On Pedagogy

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Russia has long been a very pedagogical country. She likes to teach lessons to her neighbours. The smaller the neighbours, the more lessons they can expect to receive. Through most of the 20th century, Russia was at her most expansive. Thanks to the Yalta settlements, and the miracle of nuclear weapons technology, the whole world became Russia’s “near abroad,” and various little countries of eastern and central Europe became her disciplined pupils. She taught us all lessons in dialectical materialism and scientific socialism, until she collapsed under the strain of it. Vladimir Putin -- the strongman of Russia, regardless of passing titles -- is, in addition to being an old KGB officer thoroughly schooled in the ruthless barbarism of Communist power politics The notion that Russia -- whose land area makes her by far the planet’s largest single state -- could be threatened by a neighbour 1/245th her size, should not be confused with paranoia.