Thomas Theiner, a businessman expat who has lived in Ukraine for the past 5 years, on what “business in Ukraine is really like”:
It was not supposed to be this way. Everyone knew that Ukraine was notoriously corrupt under President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime, which demanded a share of every deal and business. The anger at this kleptocracy drove Ukrainians to the streets in 2013-2014. After the Euromaidan, Ukraine was supposed to be a modern, European country.
That hasn’t happened. By now it is clear that the corrupt and thieving government-mafia clans are still in charge.
Businessmen that had managed to survive Yanukovych’s shakedowns are throwing in the towel.
Nigel, a British citizen I know, came to Ukraine in 2004. He and a Ukrainian partner built up an engineering company with more than a hundred employees. In 2011, he won a major contract from the US government, which meant that Yanukovych’s goons went into overdrive to shake him down. In 2013-2014, Nigel supported the Euromaidan enthusiastically, only to be harassed by the new “clean” officials under Poroshenko for their share. With the currency having fallen by over 70 percent, the new authorities demanded three times the money to offset the aforementioned fall. Nigel didn’t buckle, so the authorities revoked his visa, threatened deportation, and harassed the family of his Ukrainian partner. Today, the company is closed, everyone has been fired, and Nigel works in Britain.
The European Choice:
In another story, Sven, one of Scandinavia’s biggest food traders, attempted to source raw materials and basic food products from Ukraine. He believed that the EU-Ukraine association agreement signed in 2014 would finally make sourcing food from Ukraine a viable business. He gave up on Ukraine within a few months: he could not find a single Ukrainian company that didn’t demand an envelope of cash before telling him the prices and available volumes, and then would only give him a competitive price if he agreed to split the profits.
Another example:
James, who is Australian but has been in Ukraine for sixteen years, worked for an oligarch, and speaks perfect Russian, built one of the premier real estate agencies in Ukraine. This winter, he and his Ukrainian wife went on holiday; when they returned to Kyiv, they discovered that an employee with the backing of some government people had stolen their company. The employee had all the correct documentation and everything signed off by a judge; the only thing missing was the signature of the actual owner. But this is Ukraine, so the employee bribed a judge, the judge ruled in his favor, the employee paid a registrar and a notary, and he now owns the agency.
So who is Theiner anyway?
Who is this damnable wrecker? This separatist? This Kremlin troll smearing the Ukrainian people’s European Choice?
Oh. Guess not.
The government in Kyiv should announce that Ukraine will take these 6 steps within the next 72 hours:
* Destroy all gas pipelines & bomb the Belarusian gas pipeline, thus launching the boycott of Russian energy that the West has refused to undertake until now.
* Flood Ukraine with small arms by arming every patriotic citizen to unleash a massive guerrilla war when Russian forces invade.
* Provide guerrillas with Anti-tank Guided Missiles, Man Portable Air-defense Missiles, mines, explosives and everything else in Ukraine’s arsenal to ensure the guerrillas can resist effectively for years.
* Call on Ukrainians in the West to attack and kill members of the Putin regime, their associates and close relatives.
* Remove uranium from Ukraine’s nuclear reactors and prepare to disperse it in Russia by all means possible—the Budapest Memorandum depriving Ukraine of nuclear power status is clearly moot now.
* Prepare to shell Belgorod with whatever missiles and artillery Ukraine has in its arsenal to flatten that city.
So basically one of the leading paragons of svidomism is acknowledging what has been evident from the very beginning:
- Opinion polls: Ukrainians Paying MORE Bribes After the Maidan
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At best stagnation, or outright retreat, on indices of transparency and budget openness relative to the “kleptocratic” rule of Yanukovych.
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The Panama Papers, where Poroshenko was named in person
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The former Defense Minister Valery Geletey who promised a victory parade in Sevastopol… by way of the acquisiton of a $36mn estate in the UK.
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The Office of the General Prosecutor announces it is searching for whoever it was that stole the American money for its own reform.
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Lexuses and Mercedes at a summit of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Forum.
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Poroshenko condemns NY Times article about Ukraine’s corruption as an element of Russia’s “hybrid war” against Ukraine, and the Rada demands its repudiation.
The smarter sorts of svidomy are going back on their support of Euromaidan and even repudiating their old Russophobia.
Not Thomas Theiner, though:
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/763463224750637057
For the true svidomy Bolsheviks, the Revolution has a beginning but no end.
The future is never anything like we imagine it, but this is how I’m now picturing it in regards to this conflict:
Hillary, as president, orders the junta to attack DNR and LNR, but not the Crimea. After several months of fighting Novorossiya grows a little, acquiring Mariupol or the Slavyansk/Kramatorsk area or both, a new peace agreement is signed and sanctions are increased. Cold War II moves to other theaters – the Middle East, the Caucasus or Central Asia.
There’s a good chance it will come sooner, I think.
(1) It will allow Poroshenko to deflect attention from fullfilment of Minsk II which Merkel/Hollande are going to insist harder on come September.
(2) A favor for Hillary.
Hillary will need favors like that from Obama if she’s losing to Trump at the end or if the election is close then. Unfortunately I think she will win comfortably. However, after the first GOP primary debate I put the chance of Jeb and Hillary being the nominees at 95%, so I probably shouldn’t be speculating.
If the war party inside the Obama admin thinks that Trump has a good chance, the time for them to attack is now. If they think Hillary will win, it makes sense for them to wait because she would be more supportive of an attack by the junta than Obama.
Theiner’s fun and I follow him as he does interact and gives one a good insight as to the feelings of foreign Maidanite types on the ground in Ukraine. He’s written some hilarious stuff such as the “Coming Invasion of Gotland by Putin” of which he claimed stopped the actual invasion.
But credit where credit is due the guy actually has been calling out corruption and has told me time and time again that another Maidan is necessary. The assumption here is that hard right elements would engage in a final house cleaning. The problem is that these guys like Theiner don’t realize that outside of pilfering Ukraine of assets and setting up a forward base to surround Russia, the USA doesn’t actually care about things like judicial, political and economic reform.
I’m surprised that more Berezovsky types haven’t set up shop in Kiev as using it as a launch pad for regime change in Moscow was originally his plan until Yushchenko nixed it at the very last second.
Nigel and Sven? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Maybe I haven’t been paying attention but there seems to be less noise from European Politicians/Elites about how Azov are the new international brigades just pining for democracy and fighting against encroaching Putinism.
Anyway what’s the news on Ukraine “massing troops” next to Crimea since Wednesday?
What do you mean?
So what’s up with the firing of Ivanov? Sacking your leading hardliner seems like a strange reaction to provocations by Kiev in Crimea that result in deaths of Russian personnel. Prelude to Putinsliv?
(1) Ivanov the Hardliner trope is overdone in the Western media. He has if anything been a softliner wrt Novorossiya, according to the most fervent supporters of the project.
(2) One of the new people coming into the Security Council, Sergey Menyalo, was heavily involved with the Crimean Affair and was later governor of Sevastopol. I.e., a real hardliner.
As it says in the article names were changed for privacy reasons.
Are you sure that just being involved in Sevastopol and Crimea does make him a “real hardliner”?
Wasn’t his rival Alexey Chaly who led Sevastopol during the most critical time more of a hardliner?
From his Wiki page they were in on it at the same time:
They have no disputes on the status of Crimea or for that matter most likely on Ukraine. Their more recent disagreements appear to be based more on differing personalities (Chaly being the flamboyant businessman, Menyalo the gruff military man).
Serious analysis by Mr. Karlin !
Respectful congratulations.
Your I.f.f. U.
Europe is increasingly becoming irrelevant in just about any sector of foreign relations. The only thing Europe has is its media, which are run by the same type of lowlifes as it is in US main stream.
Sergei was Deputy C’n’C of the Black Sea Fleet and it came naturally. We graduated the same naval academy: me–class of 1985, he-class of 1983. What is funny, I also studied in the same school (3# in Sevastopol) as Lesha Chalyi who was two years me senior including his brother Michail with whom we are classmates. Actually we constantly fought with Mikhail but also were real buddies, that is why we started to smoke in the 2nd grade. That is until we got caught;-) Mishka, actually, took part in the movie as a fairly important character. Remember him being taken from lessons in school to the set.
Yes, rumour has it that Ivanov has actually been the biggest rat inside the Kremlin. Whatever the truth of that, it’s good news that Putin recognises the older generation have passed their sell-by date and it’s time to turn to the new.
A lot of promises of imminent retribution in crypto-silovik twittersphere yesterday. Now, 24+ hours later, nothing of note seems to have happened. Hot air?
Looks like Trump’s campaign is failure cascading. President Hilldog means aggressively anti-Russian foreign policy. If Putin wants to grab a bigger piece of Novorossia, he better do it before the inauguration. (And it would be smart to kill off at least some of the larger rebel groups in Syria, but because of Putin’s spontaneous pull out of our forces, it’s probably way too late for that).
Well, it drove some Ukrainians into the streets. Many others looked on in dismay … but I expect Anatoly knows that too.
Along with “Putin’s personal cellist”!
Surely you mean russophobia here, right? Otherwise, the sentence sound rather odd.
Putin has acted with great restraint over Ukraine. He still hopes that the rest of the Ukraine will agree peace, return to some semblance of normality and not become an outright basket case for its neighbours, Russia included. He will be disappointed.
The Anti-Russian Euromaiden provoked the secession of Crimea and Donetsk-Luhansk. What we may call the First Partition of the Ukraine ( 2014 ). The oligarchs who control the Ukraine are oblivious to the fact that the kleptocracy they represent is heading the Ukraine for complete economic collapse. It would be unable to continue the conflict with the Russians even if it wanted too. This means that the Second Partition of the Ukraine is not far off. Large parts of Eastern Ukraine, where Russophile Ukrainians and Russian speakers form a majority will defect to Russia.
Finally, the various Ukrainian factions would war amongst themselves, each claiming its own territory. This would result in the Third Partition of the Ukraine.
Any rational Ukrainian nationalist should recognise that the present policies will cause economic collapse and partition Ukraine even further. Unfortunately, they seem very thin on the ground.
Western Ukraine in 19th century was known to be a hot seat of Russophilia, especially among intellectuals. Nothing wrong with the phrase.
Nice takedown, Anatoly. Theiner is one of those self-appointed ‘defense experts’ like Eliot Higgins, and regularly features laudatory articles about western defense systems and how they could make technological mincemeat of Russia’s clumsy crap. Seriously, did anyone really think the west was going to turn Ukraine magically into a prosperous western-oriented market democracy? They just wanted Sevastopol, and to deny the Crimea to Russia. A long, long time ago, maybe, the west tried to improve its conquests and make them self-sufficient powerhouses in their own right; Japan, for instance. Germany. But of late the form seems to be go in hard, knock over and/or kill the leader, declare victory and get out. As largely as possible, achieved with proxy forces to minimize western casualties, which western audiences don’t care for.
Ukrainian friends told me, when the Maidan was at its height, that if you dared leave your company unguarded under Yanukovych, it would be stolen. If you managed to get it back through the courts – good luck – by the time you did its assets would be stripped and vanished, and you would get only the husk back. If you were not cooperative enough to leave on vacation or something, an urgent summons would arrive which would take you to the far ends of the country while your company was stolen in your absence. I didn’t believe them.
It looks as if they were right, and that sort of thing was going on all the time. Truly, Yanukovych was a slug. But Poroshenko is cut from the same cloth and the west will not pressure him to change his ways, so obviously corruption does not matter as much as anti-Russian ideology. Too bad for Ukraine – thanks for the valuable lesson. I see only two choices – someone is going to have to pick up the pieces and reform it, and both sides obviously want the other to be on the hook for that financially, because it is going to be expensive beyond belief, although it has gotten ever so much more costly under Poroshenko because so much has been destroyed. Or it will just collapse and become a largely depopulated failed state. Glittering success is not an option.
We’ll see.
Crimea-based military retaliation would be unwise.
Donbass-based military retaliation would be unofficial.
There is talk of breaking off official diplomatic relations with Ukraine which is no mere hot air thanks Ukraine’s unwillingness to accept the new Russian ambassador to Ukraine.
Ivanov was one of those who participated in Mannerheim’s plaque screw-up. While Putin can’t fire Medinsky (for now, although this twit totally deserves that), Ivanov has… outlived his usefulness. One faux pas too many.
As someone from the Baltic states who has tons of experience with Scandinavians, I would advise Ukrainians to be extra cautious with anyone named “Sven”. How is “splitting profits” not fair? I’d say, given Ukraine’s natural resources and the amazing potential, at least 20% of the shares in any agricultural company should go to Ukrainian nationals by default (oligarchs, private, government/national, doesn’t matter).
I would also advise to be extra cautious with the expansion of the Swedish banks, SEB in particular. They will screw you over and leave you with the bill. Do NOT let the Swedes take over your banking sector. Keep the local banks present and strong, as shitty as they may be, PrivatBank, et al. Hey, at least PrivatBank had some good returns on deposits back in the day.
Ukrainians, keep it “anarchic / unclear / “corrupt” for a while, before you figure out how the Western neoliberals could potentially screw you over. Do NOT make the same mistakes we did.
What, Russia allowed a Mannerheim plaque?
Wow, just checked it out, it’s beautiful!
Good to see that he was removed from the highest posts just as the tasteless plaque was removed.
It might be that he just retired into something that is lower profile (transport and environment). He might have asked himself.
Like Yezhov requesting to be allowed to go and chill for a bit as narkom of water transport.
It was a bizarre event that managed the not inconsiderable feat of uniting Communists and nationalists against its initiators.
There were plenty of other officers in the Russian Army just like Mannerheim who did not become traitors after 1918 (not necessarily a value judgment; but that is what he objectively was) who could have been honored.
BTW, I find it very interesting that, so far at least, none of the usual svidomi trolls (AP, unit472, soarintothesky, et al.) have bothered to comment on this post. Are they tacitly conceding Anatoly’s case? Are they starting to realize that defending Banderism is a lost cause? Very interesting …
Indeed, Sweden has produced many famous con men, from the great Ivar Kreuger on downwards.
5371, yea, like Lukas Lundin (the Swedish guy connected to Hillary), they’re all over the place if you look hard enough. But all I said, the Ukrainians should be cautious and evaluate what kind of investors are good for them. Speculative capital is not that great and can be toxic for a country like Ukraine.
Re: Mannerheim I was just stunned that they would put up a plaque. However, St Petersburg is the imperial capital so I can see it from that point of view.
What? Mannerheim wasn’t a traitor, he was a loyalist who crushed the main ethnic Finnish separatist movement (AKA the Finnish Reds) and salvaged a part of the empire when everything else either fell to the revolutionaries or ethnic separatists (Poland etc). He was a Romanov loyalist who maintained that if a legitimate heir to the throne is restored he will be loyal to that monarch.
Mannerheim and the other loyalist aristocrats were exiled from Finland immediately after the White victory when the Germans and their puppet faction (of mostly ethnic Germans and Swedes who were influenced by pan-Germanic ideology) briefly seized power here. What Mannerheim wanted out of Finland was a base to intervene against the Bolshevik government and that didn’t fit German plans. He kept visiting European powers lobbying for England or France to send a force to Finland to attack Petrograd and to try to convince some relative of Nikolai II to make a claim to the throne.
When my great-grandparents joined the Finnish Whites they were not separatists, they were fighting against the Finnish Reds who were separatists and fully recognized that the leaders of the Whites like Mannerheim were pro-Romanov. My ancestors happened to be landowners and if you’re a landowner you’re obviously going to recognize that even if a White victory leads to a restoration of Romanovs and no independent Finland it’s still better for you than the national liberation championed by Lenin and our Reds whose visions of an oppression free world included an independent Finland but did not include landowners.
If Russian nationalists have such an interest in the empire and loyalist history it is weird how they keep failing to recognize that there’s a part of the empire that still lives. Finland is a direct continuation of the Grand Duchy of Finland created by Alexander I in 1809 and if I open the law book it still begins with “Us Alexander, by the grace of God the Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar of All Russias, Tsar of Poland etc etc etc make it thus known…” Sure, we did have to kind of recognize that our Grand Duke was dead and government had to be reformed but really, what actually happened is that all the various separatist movements in Finland lost and Tsarists ended up in charge only to find out that the empire had died anyway so people like Mannerheim settled here, learned Finnish and this state became something different.
From my point of view it’s Russians, Poles, Balts etc who are the traitors. My White ancestors were never separatists or nationalists and this independent Finland is an accidental product of Russia and those other countries separating from us.
In any case if we can’t agree on anything else I hope we can at least agree that Leninists can shut up since Finland has a Lenin plaque on every hut where the man once stopped to have a piss.
I do like you Mr Karlin. But you must get your historical facts right. The Tsar was Grand Duke of Finland ( ie Constitutional monarch of Finland under 1815 Constitution ) The 1917 revolutions removed the Tsar and abrogated the constitution. Therefore Finns were free to set up a successor government as they saw fit. It was a democratic government, please note.
Theiner is not an aberration, and he never has been. His views differ from those of official Germany only in their manner of expression, and wider German society (including German-Austrians) either agrees or will agree when commanded to.
And certain Russians hope for Germany to be ‘liberated’ from Anglo-American rule. Russia allied with the power in Berlin twice in as many centuries and twice Russia was nearly destroyed by her German allies – does somebody think the third time will be the charm?
Lenin recognised Finland’s independence.
I think Mannerheim helped the Germans blocade Leningrad during WWII. Different countries have different interests. I guess it made sense for Finland to ally itself with Germany at that particular point, but by the same logic it makes sense for Russia, and for St. Perersburg especially, to avoid installing plaques in Mannerheim’s honor.
It is one of his many crimes.
I don’t know what is difficult about this. My White family certainly did not want the independence pushed on us by Lenin. He made his promises to Reds, not to my kind of people, and we rejected him and the Red government in the civil war, restoring the old order (and then we started debating over what do we do now when we’re monarchists without a monarch). At the same time when Lenin was “recognizing Finnish independence”he was sending word to Finnish Reds that it will be their duty to get the revolution done in Finland.
Finland was full of Russian soldiers who had mutinied against their officers and joined the Reds. Did Lenin pull them out as he “recognized Finnish independence”? No, of course not, he ordered more weapons sent to them so that they could join the Finnish Reds in the revolution. “Finnish independence” was just a game move and it was actually well calculated by Lenin as he did manage to spark the civil war here and the Reds probably would have won without a German intervention that Lenin didn’t foresee.
Again, my White ancestors were not separatists. Ethnic Finnish separatism was mostly a Leninist movement where the international revolutionary left was telling us that we’re an oppressed people and therefore we must become nationalists, much like today they keep telling Palestinians etc that they should be nationalists against oppressors. My family had zero reason to support this project as we were classified as an oppressor class and we were going to end up just as dead as the oppressor Tsar if those separatists that Lenin supported had won.
There was also the separatism of pro-Germans who wanted to separate from Russia to turn Finland into a German vassal but these were mostly not ethnic Finns (for obvious reasons). Mannerheim was not one of these people and he did not even want to admit the pro-Germans to the Whites until it was clear that the choice is between working with Germany and letting Reds win. Of course after the White victory these people immediately betrayed him and the other Romanov loyalists and exiled them from Finland. Then Germany lost and pulled out of Finland, pro-Germans collapsed and Tsarists could return to Finland but then Mannerheim failed to find support for any Romanov restoration project and Finland continued to exist as it was, as the weird state that ended up independent even though all the separatist movements failed.
What? If it weren’t for Mannerheim vetoing it Leningrad would have been flattened by German bombers operating from Finland. Full alliance with Germany is what most of the Germanic elites of this country wanted but Mannerheim was still living his Romanov restoration dreams and wanted to ride in as a liberator.
Having an elderly russophile aristocrat with dreams of fighting a gentlemanly 19th century war in charge with veto powers during Barbarossa was a very bad move for Finland and the Axis. Finland’s actions simply make no sense from 1941 onwards and it’s because countries don’t have interests, countries are collections of various interest groups and when you are trying to fight an offensive war the various interest groups and their clashing values are a huge liability.
It made zero sense for us to jump in bed with Germans but then hold back on things that might actually win us the war (like letting Germans operate from Finland towards Leningrad might have done) but that’s what happens when you’re a non-dictatorship trying to fight a war. Unity is only possible when you’re on the defensive like in 1939-1940 and then Mannerheim was an asset as a figurehead. Not so much during 1941-1944 when his grudges against Germany and dreams of Romanovs messed with his judgement.
Anyway, the point is, if you’re a commie I get it, you don’t like Whites so you don’t like Mannerheim. Our commies hate him too. But these supposed monarchist revisionists that we are now seeing in Russia should really detox themselves from commie propaganda, it is extremely weird to see them with strong opinions against Mannerheim who was their guy to the end and actually a liability to Finland at times because of it.
What kind of grudges did Mannerheim have against Germany? I would guess that other tsarist officers would have looked on him as a German. There were lots of Baltic Germans in tsarist service, so they would have probably filed him in that mental category. And it would be natural for that to increase his own identification with that part of his heritage. These things don’t always work out that logically, of course. But I wouldn’t have expected him to have a grudge against Germany.
Russia “allying with the power in Berlin” was the cause of WW1? Your mind or memory works strangely. Not to mention, the Entente powers had more to do with Russia’s 1917 revolutions and hence near destruction than the Central.
Cooperation with Prussia and the ultimate defeat of Napoleon made a unified Germany possible. The Hohenzollern empire cheerfully discarded her former understandings with Russia once she considered it safe – much as the Fuhrer would later do.
I am not sure how you arrive at your other conclusion. If you refer to British and French efforts to keep Russia in the war despite military failures and attendant domestic trouble, then I reply that the continuation of the war was correct and justified. The allies were not to blame for the Imperial regime and subsequently Kerensky’s inability to maintain order, nor for Berlin and Vienna’s efforts to subvert the state.
England and France made a united Germany possible by their Crimean war of choice. Russia voluntarily concluded the French alliance, though that helped to keep the peace rather than endangering it. The renewed threat of war stemmed from France’s surrender to England in making the Entente. As Lenin saw immediately, the allies were very much responsible for the February revolution.
Since we were discussing S.B.Ivanov, it might be worth mentioning that his successor A.E.Vaino is responsible for a rather hair-raising “invention”, which seems to be right in our AK’s wheelhouse:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%BE%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF
http://law-journal.ru/files/pdf/201204/201204_42.pdf
Mannerheim survived assassination attempts by pro-German nationalists during the civil war. Nationalists expected him as a Romanov loyalist to return to his old masters if the monarchy was ever restored.
What they don’t seem to get in Russia is that there were two radically different factions working in the White leadership in Finland. There were pro-German people like these, the nationalists or “activists” as we called them…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27th_J%C3%A4ger_Battalion_(Finland)
…who volunteered to fight for Germany against Russia in World War I. These people were of course traitors to the empire by any definition. (Most of them were Germanic and had ethnic motivations but there were ethnic Finns among them too. Personally I don’t get it. What kind of independence is it if you just swap the Tsar for the Kaiser?)
Mannerheim was most definitely not one of these people and he would have put these people to the firing squad as traitors if he met them in the World War. But then Russia collapsed, Lenin took power and there was suddenly a common enemy. They made an alliance but that alliance was always very uneasy. The former imperial officers were not happy with the history of pro-German treason of nationalists and the nationalists were not happy that loyalists like Mannerheim who hadn’t been supporters of Finnish independence showed up in Finland once it was independent and took command.
Mannerheim was opposed to German intervention in the civil war but the acting Senate (not elected) invited the Germans in anyway. Mannerheim threatened to resign and the White army nearly fell apart until the Senate secured a promise from the Germans that their expedition unit would be put under Mannerheim’s command. The Germans took Helsinki from the Reds while Mannerheim’s army took the country bit by bit starting from Sweden only to arrive in the capital to find out that the Senate had already sold out to the Germans and Mannerheim was offered a ceremonial position. He said…
“You cannot have imagined that I, after raising an army and leading a nearly untrained and poorly armed force to victory – thanks to the fighting spirit of the Finnish soldier and the skill and readiness of my officers – would now submit to simply putting my signature on the decisions of a German military commission.”
…and left the country for the West to lobby against the Finnish Senate and the Germans who had already arranged for a Hessian Prince to become King of Finland. Then Germany lost, the pro-German Senate resigned and Mannerheim was invited in to be the first President of Finland to a large part to signal to the world that Finland was not a pro-German state anymore. Nikolai II was dead at this point so whether Mannerheim was still loyal to him didn’t matter anymore.
Once elections were held Mannerheim was crushed by classical liberal Ståhlberg and he essentially retired from Finnish politics until World War II.
PS. Sorry about these walls of text on tangential Finn matters. I should start my own blog for this stuff…
Sorry about these walls of text on tangential Finn matters. I should start my own blog for this stuff…
No, this was very interesting. I didn’t know most of that stuff.
My running theory is that the nooscope article was bought to ease the completion of Vaino’s degree (the idea that a busy man like himself would be writing it himself in a country where paid-for dissertations are a matter of course is far-fetched).
Presumably Vaino’s shadow scholar was not paid very much given the apparent instances of plagiarism, inappropriate citations format, and general pseudoscientific bullshit-your-way-to-n-words character of the article.
PoMoist pseudoscience is not anywhere near my “wheelhouse,” though I can see why a studied ignorance of (real) technological developments and trend analysis might make one think otherwise.
Thanks for your perspective.
This is very interesting stuff; like Glossy, had no idea about most of it, including that factional split amongst the Finnish Whites.
I’ll take care to treat it with more nuance in the future.
I have never pushed The Saker’s view that Europe is secretly yearning to be “freed” from the US/”AngloZionists”.
I have stressed several times that Germans (with the very partial and often exaggerated exception of the former East Germany) view Russia no more positively than other Westerners.
Ivan Ilyin, incidentally, also warns against this sort of idealistic Germanophile thinking in Our Tasks.
I had no idea the nooscope was already famous in the wrong part of the internet))
All I meant was that you have a taste for futurism, didn’t really think you would like the article, sorry for the inadvertent dig.
Endlessly quotable, and reliable quasher of mindless shibboleths, as usual.
I’m aware you don’t long for a Moscow-Berlin axis (a term recently used without irony on Fortruss), but plenty of Russophiles do.
One only hopes to dissuade a few.
It is a foolish hope.
The pro-Washington and pro-Brüssel factions in elite and population are too strong in Germany.
The best you can hope is neutrality and non-interference.
Why must Yanukovich get lumped in for criticism for everything in corruption when then same things were happening under Kuchma,Yushchenko/Timoshenko ?
Yanukovich was an idiot….but in a few areas he was trying to steer the country back into the right direction……and his balancing act between Russia and the west …in many ways he was doing what he was elected to do
Just like with Putin when something bad happens anywhere in Russia and it is wrongly and nonsensically ascribed to him…..the same things were happening with Yanukovich. Obviously you cant compare Putin with a thief like Yanukovich…but the fact remains that he was overcriticised.
There was the image cultivated that he was the one “unjustly” imprisoning Timoshenko…..but the facts remain that it was Yushchenko who initiated…and that she was guilty