April 22, 2022

Guessing at Russia's future

The Russian tsars had had absolute power similar to the pharaohs.  The aristocracy (boyars) were haughty and brutal, and the educated ones spoke French.  The illiterate peasants and muzhiks (serfs till 1861) lived in poverty and s...

August 21, 2018

Eyewitness to the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

Half a century ago today, I watched as Soviet tanks rolled into my native Czechoslovakia to suppress the slight relaxing of the odious repression that was necessary to maintain a purported socialist paradise. “Prague Spring,” as the loose...