2025: Let's just say there's room for improvement
Greetings and salutations (and blog announcements)
The last few months have been rough.
My Russian village mentor, Andrei, died in July. Literally the next day, Ekaterina was deported from Russia, forcing the Edward Institute for Village Studies—which is still considered the most prestigious unaccredited institute for higher village learning in Novgorod Oblast—to close its doors. A few weeks later, I left Potato the dog and Susan the misgendered cat with a neighbor and flew to Egypt.
While in self-imposed exile in Alexandria, Egypt, I learned of the death of my friend and blog colleague, Marko Marjanović. The circumstances of his passing are still a mystery to me.
Then the FSB informed us that Ekaterina had received a 25-year ban from Russia. The reason? To ensure the security of the state. The evidence against Ekaterina? That’s a state secret.
We lost a lot in a period of less than three months.
Thankfully, I was reunited with Edward Junior in early December. We are now visiting family and friends in the States. But what comes next is still a very open question.
Ekaterina will be attending the People’s Reset conference in Morelia, Mexico at the end of January. She will be serving as an official emissary of the Edward Institute and will have the authority to sign treaties and memoranda of understanding with like-minded folks seeking to create parallel societies where we can grow root vegetables and build stately palaces for our poultry. Everything else is just noise blasted into our eardrums by the global oligarchy.
What I’m trying to say is that you should go to Mexico next month and meet up with Ekaterina and help plan our next move. Tickets are still available.
Meanwhile, starting on January 3, Edward Slavsquat will be officially REBOOTED.
I really do apologize for the horrendous lack of blogging. I blogged my heart out in October while I was in Alexandria, but then I got sidetracked while volunteering as a day laborer at a Moldovan vineyard (more on that later?), and then I had to rush over to Tbilisi, Georgia, to scoop up my son, and now, after several weeks of family-visiting in the USA, things are finally settling down.
Apart from committing to more regular blog-posting, I am going to attempt to publish a weekly Squatcast. Yes, I too have one of those podcast things, although it is even more neglected than the blog.
I will also try to make myself more available to anyone who might want to chat about Russia-related topics. Over the past few weeks I was honored to speak with Maryann Gebauer and Folkets Radio:
I was also invited to do a very long-form written interview with a journalist from Scandinavia, which I hope to complete in the coming days. So stay tuned for that.
The blog reboot will also focus on republishing Marko’s writings.
I am eternally grateful to those who have helped preserved Marko’s journalism and commentaries. There are now several versions of what (in theory) should be Marko’s complete works. Reader “Wesley” was the first to send me a zipped archive of Marko’s website. Shortly after, the curator of Events in Ukraine enlisted a tech-savvy friend to create an archive of Marko’s work, which I was able to download. A publicly available archive of Marko’s website was created by veteran reader Vanusha, and can be downloaded here.
There were others who emailed me or left comments with suggestions and ideas about how to best go about preserving Marko’s writings. Thank you to you all.
Since then, Marko’s domain has been suspended by his hosting provider (I’m assuming because of non-payment).
My plan is to republish one of Marko’s articles every week in the blog’s newly created “Marko Was Right” category.
I miss you, Marko. But we’ll always have Austerlitz.
That pretty much does it for now.
I will give Edward Junior, who is a celebrated commentator in his own right, the final word:
Happy New Year.
— Riley
P.S. — don’t forget about Mexico.
Those circumstances and losses are some pretty heavy blows to receive all at once, I feel your pain brother and wish you well.
I have always liked the saying that says the same hammer that shatters glass also forges steel.
You are someone that I sense falls into the latter category.
May your fortitude, sense of humour, courage to speak truth and love of life transform the inertia of life’s hammering into a resilient alloy of the soul that serves you well in the years ahead.
Much love and respect to you and the snow man architect from Canada.
I am still voting for Susan the cat come the next election. My faith in Russia has dwindled although I don't doubt its citizens are quite resourceful and remarkable. It's like everywhere else, the governments stink to high heaven.