While I’m here in Moscow for a couple of weeks teaching a course for MGIMO-University, I’ll take the opportunity to post some random observations. The first is that the “70 years since the end of the Great Patriotic Bandwagon” is as predictably a Big Thing as one would expect but also, and I suspect not least thanks to the current national (or at least Kremlin) mood become a competition of sorts. Equally predictably, Russian Railways (RZhD) boss Vladimir Yakunin, everyone’s favourite KGB veteran/Putin chum/Orthodox Chekist booster, is not going to let such an opportunity pass by and RZhD “we are proud and remember” billboards greet you at the airport and dominate several city landmarks, including a massive video one that provides a veritable multi-stage history of the railways and WW2…
