Putin May Be Dead but He Rules No Worse than He Did Before, Some Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 9 – The real Vladimir Putin may have died and been installed in a refrigerator in a morgue; but despite that new arrangement, there is no question, some Russians say, that that he has been able to rule the country just as well as he did before -- and perhaps even better.

            That is just one of the anecdotes in a new collection assembled by Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/47112/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       The head of the Constitutional Court has dismissed the idea of a new iron curtain as extreme, but thousands of ordinary Russians are calling on the Duma to put it in place and lower it as quickly as possible to protect them.

·       Russian officials say that a Russian ship has not suffered serious damage and can always be sold to China as scrap metal.

·       Americans are clearly savages: they elect a new president before the old one has died.

·       Reactionary officials always create revolutions; revolutionary parties only exploit what the reactionaries have done.

·       The new Russian happiness ministry as its first official action has given Adam Kadyrov an award.

·       “Revolution, chaos, terror, hunger, total poverty, preparation for war, war, horror, death, sea of ​​blood, poverty, toil, cold war, poverty, deficit, Afghan war, total deficit, inglorious collapse.” That is a brief history of the USSR. Unfortunately, Russia is continuing in this tradition.

·       Yakutsk has announced a competition for the bet mobilization effort. An even better idea would be to have competitions for the best wound and the best premature death.

·       Patriarch Kirill says that Russians who don’t attend an Orthodox church don’t have the right to consider themselves Russians. In his world, you must pray and then die to become a real Russian.