Vladimir Putin II

 

Wonderful World

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me, too
What a wonderful world this would be

Vladimir Putin doesn’t much about know history….or about love.

Valdy, Valdy, Valdy. And here I thought that it was Americans who did not know Russian history. It sounds like you are not too hot on that subject either. In a speech on March 25^th, President Putin said that the West was trying to cancel the culture of a 1000 year old county, including cancelling such composers as Tchaikovsky.

1000 years? Really? Really? The Russian Federation, of which you are the President, dates only back to 1991. The USSR, which preceded the Russian Federation, was established in 1921. Ukraine was in the USSR only because the Russian Bolsheviks invaded, and conquered, the Ukraine People’s Republic. Ukraine was an independent country between the assassination of the last Romanov Tsar in 1917 and 1921. While Nicholas II was the last of the Romanovs  (by the way, I think Amazon Prime should be told that its series the Romanoffs has been cancelled. Yes, it is spelled different but that is because you Russians use that funny alphabet which can have multiple translations. The series was there the last that I looked!), he actually was descended from Peter II and Catherine the Great ( by the way The Great is currently a series on Hulu starring Elle Fanning as Catharine.  Is it being canceled too?).  That pair were actually Germans who changed their name from Holstein-Gottorp to Romanov when they assumed the throne. Peter spoke little Russian). But that was in 1762. The last actual Romanov was Tsarina  Elizabeth Petrovna who died in 1762. The Russian Empire was declared by Peter the Great in 1721 which, do the math, was NOT 1000 years ago. The first actual Romanov Tsar, not the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanovs, was Tsar Michael who ruled from 1613 to 1645. The First Tsar of Russia, who was not a Romanov, and whose title you are clearly want, was Ivan the Terrible who ruled from 1547 to 1584. A thousand years ago Russia was ruled by the Mongol Golden Horde, you know of Genghis and Kubla Khan fame, or is it too soon to mention that. The Rus Kiev, modern day Kviv, was founded in 880, but the Dukes of Moscow conquered and ruled Kiev beginning in 1389. But the Ukrainians are their own people. They have their own language and their own religion, Ukrainian Catholicism or Orthodoxy, which is different than Russian Orthodoxy, and everything. Just because Russia ruled Ukraine once, it does not mean that you can rule it forever.

As to cancelling Tchaikovsky, that is news to me. Does that mean the Boston Pops won’t be playing the 1812 Overture on the 4^th of July as it does every year, because it is such a beautiful patriotic commemoration, in this case of the Russian defeat of the invasion by Napoleon? Is the Pops going to be playing an updated version where the Russian National Anthem fades as the Church bells ring? Does canceling Tchaikovsky  mean that his Nutcracker ballet won’t be performed in virtually every American city during the Christmas season? Canceling the persons performing Tchaikovsky who also support your invasion does not mean that we are cancelling Tchaikovsky. You do realize that Tchaikovsky died in 1890 and is not in a position to support you?

Clearly you don’t know much about history. Your absence would make it a wonderful world.