Final Word from Wednesday, February 29, 2012
February 2012 is ending with a bang for both Czechs and Russians, with protests of all types, but not with the kind of Feb. revolutions experienced in 1948 (in Czechoslovakia) or 1917 (in Czarist Russia). TV Nova reminded viewers that if Feb. 1948 returned, Petr Kellner would have his Boeing confiscated and Andrej Babiš would lose Agrofert. Ninety-five years after Feb. 1917, Russians have been obsessing this month about the overthrow of the czar and the bloody dictatorship that followed. Often quoted is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote in his "Thoughts on the Feb. Revolution" that the events of that year started slowly but lasted 15 years, until Christianity was eradicated. Once a revolution starts, he wrote, it's undeviating. Will 2012 be a year of revolution that gradually sweeps aside the new-age Czech and Russian czars? To quote The Clash from their "Revolution Rock," it's food for thought, mobsters. [Czech Republic Alexander October Bolshevik provisional government Lenin tsar]
Glossary of difficult words
či rok - or year (the word for "year" in Czech, "rok," has nearly the same pronunciation as "rock";
with a bang - spectacularly; with something monumental;
to obsess about something - to be preoccupied with something to a troubling extent;
to eradicate - to wipe out;
undeviating - not departing from an established course;
food for thought - something that warrants serious consideration.