Since this is Russia:
21/11/20 11:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancesofthelight posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsI wonder if Comrade Vladimir the Butcher of Grozny ever really had Parkinsons, or if this was like Tsar Peter III's fatal case of hemorrhoids?
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-denies-putin-stepping-down-leader-due-parkinsons-disease-1545425
For those who've forgotten or never learned the story, back in the day Tsar Peter the Great was a great reveler and drunkard who had a really nasty temper problem. In one of his fits of temper he drove his son into exile, and when his son came back to Russia he beat him to death Ivan the Terrible style, and thus created his own self-imposed problem. To resolve this the Russian throne hinged around a slightly insane fellow who was a big ol' Prussophile in the days before proto-Wehrabooism was cool.
So Russia decided that this guy, who married Sophia of Anhalt-Scherbst, was to be its next Tsar-Emperor as she was to be its Empress. Everyone except Tsar Peter III to be was happy. For a time he got a stay from the dreaded throne of Petersburg by virtue of Peter the Great's daughter and third successor, Empress Elizabeth, the first Russian autocrat to teach an arrogant warmongering German that pretty battles are just that and war is won by quartermasters and mathematics. Her armies slew one in four of Frederick the Great's legions at Kunersdorf, Berlin falls, she dies, and poor Russia gets ol' Peter III, who goes on to prove that enthusiasts of German warmongering have always been sad little virgins that don't know shit about shit.
Peter III alienated so many people in Russia that his wife arranged to have him strangled, not before having 'his' son, PaulSalty-er Romanov..
Ensue that Peter III died of 'hemorrhoids' and that the Russian monarchy under its new Empress, who would go on to partition Poland and fix Central and Eastern Europe down the path that cast the shadows of World Wars I and II and the genocide of European Jews and Germany's mad bids for world power by the crash of the bomb which it could not do once, let alone twice, and refused to let this stop it.
So, with that in mind, did Vladimir Putin ever really have Parkinson's? Does he have it, or did his oligarch buddies decide he's finally started to overreach himself and Russia, try the August 1991 route, utterly failed at it, and this 'lack of concern 'about health reflect a much more classical kind of Russian power behind the starch walls of the Kremlin?
Personally I suspect it was this and that the health excuse means as much or as little as it usually does in Russia, which is to say that an autocrat never falls, he just has a health condition, sometimes involving strangulation or dying in his own piss from a stroke because his attempt to orchestrate a new pogrom of Jews and doctors bit him in the ass.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-denies-putin-stepping-down-leader-due-parkinsons-disease-1545425
For those who've forgotten or never learned the story, back in the day Tsar Peter the Great was a great reveler and drunkard who had a really nasty temper problem. In one of his fits of temper he drove his son into exile, and when his son came back to Russia he beat him to death Ivan the Terrible style, and thus created his own self-imposed problem. To resolve this the Russian throne hinged around a slightly insane fellow who was a big ol' Prussophile in the days before proto-Wehrabooism was cool.
So Russia decided that this guy, who married Sophia of Anhalt-Scherbst, was to be its next Tsar-Emperor as she was to be its Empress. Everyone except Tsar Peter III to be was happy. For a time he got a stay from the dreaded throne of Petersburg by virtue of Peter the Great's daughter and third successor, Empress Elizabeth, the first Russian autocrat to teach an arrogant warmongering German that pretty battles are just that and war is won by quartermasters and mathematics. Her armies slew one in four of Frederick the Great's legions at Kunersdorf, Berlin falls, she dies, and poor Russia gets ol' Peter III, who goes on to prove that enthusiasts of German warmongering have always been sad little virgins that don't know shit about shit.
Peter III alienated so many people in Russia that his wife arranged to have him strangled, not before having 'his' son, Paul
Ensue that Peter III died of 'hemorrhoids' and that the Russian monarchy under its new Empress, who would go on to partition Poland and fix Central and Eastern Europe down the path that cast the shadows of World Wars I and II and the genocide of European Jews and Germany's mad bids for world power by the crash of the bomb which it could not do once, let alone twice, and refused to let this stop it.
So, with that in mind, did Vladimir Putin ever really have Parkinson's? Does he have it, or did his oligarch buddies decide he's finally started to overreach himself and Russia, try the August 1991 route, utterly failed at it, and this 'lack of concern 'about health reflect a much more classical kind of Russian power behind the starch walls of the Kremlin?
Personally I suspect it was this and that the health excuse means as much or as little as it usually does in Russia, which is to say that an autocrat never falls, he just has a health condition, sometimes involving strangulation or dying in his own piss from a stroke because his attempt to orchestrate a new pogrom of Jews and doctors bit him in the ass.
