Fair Trade? Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Fair Trade?



At the Finland Station in Petrograd, April 1917
Vladimir Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov
Better known as Comrade Lenin
Promised a Worldwide Socialist Revolution

With a permanent end to the class struggle,
And a similar finale for liberal reform, arguing:
We don't need a parliamentary republic.
We don't need bourgeois democracy.

We don't need any government except
A Soviet of worker, soldier and peasant deputies.

At Haparanda-Tornio on the Swedish-Finnish border
The bemused guards had shunted the Sealed Train
Into a siding along with the munitions, luxuries
And refugee removals waiting for the onward locomotive -

This was a package friend that would ruin Russia.

...

At his ‘Cottage' or Palace at Cape Idokopas, September 2016
President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
A former Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB
Promises social populism with a nationalist tinge

With a long-term plan to make Russia Great Again
Through a seamless mix of cronyism and pretence
In which state propaganda subverts justice and the media,
And wealth is concentrated among those who collude

Arguing: Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible
If we make information so dirty there is no longer any trust.

And in public opinion where borders increasingly count for little
The guards are mainly amateurs armed only with flashlights
So munitions and luxuries move endlessly down the track
Though the refugees are forced to flee empty-handed -

If emulated friend, this is a package that will ruin the West.

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