That would be the Cyrillic script for Russia, the last stop of my traceable ancestry.  The origin of the script is Bulgarian from the mid eighth century, making its way to the land that would first be called the Tsardom of Russia by Ivan IV in 1547, and later, the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721.  Russia stands out in many ways. Its land area is vast.  It is the largest country in the world, four times the area of the EU.  It is renown for its art, music, literature and dance.  Russians have been innovators in medicine, psychology, sports and chess.  The governance, however, has been totalitarian, tyrannical and shamelessly awful for every one of its 475 years.  It is, by a more than cursory dip into Googleable history, unique in that way.  No other country has passed from regime to regime without even an attempt at being fair, beneficent or showing a sign of kindness or cooperation towards its citizens or neighbors.  The tsars, the Bolsheviks, the communists, the post-communists were/are all, at varying degrees of horror, unconscionably evil.  The details of nearly 500 years of atrocity obviously grow clearer by proximity to the chronology, but the actions of Russia’s current madman, in the clear light of day…today…cannot be tolerated.

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