The Vineyard of the Saker: The painful issue of today's Europe - what are Russia's options?

The painful issue of today's Europe - what are Russia's options?

I think that it is time for me to directly address the issue of today's Europe role in world affairs.  In this blog I have often voiced very harsh criticisms of both "old Europe" and "new Europe" - to use Rumsfeld's classification - but I have never addressed this issue head-on, and this is what I propose to do now.

Let me begin by a little disclaimer and say that while I am ethnically and culturally Russian, I was born in the heart of Western Europe from in a family of refugees.  I spent most of my life in Europe, and I have become especially close to what I call my "2nd homeland" - the northern Mediterranean from Spain to Greece (which I consider as one coherent - if diverse - cultural zone).  So for all my criticisms of Europe, part of me is most definitely European.  Furthermore, and regular readers of this blog know that, I have spent a good part of my life in an absolute opposition to the Soviet regime and then the AngloZionist colonial regime of Eltsin which followed it.  So while I am ethnically and culturally Russian, I am hardly an automatic supporter of everything "Russian".  In fact, I repeatedly have to pinch myself to check if I am dreaming every time I say something positive about the Kremlin or Putin (who is, after all, an ex-KGB officer).  I am so used to be disgusted, outraged and even ashamed by everything which comes out of the Kremlin that, if anything, I have to struggle with my kneejerk suspicion, if not hostility, towards anything "Kremlin".  And yet, here I am, in 2014, a longtime Cold War participant (on many levels - private, corporate and even professional) catching myself in the undeniable fact that I am becoming a "Putin groupie".  I can hardly convey how weird this still feels to me.

I wanted to begin by clarifying all this because what I will write next I do not write as "a Russian bashing Europe" but as a European disgusted with his own birthplace.  So here we go:

First, for all its rights and wrongs, and even though we have been more or less a US colony since 1945, I still believe that Western Europe was the "good guy" during the Cold War.  Yes, I know, Churchill and the rest of the Anglosphere created that Cold War much more than the Soviets and, yes, the Soviets were not nearly as bad as our propaganda said, nor were we nearly as good as we fancied ourselves to be.  And yet, Europe, Western Europe was a continent, a society, which was free, especially compared to Eastern Europe.  Anyone doubting this today should watch the beautiful German movie "Das Leben der Anderen" ("The lives of the others") of director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (preferable in the original German language - with subtitles if needed).  Here are a few links to this remarkable movie:

(Links removed by the original author.  I'm not sure what kind of trouble he was having, but there shouldn't have been a problem, as far as I know.)  

SORRY - I HAD TO REMOVE THESE LINKS AS I DID NOT WANT TROUBLE WITH BLOGGER.  YOU WILL HAVE TO LOOK FOR THIS MOVIE BY YOURSELF

THE SAKER

This movie shows, without any exaggerations, what life was like in the last years of the former GDR and I think that for those who might be tempted to forget what daily life was under Soviet rule, this is a very good refresher.

I feel that I want to mention this because I then felt - and still do today - that in those years one could be if not proud, then maybe at least grateful to live in a society which was comparatively wealthy and comparatively free.

Complete story at - The Vineyard of the Saker: The painful issue of today's Europe - what are Russia's options?