In her book, “The Russian Syndrome: One Thousand Years of Political Murder,” she writes, “The history of Russia is first and foremost a continuous history of political murder.” (My emphasis.) The book is one of the most scholarly books I have ever read and one of the most blood-drenched books I have ever read. I do not even think a history of Hitler’s Germany could match d’Encausse’s work, though Cpl. Hitler only had some 15 years in which to work his deviltry. d’Encausse had 1,000 years to work with and with millions of people to slaughter. Stalin alone kicked in millions.

The most recent Russian added to the carnage was Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was numbered amongst the ten or so casualties who went down on the ill-fated airplane traveling to St. Petersburg from Moscow late last month. The Russian authorities still do not know what brought it down, so they say, though our CIA believes it was a bomb planted aboard the airplane by some of Czar Vladimir Putin’s servitors. If Czar Putin’s boys did not get Prigozhin, it was only a matter of time until the International Criminal Court at The Hague picked him up. He committed some grisly acts when he was upright and in one piece.

For that matter, Czar Putin is responsible for some grisly deaths that the international court is already interested in and has barged Putin from leisurely international travel. Doubtless, his day will come, though I doubt it will be in the cushy precincts of the Hague. More likely, he will be another name on d’Encausse’s long list of political murders committed by Putin’s countrymen.

[I call the more recent murders the Moscow Window Flu, and my anonymous friend refers to it as “defenestroika.” It’s a kind of gallows humor to deal with a gangster government and a culture that all too often finds itself in thrall of such leaders, either willingly or unwillingly (and I’d guess more the latter than the former, even now). The Soviets were no exception in that regard, at all. — Ed]