Great story. This is such a strange time to be alive: as a Gen-x American looking around at the utter degradation of my country, it is old, solid, beautiful, mysterious and screwed-up Russia that gives me hope. There is something very encouraging about the older, cynical man sharing his understanding with the younger idealistic student here - both lovers of Great Russia, finding each other and passing on the commitment that has kept Russia alive. I would love to hear what the old guy says now about the SMO and what it means. The Covid caper exposed a lot of nefarious bullshit; but now the pro vs. anti Russia divide is becoming the ultimate test of whether anything noble can survive.
Jun 4, 2022·edited Jun 4, 2022Liked by Rurik Skywalker
Excellent piece Rolo. I see it as follows. As I've mentioned before I studied Russian history and literature in both under grad and grad school. I see Russia as a nation filled with amazing triumphs and horrific tragedies. I agree I think Russia and Russians are trying to make sense of their history especially 20th Century history. I'll offer some random thoughts and observations. Russia is a frontier nation in origins and a such a multi ethnic racial and religious milieu (like the USA) the glue that held the state together was autocracy/Orthodoxy where as in the USA it was Anglo-Saxon Magna Carta based concepts of liberty and "equality". Back to Russia. The 20th Century was tragic for the nation. By 1914 Russia was well on its way to becoming a major industrial power equal to any western nation and the USA. Had the revolutions of 1917 not occurred I maintain that by the later 1920's Russia easily could have emerged as the most powerful nation on earth. This was recognized by the Anglo-American oligarchic elites and they were determined to destroy Russia. The Rockefeller, Morgan, syndicates for financial reasons the Kuhn Loeb for the same plus racial hatred (this banking house was led by Paul and Felix Warburg, Jacob Schiff and Otto Khan German Jews) all three financed with the help of William Boyce Thompson and the American International Corporation political puppets like Woodrow Wilson and the funding of radical and revolutionary movements including the Bolsheviks. The February Revolution 1917 that brought down the autocracy was not spontaneous as it's often believed but planned bribery and treason caused the collapse and after Nicholas II abdicated his brother Grand Duke Michael was intimidated into renouncing the throne (terrible mistake) this paved the way for a liberal democratic regime the so called provisional government that would be toppled in October 1917 by the Bolsheviks that were financed by the Anglo-American oligarchs. William Boyce Thompson (1969-1930) personally gave 1 million of his own money towards the success of the revolutions both February and October. The Bolshevik regime that took power and won the Russian Civil War was a collection of elitists, neurotics, psychopaths, criminals and a few idealists. It was dominated by Jews and their goal was part revenge against Slavic Christians and to establish a base of operations to expand Marxist power which was for them Jewish power in disguise. They had no problem compromising or working with western oligarchs as both the NEP and 5 year plans demonstrate. Because for them it was never really about "Marxist" ideology it was about "their own power" in and outside Marxist circles. Stalin a convinced Marxist realized this and thus began to purge them. Many fled to the USA these Trotskyites eventually morphed into what we call today "neo-Cons" and have infiltrated all levels of life in the USA to the detriment of the nation culture and populace. Irving Kristol and his wife historian Gertrude Himmelfarb were both Trotskyites in the 1940's and 50's. Their son the balding flabby Bill Kristol the dean of "neo-Con" ideology. The USSR was always propped us by western oligarchs whether it was the 5 year plans that they created and built for the USSR in joint ventures with GOSPLAN or bailing out the USSR after the launching of Operation Barbarossa. Whether one agrees with Suvarov's thesis or not, there's no question from the October revolution in 1917 to the creation of the USSR in 1922 the nation was in a star perpetually at war: The red terror, the Russian Civil war, the Sino-Soviet War 1929, the Collectivizing of the land, the purges, the Japanese-Soviet War 1938-1939, annexation of Eastern Poland 1939, the Finish-Soviet War 1939-1940, and the annexing by force of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina from Romania in 1940. All the above led to the decision to launch Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Post 1945 the USSR immerged as a major power that could no longer be controlled the western oligarchs created their own Frankenstein monster. Stalin's dismantling of Jewish power in the USSR turned the Jews against the Soviet Union outside the country. After Stalin's death in 1953 a cold war began to contain the monster and encircle it with pro western (American) puppet regimes that were supported by Washington so long as they were anti Soviet and Maoist (after 1949) regardless of the nature of these regimes that were mostly petty tyrant dictatorships that fleeced their own nation treasuries. Hence current animosity towards the USA in third world countries (The CCP today is doing much the same thing.) Matters came to a head with the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK wanted to scrape the GO political status quo and it's one of the reasons he was murdering in an American deep state coup d' etat. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991 the western oligarchs now dominated by the "neo-Cons" as in 1917 wanted their revenge on the Slavs and tried to wreck Russia and turn her into a half ass puppet state. (ZOG began to slowly take over the USA around 1910 and after 1945 it began rapidly there's an excellent essay I read entitled, "The Decline of Anglo-Saxon America" the author escapes me at the moment that goes into this in detail.) Putin stopped this. And the neo-Cons have been at war with Russia ever since. All of this is not easy for the average Russian or American for that matter, to swallow. Russians are trying to make sense of all this, just as Americans feel lost in a WOKE collapsed American nihilistic trash culture. An alliance of Russia and the USA would be ideal just as an alliance between Germany and Russia pre-1914 would've bee ideal and almost happened. A Russo-American alliance could stop the decline that western nations are facing, and stand as a bulwark against the Maoist in Beijing and globalists in Davos. I've jumped around a bit as to write a full discourse would take a book I may write one day. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts and be a guest on a podcast with you and discuss all of this in deeper detail. Keep up the good work.
I mostly agree with what "fake professor" said, and came to much the same conclusions by reading about events and knowing how governments/elites work.
But it is terrible if V. Putin really believes this:
“negotiate for a better place for Russia in the New World Order. Being reduced to a vassal state was unacceptable”
That's a colossal delusion, because in USA calculations the Russian is just Brazil with nukes, a near-third-world country.
«Instead of being a gas station, he insisted that Russia be incorporated into the world order as an equal. The Soviet Union and the West made a deal to merge and to split the world amongst themselves around the time of Andropov and Gorbachev. But then the West reneged on that deal.»
Of course the USA reneged, because the material basis of that deal disappeared, that is the fear of the USSR. After the evaporation of the USSR the USA etc. bought all soviet secrets cheaply, and inventories all that was to inventory as to their military resources:
«Back in the days when I was one of the British state’s more efficient functionaries, I spoke with British officers who had been in Russia during the Yeltsin period, when they had been able to get up close and effectively inventory the Russian armed forces. (For those who don’t know, I was First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw, I was British Ambassador in Tashkent, and I was taught to be fluent in both Polish and Russian, which included living in St Petersburg as a language student while Ambassador designate).
What we (as I was then a cog in this machine) found was that the strength of the Soviet Union’s Red Army had been massively exaggerated in all our intelligence estimates, on which defence strategy had been based for decades. We had over-estimated the numbers, the mobility and above all the capability of Soviet weapons systems. Much of it was barely functional; the problems with both quality and maintenance were not just the product of the disintegration of the Soviet system, they evidently went back decades.»
V. Putin said something that however seems to confirm the view of the "fake professor":
«In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union grew weaker and subsequently broke apart. That experience should serve as a good lesson for us, because it has shown us that the paralysis of power and will is the first step towards complete degradation and oblivion. [...] Anything that does not suit the dominant state, the powers that be, is denounced as archaic, obsolete and useless. At the same time, everything it regards as useful is presented as the ultimate truth and forced on others regardless of the cost, abusively and by any means available. Those who refuse to comply are subjected to strong-arm tactics. [...] Of course, practice, international relations and the rules regulating them had to take into account the changes that took place in the world and in the balance of forces. However, this should have been done professionally, smoothly, patiently, and with due regard and respect for the interests of all states and one’s own responsibility. Instead, we saw a state of euphoria created by the feeling of absolute superiority, a kind of modern absolutism, coupled with the low cultural standards and arrogance of those who formulated and pushed through decisions that suited only themselves. [...] Sure, one often hears that politics is a dirty business. It could be, but it shouldn’t be as dirty as it is now, not to such an extent.»
If he really believed that the USA would behave “professionally, smoothly, patiently, and with due regard and respect for the interests of all states and one’s own responsibility” he was seriously deluded. There are foreign policy professionals in the USA "deep state", but they are minions, not principals, the principals only follow the principle of "might is right", "winners do whatever it takes". Did he really believe that "worthless as an indian treaty" was just a figure of speech?
From the USA perspective the Russian Federation, like Ukraine before it, is just a minor piece, a domino in "domino theory"...
«From the USA perspective the Russian Federation, like Ukraine before it, is just a minor piece, a domino in "domino theory"....»
In the past the role of the USSR/Russia was as a threat both to keep the european vassal states in line and to pump up the military-industrial-congressional complex.
George Kennan "At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982-1995" "Part II: Cold War in Full Bloom" page 118 (1997) ISBN 0-393-31609-2
“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
However for several years now they seem to have decided that they no longer need "Russia" as a fake threat, because they now have a real threat, China, and that therefore:
* They want a conflict in Ukraine to "yeltsinify"/"ukrainize" the Russian Federation via a coup/color revolution.
* Then once a vassal regime is installed in "Russia" (and a similar one in Kazakhstan), it will surely "invite" the USA to build a chain of biowarfare labs and DOD/CIA bases on the northern and west borders of China, from which the USA will train, fund and arm many "freedom fighters" inside China, with the aim to split it into "warring states".
That must be the real goal, not even grabbing the vast natural natural of "Russia"; the USA don't consider "Russia" important enough to bother about it, except as a domino to fight China. Just as the USA regarded Britain in WW2 as not important enough to bother about it, but just as a logistics base from which to invade Europe ("Airstrip One" per George Orwell).
«they now have a real threat, China, and that therefore: * They want a conflict in Ukraine to "yeltsinify"/"ukrainize" the Russian Federation via a coup/color revolution»
This perhaps needs to be explained:
* Before "modernity" states were run by oligarchies/dynasties that made money by taxing their subjects and spending it for themselves, tax-as-tribute, pretty much the same as protection gangs with their territories.
* Usually when a state conquered another state (gang warfare) they eliminated the rival oligarchy/dynasty and just took the tax revenues for their own profit. As in neighbouring states or foreign colonies.
* The USA instead offers or imposes what in ancient times was called "suzerainty", that is they don't eliminate the oligarchies/dynasties of their vassal states: they leave in place, and just take control of military and security affairs, and give a chunk of their economies to USA-owned corporates, and protect them against neighbouring states or the local servant classes.
Many oligarchies/dynasties, from Kuwait to Chile to Ukraine, have willingly taken that model, because they don't care much about abstractions such as "independence" but care a lot about making a lot of money under USA protection.
There seems to be a significant minority of Russian Federation (and of course ukrainian and belarussian and kazakh) middle classes, like those “students and they all hate Russia and they’re all Liberal” who think that they would make lots more money working for Google or Exxon or Pfizer in a Russian Federation that was a vassal state of the USA, than to be independent.
Consider Khodorkovky etc: in "Russia" they have to do as the government says, in a USA vassal "liberal democracy" they could buy as many politicians as they want and the government would have to do as they want.
They would want independence if the USA planned to *replace* them as most empires of old would, but all the USA wants is to to control their external policies and a chunk of their economy, at the expense of the lower classes. It is a pretty good deal.
The USSR was most resistant to this because the point of the USSR was to be on the side of the lower classes, and indeed as the professor says it had an ideology to export alternative to "winners do whatever it takes" and "might makes right".
Now having much the same ideology as the USA, neoliberalism, the Russian Federation competes only in terms of oligarchy/dynasty power, and for much of the latter it is better to be part of bigger "co-prosperity sphere" than to be independent.
With China it is quite different: it has the size and the resources where the chinese oligarchies/dynasties can see that being independent means they control a bigger and more powerful state and market than the USA, so there is no point in them becoming vassals, they have the might to have their own vassal states as in earlier chinese eras. That's why the USA have made a "pivot to the Pacific", and why they want to surround, isolate and breakup China, and installing a vassal regime in "Russia" is a step towards that.
For me, a most wonderful analysis and historical narrative that has provided me a very satisfying Rubix-cube snap about many things. Mucho graci, even.
I agree with all the above but wish to note my belief that the major problems these entities have domestically ensure their mutual failure: China lacks material/Resources, Russia lacks people; USNATO lacks a clue in the manner by which most bloated empires at the end of their life cycle are.
If I could predict the future, it would probably be Afro-centric with a strong smell of the taiga as global warming (don't everyone waste our time on that argument please; I know what I believe and why and how and don't wish to be "educated" by my alleged superiors) pushes the breadbasket north, as firewood-for-fuel becomes a final frontier in devastating what's left of Terra the Fair, as Russia proves to be closer than not to The Last Civilization standing via both its natural resource wealth, its intense capacity to endure and survive, and its position at the very start of a new cycle of empire after its defeat in the late 20th century.
Africa, South World in general, and the CircumArcticNorth, with likely Russian control of Canada as a vassal state. That's what I'd predict.
And some people will be happy there, some not, as always. Me, watching the final twilight of the Golden Age of Atlantis, think that I too could be happy here, since that's where I inescapably am:
"A Geostrategy for Eurasia", Zbigniew Brzezinski, September 1997:
«A loosely confederated Russia – composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic – would find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbours. [...] a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization. [...] A sovereign Ukraine is a critically important component of such a policy, as is support for such strategically pivotal states as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.»
"Opening and dividing China", The World Today, May 1992:
«Needless to say, not all these regions are like to have the same views on foreign policy questions. Coastal regions would be less willing to see relations with the United States deteriorate, or take a hard line with Hong Kong or Taiwan.»
Great post. The American right/conservatives/nationalists also take a very laissez faire approach to fighting the cultural war especially in schools. As long as the right of the divide can own guns they don't care that the left controls nearly all educational (and all other) institutions including in red states. Only DeSantis in Florida fights back against this to any significant degree.
Consequently ZOG owns the future of the country by owning the young. Few people in the right care. If they do they just homeschool which is a short term fix that doesn't solve the bigger problem.
Anyway, this war might be they only thing that offers Russia a chance to reboot and save their culture if the Russian leadership wises up and brings the youth onto their side not the globalists' side. Of course, as you noted, that will also require a program to encourage more babies which only Hungary, among white nations, seems to understand
“The Russian government has decided to start from scratch and build its internal platform on three planks: Orthodoxy, Sports and WWII.” > I don’t follow sports... but watching the west attack Russian olympians was puzzling to me. Given this fact, it makes sense.
The "Washington Consensus" authorities (including "autonomous" entities) have also banned russian artists and researchers and long dead composers, etc.; I think with two motivations:
* To send a message to the neoliberal russian upper-middle classes that they will be boycotted until there is a vassal regime in the Russian Federation, the same as for the billionaires.
* To ensure that their populations are not exposed to the high-quality aspects of russian culture.
As to WW2, that is a bad foundation for the new sense of russian identity, because while the official story is different, even their populations deep down realize that the USSR like the UK was quickly and brutally defeated by the nazis, and would have had to surrender without being financed and resupplied by the USA.
The USA financed and resupplied the USSR to ensure that a protracted war of attrition on the eastern front would substantially weaken the nazi armed forces and their logistics even if it cost many USSR military and civilian deaths. Same as today with Ukraine and Russian Federation.
The USSR after WW2 was devastated both in population and economic terms (despite looting a lot of german capital in reparations) and took a long time to recover; in some respects it never recovered, and that's part of the reason why it collapsed.
The USSR would have defeated the Nazis without USA resupply - the US resupply efforts were a drop in the bucket in the overall Soviet industrial machine and meant very little in terms of their capabilities. Regardless of supply the Soviets would still have won it would just have taken longer.
Not trying to convince you to change your position (you probably won't) but I do want to set the historical record straight
The US government sent an expeditionary force to fight against the Bolsheviks and support the Whites as part of the Interventionists in the Civil War. Given that it would not make sense for them to also build up the USSR. The "US Capital" that you say build the Soviet Union was mostly American industrialists sympathetic to the Soviet cause. This is MUCH different from having a systemic effort by the US government to fund the Soviets. This is something the Professor in your article says, when he said the Soviet ideology was sufficient to have people working on helping the USSR in Western countries - something that does not exist now.
Indeed, modern Russia was built by US government capital and the US wrote RFs Constitution, prohibiting it from having any sort of ideology. Indeed, as you write in this article the reason that the Russians are not engaging in "Active Measures" against the US is because they still hope to eat with the Americans at the same table, rather than seeing them for what they are - a mortal enemy. For this reason supporting modern Russia over the Soviets makes no sense imo, which is why I kind of take issue with you using the word "sovoks" in other articles - the Soviets made many mistakes, but they did a few things well - focusing on self-sufficient industry, military and protecting their culture.
>This is MUCH different from having a systemic effort by the US government to fund the Soviets.
There was a systematic support for Soviet industry.
>The US government sent an expeditionary force to fight against the Bolsheviks and support the Whites
No one supported the Whites. They weren't there to fight the Reds. The US sent a ship of Jewish terrorists to Russia for good measure. The Whites only got support by the Brits for a brief period because they were keeping Russia in the war against Germany.
Once the civil war kicked off, literally no one would even sell the Whites weapons. Capitalism loves communism because it standardizes labor and reduces wages to slave level. That's why capitalists can move in and make profits, just like they did in the USSR and communist China.
>For this reason supporting modern Russia over the Soviets makes no sense imo, which is why I kind of take issue with you using the word "sovoks" in other articles - the Soviets made many mistakes, but they did a few things well - focusing on self-sufficient industry, military and protecting their culture.
You come off as a tankie and you don't know what you're talking about, unfortunately.
The Soviets made industry that couldn't compete with the world. They did good on the military, but only after suffering catastrophic losses to the undermanned and comparatively small German force. Before Zhukov got involved, the Soviets lost millions of troops. The Winter War was a debacle. Poland. Please, read up a bit before writing these ridiculous sovok comments.
As for culture - what culture? Is the destruction of an existing culture a culture?
>There was a systematic support for Soviet industry.
That makes no sense from the perspective of American intervention in the civil war (i'll mention it later in this comment) and from the perspective of the cold war.
>No one supported the Whites.
Indeed there was. This is easy to verify. See below:
"The North Russia intervention, also known as the Northern Russian expedition, the Archangel campaign, and the Murman deployment, was part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War after the October Revolution. The intervention brought about the involvement of foreign troops in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White movement."
>Capitalism loves communism because it standardizes labor and reduces wages to slave level.
Capitalism hates communism because communism means the transfer or property and capital from the hands of the owners to the hands of the workers.
> That's why capitalists can move in and make profits, just like they did in the USSR and communist China.
Capitalists moved into China because of a large rural population that could easily be moved into the cities and trained to work in factories. This is the same process that happened during the Industrial Revolution in England and then the United States. It has nothing to do with Communism and has everything to do with an agrarian stage of development of a country. This is why currently factories are beginning to move to India that has similar preconditions to what China had not so long ago.
>You come off as a tankie and you don't know what you're talking about, unfortunately.
If you can read Russian, we can easily verify this by looking at numbers:
These numbers compare the USA to USSR - what I like about it is that it is sourced and uses a mix of Russian and Western sources. Of course in some aspects the USSR was behind the US, but that is to be expected as it had less time to develop and underwent two cataclysmic events in its history. But overall, industrial outlook was positive.
>The Soviets made industry that couldn't compete with the world
I'd expect someone who writes a blog such as this one not to repeat US Cold War era propaganda but apparently even this blog is not immune to that.
>suffering catastrophic losses to the undermanned and comparatively small German force
Compartively small? The Germans brought almost 1 million men and ended up losing around 9 million soldiers in the war. This is not a far cry from what the Soviets lost at around 10 million. The KD Ratio was 1.1/1 between the Soviets/Germans. So no, it was not "catastrophic losses". Shame that a Russian patriot would say such things.
> The Winter War was a debacle.
It was won though and Finland lost its second largest city.
>Poland
Happened in between 1919-1921 on the back of the Civil War, not an indication of Soviet combat capabilities. Indeed, judging by the presence of many Tsarist era Officers like Brusilov and others, they had a very capable command.
There's a reason why I said that it is not "sovok" to support the Soviet Union as the best period in Russian Civilization and why many continue to support it.
>As for culture - what culture? Is the destruction of an existing culture a culture?
The Soviets promoted the spreading of Tsarist era culture into the masses through the school program and expanded on it - this is why we see to this day many kids in the post-Soviet space knowing about Pushkin, Lev Tolstoy, etc why we have the Bolshoi as one of the priemere ballet academies in the world, etc.
"The "US Capital" that you say build the Soviet Union was mostly American industrialists sympathetic to the Soviet cause. "
Agreed. For example, Ford was a huge factor and (ahem) hardly pro-Zionist. He (claimed, at least) that he invested in Russia to show them that capitalism could beat commie economic ass. Ford is also an example of how many Great Men are often on one hand wise and shrewd and on another eccentric cranks, even loons. Elon Musk comes to mind. Neither Congress nor Zionists (not communists) controlled Ford. Ford bought senators not vice-versa.
Which reminds me to comment on the ever popular Protocols of Zion school of political analysis. Regarding Israel, Zionistas, the uncommonly high representation of Jewry in banking circles, etc... it is foolish to confuse a parasite with its host. Yes, Israel et al wield uncannily clever and shrewd clout in global geopolitics, but they are the fleas not the dog. When they run the dog into the swamp, they drown while the dog paddles across to the other side.
Meanwhile, we individual hairs (to complete this shaggy dog metaphor) are born, grow old, and die as ever. The history of banksters and their government cohorts in generally always follows this pattern per my understanding: suck the host so dry it can't carry them and they jump to another host (Britain fails, USA rises, for example).
But now it's global. The parasites have nowhere to run... unless they really are shape-shifting space lizards. Gonna be innarestin', this next decade or so.
That's a bleak and characteristically very fatalistically Slavic take on the situation. Which is not to say it strikes me as inaccurate, at least circa 2014 when the West still possessed a great deal of cultural influence and unlimited economic power. The shine has come off, however. America is not nearly so haloed in bishie sparkles as it once was. I wonder if that professor has revised his analysis?
«That's a bleak and characteristically very fatalistically Slavic take on the situation»
The collapse of the USSR and "yeltinisization" hit russians, and especially the non-russian previous parts of the USSR, very hard, not just economically, but also spiritually. For many of those places it was largely a return to feudalism, after being part of a state that had significant achievements starting from a very low base (The Tsarist Empire was not that different from Mexico or China when it fell).
I know people who worked in USSR in the 80s. The spiritual anemia was already very strong. The people were deeply dejected. Russia was ripe for the picking...
I only know one thing: When the people in the west get cold this winter (or are fired, lose their home, their tesla etc), they will seek someone to blame. The media will be working overtime to blame it all on Russia. And I have a sneaking suspicion that they will succeed. Would this be enough to get the muslims to attack Russia? I dunno, but it is not entirely unthinkable.
"It’s almost as if Russia is getting serious about fighting the West for the first time."
I think Russia was serious about fighting the west all along. A couple things I've learned in life:
. Pick your battles.
. Timing is everything
. Aim for win-win; shift to win-lose when confronting a total bully
Russia didn't end up with the most advanced weaponry -- years ahead of the west -- & near total self-sufficiency by chance. They didn't have an alternative to Swift plug-in ready by chance. Preparations were decades on the making. The west is now exposed as a paper tiger.
Sports as an industry is mostly PR/advertising./propaganda. Russia is proving it can take on the west. The west has been long since co-opted by stupid, greedy bullies who drank their own kool-aid.
Iirc, Putin has told friendly nations that defaulting on IMF debt will not be held against them if they want to join the new financial system. Offer of a fresh start; another master stroke.
«Iirc, Putin has told friendly nations that defaulting on IMF debt will not be held against them if they want to join the new financial system.»
That could be interesting: so far, sooner or later, all IMF loans have been fully repaid, such is the IMF's "sacred" status in the "USA-rules based order".
Great story. This is such a strange time to be alive: as a Gen-x American looking around at the utter degradation of my country, it is old, solid, beautiful, mysterious and screwed-up Russia that gives me hope. There is something very encouraging about the older, cynical man sharing his understanding with the younger idealistic student here - both lovers of Great Russia, finding each other and passing on the commitment that has kept Russia alive. I would love to hear what the old guy says now about the SMO and what it means. The Covid caper exposed a lot of nefarious bullshit; but now the pro vs. anti Russia divide is becoming the ultimate test of whether anything noble can survive.
Excellent piece Rolo. I see it as follows. As I've mentioned before I studied Russian history and literature in both under grad and grad school. I see Russia as a nation filled with amazing triumphs and horrific tragedies. I agree I think Russia and Russians are trying to make sense of their history especially 20th Century history. I'll offer some random thoughts and observations. Russia is a frontier nation in origins and a such a multi ethnic racial and religious milieu (like the USA) the glue that held the state together was autocracy/Orthodoxy where as in the USA it was Anglo-Saxon Magna Carta based concepts of liberty and "equality". Back to Russia. The 20th Century was tragic for the nation. By 1914 Russia was well on its way to becoming a major industrial power equal to any western nation and the USA. Had the revolutions of 1917 not occurred I maintain that by the later 1920's Russia easily could have emerged as the most powerful nation on earth. This was recognized by the Anglo-American oligarchic elites and they were determined to destroy Russia. The Rockefeller, Morgan, syndicates for financial reasons the Kuhn Loeb for the same plus racial hatred (this banking house was led by Paul and Felix Warburg, Jacob Schiff and Otto Khan German Jews) all three financed with the help of William Boyce Thompson and the American International Corporation political puppets like Woodrow Wilson and the funding of radical and revolutionary movements including the Bolsheviks. The February Revolution 1917 that brought down the autocracy was not spontaneous as it's often believed but planned bribery and treason caused the collapse and after Nicholas II abdicated his brother Grand Duke Michael was intimidated into renouncing the throne (terrible mistake) this paved the way for a liberal democratic regime the so called provisional government that would be toppled in October 1917 by the Bolsheviks that were financed by the Anglo-American oligarchs. William Boyce Thompson (1969-1930) personally gave 1 million of his own money towards the success of the revolutions both February and October. The Bolshevik regime that took power and won the Russian Civil War was a collection of elitists, neurotics, psychopaths, criminals and a few idealists. It was dominated by Jews and their goal was part revenge against Slavic Christians and to establish a base of operations to expand Marxist power which was for them Jewish power in disguise. They had no problem compromising or working with western oligarchs as both the NEP and 5 year plans demonstrate. Because for them it was never really about "Marxist" ideology it was about "their own power" in and outside Marxist circles. Stalin a convinced Marxist realized this and thus began to purge them. Many fled to the USA these Trotskyites eventually morphed into what we call today "neo-Cons" and have infiltrated all levels of life in the USA to the detriment of the nation culture and populace. Irving Kristol and his wife historian Gertrude Himmelfarb were both Trotskyites in the 1940's and 50's. Their son the balding flabby Bill Kristol the dean of "neo-Con" ideology. The USSR was always propped us by western oligarchs whether it was the 5 year plans that they created and built for the USSR in joint ventures with GOSPLAN or bailing out the USSR after the launching of Operation Barbarossa. Whether one agrees with Suvarov's thesis or not, there's no question from the October revolution in 1917 to the creation of the USSR in 1922 the nation was in a star perpetually at war: The red terror, the Russian Civil war, the Sino-Soviet War 1929, the Collectivizing of the land, the purges, the Japanese-Soviet War 1938-1939, annexation of Eastern Poland 1939, the Finish-Soviet War 1939-1940, and the annexing by force of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina from Romania in 1940. All the above led to the decision to launch Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Post 1945 the USSR immerged as a major power that could no longer be controlled the western oligarchs created their own Frankenstein monster. Stalin's dismantling of Jewish power in the USSR turned the Jews against the Soviet Union outside the country. After Stalin's death in 1953 a cold war began to contain the monster and encircle it with pro western (American) puppet regimes that were supported by Washington so long as they were anti Soviet and Maoist (after 1949) regardless of the nature of these regimes that were mostly petty tyrant dictatorships that fleeced their own nation treasuries. Hence current animosity towards the USA in third world countries (The CCP today is doing much the same thing.) Matters came to a head with the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK wanted to scrape the GO political status quo and it's one of the reasons he was murdering in an American deep state coup d' etat. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991 the western oligarchs now dominated by the "neo-Cons" as in 1917 wanted their revenge on the Slavs and tried to wreck Russia and turn her into a half ass puppet state. (ZOG began to slowly take over the USA around 1910 and after 1945 it began rapidly there's an excellent essay I read entitled, "The Decline of Anglo-Saxon America" the author escapes me at the moment that goes into this in detail.) Putin stopped this. And the neo-Cons have been at war with Russia ever since. All of this is not easy for the average Russian or American for that matter, to swallow. Russians are trying to make sense of all this, just as Americans feel lost in a WOKE collapsed American nihilistic trash culture. An alliance of Russia and the USA would be ideal just as an alliance between Germany and Russia pre-1914 would've bee ideal and almost happened. A Russo-American alliance could stop the decline that western nations are facing, and stand as a bulwark against the Maoist in Beijing and globalists in Davos. I've jumped around a bit as to write a full discourse would take a book I may write one day. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts and be a guest on a podcast with you and discuss all of this in deeper detail. Keep up the good work.
I mostly agree with what "fake professor" said, and came to much the same conclusions by reading about events and knowing how governments/elites work.
But it is terrible if V. Putin really believes this:
“negotiate for a better place for Russia in the New World Order. Being reduced to a vassal state was unacceptable”
That's a colossal delusion, because in USA calculations the Russian is just Brazil with nukes, a near-third-world country.
«Instead of being a gas station, he insisted that Russia be incorporated into the world order as an equal. The Soviet Union and the West made a deal to merge and to split the world amongst themselves around the time of Andropov and Gorbachev. But then the West reneged on that deal.»
Of course the USA reneged, because the material basis of that deal disappeared, that is the fear of the USSR. After the evaporation of the USSR the USA etc. bought all soviet secrets cheaply, and inventories all that was to inventory as to their military resources:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/03/the-universal-boosting-of-putin/
«Back in the days when I was one of the British state’s more efficient functionaries, I spoke with British officers who had been in Russia during the Yeltsin period, when they had been able to get up close and effectively inventory the Russian armed forces. (For those who don’t know, I was First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw, I was British Ambassador in Tashkent, and I was taught to be fluent in both Polish and Russian, which included living in St Petersburg as a language student while Ambassador designate).
What we (as I was then a cog in this machine) found was that the strength of the Soviet Union’s Red Army had been massively exaggerated in all our intelligence estimates, on which defence strategy had been based for decades. We had over-estimated the numbers, the mobility and above all the capability of Soviet weapons systems. Much of it was barely functional; the problems with both quality and maintenance were not just the product of the disintegration of the Soviet system, they evidently went back decades.»
V. Putin said something that however seems to confirm the view of the "fake professor":
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/full-transcript-vladimir-putin-s-televised-address-to-russia-on-ukraine-feb-24
«In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union grew weaker and subsequently broke apart. That experience should serve as a good lesson for us, because it has shown us that the paralysis of power and will is the first step towards complete degradation and oblivion. [...] Anything that does not suit the dominant state, the powers that be, is denounced as archaic, obsolete and useless. At the same time, everything it regards as useful is presented as the ultimate truth and forced on others regardless of the cost, abusively and by any means available. Those who refuse to comply are subjected to strong-arm tactics. [...] Of course, practice, international relations and the rules regulating them had to take into account the changes that took place in the world and in the balance of forces. However, this should have been done professionally, smoothly, patiently, and with due regard and respect for the interests of all states and one’s own responsibility. Instead, we saw a state of euphoria created by the feeling of absolute superiority, a kind of modern absolutism, coupled with the low cultural standards and arrogance of those who formulated and pushed through decisions that suited only themselves. [...] Sure, one often hears that politics is a dirty business. It could be, but it shouldn’t be as dirty as it is now, not to such an extent.»
If he really believed that the USA would behave “professionally, smoothly, patiently, and with due regard and respect for the interests of all states and one’s own responsibility” he was seriously deluded. There are foreign policy professionals in the USA "deep state", but they are minions, not principals, the principals only follow the principle of "might is right", "winners do whatever it takes". Did he really believe that "worthless as an indian treaty" was just a figure of speech?
From the USA perspective the Russian Federation, like Ukraine before it, is just a minor piece, a domino in "domino theory"...
«From the USA perspective the Russian Federation, like Ukraine before it, is just a minor piece, a domino in "domino theory"....»
In the past the role of the USSR/Russia was as a threat both to keep the european vassal states in line and to pump up the military-industrial-congressional complex.
George Kennan "At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982-1995" "Part II: Cold War in Full Bloom" page 118 (1997) ISBN 0-393-31609-2
“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
However for several years now they seem to have decided that they no longer need "Russia" as a fake threat, because they now have a real threat, China, and that therefore:
* They want a conflict in Ukraine to "yeltsinify"/"ukrainize" the Russian Federation via a coup/color revolution.
* Then once a vassal regime is installed in "Russia" (and a similar one in Kazakhstan), it will surely "invite" the USA to build a chain of biowarfare labs and DOD/CIA bases on the northern and west borders of China, from which the USA will train, fund and arm many "freedom fighters" inside China, with the aim to split it into "warring states".
That must be the real goal, not even grabbing the vast natural natural of "Russia"; the USA don't consider "Russia" important enough to bother about it, except as a domino to fight China. Just as the USA regarded Britain in WW2 as not important enough to bother about it, but just as a logistics base from which to invade Europe ("Airstrip One" per George Orwell).
«they now have a real threat, China, and that therefore: * They want a conflict in Ukraine to "yeltsinify"/"ukrainize" the Russian Federation via a coup/color revolution»
This perhaps needs to be explained:
* Before "modernity" states were run by oligarchies/dynasties that made money by taxing their subjects and spending it for themselves, tax-as-tribute, pretty much the same as protection gangs with their territories.
* Usually when a state conquered another state (gang warfare) they eliminated the rival oligarchy/dynasty and just took the tax revenues for their own profit. As in neighbouring states or foreign colonies.
* The USA instead offers or imposes what in ancient times was called "suzerainty", that is they don't eliminate the oligarchies/dynasties of their vassal states: they leave in place, and just take control of military and security affairs, and give a chunk of their economies to USA-owned corporates, and protect them against neighbouring states or the local servant classes.
Many oligarchies/dynasties, from Kuwait to Chile to Ukraine, have willingly taken that model, because they don't care much about abstractions such as "independence" but care a lot about making a lot of money under USA protection.
There seems to be a significant minority of Russian Federation (and of course ukrainian and belarussian and kazakh) middle classes, like those “students and they all hate Russia and they’re all Liberal” who think that they would make lots more money working for Google or Exxon or Pfizer in a Russian Federation that was a vassal state of the USA, than to be independent.
Consider Khodorkovky etc: in "Russia" they have to do as the government says, in a USA vassal "liberal democracy" they could buy as many politicians as they want and the government would have to do as they want.
They would want independence if the USA planned to *replace* them as most empires of old would, but all the USA wants is to to control their external policies and a chunk of their economy, at the expense of the lower classes. It is a pretty good deal.
The USSR was most resistant to this because the point of the USSR was to be on the side of the lower classes, and indeed as the professor says it had an ideology to export alternative to "winners do whatever it takes" and "might makes right".
Now having much the same ideology as the USA, neoliberalism, the Russian Federation competes only in terms of oligarchy/dynasty power, and for much of the latter it is better to be part of bigger "co-prosperity sphere" than to be independent.
With China it is quite different: it has the size and the resources where the chinese oligarchies/dynasties can see that being independent means they control a bigger and more powerful state and market than the USA, so there is no point in them becoming vassals, they have the might to have their own vassal states as in earlier chinese eras. That's why the USA have made a "pivot to the Pacific", and why they want to surround, isolate and breakup China, and installing a vassal regime in "Russia" is a step towards that.
For me, a most wonderful analysis and historical narrative that has provided me a very satisfying Rubix-cube snap about many things. Mucho graci, even.
I agree with all the above but wish to note my belief that the major problems these entities have domestically ensure their mutual failure: China lacks material/Resources, Russia lacks people; USNATO lacks a clue in the manner by which most bloated empires at the end of their life cycle are.
If I could predict the future, it would probably be Afro-centric with a strong smell of the taiga as global warming (don't everyone waste our time on that argument please; I know what I believe and why and how and don't wish to be "educated" by my alleged superiors) pushes the breadbasket north, as firewood-for-fuel becomes a final frontier in devastating what's left of Terra the Fair, as Russia proves to be closer than not to The Last Civilization standing via both its natural resource wealth, its intense capacity to endure and survive, and its position at the very start of a new cycle of empire after its defeat in the late 20th century.
Africa, South World in general, and the CircumArcticNorth, with likely Russian control of Canada as a vassal state. That's what I'd predict.
And some people will be happy there, some not, as always. Me, watching the final twilight of the Golden Age of Atlantis, think that I too could be happy here, since that's where I inescapably am:
https://youtu.be/of-GOC3mNKw
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/1997-09-01/geostrategy-eurasia
"A Geostrategy for Eurasia", Zbigniew Brzezinski, September 1997:
«A loosely confederated Russia – composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic – would find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbours. [...] a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization. [...] A sovereign Ukraine is a critically important component of such a policy, as is support for such strategically pivotal states as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.»
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40396396
"Opening and dividing China", The World Today, May 1992:
«Needless to say, not all these regions are like to have the same views on foreign policy questions. Coastal regions would be less willing to see relations with the United States deteriorate, or take a hard line with Hong Kong or Taiwan.»
Great post. The American right/conservatives/nationalists also take a very laissez faire approach to fighting the cultural war especially in schools. As long as the right of the divide can own guns they don't care that the left controls nearly all educational (and all other) institutions including in red states. Only DeSantis in Florida fights back against this to any significant degree.
Consequently ZOG owns the future of the country by owning the young. Few people in the right care. If they do they just homeschool which is a short term fix that doesn't solve the bigger problem.
Anyway, this war might be they only thing that offers Russia a chance to reboot and save their culture if the Russian leadership wises up and brings the youth onto their side not the globalists' side. Of course, as you noted, that will also require a program to encourage more babies which only Hungary, among white nations, seems to understand
“The Russian government has decided to start from scratch and build its internal platform on three planks: Orthodoxy, Sports and WWII.” > I don’t follow sports... but watching the west attack Russian olympians was puzzling to me. Given this fact, it makes sense.
The "Washington Consensus" authorities (including "autonomous" entities) have also banned russian artists and researchers and long dead composers, etc.; I think with two motivations:
* To send a message to the neoliberal russian upper-middle classes that they will be boycotted until there is a vassal regime in the Russian Federation, the same as for the billionaires.
* To ensure that their populations are not exposed to the high-quality aspects of russian culture.
As to WW2, that is a bad foundation for the new sense of russian identity, because while the official story is different, even their populations deep down realize that the USSR like the UK was quickly and brutally defeated by the nazis, and would have had to surrender without being financed and resupplied by the USA.
The USA financed and resupplied the USSR to ensure that a protracted war of attrition on the eastern front would substantially weaken the nazi armed forces and their logistics even if it cost many USSR military and civilian deaths. Same as today with Ukraine and Russian Federation.
The USSR after WW2 was devastated both in population and economic terms (despite looting a lot of german capital in reparations) and took a long time to recover; in some respects it never recovered, and that's part of the reason why it collapsed.
The USSR would have defeated the Nazis without USA resupply - the US resupply efforts were a drop in the bucket in the overall Soviet industrial machine and meant very little in terms of their capabilities. Regardless of supply the Soviets would still have won it would just have taken longer.
Maybe.
But US capital literally built the Soviet Union.
Not trying to convince you to change your position (you probably won't) but I do want to set the historical record straight
The US government sent an expeditionary force to fight against the Bolsheviks and support the Whites as part of the Interventionists in the Civil War. Given that it would not make sense for them to also build up the USSR. The "US Capital" that you say build the Soviet Union was mostly American industrialists sympathetic to the Soviet cause. This is MUCH different from having a systemic effort by the US government to fund the Soviets. This is something the Professor in your article says, when he said the Soviet ideology was sufficient to have people working on helping the USSR in Western countries - something that does not exist now.
Indeed, modern Russia was built by US government capital and the US wrote RFs Constitution, prohibiting it from having any sort of ideology. Indeed, as you write in this article the reason that the Russians are not engaging in "Active Measures" against the US is because they still hope to eat with the Americans at the same table, rather than seeing them for what they are - a mortal enemy. For this reason supporting modern Russia over the Soviets makes no sense imo, which is why I kind of take issue with you using the word "sovoks" in other articles - the Soviets made many mistakes, but they did a few things well - focusing on self-sufficient industry, military and protecting their culture.
>This is MUCH different from having a systemic effort by the US government to fund the Soviets.
There was a systematic support for Soviet industry.
>The US government sent an expeditionary force to fight against the Bolsheviks and support the Whites
No one supported the Whites. They weren't there to fight the Reds. The US sent a ship of Jewish terrorists to Russia for good measure. The Whites only got support by the Brits for a brief period because they were keeping Russia in the war against Germany.
Once the civil war kicked off, literally no one would even sell the Whites weapons. Capitalism loves communism because it standardizes labor and reduces wages to slave level. That's why capitalists can move in and make profits, just like they did in the USSR and communist China.
>For this reason supporting modern Russia over the Soviets makes no sense imo, which is why I kind of take issue with you using the word "sovoks" in other articles - the Soviets made many mistakes, but they did a few things well - focusing on self-sufficient industry, military and protecting their culture.
You come off as a tankie and you don't know what you're talking about, unfortunately.
The Soviets made industry that couldn't compete with the world. They did good on the military, but only after suffering catastrophic losses to the undermanned and comparatively small German force. Before Zhukov got involved, the Soviets lost millions of troops. The Winter War was a debacle. Poland. Please, read up a bit before writing these ridiculous sovok comments.
As for culture - what culture? Is the destruction of an existing culture a culture?
>There was a systematic support for Soviet industry.
That makes no sense from the perspective of American intervention in the civil war (i'll mention it later in this comment) and from the perspective of the cold war.
>No one supported the Whites.
Indeed there was. This is easy to verify. See below:
"The North Russia intervention, also known as the Northern Russian expedition, the Archangel campaign, and the Murman deployment, was part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War after the October Revolution. The intervention brought about the involvement of foreign troops in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White movement."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Russia_intervention
>Capitalism loves communism because it standardizes labor and reduces wages to slave level.
Capitalism hates communism because communism means the transfer or property and capital from the hands of the owners to the hands of the workers.
> That's why capitalists can move in and make profits, just like they did in the USSR and communist China.
Capitalists moved into China because of a large rural population that could easily be moved into the cities and trained to work in factories. This is the same process that happened during the Industrial Revolution in England and then the United States. It has nothing to do with Communism and has everything to do with an agrarian stage of development of a country. This is why currently factories are beginning to move to India that has similar preconditions to what China had not so long ago.
>You come off as a tankie and you don't know what you're talking about, unfortunately.
If you can read Russian, we can easily verify this by looking at numbers:
http://su90.ru/
These numbers compare the USA to USSR - what I like about it is that it is sourced and uses a mix of Russian and Western sources. Of course in some aspects the USSR was behind the US, but that is to be expected as it had less time to develop and underwent two cataclysmic events in its history. But overall, industrial outlook was positive.
>The Soviets made industry that couldn't compete with the world
I'd expect someone who writes a blog such as this one not to repeat US Cold War era propaganda but apparently even this blog is not immune to that.
>suffering catastrophic losses to the undermanned and comparatively small German force
Compartively small? The Germans brought almost 1 million men and ended up losing around 9 million soldiers in the war. This is not a far cry from what the Soviets lost at around 10 million. The KD Ratio was 1.1/1 between the Soviets/Germans. So no, it was not "catastrophic losses". Shame that a Russian patriot would say such things.
> The Winter War was a debacle.
It was won though and Finland lost its second largest city.
>Poland
Happened in between 1919-1921 on the back of the Civil War, not an indication of Soviet combat capabilities. Indeed, judging by the presence of many Tsarist era Officers like Brusilov and others, they had a very capable command.
Here's a list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarist_officers_in_the_Red_Army#:~:text=Dmitri%20Parsky%20%2D%20The%20first%20Tsarist,Front%20during%20Russian%20Civil%20War.
There's a reason why I said that it is not "sovok" to support the Soviet Union as the best period in Russian Civilization and why many continue to support it.
>As for culture - what culture? Is the destruction of an existing culture a culture?
The Soviets promoted the spreading of Tsarist era culture into the masses through the school program and expanded on it - this is why we see to this day many kids in the post-Soviet space knowing about Pushkin, Lev Tolstoy, etc why we have the Bolshoi as one of the priemere ballet academies in the world, etc.
"The "US Capital" that you say build the Soviet Union was mostly American industrialists sympathetic to the Soviet cause. "
Agreed. For example, Ford was a huge factor and (ahem) hardly pro-Zionist. He (claimed, at least) that he invested in Russia to show them that capitalism could beat commie economic ass. Ford is also an example of how many Great Men are often on one hand wise and shrewd and on another eccentric cranks, even loons. Elon Musk comes to mind. Neither Congress nor Zionists (not communists) controlled Ford. Ford bought senators not vice-versa.
Which reminds me to comment on the ever popular Protocols of Zion school of political analysis. Regarding Israel, Zionistas, the uncommonly high representation of Jewry in banking circles, etc... it is foolish to confuse a parasite with its host. Yes, Israel et al wield uncannily clever and shrewd clout in global geopolitics, but they are the fleas not the dog. When they run the dog into the swamp, they drown while the dog paddles across to the other side.
Meanwhile, we individual hairs (to complete this shaggy dog metaphor) are born, grow old, and die as ever. The history of banksters and their government cohorts in generally always follows this pattern per my understanding: suck the host so dry it can't carry them and they jump to another host (Britain fails, USA rises, for example).
But now it's global. The parasites have nowhere to run... unless they really are shape-shifting space lizards. Gonna be innarestin', this next decade or so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phP8IJYUy70
That's a bleak and characteristically very fatalistically Slavic take on the situation. Which is not to say it strikes me as inaccurate, at least circa 2014 when the West still possessed a great deal of cultural influence and unlimited economic power. The shine has come off, however. America is not nearly so haloed in bishie sparkles as it once was. I wonder if that professor has revised his analysis?
«That's a bleak and characteristically very fatalistically Slavic take on the situation»
The collapse of the USSR and "yeltinisization" hit russians, and especially the non-russian previous parts of the USSR, very hard, not just economically, but also spiritually. For many of those places it was largely a return to feudalism, after being part of a state that had significant achievements starting from a very low base (The Tsarist Empire was not that different from Mexico or China when it fell).
I know people who worked in USSR in the 80s. The spiritual anemia was already very strong. The people were deeply dejected. Russia was ripe for the picking...
I only know one thing: When the people in the west get cold this winter (or are fired, lose their home, their tesla etc), they will seek someone to blame. The media will be working overtime to blame it all on Russia. And I have a sneaking suspicion that they will succeed. Would this be enough to get the muslims to attack Russia? I dunno, but it is not entirely unthinkable.
"It’s almost as if Russia is getting serious about fighting the West for the first time."
I think Russia was serious about fighting the west all along. A couple things I've learned in life:
. Pick your battles.
. Timing is everything
. Aim for win-win; shift to win-lose when confronting a total bully
Russia didn't end up with the most advanced weaponry -- years ahead of the west -- & near total self-sufficiency by chance. They didn't have an alternative to Swift plug-in ready by chance. Preparations were decades on the making. The west is now exposed as a paper tiger.
Sports as an industry is mostly PR/advertising./propaganda. Russia is proving it can take on the west. The west has been long since co-opted by stupid, greedy bullies who drank their own kool-aid.
Iirc, Putin has told friendly nations that defaulting on IMF debt will not be held against them if they want to join the new financial system. Offer of a fresh start; another master stroke.
«Iirc, Putin has told friendly nations that defaulting on IMF debt will not be held against them if they want to join the new financial system.»
That could be interesting: so far, sooner or later, all IMF loans have been fully repaid, such is the IMF's "sacred" status in the "USA-rules based order".