Letters to the editor

The Russian experience

Like many Russian citizens, I have a problem with your highly biased piece on the great patriotic war (“Great patriotic war, again”, May 2nd). You overlook the fact that the second world war was critical in moulding our national identity, pretty much as the first world war was for Britain. Notwithstanding ideology or regime, Russia, as at the time of Napoleon, was doomed by history to pay dearly for another total failure of European politics. The 1938 Munich agreement and the 1940 phoney war showed that Moscow could rely on the word of Paris and London no more than Warsaw could.

The vastness of our sacrifice and the fact that nobody else was capable of stopping and destroying the German war machine; that experience transcends everything else. We should remember that the possibility of us having our present debate was paid for with the blood of the Soviet people, including Russians. Yet the war also established an intimate brotherhood between us and our allies, such as Britain. This brotherhood is forever, and the sentiment is kept alive not only by us, but by British veterans, in particular those who went to sea on the Arctic convoys.

What is happening in Ukraine has a lot to do with history. It was nationalistic and repressive regimes, like the one taking shape in Ukraine with Western acquiescence, that brought about the war. Those who back the authorities in Kiev today take up the cause of the nationalists. No wonder that the Ukraine crisis is viewed in Russia as the unfinished business of the war.

State sovereignty is no carte blanche to suppress one’s own citizens. There is a huge gap between the policies of the authorities in Kiev, such as imposing their historical narrative on the entire population, and perceived European values or the ideals of Maidan.

ALEXANDER YAKOVENKO
Russian ambassador
London

A more statesmanlike response by the West to Vladimir Putin would account for the fact that the events of 1989-91 were an enormous humiliation for many Russians, for whom the Soviet Union’s world role was a source of great pride. Westerners, who glibly thought of the USSR as a rather tatty Evil Empire, not worth a moment of regret, have found this reaction incomprehensible. To impose the further misery of economic sanctions on a humiliated and diminished Russia is dangerous. The understandable but self-indulgent wish-to-punish finds its parallel in the Treaty of Versailles, now more or less universally regarded by historians as having disastrous consequences.

DAVID BLACK
London

Gay marriage has a history

At its hearing on gay marriage, you say that America’s Supreme Court “seemed nervous about tinkering with an institution that has existed for millennia” (“Showtime for gay marriage”, May 2nd). Yet according to John Boswell’s “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality” and “Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe”, official ceremonies took place in the Roman Empire and early Christian era that bound men to each other. Homosexual “marriages” were sanctified by the church and homosexuality was tolerated well after Christ’s death. Homosexuality only became controversial when it was condemned during the Middle Ages.

JAN EWING
WILLIAM CATALDI
New York

For those who think it is preferable to resolve controversial cultural issues through the political process at the state level rather than the federal courts, look at the case of Alabama and interracial marriage. In 1967, the federal Supreme Court ruled in Loving v Virginia that no state could forbid interracial marriage. Yet that prohibition, though unenforceable, remained embedded in Alabama’s constitution until it was removed by referendum in 2000. Even then, more than 40% of voters in the state chose to keep the ban. It was a narrow and belated victory for equal protection, individual liberty and the rule of law.

GEORGE KOVAC
Miami

In support of bullfighting

To say that fans of bullfighting have “little to cheer about” is somewhat at odds with the Iberian reality (“Matadors on the march”, April 4th). In Spain 17,000 bullfighting festivals are celebrated each year, each with its own fight calender. Some 130,000 bulls are bred for this by 1,200 bull breeders. Spain has hundreds of permanent bullrings and 3,000 temporary structures are set up in smaller villages up and down the country for local festivals. These provide gainful employment to locals on top of the 2,000 full-time professional matadors and 3,000 younger novilleros, each with supporting picadores and banderillerosin what is a billion-dollar industry.

The San Fermín festival in Pamplona is watched by millions on television. I think there is plenty of life yet in bullfighting.

OLAF CLAYTON
Madrid

Voting online

Barbara Simons argues that “there is a consensus within the computer-security industry” that online-voting systems are insecure and subject to hacking (Letters, May 2nd). I have worked in the industry for 18 years and I disagree. The fact that a large number of online systems are badly designed does not mean that the idea is fundamentally insecure. Cryptographic checksums, peer-reviewed open-source code, adherence to mature, published standards, and independent third-party verification of votes are elements that should be incorporated in any online voting system. They would make online voting easily more secure than paper ballots. Such practices exist and are proven to reduce risk to an absolute minimum when implemented correctly.

JOHN SALOMON
Zurich

One husband just won't do

“Bare branches, redundant males” (April 18th) missed the obvious solution to the social problem of mateless males in Asia: polyandry. Adapting to the long history of pre-Mao concubinage in China, with just a slight twist, will serve those forlorn men well.

LEON KENMAN
Associate professor emeritus
Thunderbird School of
International Management
Glendale, Arizona

Swine fever

I read your article on eating the whole hog while enjoying a portion of barbecued pork ribs (“Nose-to-tail eating”, May 2nd). However, your porcine piece could easily apply to another animal: the goat. The Spanish word barbacoa, and thus the American “barbecue”, comes from the combination of barba (beard) and cola (tail), which describes the practice of roasting a young goat in an earthen pit, and eating it from tip to tail until the bones are the only thing left.

ANGEL SUSTAETA
Austin, Texas

You asked “how much is a happy pig worth”? Readers who enjoy a nice piece of crackling might like to ponder the fact that pig’s skin has long been used for human transplants where the patient lacks enough of their own skin.

This, and the prospect of using pig organs for human transplants, only adds to a pig’s worth. Surely the pig is a happier animal knowing that it can heal as well as feed its human masters.

ROBIN LAURANCE
Oxford