Tag Archives: USSR

There were many British and American experts inside the Russian government at the time; they were either intelligent [sic] agents or Harry Lime types, usually both at the same time. Their orders were to demolish the Soviet system as swiftly as possible; their motive was to transfer the profits to their governments and themselves…. It is a virtue of Stephenson’s book that, as he says at the end, “I have avoided the temptation in this book to compare the old with the new.” Thus has he...

My Forbes post on the threat to democracy in the EU touched a nerve. Well, several nerves, actually. Some people regarded my invocation of the Prague Spring as insulting to the people who suffered under Soviet oppression: others objected to my comparison of the benevolent EU with the evil USSR: and a few complained that I had presented the Syriza government as "martyrs", when they are nothing of the kind. And lots of Portuguese called me out for misrepresenting how their parliamentary...