So, we are once again in the midst of the holiday season. The most powerful man in the world - well, at least he thinks he is - Donald Trump, is once again vacationing at America's expense. While the world number two - thinks HE should be number one - Vladimir Putin is stripped to the waist, a-huntin' and a-fishin' like the Tsar he thinks he should be, in the vast expanses of Siberia; a place in his KGB days of old, he probably vanquished many an adversary.
Currently six weeks away from the centenary of the October Revolution of 1917 - various calendars permitting - that introduced Russia to the Bolsheviks and a whole new way to decimate the population, the two most powerful men on the planet and a certain North Korean are vying for total power in a battle to rule people that never ends from one generation to the next.
The Romanovs
Having been in power since 1713, the first Romanov Tsar was led to his coronation weeping that he did not want the job in the first place, although his predecessors certainly made up for him. Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, even Alexander II, all tried in some unhelpful way to free the people of the sprawling land. They all, including the last Tsar, Nicholas II, had one fatal flaw, they could not part with the thought of Autocracy. Solo rule by divine right was the Legacy passed down from one to the other, the thought of any sort of parliamentary intervention on behalf of the people a complete and utter anathema. A handful of ministers - mostly corrupt - a handful of generals - whose positions were mostly bought - and a handful of Nobles - who could only say yes, could only lead to one thing: Revolution.
What replaced them?
Pretty much the same thing; Lenin hated the peasants, Stalin hated everyone and Khrushchev never quite recovered from the horrors of Stalingrad. All of them, and everyone since has had the same traits as the Romanov's; autocracy, autocracy, autocracy.? Apart from perhaps, Gorbachev, no one stopped to consider that Russia - even now, and like China - is too vast to rule.
Each one was a Tsar substitute, ruling quite independently making up their own mind and generally ignoring the will of the people through their elected representatives.
Putin and his strongman persona, shooting and fishing things, his bare chested antics and his hard man stance is only another in the line of Tsars without the title.
They see Russia as a land of children to be ruled with an iron fist and it will sadly remain that way for a very long time to come. Vladimir is going nowhere soon, and if he does don't hold out any expectations for his successor!
