Wednesday, January 04, 2006

From Russia with Oil

I haven't followed the recent Russian/Ukraine oil story too closely, but this story in the Telegraph the other day inspired my flatmate Pavel (who's from Belarus) to write the paper a letter condemning Russia as totalitarian.

If I was feeling more inspired, I'd assess Russia according to standards of totalitarianism, and bring in people like Arendt and Popper. As it is, I don't really know enough about the Russian situation to comment intelligently. Suffice to say the simple fact that's it's expansionist (granting that) doesn't imply it's totalitarian, and even while studying Stalinist Russia for A-level history we found some evidence that Russia wasn't wholly totalitarian.

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