Hey Everybody, Putin is putting the band back together!

Vladimir Lenin

So way back in 1917, this Russian guy named Vlad wanted to unite Russia with some other places with funny names like the Ukraine and Belarus.  He was successful, and in 1922 the Soviet Union was born.  General hilarity then ensued for the next 69 years as the Soviets waged a Cold War against the United States, and a very hot war against their own citizens.  When Vlad died in 1924, he turned his little party over to his friend Joe.  Joe was a real hoot,  causing the deaths of somewhere between 10 and 60 million people before he was done in 1953.

Hitler's Nazis tried and failed to defeat the Soviet Union.  Unfortunately George Patton never got his chance to take on the Red Menace, one of the great strategic mistakes in the history of the United States.  Nope, it was left to a B movie actor from Illinois, a Polish priest, and an English lady to rid the world of the Soviet scourge.  In December 1991, the Soviet Union was declared dead.

Fast forward 20 years to the present.  Another Russian guy named Vlad wants to unify Russia and some other places with funny names like Belarus and Kazakhstan.  The former and soon to be current President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, thinks his "Eurasian Union" is a great idea and surely won't make American schoolchildren practice nuclear attack drills anytime soon.  In the eurasiaorg.net article here, Putin is quoted as wanting to set "a more ambitious goal" and "achieve a higher integration level" for his Eurasian Union.

Vladimir Putin

Now you millenials out there may think I am overreacting, but pay heed to the Crew.  When former KGB strongmen talk about "ambitious goals", there is no such thing as overreacting.  Putin will reclaim the Russian presidency in March of 2012, and begin spreading the Russian sphere of influence again throughout eastern Europe.  Freedom lovers in the former Soviet satellite states should be very concerned.  Unfortunately, this time they don't have the moral strength and resolve of the actor, the priest, and the lady to buttress them against this new threat.

By the way, do you know what Vladimir Putin called the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union, the most brutal and ruthless totalitarian regime in the history of man?  He called it "the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the 20th century".  Now that's comforting.