Last week Russia published a long list of Americans permanently banned from entering the country.
I mean like seriously, who in the name of the Lord would get upset about not being allowed to visit Russia. Even during the brighter post-Soviet era it was never on most peoples´ ”must visit list.”
Fair enough, I actually did a Trans-siberian run all the way to Beijing a few years back, which included some interesting museums in Moscow before we boarded our train. Surprises me that Russia still has museums as there seems to be a penchant for flatttening Ukrainian cultural institutions including museums, theatres and schools. Maybe it´ s not anti-culture at all, just a plain case of eliminating the competition. I don’t know why they bother, they have the drop on the rest of us anyway. The whole of Russia is a museum, with cities like Moscow and Vladivostock doing a good impression of western Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin wall, with the rest of the country providing scenes representative of various decades, all the way back to 1917.
Have to give it to Putin though, living up to communist egalitarianism by psychologically ushering everybody into the Stalin era. He is killing thousands in the name of nationalism, set to starving millions, condoning rape, torture and other war atrocities in order to satisfy his fetish with a war that he not only has no experience of but that ended before he was born. If opinion polls are to be believed, your everyday Russian nationalist on the street is fine with all this. Not my prime holiday target if you see what I mean and if anybody wanted to send me there on business, being able to tell them I was banned from visiting, would leave me in profound debt to the Kremlin.
I mean honestly, they have to be kidding.
On the other hand, you never know with the Kremlin. On that list of 963 people there are five dead Americans. I can just imagine listening to Laurel and Hardy discussing the pros and cons of that.
This is Keystone Cops/Charlie Chaplin slapstick humour of the 1930s and 40s and unintentional or not, it´ s pretty weird.
