RUTHFULLY YOURS

The catastrophic failure of Peronist populism was sealed at last by November’s presidential elections and the victory of conservative free-marketeer Mauricio Macri. In the Vatican, however, one can only wonder if the brilliantined dictator’s direct and indirect influence lives on
History is a fair-minded goddess. The Soviet Union got nowhere in the seventy years it applied for, and which the goddess granted, to change the world. In compensation, a leader is now at the helm of the Russian government able to restore a sense of national pride and achievement which augurs well for the future and, all things considered, is vastly preferable compared to what the Soviets had to offer. German Nationalism and Socialism put the hand up, got the nod, but ran out of puff in less than the thousand years they had asked for. To make amends history showered the ruined country with more than a sufficiency of economic prosperity.

Argentine populism staked its claim in 1946, was given the call, and for the following sixty-nine years, in and out of government, with or without its founding leader or any of his wives, retained a pre-eminent political position mostly influenced by the Justicialista ideology bequeathed by Juan Perón and principally responsible for bringing the country to its knees. The catastrophic failure of Peronist populism was sealed in November’s presidential elections with the victory of the conservative advocate of free-market economics, Mauricio Macri, whose victory preceded by only a few days the equally decisive triumph of the opposition in the Venezuelan parliamentary elections. Taken together, these two events mark a definitive turning point in the political climate of Latin America, away from the clownish antics of Chávez and the corrupting populism of the Peronists towards a restoration of economic sanity and civic virtue.

Macri brings to his high office valuable experience gained during a successful career in business followed by three impressive terms as the elected mayor of Buenos Aires, which ranks as the principal political office outside the national presidency. It is also quite probable that the consolation that history has up her sleeve for Argentina’s melancholy populist twilight is the appointment of an Argentinian Jesuit to the Holy See, as many of Pope Francis’ public pronouncements are alarmingly consistent with what his Peronist compatriots have been uttering during the past seven decades and it is therefore apposite for his arrival in the Vatican to become immortalised as Perón’s last hurrah.

Stalin’s dissident daughter might well have found sanctuary in Australia. Instead, it was a publisher’s rich advance that drew her to the US, where she eluded the same Soviet gorilla who tried to bundle Mrs Petrov back to Moscow, but never the curse of her father’s infamy
In the comedy Children of the Revolution (1996) Judy Davis’s character bonks Joe Stalin in the 1950s and their love child, Joe, gains a career in the Australian police union. In the real world Australia came quite close to adopting Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, as a political refugee in 1967. Svetlana, then 41, was an unwelcome arrival by taxi at the US Embassy in New Delhi, demanding asylum. The US was trying to mend fences with the USSR, and Washington wanted her thrown back to the unforgiving Soviets.

Too late, they were told: she was already on Qantas to Rome. Actually, the flight had been delayed two hours and Svetlana was still in the departure lounge. The sequel is laconically described in John Blaxland’s “The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO” (Vol 2, 1963-75), published last October.

Occasionally ASIO was approached by the Americans to consider resettling defectors. Generally, the Australian Government looked favourably on requests to resettle such people but there were instances when it objected.

In 1967, for example, the Americans approached [ASIO director-general Charles] Spry to see if Australia would be prepared to grant asylum to Svetlana Iosifovna Stalin, the daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Spry advised the Minister for External Affairs, Sir Paul Hasluck, and the Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department, John Bunting, that a number of factors had to be taken into consideration before agreeing to the request, although ‘the difficulties of looking after her would not be insuperable’. Australia had plenty of experience looking after the Petrovs.

Hasluck acknowledged that the principal argument in favour of granting the request was ‘to please the Americans’, but believed that acceding to the request would have significant repercussions on relations with the Soviet Union and South-East Asian countries. Hasluck saw more disadvantages than advantages, and Prime Minister Holt agreed. In the end, soon afterwards, she settled in the United States.

Svetlana defected on March 6, 1967. The flurry of memos began when Svetlana was holed up in secrecy and stateless in Rome. New Zealand turned down a concurrent US request to take her. South Africa offered residence but she refused. Moving on to Switzerland, she had a US-organised disguise as “Fraulein Carlen”, an Irish tourist. The cover was so weak that an ex-Soviet circus performer, now an Australian citizen, mailed her a marriage proposal.

petrov mrsSvetlana made it to New York on a six-month tourist visa. She’d been hiding her manuscript Twenty Letters to a Friend and a US publisher offered $US1.5 million for the rights. This windfall meant she needed no official subsidies and could enter and live in the US as a private citizen.

Margaret Thatcher predicted that it would end in tears. She described “the drive to create a European superstate” as “perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.” The late British prime minister knew the lesson of the past: When politicians try to impose grand designs on peoples of different histories, languages and cultural allegiances, the edifice totters and collapses.

Once devoutly pro-European, Thatcher had come to worry by the late 1980s that grand projects emerging from Brussels, like the effort to create a single European currency, would centralize power and create a vast bureaucracy. She saw that democratic accountability would be impossible across a wildly polyglot European Union. And she feared that the sort of cronyism and collusion among big business and politicians that she had dismantled in the U.K. would re-emerge in Brussels. Almost every one of her fears has been vindicated.
Britain will soon have the opportunity to decide whether or not to remain a part of the European project that it joined in 1973. After EU leaders agreed late Friday to several key British demands, including a so-called emergency brake to let the U.K. restrict welfare benefits for EU migrants, a nationwide referendum is likely to be held in June, fulfilling a promise made by Prime Minister David Cameron at the last general election. Polls suggest that the outcome of the vote is too close to call, but a British exit—or “Brexit”—is a real possibility. It would also be a wise choice, for the U.K., for Europe and for the U.S.

Prominent Conservative politicians, including Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Gove, are expected to campaign for Brexit, endangering the unity of the government. But Mr. Cameron, most of his top ministers, the leader of the opposition Labour Party and the country’s largest businesses will hold firm with the EU. They will argue that Britain should not walk away but should remain at the EU’s highest table, helping to fix the continent’s problems. They worry that if Britain leaves the EU, London won’t be able to influence the rules that govern the world’s richest single market, with more than 500 million people. READ MORE AT SITE