From Russia With Love

“President John F. Kennedy had named Fleming's novel From Russia with Love among his ten favorite books of all time in Life magazine,^[4] producers Broccoli and Saltzman chose this as the follow-up to (James) Bond's cinematic debut in Dr. No. From Russia with Love was the last film President Kennedy saw at the White House on 20 November 1963 before going to Dallas.”

(Wikipedia)

The film From Russia With Love (1963) came out at the height of the Cold War. I didn’t know about the John Kennedy connection until today while reading the Wikipedia article. But the movie is an indication of where the average American stood on the subject of Russian culture. The Cold War propaganda fed to American kids at the time was best exemplified by the character Rosa Klebb, the ugly Russian spy who attempts to kill James Bond with a poisoned toe-spike.

The image of Russia offered to us featured a vast, colorless, inhumane Communist gulag filled with unattractive women and brutal men and totally lacking in consumer goods—except shoes with spikes in the toes.

And now we have learned that Russian women are hot—the beneficiaries of a fantastic make-over, historically speaking.

Vladimir Putin is depicted as something akin to the harsh Communist bureaucrats, very utilitarian and single-minded in his quest for world domination. We are always reminded he began adult life as a KGB agent. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The new twist is Donald Trump, the American president, having a pro-Putin stance. This twists America’s psyche into knots. The ugly women are now the pretty women? The bad guys are now the good guys? Or, are Russians still the bad guys—only now they may have been clever enough to have influenced an American election.

If a bunch of Russian hackers had the skill to get Donald Trump elected American president—everyone should be hiring them for their next project. Trump may have been the biggest underdog in Presidential history. Now he’s President. He’s keeping everybody engaged with his unpredictability, his erratic tweeting and his disregard to proper Presidential behavior. And added to his unpredictability, he refuses to say negative things about Putin and the Russians. Does that mean he colluded with the Russians? Not so sure about that. I can’t picture Trump cooperating with anybody.

But here’s a twist—two of Trump’s wives have been of Slovak-style background. Ivana Trump married Donald way back in 1977, long before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She must be celebrated by Trump for her contribution of their daughter Ivanka, the light of Donald’s life. Mother Ivana was born in Czechoslovakia and attended University in Prague. She’s really Czech! What a Czech… check her out!

Melania Trump, Trump’s present wife and First Lady of the United States, was born in Slovenia, part of Yugoslavia at the time. She went to school in Ljubljana and that’s not in Kansas. Melania speaks 6 languages--English, French, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, and her native Slovene. She loves fancy clothes, no doubt, as a former model.

So, Donald Trump showed some open-minded freedom in his choice of mates and has a carnal connection to the part of world once firmly in the embrace of Soviet Russia, as part of the Iron Curtain countries. Trump’s women have been Russian—esque, maybe not actual Russian but certainly from the Soviet suburbs, and that part of the world has been good to him. The American press (media) never considers a man’s basic drives, sex and procreation, when understanding Donald’s Trump’s fondness for people from the cooler climes, just east of Europe.

And Ivanka will sell you all kinds of fancy shoes, but none with spikes coming out of the toes.