oD Plugs

OpenDemocracy 13.11.2009 (UK) An exasperated Moscow poet, Tatiana Shcherbina, describes the obsession with Stalin in Putin's Russia. Russia is isolating itself, she writes: "There's no oxygen today, no sense of the future, just a disconnected nation which feels it has been deceived, humiliated, is helpless and futile. This is why it can only rummage around in the past - a past which was also deprived of oxygen… The humane way doesn't work, so let it be bloody and cruel, but we have to get out of our current psychological quagmire somehow. And then, of course, there's the conspiracy theory: we are encircled by enemies, no one loves us and we'll show 'em."

Neal Ascherson describes beautifully how long it took the West to catch on to what was happening in Eastern Europe. "Even then, none of us understood that the whole imperium from the Bug to the Rhine was no more than an old wasps' nest hanging from a roof - dried-out, abandoned by the stinging hordes, ready to fly to dust at a blow. But the people did get it. They had lost something - not exactly their fear, but their patience. Suddenly it seemed unbearable to go on accepting these systems, these portly little idiots in their blue suits, for another year, and then for another day, another hour. That special sort of impatience is the power-surge of revolution. ... It was a real revolution. But with one missing feature. That is the feeling in a people that 'We have done it once, and if the new lot let us down, we can do it again!' It was that proud, menacing confidence which made the French revolution special. But it's not around in 21st-century Europe. After 1989, the people handed over liberty to the experts. Will they ever want it back?"

Excellent piece by Rosemary - first mention of Rotating Editorial team?