Kirill Shulika: “The drunkard empire has woken up”

December 8, 2016 marked the 25th anniversary of the signing by the Russian Federation of Belarus and Ukraine of the “Belovezhskaya Accords” (the official name is the “Agreement on the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States”), which stated the cessation of the existence of the USSR as “a subject of international law and geopolitical reality.”

These agreements meant not only the legal formalization of the collapse of the USSR, but also the death of the empire. And “the death of an empire is a positive process, because an empire is a predator that eats freedom, and often the lives of its own subjects,” writes publicist and politician Kirill Shulika on his Facebook page.

“There is no contradiction in the fact that some people live well under the empire, because every villager tries to keep his livestock in comfort so that he can eat it later at dinner. Likewise, an empire may well fatten its own subjects. However, an empire is not a hardworking villager, and such a drunkard. Our empire drank away the oil revenues. When they ran out, there was nothing to feed our subjects, so they fled.

However, the modern development of Russia shows that the drunkard empire itself has not died. She is in very bad condition, with cirrhosis and a bunch of other diseases, but she is alive and periodically tries to collect her scattered subjects. True, he collects it when he has money, but when he doesn’t, he doesn’t know how to get rid of it and withdraw it from his allowance. In general, the evil empire is a very good and capacious definition for all this.

I am now beginning to understand what the main mistake of the 90s was. We didn’t understand then that the empire didn’t die, but simply fell asleep in a drunken stupor somewhere in the middle of the room. Although, by and large, of course, if you wanted, you could hear her snoring. And then she woke up... Those who have alcoholic neighbors will understand what it is.

So the Belovezhskaya Accords did not kill the empire, but simply sent it to a rather short sleep by historical standards. Or, if you prefer, they sent you to a sobering center. Therefore, we were able to live peacefully for at least some time without a restless owner. Some suffered... By the way, often the relatives of alcoholics shield themselves and make excuses, but in general, as Putin said, everyone managed to catch their breath.”