Given my personal history with the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, starting in 1969 as a graduate student and then ministry in Kyiv in 1991 and running real estate offices in both capital cities in the exciting days of 1991-2013, I am often asked what we should now...
Let me stipulate up front that this post contains several generalizations which I know do not apply to everyone in every case described. But focus with me on the larger picture, and I hope you will find the generalizations to be useful, as well as the many embedded...
In the space of just four hours last week two different friends mentioned to me the article “Complications of the Ukraine War” by Christopher Caldwell in Hillsdale College’s monthly newsletter, Imprimis. Complications of the Ukraine War | Imprimis (hillsdale.edu). I...
When our astronauts landed on the moon in July, 1969, I was a 22 year old graduate student at London School of Economics on a one month language study in Leningrad, USSR. While our student group was there, we saw all the deprivations of the Soviet command economy, and...
One of my favorite sayings about Truth is: “Truth is simple, and delights in simple statements. It expects to make its way by its own intrinsic force, and is willing to pass for what it is worth. Error is noisy and declamatory, and hopes to succeed by substituting...
I began these posts almost ten years ago in August, 2010. For the first several months I offered one or two policy recommendations under the title of 2020 Vision: How To Fix The Next Ten Years in Ten Steps. With 2020 almost upon us, I thought it would be useful and...
This week in August marks the Fiftieth Anniversary of two events in the tumultuous year of 1968 which had a lasting impact on my life: The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21st, and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 26th. I had...
A nation that fractures along identity politics boundaries is almost certainly doomed. When Lenin and Trotsky started their rebellion against the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky in St. Petersburg, Russia in November, 1917, they expected to be arrested and...
Ending 2014 with five personal thoughts on events that surprised me: Shortly after Memorial Day I attended a professional breakfast on current topics in commercial real estate. There were several hundred well dressed attendees, of all ages and both genders. The MC...
In the summer of 1969 at age twenty-two I attended a month-long Russian language school with other British university students, first in the center of Leningrad, and then at a “camp of organized rest” on the Finnish Gulf. We experienced the KGB-induced fear among the...
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