Sir, - Seamus Martin's piece on ailing Russia (November 12th) is enough to make one cry in one's borscht. Imagine truck manufacturers unable to pay their taxes, because the Government is unable to pay them, because the IMF won't give Russia a further handout. Free fall capitalism at its daftest!
And all the while, the Russian Navy rots in the Black Sea, the Missile Corps twiddles its thumbs in Novosibirsk and the Army chases its tail in Chechnya. It would be fun to watch the mighty armed forces disintegrate, were it not for the fact that all these chickens are sitting on an Armageddon worth of nuclear eggs.
While the slow fuse burns, it is no surprise to read, in the same issue of The Irish Times, that Russia, though broke, has just launched a £40 million Mars probe - presumably to check out the real estate. Could it be that within a few years the descendants of the present Politburo will be disporting themselves under cloudless skies, breathing pure (if somewhat thin) air and staking claims on a land mass greater than all the polluted, struggling, dangerous Russias they have left behind?
It is the Red Planet after all! - Yours, etc.,
South Hill,
Dartry, Dublin 6.