Barbarians Within the Kremlin Gates

A very long time ago, when Europeans began conquering the world, they encountered a number of strange societies.

One was the Aztec Empire, located on the territory of modern Mexico. According to Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, Aztec ruler Montezuma II was so powerful that he “made up to 20,000 human sacrifices per year.”

The Europeans encountered another part of that multipolar world on the coastlands of Brazil. This was the Tupi Indian tribe. A traveler named Andrei Teve, who lived among the Tupi people in the mid-16th century, tells of their unpleasant habit of constantly eating their enemies. He relates that even though the Indians had enough land and food, they were constantly at war with each other for the sole purpose of eating their enemies. If time were short, they would cut off their victims’ arms and legs and eat them right on the battlefield. But if possible, they would take the enemy prisoner and fatten him up for a few months, often giving him a woman to produce offspring whom they would also eat.

And now we have a new breed of savages. One of the most obvious examples is probably the people of Saudi Arabia. Since the 19th century, the laws and customs of that country have only grown more savage. Thanks to petrodollars, the ruling dynasty has moved out of its tents and into palaces. But their understanding of the process of government boils down to buying luxury goods in London stores and inexpensive women for their harems. They see themselves as a chosen people with a life mission that is much purer than the one offered by the depraved West.

North Korea is another example of a modern savage society. North Koreans are so starved for food that they have reverted to cannibalism to survive, while their great and powerful leader, Kim Jong Il, lives an indescribable life of luxury.

There is one more country that could be a candidate for the list — Russia. Our historical distinction is that Russia does not produce anything besides oil and gas. Everything else — from cell phones and televisions to toilets and even the video cameras on which we record speeches about the imminent collapse of the depraved West — it imports from that very same depraved West.

True, Russia doesn’t have a rapidly multiplying royal family as in Saudi Arabia, but it has a ruling clan from St. Petersburg. And although the rulers from “Piter” don’t have harems, they can commit just about any crime they want without fear of ever being punished.

The modern barbarian leaders don’t differ all that much from the ancient ones. They have equally strange ways of measuring the state’s power — for instance, counting the number of their sacrificed enemies. In addition, they seize the country’s wealth and send the proceeds to their offshore accounts and sincerely believe their own corruption and depravity to be a sign of superiority.

These modern primitive societies remain more or less the same as they ever were. Only the West has changed. Cortes and his ilk are long gone.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.