While Muscovy did adapt the state institutions of the Kipchak Khanate to its own, an absolutely uncontroversial well-accepted claim, Russian autocracy can be explained primarily by the vast sparsely distances between cities and extremely cold weather.

https://twitter.com/CSallustius/status/2053087650005856680

If it had been "democratic" Novgorod that had conquered the Russian principalities into a single unified state, you would have seen a similar autocracy emerge. The 19th century State school of Kavelin and Chicherin used Hegelianism to justify autocracy as the height of government

If Russia is so anti-White, it begs the question as to why their entire justification for antipathy towards NATO and the West is that they rejected Russia's proposals for a truly pan-European security scheme that respected the interests of all European powers and not just the US.

https://twitter.com/ChromeBarracuda/status/2052205322350059795

Aside from statements by Lavrov at the time of the 2014 directly talking about how NATO expansion squandered the opportunity to turn it into a truly pan-European org, Russian diplomacy in the 90s focused on working with French to turn the OSCE into an alternative to NATO.

Magyar's long term position is precarious because he was a protest vote by a heterogenous set of interests, between RWers dissatisfied with Orban and pro-EU libs. You can't really satisfy both parties at the same time. You can't have good relations with both Russia and the EU.

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2043690092284284935

Trying to ingratiate oneself with the EU is difficult when you also want to conduct a rational sensible policy towards Russia and preventing your country's falling into an energy crisis. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. The coalition he built cannot last long.

The East Euro liberals of 1989 were not "revolutionaries", they were weaklings whose success was based entirely Gorbachev being a liberal who refused to use force to crush dissent to exorcise the Stalinist past. Without his hesitation, the Warsaw Pact would exist to this day.

https://twitter.com/The_Davos_Man/status/2042525669062533189

Gorbachev and his advisors sidelined hardliners within the Polish Politburo and actively courted and promoted Solidarnosc, saying there would be no support for a crackdown against liberal protestors and that the future of Poland was not any of Soviet Russia's business.

Some thoughts on the ceasefire: I am skeptical that this will hold at all and I think that the Israelis are accepting this ceasefire solely to keep up appearances with the intent of doing a false flag pinned on Iran to restart the conflict. But I think this benefits Iran more. A two week ceasefire means two weeks where the global economy inches closer to recession without their having to exhaust any resources. The Iranians have superior logistics and production than the US and Israel so there is not much the latter can gather to get an edge.