Gogol. Yes Gogol. His writing is alright, but I think he is too much of a parody, and gets more credit than he is worth. Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky did it first; he copied them, the little rascal. I think I will return Gogol early, but maybe I will read some first, to see if my initial reactions are indeed correct. However, I find Mayakovsky to be absolutely fantastic. He is a poet, mind you, so he is out of their class altogether, but like Dostoevsky because they both served in exile. However, Mayakovsky is much more outspoked, provocative and simple. Yes his writing style is simple but highly charged. I don't know why I find his writing to be sooooo good but it just seems that way to me. Perhaps it is because of his outlook on life in general, and what he brought out of the chaos, as he called it, inside his head. Goodness knows he could have stayed in school and been a civil servant. That would have been such a total waste. What he gave to Futurism and many other isms is quite remarkable. I'm not sure that he should be called a poet, though that is the title which he called himself. I think that an "intellectually inclined poetical revolutionary" would be more just to his talents. 

I think that communism and leftism has been radically misjudged. Not only is it assumed that Stalin's protege is the ultimate in a goverment of that type, but that every that could possibly be done could only be worse, not better than his prototype. It seems this stance was taken because of all the "hard feelings"over the Cold War in general. However, it appears to the naked eye that Putin is attempting to return to the "old system" by iniating laws and rules from that era, and removing improvements inserted by the likes of glasnost and perestroika. It is sad, really, to watch such a great country, which has the great chance to turn itself around, go to waste in such a hurry. Putin has corrupted the system thus far, and there is no doubt he will continue to do so in such an archaic manner, much to my charign. Leastly, it is not as though a single opinion could ever make a difference to what will happen with his government. A group of dedicated individuals could do it, but a single person such as myself? I highly doubt it! Why should a patriarch pay any attention to the lowly serf who plows his land and grows his food? What right does he have to speak out? According to the patriarch, none at all. This is the vile view upon which Putin thinks of the lower classes of mother Russia. Not only will he return to the old system, but he will drive it into the ground, like an axe does a wedge.