There is such a thing as society -
it’s just not the same as the state.

A fascinating book by The Economist‘s Central and East European correspondent, Edward Lucas:

First a medieval fortress and then the citadel of Soviet totalitarianism, the Kremlin’s rose-red walls have rarely made lovers of liberty and justice feel at home. It is as if Britain’s government were based in the Tower of London, or France’s in the Bastille. Certainly the ideas now bubbling under its onion domes would have been all too familiar to its past occupants: put bleakly, Russia is reverting to behaviour last seen during the Soviet era.

For the justification of these remarks, see the book: it is recommended reading.

From the Guardian:

Tanks rolling into neighbouring countries, the media back under state control and Kremlin policy shrouded in secrecy … Luke Harding reports on why Russia seems hellbent on reverting to its Soviet past.
…
“The Soviet Union had global ambitions. It believed in socialism and social justice. Now the main ideological idea is nationalism and anti-Americanism. There are no positive ideas any more, only negative ones,” Kryshtanovskaya [Russia's leading sociologist] says.

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Today’s Telegraph reports:

The largest wheat harvest in 15 years is expected to yield 51 million tons, of which a record-breaking 15 million are earmarked for export. Only the US and Canada are expected to export more.

Growing influence in the Middle East and more collaboration in the energy sector, plus increasing Kremlin control: a story to watch?

It was not without reason that the Russian Social Democrats, better known to history as the Bolsheviks, decided in November 1917 to call themselves “Communists”.

And so “The Black Book of Communism” is proving an interesting read:

But socialist revolution for Marx was not just a matter of economic development; it was at bottom an eschatological “leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”

Mises, Friedman and Hayek have something to say about that: Marx was wrong.

[Cataloguing the crimes of communism in] an effort at retrospective justice will always encounter one intractable obstacle. Any realistic accounting of Communist crime would effectively shut the door on Utopia; and too many good souls in this unjust world cannot abandon hope for an absolute end to inequality (and some less good souls will always offer them “rational” curative nostrums). And so, all comrade-questers after historical truth should gird their loins for a very Long March indeed before communism is accorded its fair share of absolute evil.”

It’s an old adventure now, but I did love working in North Norway as JEngO 41(F) Squadron, which operated Jaguars in the tactical recce and close air support roles.

Fortunately, the Russians weren’t coming after all.