Good morning

I didn't have time yesterday to even think about blogging the St. Petersburg trip; suffice it to say, until I have more time, that all things must stay in balance and the outstanding first half of last Friday was counterweighed later in the day.

I woke up this morning to a disturbing report on Echo of Moscow Radio - they were reading an RIA Novosti wire story about a skirmish last night in Ingushetia between federal troops and unidentified militants.

Yesterday, one of the first things I heard in the morning was internet commentator (perhaps the only - and certainly the best - one in Russia) Kirill Plyushchev's "Echonet" broadcast on Echo.

[Digressing for a moment, I don't know how I would make it through the mornings without that radio station - it serves as our alarm clock and provides such up-to-the-minute news and insightful commentary that it almost makes the brief sponsored segments (touting various tour companies and medical clinics) bearable.]

Anyway, Plyushchev's "site of the day" yesterday was also not the sort of thing with which you want to start your day - a database maintained by the venerable Memorial foundation (they have an English-language site, too) listing the victims of Stalin's political repressions who lived in Moscow sorted by their address of residence. As Plyushchev noted in his comment, this is an especially chilling way to see the data - not only can you see (even if you don't know Russian) by scrolling down the left-hand column the sheer volume of addresses that had victims; you can also, if you happen to live in Moscow, find out whether your apartment building or perhaps even your flat was once occupied by someone who was taken away in the middle of the night, never to be seen again. For example, our building on Tverskaya was built in 1948 and therefore not around during the height of the purges, so it has no victims listed, but the one-block-long side street that we enter the building from has 12 victims listed.

File that one under the category of "those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it," which Bartleby tells me is a Santayana line.

All of this, compounded by Putin's slow-motion, collossal blunder in Ukraine, makes me worry what the coming months will bring for Russia. It also makes me wonder - far from the first time - why this country, which produces some of the most talented people on earth, seems destined always to be ruled by madmen or incompetents.

OK, off to work now. I promise my next post will be more upbeat and that I'll get my photos of SPb uploaded and on here soon - I know you can't wait!