My spiritual kinship with sexpot Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice knows no bounds. In addition to my eternal love for all human women who resemble in form and function the animal canis familiaris, I have (like Rice) long been a student of the ancient nation once described by Winston Churchill as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

To help our Loyal Partisans make sense of the Georgian situation, we aim to provide herein a brief history of the Russian Government and then describe the current conflict in easily-digestible nuggets of folkish wisdom.

During my formative years as a slothful misanthrope, I developed a taste for early Soviet propaganda cartoons which, in short order, led me to the Seminal Works of a genre of literature euphemistically referred to as Socialist Realism. This was, of course, the only school of artistic expression permitted by the Communist regime and it had obviously perverse effects upon the “popular culture” of the Russian people. An American, for example, would do well to consider what their outlook on life would be if they had been forced to read nothing but Horatio Alger novels for 70 consecutive years.

However, the truth is that Russia is not that difficult to understand. On the day that he made the now proverbial pronouncement mentioned earlier, Churchill was merely beffudled by a copious breakfast of gin (washed down with warm scotch.)

In fact, the key to understanding Russian history is the same simple maxim employed by real-estate speculators: Location. Location. Location.

Russia stretches across eleven time zones, from Europe to Far East Asia. Their borders, unbroken by mountain ranges, oceans, or any other worthwhile geographical feature, are totally indefensible. Their territories are richer than God but the Russians have never been able to hold them. At least, not the people themselves, via any vehicle of law or good faith. The men and women who have ruled Russia have been very careful to ensure that they are never, under any circumstances, expected to adhere to any law save the law of the Boss.

It is for this reason that Russia has been ruled by Gangsters for 1200 years. The only way to hold on to that immense and wealthy country was by being the toughest Gangster in town.

Vikings sailed down the rivers and took over: they were Gangsters. The “Kievan Rus” were little more than armed gangs that held a city apiece until the Mongols took over. (The Kievan Rus were gangsters, too.) Once the Mongols had conquered the Russians, they left the day-to-day administration of the country to local (Russian Gangster) satraps.

The badassest of those Original Gangstas is known to the West as Ivan the Terrible (but remembered in the Russian language as something closer in meaning to “Ivan the Terribly Great.”) He drove the Eastside Tatars out of his ‘hood (sort of) utilizing a fearsome mixture of statist economic policy, political violence, religious nationalism, some vicious filicide and an extra dose of badass Gangsterosity.

Next came the Romanovs who were, initially, quite Gangster. Some notable dons included Peter the Great, who turned a swamp into a giant city by building it out of the bones of peasant children. There was also Catherine the Great, a Gangsterette who spent most of her time beating the crap out of Ottomans and Lithuanians.

Unfortunately, Russian power declined as the Romanovs became increasingly ineffectual gangsters. By the time World War One rolled around, new leadership was necessary: the Romanov mob was overrun by the Bolshevik gang who spent their first couple decades in power either starving or imprisoning (and then starving) any and all non-gangsters within Russia.

The first Don of the Bolsheviks was an old-schooler named Lenin who was terifyingly effective (if a bit short-sighted). Lenin was one of those Gangsters who had a code: civilians were fair game but he rarely dropped anyone from his own gang (bolsheviks.) His successor Josef Stalin, however, was a “new school” Gangster — whose code amounted to “anything goes.” (Thus emulating his Gangster contemporaries in other ‘hoods throughout the world, such as Hitler, Mao, and Mussolini.)

As everyone knows, Gangsters make their living via robbery, murder, and dope-slinging. For seventy years, the Bolsheviks exported the dope called “Communism” and for a while business was good*… until their Bosses again grew successively more inept. Totalitarian control of almost half the world eventually wandered into the hands of Yeltsin the Terminally Besotted. No longer slinging communism in the ghetto nations of the world, the Russian Mafia (i.e. government) had fallen on hard times.

As their criminal empire collapsed before their eyes, the Gangsters in charge of hoarding Russia’s resources and terrifying its people began to realize that a change of course was required. Other gangs, like NATO or Red China, were taking over their customer: the fiends/junkies of eastern Europe, central Asia, Africa, southeast Asia, or the Middle East.

New blood was again necessary — and so was New Dope. Fortunately for Russia, oil prices were spiking and the KGB (a sort of gang-within-a-gang) was itching to get back to their time-honored practice of political violence and oppression.

Enter Vladimir Putin: one serious muthafukkin Gangsta. As the petro-bucks started rolling in, he devoted himself to rebuilding the Russian Mafia’s enforcement capabilities. New guns, phones, and whips for each and every brigadir and souljah in the syndicate. Now that they’re finally rolling deep again, even the “Georgian Problem” is best described with — you guessed it — the Gangster metaphor.

To the kind of people that have always ruled Russia, every region of the world is a street corner and each nation or alliance a rival gang. America has gained a whole lot of territory during the last twenty-some-odd years… territory that used to be held by the Russian Mob (government). And the Baltic countries — and all those central Asian “Stans” — are, from a Russian standpoint, the most egregious of those losses.

So now Russia’s making a play to get those corners back. All the crap you might be finding about Ossetia or democracy or pipelines: its all Crap.

Russia really just wants their influence back. They can’t invade the Ukraine (yet) but they are long past the point of just letting their streetcorners fall under the sway of rival gangs like NATO. Parking “missile defense” systems right under their nose was the Last Straw and Putin/Medvedev are well aware that the USA, already beefing with Al Qaeda and other such gangs, just doesn’t have the muscle to hold them back any longer.

As we have seen, Russia has always had the same government: a government composed exclusively of gangsters. The ancient princes of Kiev were gangsters, the Romanovs were gangsters, and the Soviets were gangsters. Even now, armed with capitalism and sweet crude, the Siloviki who run the nation are merely another gang with a new name.

Having considered the past, let us now look to the Future and ponder what is new about the conflict in Georgia:

The Internet

In this article from the Telegraph, there is much mention of a New Tactic in the globalization gangwars. The first Nation to throw shit into space has now taken steps to Weaponize our beloved ‘Nets — and erudite Partisans will be quick to realize what is sure to come next: a total loss of internet freedom.

By conducting Distributed Denial-of-Service drive-by’s, the Russians will soon force the West to lock down server traffic, track each and every user, and Imprison With Extreme Prejudice any and all malcontents, mischief-makers, or muckrakers residing herein.

In short, Humans, we Gremlins are fucked. Damned. Doomed. It’s only a matter of time until the forces of Law & Order invade our holy Lair and lay waste to our way of life just as surely as they incinerated the Iroquois.

So demonstrate your boundless love for Gremlinkind by donating to the Gremlin Legal Defense Fund, our last/best/only line of defense against the soon-to-be ubiquitous Google gestapo.

Thanks for your support, Partisans… and Good Luck avoiding incarceration.

* Editor’s note: for a thorough description of the Soviet regime’s non-dope-slinging activities (meaning the robbery/murder bits) we heartily recommend the late Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. It’s a cheerful and humorous tale that makes for a very relaxing read and is best enjoyed on the toilet or at the beach.