One Year Later… Russia is Back to the 1700s…

Here is an interesting story about the madman called Putin, the self-proclaimed genius of Russia who now thinks he is Peter the Great!

This small man who started life as a low level Russian spy in Germany now dreams that he is some kind of hero saving Russia and Ukraine from dominance by the West.

Most Russians can only dream about what we have in the West, but luckily they have Czar Putin who gives them death, poverty and poor housing  just like Peter the Great did back some 300 years ago.

Czar Putin had the “Great Idea” of invading Ukarine on 24 February, 2022 with a  false claim of a “special operation” limited to the eastern Donbas region to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and reduce a fabricated threat to Russia.

Peter the Great, though a ruthless thug like Putin, was unlike Putin, a huge admirer of Western ideas, science and culture, famously building St Petersburg as a “window on Europe” and travelling that continent thirsty for knowledge to help drag Russia towards modernity.

But let’s look at the similarities between these two rogues, because there are plenty:

1. Many Russians in the countryside, in small cities and villages continue to live in awful damp homes, without clean water and proper sanitation. Yes, the wealthy friends of Putin & Co. have nice places, but they account for 0,001% of the population… Air pollution is a problem where there is heavy industry. In the 17^th century, the growth of cities and towns placed enormous pressures on the availability of cheap housing. With many people coming to towns to find work, slum areas grew quickly. Living conditions in many places consequently became unimaginable. Many families were forced to live in single rooms in ramshackle tenements or in damp cellars, with no sanitation or fresh air.
2. Problems with the disposal of the dead often added to the stench and decay. Many graveyards became full to capacity in Peter’s time, and coffins were sometimes left partially uncovered in ‘poor holes’ close to local houses and businesses. In Putin’s time, the Russian army have left many of their dead soldiers to rot on the ground, while hundreds of thousands of dead Russian soldiers are shipped in lorries and trains from Ukraine. There are problems finding space in existing graveyards so new graveyards have been hastily found!
3. Naturally, the sons of poor Russian residents, as has always been the case, have seen that their sons and husbands are the ones who are voluntarily sent to join the army to fight in Ukraine. The sons and husbands of Putin & Co. somehow manage to avoid such voluntary conscription! Not much has changed.
4. Back in times of Peter the Great, wheat bread was the favorite staple, but most peasants lived on rye and barley in the form of bread and beer. In Putin’s time, Russians eat plenty of bread and drink vodka baked and distilled from wheat, rye and barley!
5. In the 17^th century the church was at the center of the common life, and there were tens of thousands of witchcraft trials. Virtually everyone believed in magic. In Putin’s world the Orthodox Church is big and powerful and blesses Putin & Co., while his crusading soldiers kill torture and rape ordinary Ukrainians and his opposition!  Witchcraft trials imprison Putin’s opposition, and magically, since he controls the media, people believe that Putin is telling the truth about how he is saving Ukraine from the Wicked West.
6. In Peter’s time drinking water was often contaminated by raw sewage and garbage was left rotting in the street – Putin allows the same to happen, preferring to spend state revenues on weapons and armies rather than bring his population out of the Middle Ages.

Czar Putin is Great at copying the antics of Czar Peter the Great… one can wonder how long his reign will last because there is very little value for Russians to live like they did 300 years ago, when it was just a stinking putrid mess controlled by one man who can best be described as the very opposite of Great.