Why Russia Has Forced It: Part 1

Russia.

Ice, snow, serfdom, lorddom, Tsars. Cities that occasionally end with "grad." Livestock. Glacier-paced industrialization. Mountains, trees. Beards--many, many beards.

Russia.

If you go as far back as say, the 1500s (before which I stop caring about anything but fans of Jesus and the many ways other people found to kill them), you'll find a funny trend in that giant slab of geography known as Russia. For lack of a better word, dumbassery has run rampant throughout the icy hills of Russia since time immemorial. And that's not to say it's always the Russians doing it, because it's not. The French alone make up a significant portion of stupidity that characterizes the snowy fjords of Russia. But you must admit: whoever doing the deeds, if the deeds are in the chilly plains of Russia, they'll probably be severely fucked up.

Let's start with Ivan the Terrible, shall we? His reign in the frosty tundras of Russia was marked by stabbing, burning, mutilating, crucifying, torturing, and occasional mean-spirited gossip. These things all happened to people he liked, by the way. Ivan was the kind of guy to beat his pregnant daughter near-fatally because she wasn't dressed appropriately (although in the freezing iceyards of Russia, dressing immodestly is usually restricted to wearing one less layer of elkskin under your parka). He was a bit of a trendsetter in that he was the first Russian monarch to be known locally as ____ the ____. His successors Peter and Catherine The Great (not married, not even alive at the same time) took his cue, although they were evidently more positive-minded. Oh, and if anyone's wondering what Ivan's political and economic strategies were as Tsar, here's a hint: he's often compared with Josef Stalin, which means he had socio-economic bulimia (binge on workers, purge your opponents, keep going until your political esophagus withers).

Moving on past Ivan, the mountainous glaciers of Russia endured a Time of Troubles, which was only distinguishable from the past several centuries of Russian history in that this time the vast majority of people trying to kill Russians were also Russian. After the blood had stopped shedding, the Romanov dynasty took over the Tsardom.

Here is where I pause so that everyone who knows Russian history can cry a little inside.

Peter the Great, also known as Peter the Doucheface, decided the windswept vistas of Russia needed to get with the times. In the seventeenth century, that meant not sleeping under the untanned pelt of a wild grizzly every night and hosing down the serfs every now and again. Peter basically forced Russians to learn and dress nice and build things, just like all those Western Europeans who were looking suave right about the same time; however, his strategy for bringing his people to a higher spiritual and intellectual ground was to force everyone into the military, execute thousands of people who didn't actually enjoy virulent despotism, and stuff the new capital city (named St. Petersburg, for an extra poke at the gag reflex) with the same upper class that he was spending all his time making over. Peter, in a general sense, went a little nuts with the modernization and ended up making everyone in Russia hate him more than anything on this sweet earth. Except for walnuts. All Russians hate walnuts.

Anyway.

Catherine the Great, who was apparently not one to let some shit named Peter hold copyrights over suffixes, carried the reform torch not even halfheartedly--like, fifth-heartedly. She made friends with Voltaire and abolished torture and was like "hey, serfs, be free?" and they were like "REVOLT AGAINST THE MONARCHY" and she was like "lol JK never again." Catherine also sliced up Poland like Christmas ham and served a portion to Austria and Prussia, because people weren't living there or anything.

The vaguely unobtrusive crests of Russia then experienced an exponential rise in dumbass. Napolean, high as a kite after spanking most of Europe (except for Britain, because it doesn't matter how many men you have or how terrific your Revolution was, you still can't reach them except by fucking boat), decided to invade Russia.

With 500,00 Frenchmen whose idea of climate discomfort was a breeze that wafted a little too robustly.

Right before autumn started.

Here's the thing about Russia: it's a fucking beast. It's huge, it's muscular, and it will shit on your face if you aren't wearing forty pounds of animal skin during the winter. By the time December hit, Napoleon was realizing that just because the Russians couldn't write witty satirical plays of antiquated monarchical standards didn't mean they couldn't and wouldn't burn their god damn entire country to the ground just so the French couldn't get a piece of it. The Russians retreated back through Moscow, drawing the French forward like a mademoiselle drawing smoke through an obnoxious cigarette holder. Napoleon found himself trapped with many, many, many hungry men in a Russian winter. There is no other adjective to explain how shitty this winter was. After the trek back, he had a fifth of his original manpower, though the loss of warm bodies was made up for in plenty by the wealth of dysentery, hypothermia, flu, and utter lack of fuck-giving that afflicted his men. Oh, and then he lost control of all of Europe and got sent to play shuffleboard on an island where there may and may not have been unicorns. The sarcastic ditches of Russia just laughed.

Afterwards, the pedantic ridges of Russia got a little stir-crazy. The Decembrists' Revolt, apart from providing a name for an awful indie band, tried and failed to fuck up the monarchy. Lucky for them, because Tsar Alexander II went on to free the serfs right before the Civil War, further highlighting that a bunch of people who wear lumps of fur on their heads and generally look like the Lorax could be more socially advanced than the constitution-sporting, independence-declaring, life-liberty-pursuit-of-happiness Americans. Although, to be fair, Alexander's emancipation was about as effective as Lincoln's: Russians serfs became the peasant equivalent of sharecroppers, and just hated the upper class a little more. This would be important later.

On the next installment: everybody's favorite revolution and the reason kids are forced to read Animal Farm in school!

Mussolini Is A TwiHard

I don't know how many people have read any of Mussolini's half-coherent ramblings about the basis of fascism, but let me save you the suspense: if the man worked for a shampoo company, he'd find a way to turn "lather, rinse, repeat" into The Iliad.

But when being forced to slog through pages and pages of the State and the State's will and the State's grandmother, one does understand a little of why several million Italians decided this was the kind of crazy that was good to have in vogue. Mussolini is pretty good at creating a big blank hole that anyone can conveniently step into and find themselves being described as a victim of communism, pacifism, vegetarianism, anything and everything. Standing in this hole, a person can fit what might be generously called ideas around their personal problems and find a comforting authoritarian resolution. Late train? Fix it with fascism! Feeling ugly? Fix it with fascism! Erectile dysfunction? You can become gay, or fascist, or possibly both!

Anyway, the point is, Mussolini's writing is pretty subjective for anyone who needs a quick and easy answer to bad feelings. And in this way, his work stays true to that of a certain vampire-werewolf-sparkle novel and its sequels, all of which are floating through popular culture as we speak. I'm referring, of course, to Twilight, that beacon of fail amongst the moderately awful vampire novels that are so fashionable right now. Many people have attributed Twilight's success to the total lack of personality of Bella Swan, heroine, adventurer, and possible schizophrenic. "Writer" Stephanie Meyer claims she purposefully made Bella "ambiguous" (read: dumb as a post) so that pre-teen girls could cut and paste themselves into Bella's vapid shoes. Just juggle the names a little bit and you could find yourself pursued by a handsome likely-bisexual with golden eyes and hair like an abstract sculpture of ocean waves. It's the American Dream!

I'm pretty sure that had Mussolini survived the fatal condition of overwearing small cylindrical hats, he would have been a pretty big fan of Twilight. Here is a young-adult novel that did a better job of creating an audience-proxy than he ever did. Let's be honest: when you live in 1930's Italy and you realize you are the shart of Europe, would you rather rally around a chubby little man wearing a teacozy on his head, or what looks like James Dean's dumb cousin? The answer, I think, does not have to be said. With the power of Edward Cullen's permanent PMS and his ability to be the understudy for a disco ball, Mussolini could have scrapped the Black Shirts and built a platoon of underage girls and questioning young men so awesome and mighty that before long, he'd have the rest of Europe dazzling each other and munching mountain lion knish--OR ELSE. Yes, Mussolini and his Beige Shirts would have been the terror of the Mediterranean, the West, the East, Mordor, and even possibly Utah.

Let's count our lucky stars Benito Mussolini only went on to vaguely conquer some stuff and end up ass-first in history as a dictator who emphasized the "dick" half of the world. If he'd gotten his hands on Twilight, we'd be up the sparkly, sparkly creek.