Comrade chancellor

Comrade Angela Merkel said in the German parliament that in Ukraine "they fight for the same values that guide the European Union". Ha! FDJ is alive and well.

The Kiev comedy

Originally published 22 January 2014

The aim of the Kiev and Moscow regimes is to provoke emotional response from western governments and from citizens of western democracies. If an emotional threshold is reached, the real manipulation may begin. The dynamics of this manipulation is fairly easily predictable. While details cannot be specified in advance, the general direction is pretty obvious.

The supporting cast in Warsaw does whatever it can, of course. Moscow, Kiev, and Warsaw together dupe the West in this game.

A similar trick worked quite well in the Solidarity project. The Solidarity trade union was an entirely artificial creation of the communist political technologists. The West was duped into believing that it was a genuine expression of people's will. Yes, people in Poland wanted to get out of communism but they had no chance to be anywhere near the leadership positions in the so-called "democratic opposition".

It is a wonderfully simple mechanism. Its main drawback is the necessary participation of a large number of actors to create an impression that it is not a spectacle but the real thing. Keep in mind, however, that the communist regimes and postcommunist juntas of Eastern Europe have social armies of millions of junta members at their disposal. What is harder to do in the West, is banally simple in Eastern Europe.

The Solidarity trade union march through the streets of Warsaw in September 2013 was just such a fake demonstration. There were roughly hundred thousand participants brought over to Warsaw from various parts of the country. There were thousands of flags and plenty of noise. However a careful observer could easily notice the obvious signs of deception.

The comedy in Kiev is nothing but deception.

Komsomolets

Here are the main Mikhail Khodorkovsky's roles so far.

• Komsomol member
• capitalist, billionaire, oligarch
• politician
• victim of the Putin's revenge

In order to be a Komsomol member he had to speak and act against the basic ideas and values of the western civilization. 

The top level officials of the Russian secret police had to approve his rise to riches, his becoming a billionaire and the taking over of Yukos, the large oil and gas company. Only those most trusted by the Russian secret services had any chance to lead such a company in such a strategically important industry, in a country obsessed with secrecy and deception.

Which of the characters played by Khodorkovsky is closest to the real thing?

A hint comes from Nechaev's Catechism of a Revolutionist (1869):

14. Aiming at implacable revolution, the revolutionist may and frequently must live within society while pretending to be completely different from what he really is, for he must penetrate everywhere, into all the higher and middle-level social formations, into the merchant's commercial establishment, into the church, the gentry estate, and the world of the bureaucrat and military, into literature, and also into the Third Section and even the Winter Palace of the tsar.