# Vladmir Putin, kindly put a shirt on!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [August 6, 2009, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513 "2009-08-06T06:36:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/41 "2009-08-08T02:28:48Z")
This thread, my friends, is about Putin’s manly tits. It is not about his skill in the manly arts.
Anyway, Governor Jesse Ventura would squish Putin like a bug. Forget The Gonernator, that pencil-neck geek.
---
### Author:  [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/42 "2009-08-08T02:59:29Z")
I don’t find Putin at all attractive. In fact, looking at those pictures my thought was, hmmmnnn, Gay? Could explain a lot . . .
As for an American winner I vote for Lincoln. Longer reach, experienced soldier, wrestled for his captaincy. . . . wiry, long boned and expert in leverage. Plus ruthless, which helps.
Putin has the reptilian eyes of a sociopath, it’ll take a ruthless person to beat him. Howsabout Hillary??
P.S. I love that shot of the little kid throwing him. It’s gotta be a great feeling for the kid.
---
### Author:  [@Amber\_in\_Treasury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amber_in_Treasury)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/43 "2009-08-08T09:07:06Z")
> [@mangeorge](#):
>
> Seeing even **Pat Buchanan** scantily clad will _not_ make you blind.
It just might make you toss your cookies, though!
---
### Author:  [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/44 "2009-08-08T09:55:16Z")
I found these scary pictures, one featuring Buchanan and the other featuring Saddam Hussein.
They might not be safe for work. Or for your eyesight.
[ ](https://www.lowculture.com/archives/images/saddam_buchanan.jpg)
---
### Author:  [@SmashTheState](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmashTheState)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/45 "2009-08-08T09:58:47Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#):
>
> A better question is; what historical world leaders could go toe-to-toe with Putin? Who are the most recent? Teddy Roosevelt _might_.
Nestor Makhno was the leader of the anarchist revolutionaries in Ukraine during the First World War. His army was called the Makhnovshchina, and Makhno kicked twenty different kinds of ass. He is my role model. If I was just ten percent the man that Makhno was, I could bench-press a locomotive engine and make rhinos explode like fleshy pinatas with a mean look.
By the time he was 17, Makhno was already a killer, having assassinated many police as part of an anarchist reading circle. He and the rest of the reading circle were betrayed by two people from within, and they were all sentenced to death. Makhno was tortured for four days straight and watched his friends taken away one by one and hanged. At this point his mother visited him in jail and begged him to ask for mercy from the court because of his age, since he was the youngest of the group. Makhno – just 17 remember, and having been tortured for four days in a row while watching his friends die – laughed in her face and said, “I want nothing the State can give me, not even mercy.”
The court commuted his sentence anyway, without Makhno asking, to life imprisonment with hard labour. They welded on the heavy iron shackles, since they were never intended to be removed. Years later when Makhno was freed as part of the Bolshevik amnesty for political prisoners he had to learn to walk all over again because he had become so accustomed to the awful weight of his bonds.
When Makhno returned to Ukraine the very first thing he did was start a revolutionary army, since the Bolsheviks had given away Ukraine to the Germans in exchange for not attacking the Soviet Union. Makhno had 30 men and one bren gun. His men wanted to hide in the forest, but Makhno decided this would be the perfect time to attack, since the Germans would never expect it. He and his men slipped into a nearby town under cover of darkness, where a thousand German soldiers were bivouacked in the town square, mounted the bren gun on a wagon, and proceeded to mow down the _entire_ German force while they slept. The few Germans who escaped the massacre were hunted down and killed by townsfolk with gardening implements.
Makhno’s army grew swiftly after that – though at its largest it was only 50,000 men, none of them trained in war, and while they were officially Red Army irregulars, Lenin and Trotsky were terrified of Makhno and refused to supply him, so the only supplies the Makhnovists had were what they could capture from the enemy.
With those 50,000 men, Makhno proceeded to crush those 600,000 professional German soldiers. The German army was the terror of three continents during those days, but they all lived in utter dread of Makhno, who invented many of the modern terrorist techniques people take for granted today. There’s a story about Makhno capturing a group of German officers on their way to a dinner party in their honour. (The Ukrainian landlords welcomed the invading Germans, preferring to bend their knee to the Kaiser rather than lose their wealth and privilege to the anarchists.) Makhno had the Germans executed, then he and his men dressed up in their uniforms and attended the party in their stead. Much of the discussion at the party was about Makhno and at the end of the meal, Makhno raised his glass in a toast to his capture. After drinking off the toast, he announced, “I am Nestor Makhno.” In the utter silence which followed, he tossed a bomb into the room and he and his men leaped out the windows and escaped.
Though Makhno was a small man (his men called him “Shorty” affectionately), it was said that Makhno was an absolute demon in battle. Rather than command from the rear, Makhno insisted on sharing the risk, leading his men into combat on horseback with a pistol in one hand and a cavalry sabre in the other. Though he was seriously wounded more than 20 times, no one was strong enough to bring him down. If you watch the videos of Makhno with his men, there is no mistaking which one is him. Though he’s ususually the smallest man in the crowd, he has an intensity which surrounds him like in aura.
Eventually, Makhno’s 50,000 men drove the entire force of 600,000 Germans out of Ukraine. When the White Army of the Czarists invaded the Soviet Union from Europe, they were forced to cross Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina cut off their supply lines, giving the Red Army enough time to reinforce Moscow, saving the entire Soviet Union. Trotsky then ordered the Makhnovshchina to lay down their arms and disband, for he and Lenin and Stalin were terrified of Makhno. (It is instructive and fascinating to read [Makhno’s account](http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/krem/kremind.htm) of his visit to the Kremlin years earlier.) The Makhnovshchina refused and the Red Army invaded Ukraine. The Red Army had _millions_ of soldiers, and in the end they crushed the tiny army of the Makhnovshchina, but it took them _four years_ to do it, and Stalin killed 10 million Ukrainians to make absolutely certain that the Makhnovshchina couldn’t reform, so great was his fear of Makhno.
Makhno was one of the greatest heroes of the 20th century: a tactical genius, a cunning terrorist, and an unstoppable warrior in battle. He remains unknown to most because he was hated by both the Communists and the capitalists, who covered his name in lies and calumny.
Makhno would take a petty Russian thug like Putin and chew him up like a piece of beef jerky.
---
### Author:  [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/46 "2009-08-08T10:07:47Z")
I knew who Nestor Makhno was when I was about eleven years old, thanks to a photograph of him in a very large coffee-table book about Russia that my parents had. In the photo, he was wearing a coat which, as a child, struck me as utterly bizarre. I’ll never forget that coat, because I used to marvel at the photograph of it as a kid, it was so weird. It had these giant bars across the front of it with big circular clasps. Makhno himself looked to me like some kind of extremely cocky and dangerous man, sort of like Alex from _A Clockwork Orange._ I didn’t really know about everything he did, just that he was a rebel leader in Russia during the early days of Communism. Later on I read more about him out of curiosity. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest military commanders of all time and a completely underrated figure.
[Here’s the photo,](http://anarcoefemerides.balearweb.net/get/makhno.jpg) by the way.
ETA - he also invented the Tachanka and was, along with the Grey’s Scouts of Rhodesia, one of the pioneers of the use of warhorse in the 20th century.
---
### Author:  [@SmashTheState](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmashTheState)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/47 "2009-08-08T10:35:32Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#):
>
> Makhno himself looked to me like some kind of extremely cocky and dangerous man, sort of like Alex from _A Clockwork Orange._
In one of Makhno’s biographies, there’s a letter from the prefect of police (the equivalent of the police chief) who arrested Makhno to his superior. In it, the prefect mentions casually that he has tortured Makhno for four days and that Makhno hasn’t said a word the entire time. Then he goes on to write that Makhno looks at first sight like just another “stupid peasant,” but that Makhno is the most dangerous man he’s ever seen in his entire career. And that was when Makhno was 17.
> [@Argent\_Towers](#):
>
> I didn’t really know about everything he did, just that he was a rebel leader in Russia during the early days of Communism. Later on I read more about him out of curiosity. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest military commanders of all time and a completely underrated figure.
Michael Moorcock, the award-winning SF and fantasy writer (who also happens to be an anarchist) shares our opinion of Makhno. He has written a monograph on Makhno for an anarchist zine in which he calls Makhno the greatest hero of the 20th century, and includes Makhno as a character in several of his stories. In fact, one of his stories, _The Iron Czar_, is an alternate-history story about Stalin building a giant, steam-powered robot in his own image, and has Makhno and his men assaulting it from their fleet of blimps.
---
### Author:  [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/48 "2009-08-08T10:46:05Z")
I really wish they would make a movie about him, and I’ve stated this desire before in threads asking “what movies would you like to see made?” I guess what I really mean is, I wish _I_ could make a movie about him, because I think “they” would probably fuck it all up. There are lot of historical figures I wish they would make movies about: Byzantine emperors Phocas and Michael the Amorian, King Edward IV of England, William the Silent (if I ever make a billion dollars I will produce a TV miniseries about the Eighty Years War,) and Baron Ungern von Sternberg of Russia. But Makhno is definitely at the top of that list. I don’t know who the hell would play him. Malcolm McDowall is too old.
---
### Author:  [@SmashTheState](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmashTheState)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/49 "2009-08-08T10:50:30Z")
Did you know that Alexander Berkman wrote a screenplay about Makhno? He tried to interest Hollywood in it, and no one would bite. Hardly a surprise. I’ve searched for many years for that screenplay, and have never been able to find it.
---
### Author:  [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/50 "2009-08-08T11:01:34Z")
I had to look up Alexander Berkman, and I read this:
> [@](#):
>
> On July 23, Berkman went into Frick’s office armed with a gun and a sharpened steel file. He shot Frick three times, then grappled with him and stabbed him in the leg. A group of nearby workers came to Frick’s rescue and beat Berkman unconscious. He was convicted of attempted murder and given a twenty-two-year prison sentence. Worse, Berkman’s attentat had failed in its objective of rousing the masses: workers and anarchists alike condemned the assassination attempt.
And then:
> [@](#):
>
> In constant pain, forced to rely on the financial help of friends, and reliant on the care of his companion Emmy Eckstein, Berkman decided to commit suicide. In the early hours of June 28, 1936, unable to endure the physical pain of his ailment, Berkman shot himself with a handgun, but he failed to make a clean job of it. The bullet lodged in his spinal column, paralyzing him.
:smack:
---
### Author:  [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2009, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/51 "2009-08-08T20:40:43Z")
I personally don’t have a lot of respect for suicide. But I do think it should be legal.
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### Author:  [@Fuji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji)
#### Post date: [August 9, 2009, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/52 "2009-08-09T01:01:52Z")
Back to the subject of world leader moobs…
It could be much, _much_ worse. Over here in Ireland, the current Taoiseach (PM) is [this guy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cowen).
Trust me - this is _not_ someone you’d want to see with his shirt off.
Never mind taking off his suit jacket - Brian Cowen, kindly put a mask on!
---
### Author:  [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)
#### Post date: [August 9, 2009, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/53 "2009-08-09T12:51:08Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#):
>
> In an Ultimate Fighting tournament of all the world’s leaders, my money would be on Putin.
>
> Can anyone name any other contenders?
Both Pervez Musharraf and Benjamin Netanyahu were Special Forces officers. I think they could take him.
---
### Author:  [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/54 "2009-08-10T12:04:38Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#):
>
> Nestor Makhno was the leader of the anarchist revolutionaries in Ukraine during the First World War… He is my role model.
An anarchist leader? Sounds like an oxymoron. What do anarchists need leaders for? Why can’t they organize democratically?
> [@](#):
>
> By the time he was 17, Makhno was already a killer, having assassinated many police as part of an anarchist reading circle.
That’s nice. I hope he realized that the policemen he killed were probably drawn from the same working-class background as he presumably had. In anarchist terms, they were armed agents of the ruling class, to be sure, but did they have the class consciousness to realize that?
> [@](#):
>
> He and the rest of the reading circle were betrayed by two people from within, and they were all sentenced to death. Makhno was tortured for four days straight and watched his friends taken away one by one and hanged. At this point his mother visited him in jail and begged him to ask for mercy from the court because of his age, since he was the youngest of the group. Makhno – just 17 remember, and having been tortured for four days in a row while watching his friends die – laughed in her face and said, “I want nothing the State can give me, not even mercy.”
Of what use to the world is a dead revolutionary? If he really believed that what he was doing was making a difference, surely he would have been better off alive than dead.
> [@](#):
>
> When Makhno returned to Ukraine the very first thing he did was start a revolutionary army, since the Bolsheviks had given away Ukraine to the Germans in exchange for not attacking the Soviet Union. Makhno had 30 men and one bren gun. His men wanted to hide in the forest, but Makhno decided this would be the perfect time to attack, since the Germans would never expect it. He and his men slipped into a nearby town under cover of darkness, where a thousand German soldiers were bivouacked in the town square, mounted the bren gun on a wagon, and proceeded to mow down the _entire_ German force while they slept.
If he was an anarchist, why was he concerned with which ruling class owned the Ukraine? Surely the German rulership was no better than Russian or Ukrainian rulership. Why mow down the Germans on foreign soil when it would have been easier to mow down more policemen and soldiers at home?
> [@](#):
>
> Makhno’s army grew swiftly after that – though at its largest it was only 50,000 men, none of them trained in war, and while they were officially Red Army irregulars
Ah, so being a Russian policeman was bad, but being a Russian soldier with a 50,000-strong army is A-OK?
> [@](#):
>
> The German army was the terror of three continents during those days, but they all lived in utter dread of Makhno, who invented many of the modern terrorist techniques people take for granted today.
And this is your role model? An inventor of modern terrorist techniques, a murderer, and a perpetrator of senseless violence? You, sir, are a very dangerous and deluded man. I used to think that you actually believed in the politics you espoused, but now I am fairly certain that you’re just using them as a justification for violence and for provoking violence from others. If you truly believed in a world without government then you would spend more time trying to convince others about this in words and much less time slinging insults and idolizing terrorists.
---
### Author:  [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/55 "2009-08-10T12:41:06Z")
You’re trying to reason with an anarchist? You might want to practice on a few libertarians first.
Peace,
mangeorge
---
### Author:  [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/56 "2009-08-10T13:14:48Z")
Stop this purse fight. Did anybody see The McLaughlin Group this weekend? John McL made fun of Putin’s man tits. He referred to them as “sagging mammaries.”
---
### Author:  [@SmashTheState](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmashTheState)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/57 "2009-08-10T14:09:55Z")
> [@psychonaut](#):
>
> An anarchist leader? Sounds like an oxymoron. What do anarchists need leaders for?
Your ignorance of the subject is manifest and I feel no need to enlighten you.
---
### Author:  [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/58 "2009-08-10T14:35:31Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#):
>
> > [@psychonaut](#):
> >
> > An anarchist leader? Sounds like an oxymoron. What do anarchists need leaders for?
>
> Your ignorance of the subject is manifest and I feel no need to enlighten you.
Hint: I was employing a stylistic device known as a “rhetorical question”. I already knew the answer; the point was rather to challenge your blatantly illogical interpretation of anarchism. As you refused to meet this challenge (or even to recognize it for what it was) I’m happy to claim a default victory in this dispute. It also confirms my suspicion that you have no interest in persuading others to agree with your political ideas, but are simply content with attacking the vast majority who disagree with them (or more likely, who do not understand them, largely thanks to your refusal to explain them in the first place).
---
### Author:  [@SmashTheState](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmashTheState)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/59 "2009-08-10T14:48:58Z")
> [@psychonaut](#):
>
> Hint: I was employing a stylistic device known as a “rhetorical question”. I already knew the answer; the point was rather to challenge your blatantly illogical interpretation of anarchism. As you refused to meet this challenge (or even to recognize it for what it was) I’m happy to claim a default victory in this dispute. It also confirms my suspicion that you have no interest in persuading others to agree with your political ideas, but are simply content with attacking the vast majority who disagree with them (or more likely, who do not understand them, largely thanks to your refusal to explain them in the first place).
As several people here who have respectfully questioned me about anarchism can attest, I am quite happy to spend significant amounts of time explaining anarchism as a political philosophy. I will not, however, waste my limited time and energy on people who combine a disrespectful attitude with total ignorance of the subjuct. In my experience, these people have no intention of showing goodwill, and any effort I invest in them is wasted.
If it makes you happy to be declared “victor” of a nonexistent discussion, then by all means, allow me to crown you the winner. In the mean time, this exchange is disrupting someone else’s thread, so I’m dropping it.
---
### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladmir-putin-kindly-put-a-shirt-on/505513/60 "2009-08-10T14:58:04Z")
Dick Cheney would wait for Putin to reach for his killing envelope, then he’d shoot him in the face.
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