2022 is like 1917 

The plan behind WWI: The war was to put an end to Germany's desire to be an empire. The world had been divided by Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and Portugal.  Germany arrived late and had only a few African colonies. Japan had taken Korea in 1905, defeating Russia in the far east. Though nominally allies with Russia, Britain as the head imperialist would be able to put a teetering Russia in its place. The fantasy was along the lines of Karl Kautsky’s theory of “ultra-imperialism,” where the big powers would divide the world and settle the matter between themselves without friction or conflict.

These portraits are a riveting expose of the Cold War as it took shape even as peace was achieved in 1945. As I read, I marveled at the herculean efforts of millions of talented, gung-ho players, devoting themselves and untold trillions of dollars, all to ‘defeat communism'. But I kept asking myself: isn’t that what Hitler was trying to do? Wasn’t it the Soviet army that turned the tide at Stalingrad, liberated Berlin, not to mention all of eastern Europe and Russia itself? Was there to be no place for communism in the post-WWII order?

I was always dismissed as a ‘Sov symp’ in the days of communism, attracted by the Soviet Union’s great foreign policy: anti-imperialist, ant-zionist, pro-nuclear disarmament, pro-liberation movements, etc, etc. I could never understand why lefties didn't fall in love with the only real non-capitalist modern society. It worked, however badly. It had to be at the heart of the struggle against capitalism, imperialism.

Now I’m a ‘putinist’ according to my MP Chrystia Freeland, herself granddaughter of the leading WWII Ukrainian Hitler propagandist