City of the Mind

              I am sharing an edited excerpt from a 1917 article in the Harvard Law Review which outlines very well the Basque  fueros  or privileges which they held under the Castilian and then Spanish monarchies.  The Basque aspiration for self-government is not a product of 19 th  century nationalism or of revolutionary, anti-authoritarian or anti-colonial thinking, but the continuance of a tradition of semi-democratic self-government that reaches back to the Middle Ages and was in turn probably the formalisation of their old tribal form of governance. Thus, not only does their language preserve something of pre-Indo-European Europe for us, their old form of government also gives us a window on that corner of Europe before empires, monarchies, and dynasties.             The author of the piece is William T. Strong..  It is found in the Harvard Law Review, vol. 30, #4 (Fe...

         Why would a former KGB agent turn to Orthodox Christianity to serve as a pillar of state ideology?  For seventy years, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union went from all-out war on religion to grudging and monitored tolerance.  Vladimir Putin was part of the machinery that enforced the strict limitations on religious life in the Soviet Union and its client states in the Warsaw Pact.  Did Putin have a “come to Jesus (and Mary) moment”?        In the early days of his coming to power, Putin did make a few passing remarks about his grandmother and her connexion to Orthodox Christianity.   This seems to have been bait for those who wanted an explanation, because he has not mentioned that since those early years.  I think the answer to Putin’s “change of heart” is to be found not in the religion itself, but in the usefulness of the religion as a tool.        Dur...

    Where Europe and Russia Meet — A Story in Eight Maps     In the 13 th  and 14 th  centuries, when Moscow was just taking control of its immediate environs, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania brought much of the old Kievan Rus under its control.  Lithuanian rule was light-handed, leaving local populations to carry on while paying tribute.  Later, Lithuania and Poland would form a dual realm.  In the process, this region became part of the larger European historical and cultural experience.  Meanwhile, Moscow would remain under Mongol rule until the 16 th  century—a fact that shaped much of the flavour of Moscow’s way of conquering and ruling, hiving them off from the European conversation.         After 400 years of expansion, mostly east into Siberia, this is how far Muscovy/Russia was able to move westward.  The eastern frontiers of the Swedish and Polish-Lithuanian empires marked the...