Sunday, March 25, 2012

Italy’s Fiasco
The Ethiopian war as a Tar baby
Part I
Why Mussolini drew closer to Hitler and the Ethiopian Crisis

Ethiopia

In 1935 Mussolini, the biggest disaster to hit Italy in the Twentieth century invaded Ethiopia. By May of 1936 his armies had conquered the country and entered the capital Addis Ababa. Mussolini had successfully flouted the League of Nations and its sanctions and had emerged successful from his war.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Nomenklatura
Some Notes on the Soviet elite
Part I

Soviet Politburo

In 1917 when the Bolsheviks seized power practically nobody expected the emergence of a new type of society with a new type of class structure. Well that is what emerged. The few who saw in the Marxist-Leninist theory the emerging of a new elite and its ideological justification were a small minority.1