Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 29 – When a government makes it impossible for people to talk about actions of the government that the population rejects, as often happened in Soviet times, those who still want to talk about such things and to bring to the attention of others their thoughts routinely turn to Aesopian language.
As the Putin regime has tightened the screws on Russia especially since the Kremlin leader launched his expanded war in Ukraine, authors in the Russian Federation have expanded their use of this technique to discuss the baleful consequences of that action not directly but rather by talking about other close analogies.
A remarkable example of this is the publication today by the People of Baikal portal about “how a war for the annexation of new territories led to the overthrow of the state system in Russia 120 years ago” when Nicholas II launched what he expected to be “a good little war” to solve domestic problems.
In a 3,000-word essay, commentator Asya Gay describes how tsar’s plans after initially enjoying massive support backfired, led to general trikes and then to revolution in Irkutsk and ultimately the Russian Empire as a whole (baikal-stories.media/2026/01/29/polozhenie-otchayannoe-bunt-polnyj-vseobshhij/).
Gai’s detailed description of what happened in Irkutsk and her use of photographs from that time are fascinating in and of themselves, but it is unlikely that any Russian reading her article would fail to draw the possible and likely intended parallels to what is happening in Russia today and what may happen if Putin’s war continues.
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