The Empire of Lies and Its Chief Liar

 

It turns out the Kremlin liar stashed hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from the Russian people in the accounts of his childhood friend, cellist Roldugin, who is also his daughter's godfather and who, for some reason, slinks off to an offshore zone in distant Panama, where, according to Putin, he buys musical instruments for the Russian state's musical institutions with his own money, purely out of altruistic motives. http://www.forbes.ru/rassledovaniya/finansy/325383-koshelek-violonchelista-kak-sergei-roldugin-spryatal-svoi-dokhody

So that's it, no more, no less. How about this Liar's answer? Simply wonderful! I dare suggest introducing a measure of deception: 1 Putin equals 100% falsehood. A half-lie, accordingly, would be 0.5 Putins. And so on.

 

Alik Bakhshi

The Empire of Lies and Its Chief Liar

 

 

"You're guilty, if only because

I'm hungry."

I. Krylov

 

These words by Krylov remarkably accurately capture the predatory nature of the Russian Empire, as evidenced by the current dangerous situation around Ukraine created by the Kremlin. Needless to say, the attainment of freedom by the Ukrainian people, the most ethnically related of all the empire's many peoples, is a painful blow to the pride of the nation-forming nation (1), with its imperial worldview. The loss of Ukraine and Crimea as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union also affected the geostrategic situation in the southwestern part of the Russian Empire. However, all this does not give the Kremlin any right to a military invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, which, incidentally, was never truly Russian territory, nor was the entire Black Sea coast. Crimea's predominantly Russian population is a consequence of Russia's genocide of the indigenous Tatar people and the subsequent settlement of the area by Russians. Looking back to the recent past, a similar situation led to World War II, when England and France, fulfilling their obligations, declared war on Germany for the German invasion of Poland. Strictly speaking, Russia's aggression should have been followed by a declaration of war from the United States and Great Britain, which, according to the Budapest Memorandum, are guarantors of Ukraine's security and integrity. However, this did not happen, either because they were perplexed by President Putin's unusually brazen lie about the non-involvement of Russian troops in the military events in Ukraine, or because of this brazen, documented lie on an international scale—after all, Russia also signed up to be the guarantor of Ukraine's security in the same Budapest Memorandum. Of course, no declaration of war should be expected between nuclear powers, when every second counts. However, it must be said that the West's reaction to Moscow's unexpectedly monstrous insolence, bordering on sheer savagery, was rather restrained.

It would seem that the days of Hitler's fascism have sunk into oblivion, but no, the aggressive actions of Putin's Russia have brought Western politicians, who were scratching their heads, back to reality. They certainly haven't read Krylov's fables "The Wolf and the Lamb," but I hope they know that appealing to the wolf for justice is a hopeless endeavor. Perhaps they will finally realize that "friend Putin," who loudly declared his regret at the collapse of the USSR and compared it to a catastrophe of universal proportions, intends to recreate the Soviet Union and is little different from Hitler, who set out to build a "Greater Reich." I'd like to point out that Putin's intentions actually have an advantage over Hitler's, for unlike Hitler, Putin relies on the people's ingrained imperial worldview and Great Russian chauvinism (2). Putin doesn't need to build a party or create an ideology; he only needs to issue the cry "kill Chechnya" or "give us Crimea," and he is assured of the support and full understanding of the Russian people. It's simply astonishing how unanimously Putin's lie about the non-involvement of Russian troops, the so-called "little green men," without insignia, in the annexation of Crimea was embraced and supported by the people. This is precisely the case when, in the words of Fazil Iskander, "the general stench is mistaken for the unanimity of the people."

It's worth noting a unique trait of the Russian people: their tolerance for lies. In the Russian consciousness, truth and lies coexist harmoniously without causing any harm. Once, during the Soviet era, a Swedish woman interning at Moscow State University shared with a group of students what she considered an important discovery: "In your country, everyone says one thing and thinks another." This ambiguity, so familiar to our consciousness, perplexed her. Having grown up in a free society, she couldn't understand how it could be that everyone had the same opinion on any issue. What seemed self-evident to us, accustomed to universal lies, struck her as unnatural, and perhaps even herd-like savagery, something she naturally kept silent about. This explains how easily the lies of the Russian president, which correspond to the nation's imperial worldview, are instantly and without hesitation accepted by every Russian, regardless of the country in which they live. The latter suggests that even changed circumstances are powerless to alter the imperial worldview of the Russian people.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but in my opinion, Russian society, accustomed to lies during the Soviet era, coupled with the Russian people's pathological inability to live in a democratic environment (3), combined with its imperial worldview, is itself a kind of embodiment of Universal Evil, posing a threat to the world. And this isn't about Putin; Putin merely serves as a successful conduit, orchestrating the outpouring of this Evil. Thus, to the generally accepted, well-known definition of Russia as an "Evil Empire," one could equally add "Empire of Lies," for "lies" and "evil" are complementary concepts and cannot exist without one another. Thus, Russia's aggression against Ukraine was accompanied by the mass dissemination of an incredible amount of disinformation and outright lies by the Kremlin and President Putin himself – the main, I would say, unrivaled liar in Russia today. There's no point in citing the Russian president's long track record of lies, as every word he utters is laced with lies. Perhaps, after Putin's treatment of Ukraine, it's hard to find a diplomat who would take on the responsibility of negotiating with Putin. It's no wonder Putin counts among his friends the entire world's rabble, including Belarusian dictator Lukashenko, the bloody Syrian dictator Assad, former Iranian Prime Minister Ahmadinejad, and the late Hugo Chavez.

 

The Empire of Lies currently has one strategic ally: Armenia, which, with Moscow's support, has annexed 20% of Azerbaijan's territory and is awaiting Moscow's go-ahead to resume aggression, with the undisguised goal of creating a "Greater Armenia" from sea to sea, in accordance with a historical lie in which there is no place for Azerbaijan or its people (4). There is no Turkey, no part of Georgia. It is all Armenia, with numerous Armenian enclaves in the North Caucasus, Kuban, Crimea, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and perhaps now even California, which may in the future form part of "Greater Armenia."

In his territorial claims to southeastern Ukraine and Crimea, where a Russian diaspora exists—a consequence of the forced expulsion of the indigenous people and the settlement of Great Russians—Putin unwittingly replicates the ideology of the Armenian Nazi party, Dashnaktsutyun, founded in 1890, long before Hitler's ideology of German superiority. All Nazi ideologies that invoke national superiority and "greatness" primarily generate historical lies about either a "Greater Germany" or a "Greater Armenia," which serve as the basis for territorial claims and, as a consequence, military aggression. A very accurate picture of the national "superiority" of Armenians is presented by Vasily Grossman (Znamya, no. 11, 1988):

"With insidious ease, a people's nationalism loses its noble foundation; it doesn't become formidable, it becomes pitiful; it doesn't provoke, but humiliates. Thus, by striving to prove some kind of inferiority, man reveals his own. Some of my interlocutors, in all areas of human creativity, especially emphasized the Armenian national primacy in architecture, science, and poetry. They emphasized the superiority of the architectural merits of the temple in Garni over the seemingly primitive architecture of the Acropolis; speaking of the poet Tumanyan, they persistently convinced me that Tumanyan's genius surpassed that of Pushkin. The point, of course, is not whether Garni's architecture is more perfect than that of the Acropolis, or whether Tumanyan is a greater genius than Pushkin; the point, and the point is certainly sad, is that poetry, architecture, science, and history themselves, in their essence, cease to mean anything in the conversations of some of my interlocutors. They serve only to demonstrate the superiority of the Armenian national character over the national character of other peoples. It's not poetry that matters, but rather to prove that the Armenian national poet is superior to, say, a Russian or French poet. My interlocutors, without even realizing it, impoverished their souls and hearts by ceasing to rejoice in poetry, the perfection of architecture, the grandeur of science, and instead saw poetry and science merely as a means to assert their national superiority. This aspiration can be so fanatical and narrow that at times it seems like madness.”

 

The view of national superiority gives rise to Nazism and lies, and ultimately results in evil. Thus, the ideology of the Dashnak party contained a clause that presented terror as a method for achieving the creation of a "Greater Armenia." Following this programmatic point, Armenian Nazis subjected the civilian populations of Turkey and Azerbaijan to brutal terror, literally clearing the territory for a "Greater Armenia," which brought untold suffering to the peoples of Turkey and Azerbaijan, and indeed to the Armenian people themselves. The Nazi ideology of German fascists also led to a global catastrophe, from which the German people themselves suffered the most.

 

Today, Putin has opened the floodgates to Great Russian chauvinism; the essentially fascist rhetoric of "Great Russian people" and "Great Russian language" is increasingly heard, where "great" implies not so much quantity as quality. Interestingly, in Russian sources, of all the peoples of the world, only the Russian people are described as "great"; even the Chinese people are not destined to be so. How can a Great Russian, with such an approach, dare speak Ukrainian in Ukraine? And how dare Ukrainians neglect the great Russian language by not making it the official language! Remember the sneers and disdain shown by Russians living, for example, in Baku, at an Azerbaijani who spoke Russian poorly or with an accent, despite the fact that the Great Russians themselves didn't even bother to learn the native language. They had no idea how tactless their ridicule was. Only a latent sense of inferiority and lack of culture leads to self-aggrandizement. Incidentally, if we're being honest about the richness of a language, Russian contains many borrowed Turkic words, while Azerbaijani, for example, doesn't have a single word of Russian origin, despite Moscow's Russification policy. It's worth noting here that the Russians forcibly deprived the Azerbaijani people of their alphabet, rendering them illiterate overnight by introducing the Cyrillic alphabet. Imagine Russia suddenly being converted to the Chinese alphabet. I'd like to see Russians reading Pushkin in Chinese characters.

 

By supporting the chauvinistic frenzy of Russian separatists in Ukraine, Putin is peddling yet another historical lie, claiming that Ukraine as a state never existed. So, how should we view the agreement on Ukraine's reunification with Russia, signed by Bohdan Khmelnytsky? If Ukraine never existed, as Putin claims, then with which country was the agreement signed? It seems that Bohdan Khmelnytsky alone, without the Ukrainian people, became a Russian subject, so to speak. Thus, in his historical digressions, President Putin completely denies the Ukrainian people the right to their own country, thereby justifying the actions of Russian separatists in Ukraine.

 

In general, Putin is, to put it politely, "completely screwed" with the separatists (5). Thus, the Chechens who fought the Russians for the freedom of their homeland are all bandits, robbers—in short, separatists, worthy of being urinated on in Putin's toilet. In that case, what should we call the Russians who settled in Ukraine and now want to tear away the part of Ukraine where they live and annex it to Russia? Or are there bad separatists, and there are good separatists, who should be aided by secretly transferring Russian fascists to Ukraine, equipped with the latest weaponry, including anti-aircraft guns and tanks. In short, returning to Krylov's fable:

"The strong always blame the weak:

We hear countless examples of this in history."

 

Having transferred nuclear weapons to Russia, Ukraine has found itself defenseless against the Evil Empire. One can't help but wonder: would Putin dare attack Ukraine if it had nuclear-armed missiles? Of course not. The Evil Empire, having promised to guarantee Ukraine's integrity and independence, essentially deceived both Ukraine and America and Great Britain, which gives Russia the right to be called the "Empire of Lies." Therefore, all countries, especially former colonies of the Russian Empire, must be extremely wary of treaties, alliance commitments, and other agreements with Moscow, as they risk becoming victims of deception. This explains the concerns of Finland, which has been peaceful and neutral until now, and its sudden desire to join NATO.

 

It's certainly conceivable that, if not for NATO, Führer Putin would have unhesitatingly revived the Russian Empire within its former borders, including Poland and Finland.

 

1. The State-Forming People and Its Führer, or - Ukraine and Further Down the List.  http://alikbahshi.livejournal.com/21749.html

2. Great Russian Chauvinism, and Putin Its Führer  http://samlib.ru/b/bahshi_a/alikbahshi-38.shtml

3. The People's Destiny, or To Each His Own Candle

   http://alikbahshi.livejournal.com/4732.html

4. Armenia and the Moscow-Tehran Axis.  http://www.proza.ru/2008/03/22/521

5. A Word, Fornication, or Complete Albats.  https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2026/04/word-fornication-or-complete-albats.html

 

June 20, 2014