SouthFront Offering Exclusive Digital Book ‘Syrian War Diary’

I won’t be reading the book but intend to keep sending donations towards your day to day reports.

The Syrian war seems to be some kind of pivotal event in history so I am glad you are documenting it.

The Syrian war also mirrors a war going on within me. Not only is the personal political but military. The basic tension in me is to engage or disengage in war itself. For me it’s a question of love herself, sort of like Hamlet’s question: “To be or not to be?”

Russia is the linchpin in this all too real drama. The center holds or it falls apart.

To resolve my dilemma I’ve been listening to Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.” I’ve completed six out of eight parts. Last night I decided that continuing to engage with Tolstoy and the War of Wars was useless. But today here I am again engaged. I already know how Anna Karenina turns out and how Tolstoy’s life ended. But the war to end all wars remains hanging in the balance.

“I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.” Dylan.

I’m using the vineyard to work through my quest for truth because it’s a public forum, composed of what Ken Wilbur calls a community of the competent. At least I know of no other. That means I write to educate myself in a venue where I can be called on my errors, dysfunctionality and bluffs; and thus gain self-knowledge.

Now, back to Anna. Here’s what I get so far. Anna is Tolstoy’s autobiography in fictional form. Tolstoy probably understood Russia as well as anyone who could express it in language. The character Levin is a stand in for Tolstoy. Anna represents Russia, Tolstoy’s deepest lover.

The problem stands thus: Anna commits suicide and Levin returns to the church.

I know little of Russia and Tolstoy so I stand to be corrected and will heartily accept criticism.

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from Anna so far is descriptions of the class system in Russia of a hundred and fifty years ago. My unanswered question is how much this still stands and how much has been washed away by the present putsch of Westernism. Incidently, my heart is with the Russian peasants, so beautifully portrayed by Tolstoy.

South Front, I wish you well with your new book. Perhaps it will turn out to be another Anna. Your love for Russia is certainly the same.

I don’t pretend to know much about the history of slavery, serfdom and peasantry in Russia. But it seems the gradual erosion of patriarchy did contribute to revolution. Now patriarchy has morphed into a more devious form of slavery.

I am most interested in what came before slavery and on this point the following from Wikipedia obtains: “Serfdom only existed in central and southern areas of the Russian Empire. It was never established in the North, in the Urals, and in Siberia.”

If we go back far enough we enter into the garden paradise of freedom. Of course this is a romantic notion, the truth of which remains hidden. Russia herself is a romantic notion as presented in the character of Anna Karenina.

The nature of war now is that if worse comes to worse there will be no winners. There may be survivors, however, like the free pre-Russians of old. And then the story of Anna will start anew.

“Freedom is just around the corner for you; but with truth so far off what good would it do?” Dylan.