My latest in PJ Media:
In the course of an interview he gave for an upcoming Russian documentary about the country’s recent past, Vladimir Putin made a startling revelation. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he said in interview excerpts released Sunday, “Sometimes I had to earn extra money. I mean, earn extra money by car, as a private driver.” Specifically, according to Agence France-Presse, “he worked occasionally as a taxi driver to boost his income.”
Putin said this in the course of making it abundantly clear that he did not believe that the demise of the Soviet Union was a positive historical development. The fall of the Communist behemoth, he said, was a “tragedy” for “most citizens.” Putin asked: “After all, what is the collapse of the Soviet Union? This is the collapse of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union.” He added that the fall of the oppressive superpower was “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.”
The national disaster was paralleled in Putin’s personal life; he doesn’t remember his time as a driver with any fondness: “It’s unpleasant to talk about to be honest but, unfortunately, that was the case.”
It may be unpleasant for Putin to look back on those days. It must have been a mighty fall to go from being among the cosseted Soviet apparatchiks to ferrying around the very same ordinary people among whom he once inspired horror and dread as a KGB agent. But was it really that unfortunate? It would have been interesting if the interviewer had asked Putin more about his cab-driving experience, which is unparalleled among the political elites of the various great powers. Putin might have given enlightening answers to questions about whether his time as a driver gave him any greater sensitivity to the concerns and anxieties of the people he has spent most of his life ruling. Certainly, no other world leader can boast of having spent any time living as an ordinary citizen after entering into the inner circle of the governing elites.
In fact, we would be better off if Putin’s unpleasant memory became required of all political leaders. I wouldn’t want to get in a cab that Old Joe Biden was driving now, but imagine if Lunchbucket Joe didn’t just posture cynically about being just ordinary folks but really had lived as a decidedly unwealthy private citizen after his overlong tenure in the Senate. Biden became a Senator in 1973 at the age of 30; he stayed in the Senate until he was 66 when he became vice president. He left the vice presidency at age 74 and became president at age 78.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Hank says
“Putin said this in the course of making it abundantly clear that he did not believe that the demise of the Soviet Union was a positive historical development.”
Not really. As Russia (Russian citizens) was paying through the nose to subsidize every other nation state in the Soviet Union. I doubt if Russian citizens once again want to pay for the upkeep of other nations military, pay their energy bills, et al., instead of keeping and enjoying their wealth for themselves.
“he worked occasionally as a taxi driver to boost his income.”
Maybe he should take a few days off, disguise himself as a Taxi driver and get a feeling of how it is going with his citizens, as he is living in a bubble like all the other Elites and has no clue about the effects of his policies on business or on ordinary citizens.
The Prime Minister of Norway did this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p10TKLBffJQ
gravenimage says
Actually, every other Iron Curtain nation found its money siphoned off to Russia.
Infidel says
I know that I’m probably gonna be in the minority on this, but having read Putin’s opinions on the break-up of the Soviet Union, I get his salient point – that of different ethnicities scattered throughout the 15 republics.
Note that within the Soviet Union, there were Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Tajiks and others in and around Moscow, while there were Russians settled and working in Latvia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and so on. The break-up of the Soviet Union now meant that for the latter category, their language was now no longer the primary language of the country in which they lived. The most stark case of this was in Ukraine in 2014 when Ukrainian was made the sole national language, which was what prompted the Russian annexation of Crimea, but even in other countries, like Latvia, Russians suddenly found themselves at a disadvantage and were now scrambling to move home to Russia. Similarly, a lot of Uzbeks, Kazakhs and others who had been working in Russia were now headed home
Aside from all that, geopolitically, one major drawback of the breakup of the Soviet Union was the reversal of the Romanov conquest of Turkistan in the 19th century: the independence of the -stans, and the creation of 6 new muslim countries. We’ve seen Azerbaijan have an alliance w/ Turkey, and not just that, Turkey rediscover its Turkic roots along w/ its islamic ones while creating the Turkic Council. In Kazakhstan, which was 50% Russian and 50% Kazakh in 1991, it’s gone to 20% Russians today. Not just that, in the northern part of Kazakhstan, which historically was never Kazakh and only included in Kazakhstan by the Soviets intent on damaging the Russian identity, the government at
AstanaNursultan has been quietly but determinedly Kazakhifying, and w/ that, islamifying the Steppes, so that Russia won’t be able to claim that the way they did Crimea. On top of everything, both Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are pretty oil rich in their own right, but pretty isolated from the rest of the worldKeep in mind that before the Russian conquest of Turkistan, it was the real hub of the most intense jihad campaigns in history (note that today’s Afghanistan and western Xinjiang too was a part of Turkistan in those times) – the Samanids,Ghaznavids, Seljuqs, Ghorids, Karakhanids, Khwarezmids, Timurides and finally the Mughals. It was the capture of Russian civilians – particularly women and children – on the Russia-Turkistan frontiers that prompted the Romanovs – otherwise more busy in Europe – to invade and overrun Turkistan. The result of that was the most serious de-islamification exercise ever done in history, probably rivaling Spain’s Reconquista and the results are to be seen in the contrast b/w a muslim in, say, Uzbekistan today vs one right next door in Afghanistan, or two countries down in Pakistan. In other words, compare and contrast the Russian achievement against the Brits!
Looking at all this, while I understand what made Boris Yeltsin maneuver the way he did in abolishing the Soviet Union, the division should have gone like this:
‣ Grant the independence of the Baltic Republics, since the US and a lot of the West refused to recognize them as a part of the Soviet Union
‣ Separate Crimea from Ukraine and then have elections in Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus/Byelorussia on whether they wanted to become independent
‣ Hold similar polls in Georgia and Armenia
‣ Retain hold on Azerbaijan and the -stans
‣ Call the resultant country Russia, but put in the Duma and all the other pre-Soviet institutions that existed there. There would be no kabuki theater about Belarus’ and Lukashenko, and no resurgence of islam in Central Asia if a Russian presence continued. In fact, under this new non-athesitic Russia, they could have worked on Christianizing the -stans in the same way that they did the Sibir Khanate in the 16th century
Infidel says
I don’t watch Fox these days, but Tucker is right here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw0ypSr1SGY
James Lincoln says
Thanks for the link, Infidel.
Main point is that a NATO takeover of Ukraine would compromise Russia’s access to the strategic Sevastopol Naval base – with ramifications to follow.
All should watch.
Infidel says
Tucker is the only one I’ve seen to question the rationale of NATO these days. As he pointed out, the Soviet Union (and the Warsaw Pact) have been a part of history for now 30 years this year, and NATO is an army looking for a cause. One day, they think about combating Climate Change, another day, they try to show their relevance by declaring solidarity w/ the US on 9/11 (when we did the war pretty well w/o them). Pity is that no Republican congressman is questioning this insane policy