Final note...

"For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are thankless, fickle, false, studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to you while you are able to confer benefits upon them, and ready, as I said before, while danger is distant, to shed their blood, and sacrifice their property, their lives, and their children for you; but in the hour of need they turn against you."

-Niccolo Machiavelli - "The Prince"

This Blog is now officially closed. I wish Vladimir Putin all the best in his next few months as Russian president. And I hope the next few decades will be less hectic than those fateful first decades of the previous century.

Thanks for reading, commenting, and thanks for writing about Russia. Continue to do so, I know of few other countries with more sphinx-like political systems than Russia. The real expert will notice when the sphinx is bluffing.

All the best!

-nikolay i.

Slowly But Surely

Krusenshtern recently published what is now the latest (from what I understand) rating of the Top 50 Russia weblogs of the world in English and German. Russia's True Tales of Terra is proud to be storming its way into the Top-40 after close to a month of active existence (being at #41).

Although the true goal of this blog is yet to be determined as it is in an evolutionary phase, the motivations behind the author's writing you read here are clear: a simple attempt to present an unbiased and honest view on events in Russia; events both good and bad, whether political, economical, cultural or even sporting ones, all through a "reverse lens": fusing current events information and combining it with historic precedents and business/economic problem-solving.

With the election season in Russia already as hot as it may seem to be possible, the overall number of readers for Russian weblogs will increase in geometric proportions (hopefully) and some of that traffic will end up in RTTT (again, hopefully).