A Country that Builds Plywood Reichstags will Sooner or Later Build the Real Thing, Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 10 – In recent years, Russian officials have erected plywood Reichstags so that children can experience the thrill of capturing Hitler’s Germany; but on reflection, some Russians are saying that their country reflects the old rule that any country which builds plywood Reichstags will end by creating the real thing, somer thing that leads directly to The Hague.

            That is just one of the anecdotes Russians are now telling each other, according to Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/44633/-). Among the best of the rest she offers this week are the following:

·       Time magazine has named Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky person of the year, but it has declared that Vladimir Putin is on the list of the eight billion most influential people on earth.

·       Some Duma deputies want to stop the teaching of English in Russian schools and introduce Chinese and Arabic instead. But if they care about developing the IT sector, they should be calling for courses in Swahili, Pashto, and Urdu, languages spoken where Russian IT specialists now work or come from.

·       The essence of modern Russia is that its people complain about the lack of gender-specific toilets in Sweden even though 20 million Russians still live without indoor toilets and have to use outhouses.

·       Russia’s emergency situations ministry says the fire at the Khimki shopping center highlighted Russia’s superiority. According to its officials, goods produced by domestic manufacturers burned much more brightly than those produced abroad.

·       The West, in banning the export to Russia of laptops, has missed a real opportunity to inflict pain: it hasn’t banned the sale to Russia of abacuses and slide rules, two technologies which still matter more in Russia today.

·       Lenin declared that the most important task of his government was to “plant a bomb under the USSR” so that it would fall apart 70 years later.

·       The more the population of Russia declines, the more the Kremlin wants to expand the country’s territory, in what is becoming the most obvious paradox of Russian life.

·       One reason that Russia is in such trouble is that its rulers haven’t changed in 20 years. It is like a man who doesn’t change his underwear for weeks at a time: he may be able to survive, but he will drive everyone away from him because of the smell.