The Mailbag: On “Genocide”

Letters, we get letters, we get lots of cards and letters ever day!

Dear La Russophobe,

One aspect of Russia’s current disinformation campaign a la KGB concerned it’s quick claim of genocide of having been commited by the Georgians on Ossetians.

As someone of Polish extraction my first thoughts were why is Russia using this term so casually and frequently when it does not even recognise the Katyn Massacre as genocide, or for that matter the Soviet deportation of Poles (1 million in 1940) to the Soviet interior and Gulag where half were dead within a year. Men, women, children & the elderly. The victims of casual murder, being worked to death, starved etc.  Under the legal definition of genocide both certainly qualify as genocide.

The Mailbag

Letters, we get letters, we get lots of cards and letters ever day!

Dear La Russophobe,

Regarding your recent editorial about “insane Russia” I would ask:  Who says that Russian insanity is only an external issue?

You should know that another foreign investor(largest foreign hightech investor in  Russia, with assets more than 10 billion USD), is being frisked by the  Russian “legal” system. Just a few days after TNK-BP! Same corrupt court. And Medvedev sits in the Kremlin and babbles about “the rule of law”! Such issues abound.  Follow Alfa Bank’s activities, if you want to learn about Russian high-level corruption, and what makes the Putin system tick. Alfa, for instance, holds an exclusive long-term contract as financier for Rosboronexport. Ring ring?

Meanwhile, CNN was blacked out in Moscow on Monday by a certain major cable TV firm without explanation. And I’ve been having difficulty accessing the Moscow Times website.

The Russians are as rabid domestically, as they are internationally!

Yours,

Comrade X in Moscow

LR RESPONDS:  We also have noticed the problem with the MT website from time to time in recent days.  Has anyone else?

La Russophobe welcomes letters to the editor for publication, anonymity guaranteed if desired. Write larussophobe@yahoo.com

The Mailbag: Annals of Russian Ignorance

Letters, we get letters, we get lots of cards and letters ever day!

Dear La Russophobe,

Thanks for excellent blog, here’s a tip which might be of interest for you:

There is a Chinese website you can find the worldwide academic ranking of universities by Shanghai Jiang Tong University, a source hardly bothered by human rights issues etc, which lists world universities mainly by their economically important statistics (ie. science, medical etc. publications, Nobel prizes etc.):

By taking a look at the whole list some interesting facts will surface. On the top 500 list of universities Russia has just two, Moscow and St. Petersburg State universities. The comparison to even some very small advanced countries is startling. Finland has six universities on list and Sweden eleven. Japan, comparable in population to Russia has 31, even Brazil has six. It must be also pointed out that top Russian university on the list, Moscow State University, has the position 70, hardly comparable to ranks of top institutions of other large European countries. Russian scientific and technological ability seem to have strong positions…

Yours Truly,

Anonymous

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