Since my team of Russia experts recently saw fit to publish an editorial without my input (it was so brilliant I republished -- or perhaps I should say shameless stole -- it on my Instablogs forum, minus the complimentary rhetoric about my "prescience"), I feel it is only fair to return the favor and publish one without their input as we begin our third year of operations.

From time to time, we all should give ourselves a little pat on the back to compensate for many hours of unpaid toil in the service of democracy in Russia. I'd like to take the opportunity to do that now.

If you'd like to get a glimpse of the raw power and influence of this blog, which operates without financial support from anyone through the tireless efforts of a team of pure volunteers, just point your web browser to the Google home page and enter the search term "Peter Lavelle." Then scan the results.

The first hit you will get is Mr. Lavelle's Wikipedia entry, as is so often the case with that powerful web institution's pages. Open that entry, and you'll see it makes prominent note of our repeated and ferocious criticism of Mr. Lavelle, a treacherous sellout to the Russian oligarchs for whom we have only contempt. Here's a screenshot of the entry (click to enlarge):


Now check out the second hit on the Google search return. It's a link to one of our posts attacking Mr. Lavelle's malignant, treacherous deeds in the service of dictatorship. The third hit is a second such post, and the fourth is a third. Only after that do you reach the link to Mr. Lavelle's rancid employer, the Russia Today Kremlin-owned propaganda network. If you hear Mr. Lavelle's name and want to know more about him, and Google him to do so, you find out what we tell you first -- namely, the truth.

That's power, and not even our most crazed foes can deny it. Mr. Lavelle is an active participant in the vile Kremlin propaganda exercise known as Russia Today TV, and is lining his pockets with the proceeds of dictatorship, stolen from the very mouths of Russia's starving and dying population. But Mr. Lavelle's supporters in the Kremlin are helpless against the awesome majesty of the Internet. Truth will out (though, to be sure, in Russia itself because the vast majority of people have no regular Internet access, the Russians themselves may well be the last to know).

I'd love to claim sole personal credit for this, but in truth I can't even claim 10% of it. The lion's share is due to those who labor daily to generate our content, and to the faithful readers who support our efforts and use our content to carry the battle for democracy against the malignant little troll who prowls the Kremlin's parapets. That resulted in major news stories about heroic dissident leader Oleg Kozlvosky appearing in leading newspapers like the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, and ended up with Oleg getting his own op-ed piece in the Post, which appeared as the lead with a photograph of Oleg in the clutches of the Kremlin's stormtroopers. It's an astounding achievement, but it's fair to say that doing so was the primary goal I had in mind when I created this blog, and equally fair to say that I had relatively little to do with making it a reality. For me it was more or less a dream, but now it is reality. This blog has grown from nothing into a mighty force to be reckoned with and as is always the case, the work that made that happen was done by those who receive little credit but deserve the most -- and if you are reading these words, you may count yourself among them.

You may think Mr. Lavelle has a grievance against this blog, that he wants us to stop being so tough on him. But if you think that, you're very much mistaken. Mr. Lavelle is delighted with our attacks, because they stand him in wonderful stead with his Kremlin overlords, proving his loyalty to their malignant cause of wiping out civil society in Russia once again. He believes, just as the sycophants of Josef Stalin believed, that the cowardly, craven denizens of Russia will never rise up to overthrow the Putin dictatorship, allowing him to profit indefinitely from their corrupt spoils.

And of course, nobody who reads this blog can dispute that he may well be right. The people of Russia allowed the Soviet dictatorship to murder, plunder and terrorize until it destroyed itself, and they may well do the same in regard to Putin. Lenin, Stalin, Putin -- all eerily similar names, aren't they. Why, there was even the malignant RasPUTIN too, come to think of it. They may well allow the likes of Peter Lavelle to drink their blood until they bleed white and drop like zombies, just as they did in Soviet times (Lenin learned his craft abroad, Stalin was a Georgian).

Russian history is a wheel mercilessly grinding the people of Russia into dust. Whether they will do anything to halt that process before they are blown away into the ashcan of history is anyone's guess, but those who support this blog have done what we could, much more than most, to help that occur.

And we should be very proud of that indeed.

-- Kim Zigfeld