By Lev Navrozov

How did I learn British English in Russia? When I was a child, German was taught in Soviet schools. But I asked my parents to invite a private teacher of English — an English lady who made her living by teaching English.

How did I learn British English in Russia? When I was a child, German was taught in Soviet schools. But I asked my parents to invite a private teacher of English — an English lady who made her living by teaching English. As I grew up, I continued to be an “Englishman in Russia.” I began to work in a publishing house, where I translated Russian classical literature into English and sometimes edited English texts. As I remember now, there were four of us at the office table, including a young girl I took for a young English lady. Just as I did, she also played at “Britain in Moscow.” After hours, I would walk her home.
Military delegates from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) arrive for a meeting during the annual session of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, in Beijing on March 4. / Reuters/Jason LeeWell, we became an English couple in Moscow. We got married, and in 1972 we “emigrated,” that is, the Soviet authorities played at emigration, and we had no objection against being delivered to the New York 22-storied apartment building, in which I and my wife are still living. At that time, also living with us was our son, now a unique translator of Russian poetry into English, and last but not least, my mother, a professor of medicine. Much of its political wisdom the United States took from Britain. But here is a disastrous exception. In Britain, the queen/king is the head of state. The prime minister is the head of government. The British appoint their prime minister; they do not elect their prime minister by a “majority of the people.”  American revolutionaries thought that would be old-fashioned and established the general election, according to which the president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The U.S. president is frequently described as the most powerful person in the world. All this means that the U.S. president is mentally at the level of an electoral majority, whose minds cannot be at the level of genius (as was the mind of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who saved Britain from Hitler’s invasion). But fortunately, the American revolutionaries were not as powerful as the Russian revolutionaries, who even destroyed themselves, except for Stalin, a ruthless fighter against all freedoms, except HIS own freedom to kill anyone any way he fancied. Let us now see how armed some world countries are. A country’s military power is measured by the number of its “military people” in Active Service, the Reserves, and Paramilitary Force. As for the “latest weapons,” those may be hidden reliably enough. On the other hand, they may require Specialized Active Service, and this may be more expensive than just maintaining Active Service.