This Blogger respects Russians; as Frederick the Great stated :” It takes two bullets to take a Russian soldier out; one to kill him and one to  stop him.” This Blogger   likes Russians; even though once, in Moscow, during the Soviet era, his incredibly attractive tour guide, aka KGB agent, told him and his brother   that they were in danger of being hit, fatally, by a Soviet car crossing a Moscow street. T his Blogger’s brother told her that he had ridden in a Soviet Car, the LADA; and that he could damn well survive any hit by that piece of junk. She laughed. That night, this Blogger’s brother slept in his room, under his bed, drunk. This Blogger admires the way Russians do business; when Soviet diplomats were kidnapped in Lebanon, the KGB paid the ransoms immediately, without complaint. Shortly thereafter, Beirut was flooded with Soviet agents and Soviet bribes; the kidnappers were identified. They were abducted, tortured and  castrated; their dead bodies strung from l

  In 1758, the Great Captain, Frederick the Great of Prussia, made the following statement about the Russian soldier. “It takes two bullets to get a Russian soldier off the battlefield; one to kill him and one to stop him, in that order ………Frederick the Great of Prussia, August, 1758.   Three hundred years later, an Ukrainian combat soldier made the following statement on the 2-22-2023 edition of PBS NEWSHOUR. ·          “Senior SGT. Olexander (through translator): They are sending their soldiers as cannon fodder. We target their equipment and their soldiers, but they keep coming and coming and keep dying and dying and even then keep coming and coming ….PBS “ In many ways, History is self-explanatory.

Winston Churchill once described Russia  as :  "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.,"   This Blogger has had cursory, limited, and superficial, dealings in Holy Mother Russia. He found that the best key to understanding it was reading E.M. Forster’s epic novel about Colonial India, A PASSAGE TO INDIA.    The novel explores the layers of India, riddle, mystery, enigma.   The good-hearted Brit colonizer, CYRIL FIELDING applies his Anglican modernity and tolerance to understanding India, and fails. DR. AZIZ applies his Muslim mental superiority to understanding the nation his religion conquered, and fails.  The Hindu mystic, PROFESSOR NARAYAN GODBOLE may or may not understand India, but he will never tell.   Russia has layers and layers and layers. The modernized Russian, the insular Russian, and, at the hidden core, the atavistic Russian, combining the Mongol and the Viking.   The atavistic Russian does not like suffering; however, he does believe suffering is the