Here (h/t Skeptical Bureaucrat) is an interesting report about apparent self-censorship among US diplomats going back some years: One diplomat told The Washington Times that he has decided to resign in part because of frustration with "rampant self-censorship" by Foreign Service officers and their superiors that has gone so far […]
Picking up the theme of the previous posting, I might add that after the St Albans School prize giving this week a smart young pupil asked me for a couple of lessons learned from my diplomatic career. Gulp. Where to start? I offered only this one. Back in Belgrade in 1981/82 […]
My earlier posting about Vladimir Putin’s ‘Letter to Poles’ has been taken up (in a shorter version) by RFE/RL. Have a look at the comments from pro-Russian types, which are especially agitated on the subject of whether the Red Army in 1920 was attempting another ‘land grab’ by invading Western […]
Three Thousands Versts of Loneliness analyses Putin’s approach to Soviet and Russian history as revealed in his letter to Poland: The ‘Putinite regime’ is commonly portrayed as if it were intent on overseeing Stalin’s rehabilitation, often with the implied aim of entrenching its own, purportedly authoritarian, project. As this weblog […]
As many senior international dignitaries gather in Gdansk today to commemorate the start of WW2, Russian Prime Minister Putin (one of the guests) has written an open letter to Poland to give a clear and (as of now) definitive Russian view on the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact. Here is the Russian official […]
What do British diplomats in Europe do all day? Here is a fine example of the Embassy in Warsaw taking an idea (in this case advancing the prospects for disabled people in Poland as part of an EU-wide move in this area), then finding senior Polish partners and moving things […]
One of the UK’s top-rated blogs with the inevitably winning combination of a strong Northern Ireland focus plus Russia and eastern Europe is Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness. Have a look. The picture at the top of the front page is a masterpiece by Russian/Ukrainian artist Ilya Repin, The Volga […]
Today is the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest crimes in history: the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact. These two villains scrawled a line through a map of Europe to show who would grab what, then signed it. Here it is in two legendary cartoons by Herblock and Low:
Guardian writer Jonathan Steele dies, and as such goes straight to Hell. He is greeted warmly by the Devil, who praises his life’s work and offers him a choice of bijou accommodation. Jonathan peers uneasily through three windows. In the first cell is Tito, screaming as he twists impaled on a […]
Mark Steyn on Budd Schulberg: As a 20-year-old Dartmouth student, Schulberg visited the Soviet Union and was shown its artistic glories. He fell in love with the theatre of Vsevolod Meyerhold, Stanislavski’s wayward disciple. Meyerhold loved the older stylized dramatic forms—commedia dell’arte, pantomime—and refused to confine himself to Socialist Realism. […]
