Politburo

Politburo (pronounced pol-it-byoor-oh or poh-lit-byoor-oh)

(1) The executive committee and chief policymaking body of a Communist Party (often in lowercase).  In the English-speaking world, sometimes erroneously written as politbureau or in hyphenated form.

(2) A casual term for a senior policymaking body in a political organisation, generally consisting of members who either are appointed by the party in control of the organisation or who attain membership through their personal political affiliations (sometimes derogatory).

1917: From the Russian Политбюро́ (Politbjuró) as shortening of полити́ческое бюро́ (politícheskoe byuró) (political bureau).  As a general principle, a politburo, in general, is the chief committee of a communist party and often exercises executive authority. The German form is Politisches Büro abbreviated as Politbüro and, like the Spanish Politburó, is directly loaned from Russian.  Chinese uses a calque (政治局; Zhèngzhìjú in pinyin), from which the Vietnamese (Bộ Chính trị), and Korean (정치국, 政治局 Jeongchiguk) terms derive.

1917 and after

The first politburo was Russian, created in 1917 by the Bolsheviks, the initial membership of seven including Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky and Stalin.  Although the USSR’s Politburo was notionally the highest policy-making government authority, it was usually subservient to the office of General Secretary of the Communist Party, especially during Comrade Stalin’s (1878–1953; leader of the Soviet Union 1922-1953) time.  In an example of the re-branding which happened often in the USSR, it was known as the Presidium between 1952 and 1966.  Many communist nations adopted the model during the twentieth century but politburos exist now only in the five remaining communist countries, China, the DPRK (North Korea), Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba.  Those five long outlasted the Russian original which was dissolved in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Old white men: the Twenty-sixth Politburo (1981–1986) of the USSR (1981 press release).

The last four leaders of the USSR (Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982), Yuri Andropov (1982-1984), Konstantin Chernenko (1984-1985) and Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) all appear here.

Nomenclature

Nomenclature (pronounced noh-muhn-kley-cher, noh-men-kluh-cher, noh-muhn-kley-choor or noh-men-kluh-choor

(1) A set or system of names or terms, the terminology used in a particular science, art, activity etc, by an individual, community or institution.

(2) The names or terms comprising a set or system.

1600-1610: From the sixteenth century French nomenclature, from the Latin nōmenclātūra (a calling by name, list of names), from nomenclator (namer), the construct being nōmen (name), from the primitive Indo-European root no-men- (name) + calator (caller, crier), from calāre (call out), from the primitive Indo-European root kele- (to shout); a doublet of nomenklatura.  In many cases, the words classification, codification, glossary, locution, phraseology, taxonomy & terminology will be synonymous and interchangeable.  The related forms include nomenclatural, nomenclatorial & nomenclative, nomenclaturally, nomenclator, nomenclatory (and the equivalent systems using exclusively numbers: numericlature.  The noun plural is nomenclatures.

In Ancient Rome a nomenclator was (1) the title of a steward whose job was to announce visitors and (2) a prompter who helped a politician seeking election recall names and pet causes of his constituents.  The meaning "systematic list or catalogue of names" is attested from the 1630s; that of "system of naming" dating from the 1660s while the modern sense of "the whole vocabulary or terminology of an art or a science" is from 1789.  In English, circa 1600, it also had the meaning “a name” but, being a complicated way of saying something simple, this quickly went extinct.

In the Soviet Union, nomenklatura was the "list of influential posts in government and industry to be filled by Communist Party appointees".  The origin of this predated the formal creation of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, СССР the Russian abbreviation in Cyrillic, transliterated as SSSR in Latin script)) and was emblematic of the centralization of authority and decision making the party organization imposed almost immediately on the state.  It was too indicative of the way the dictatorial structure of the party, mapped onto the mechanism of the state would, disguised sometimes as a collective model, to almost the end distinguish the USSR from many of the non-communist models of authoritarian rule which flourished during the twentieth century, their corporatist nature often misunderstood because of the way the label “dictatorship” was applied.

Formalized during 1919-1920, the party’s system of control was created in the months after the revolution, the Politburo (a creation of the party’s Central Committee which, technically, exercised only the authority delegated by the committee) dealt with all matters of significance and thus reserved the key decisions exclusively for their remit, the routine and procedural matters handled either by the Orgburo (essentially the body which enacted the Politburo’s edicts and coordinated the regional organizations and thus best understood as a kind of party chancellery) or the famously bureaucratic Secretariat.  It was in the Secretariat (where the paperwork from the higher bodies tended to end up) that the need for a reliably indexed filing system to conquer the developing administrative chaos quickly became apparent and nomenklatura was part of the system.  Accordingly created was the Учраспред (Uchraspred), (the Department of Files & Assignments) which, operating rather as gangsters would run as HR department, handled the registration of party members and their subsequent allocation to positions below the higher-level appointments, which remained in the gift of the Politburo or Orgburo.

Comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; early Bolshevik, Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), Edward R Stettinius Jr (1900–1949; US secretary of state 1944-1945 and ambassador to the UN 1945-1946 (“Stettinius the younger”, his father having been assistant secretary of war 1918-1921)) & Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary and prime-minister-1955-1957) at the foundation conference of the United Nations, San Francisco, 1945.

Predictably, the structure provided much scope for patronage, nepotism and factionalism but, handling annually thousands of movements, it nevertheless demanded efficient administration, something lacking until in 1921, Vyacheslav Molotov, just elevated to the Central Committee and Orgburo, was put in charge of the Secretariat.  Studious, serious (of the many photographs which exist, in few is he smiling) and with a mind which if not as quick as his colleagues was certainly thorough, he excelled in the role and though the more intellectually illustrious were inclined to decry his “needless and shameful bureaucratism", they couldn’t not be in awe of his capacity to spend long hours sitting at his desk, creating order our of what was a post-revolutionary mess, comrade Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov 1870–1924 and known by his alias Lenin; revolutionary, political theorist and founding head of government (Soviet Russia 1917-1924 and the Soviet Union 1922-1924) dubbing him “stone ass” (often misquoted as “iron ass”), a moniker later used (behind his back) by the negotiators from the West with whom he sat through many meetings and conferences during his long tenure as Soviet foreign minister, his intransigence legendary even by diplomatic standards.  Other ambassadors dubbed him "comrade nyet"; nyet a Russian word meaning a particularly blunt "No!".  "Stone ass" was most productive during those long sessions at his desk, producing endless streams of paper which fed a burgeoning bureaucracy; Lenin also dubbed him "comrade filing cabinet".        

Stone ass: comrade Molotov sitting at his desk.

The English nomenclature was a borrowing in the 1600s of the sixteenth century French which was from the Latin nōmenclātūra (assignment of names to things, mentioning things by name, a list of names).  Almost immediately, the word was picked up by many branches of science (most notably in botany or zoology) where it gained the definitive senses of “a systematic assignment of names” and later in the same century, “the technical terms within a science”.  The noun nomenklatura existed in Russian since the early nineteenth century but it was particular and well-publicized use by the Soviet communists which made it known in the West.  Understanding its implications, the Kremlinologists in the 1950s adopted nomenklatura when discussing bureaucracies and administrative structures in both the USSR and other communist states.

Memo: Team Douglas Productions, 29 July 2004.

Also of interest to students of nomenclature is the process by which the names of people can become objects applied variously.  As Napoleon, Churchill and Hitler live on as Napoleonic, Churchillian and Hitlerite, on the internet is a body of the Lohanic.  Universally, that’s pronounced lo-han-ick but Lindsay Lohan has mentioned in interviews that being a surname of Irish origin, it’s “correctly” low-en, a form she adopted early in 2022 with her first posting on TikTok where it rhymed with “Coen” (used usually for the surname “Cohen” which is of Hebrew origin and unrelated to Celtic influence).  For a generation brought up on lo-han it must have been a syllable too far because it didn’t catch on and by early 2023, she was back to lo-han with the hard “h”.  Curiously, while etymologists seem to agree that historically lo-en was likely the form most heard in Ireland, the popular genealogy sites all indicate the modern practice is to use lo-han so hopefully that’s the last word.  However, the brief flirtation with phonetic h-lessness did have a precedent:  When Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) was being filmed in 2004, the production company circulated a memo to the crew informing all that Lohan was pronounced “Lo-en like Coen” with a silent “h”.

Cognac

Cognac (pronounced kohn-yak, or kaw-nyak (French))

(1) The brandy distilled in and shipped from the legally delimited area surrounding the town of Cognac, in western-central France (often with initial capital letters).

(2) Any French brandy (now technically incorrect since passage of various laws and WTO rules).

(3) Any expensive brandy (also incorrect).

(4) A town in south-west France famed for the brandy distilled from grapes grown in the region.

(5) A descriptor used for a range of brown shades from earthy to reddish-brown.

1585-1595: Borrowed from French Coniacke, (wine produced in Cognac region of western France), cognac’s origin was as a distilling of an otherwise unsaleable white wine.  The term Cognac brandy was in use as early as the 1680s and the sense of it being “a superior brandy” dates from 1755.  The city's name is from Medieval Latin Comniacum, from the personal name Cominius + the Gallo-Roman suffix -acum (from -aceus (indicating a resemblance). Cominius is an old Italic family name.

James Suckling 100 points crystal cognac glass from Lalique.

Although the traditional balloon glass was long associated with brandy and cognac, the distillers now advise the best choice is actually a “tulip” glass because it permits the aromas better to waft to the nose.  That's the most important part in enjoying Cognac; it's not so much drunk as breathed in, consumed mostly by a mere moistening of the lips while slowly but deeply inhaling; a nip of cognac can last a long time.  Enjoyed thus, it really should be taken neat.  

Named after the town of Cognac, France and known within the trade also as eau de vie, cognac is a brandy produced in any of the designated growing regions approved by the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC).  In a pleasing irony, it’s distilled from an extremely dry, thin and acidic white wine thought undrinkable and unsuitable even for cooking yet which is ideal for distilling.  Grand Marnier, the cognac-based liqueur, from the French grand (great) + Marnier-Lapostolle (name of the manufacturer) was first sold in 1901.

Although the BNIC is the body which writes the rules and controls production, the industry is regulated under the French Appellation d'origine contrôlée which codifies all regulations including the naming requirements.  One linguistic curiosities of the quintessentially French business of cognac business is the official grades (XO, VSOP etc) are in English because they were standardised in the eighteenth century when the trade was dominated by the British, even before Pax Britannia’s control of the sea lanes.  The BNIC’s categories are:

VS (Very Special), denoted usually by the three stars (☆☆☆) on the label, VS designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of two years.

VSOP (Very Superior Old Pale), still often (though now less frequently) called Reserve, designates a blend in which the youngest has been cask-aged for a minimum of two years.  VSOP is sometimes incorrectly cited as Very Special Old Port or Very Special Over Proof.

Napoléon designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of six years.  Although long used as a marketing term (often as a synonym for XO), Napoléon was never part of the official naming system of Cognacs, appearing only in recent years, when, as a transitional arrangement due to stocks not being sufficient to permit implementation of a change in the rule governing use of the XO label, it was used specifically to denote those blends which, while aged the requisite six years, did not in other ways conform with the revised XO specifications.  Slated originally for introduction in 2016, the revised rules were instead gazetted in 2018.

XO (Extra Old), designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of ten years.

XXO (Extra Extra Old), designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of fourteen years.

Hors d'âge (Beyond Age), designates a blend, at least functionally equivalent to XO, but is applied by distillers to a cognac with some special characteristics which distinguish it in some way.

The naming conventions aren’t as old as the spirit.  When first produced from un-aged distilled grape wine from the Charente in the early 1600s, there was no system of ageing designations and it was sold simply as brandy, or, from the 1680s, Cognac brandy.  By century’s end however, the wine houses began storing the brandy in barrels of oak and to distinguish the aged product, this was called “old”, the un-aged, “young”.  The now familiar, hierarchical naming regime for the oak-aged spirit didn't begin until a batch called VSOP (Very Special Old Pale) was bottled for the Prince of Wales (George Augustus Frederick, 1762–1830; King George IV of Great Britain 1820-1830).

Lindsay Lohan color-co-ordinated in cognac (hair, eyes, outfit & nails), Christian Siriano Spring 2023 Collection Show, New York Fashion Week, February 2023.

The French wine industry was little-regulated until the phylloxera (a type of aphid) crisis of the mid-nineteenth century induced the government in 1888 to create the Viticulture Committee with a remit which grew gradually from disease control to encompass other regulatory aspects of the industry.  One concern was the widespread counterfeiting of cognac and in 1909 a decree was issued which defined the “Cognac” appellation area as the eight Cognac vintages named in a map based upon the work of geologist and paleontologist Henri Coquand (1813-1881).  It’s that map which remains the basis of the rule that cognac can only be produced within a delimited geographical area, defined by the 1909 decree which meant the “Cognac”, “Eau-de-vie de Cognac”, and “Eau-de-vie des Charentes” appellations are restricted exclusively to wine spirits grown and distilled within the defined regions of Charente-Maritime and Charente, as well as several villages in the Dordogne and Deux-Sèvres departments.

Later, the regulatory body was the National Bureau of Distribution of Cognac Wines and Eaux (NBDCWE) which in 1936 defined the conditions for the production of eaux-de-vie giving rise to the “cognac” appellation and two years later re-defined the appellation area, commune by commune, vintage by vintage.  The 1936 ruling outlined the requirements for distilled wine or brandy to be considered Cognac, mandating (1) the product must originate in the Cognac Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) mapped that year, (2) that the grapes used to make cognac must come from one of the six designated growing areas (crus) located in the Cognac region (the six crus including  Borderies, Fins Bois, Bons Bois and Bois Ordinaires, Bois à terroirs, Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne), (3) that the grapes must come from one of the six approved appellations and (4), the cognac must be made from grapes blended from 90% eau de vie from Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche and Colombard grapes with up to 10% Folignan, Jurancon blanc, Blanc Rame, Montils or Semillon grapes.

The NBDCWE was in 1946 replaced by the NIBC and in 1983 it formalized the long-established designations used to classify cognacs by age.  The designations are determined by the youngest eau-de-vie blended in the Cognac, thus nothing may be represented as cognac unless it has been aged at least two years (the VS (Very Special standard)).  The distillers may sell younger eau-de-vie as brandy (for example Rémy Martin’s Rémy V) but not labelled as cognac.  The point of the designations being based on the youngest part of the blend is significant in that a VS cognac may contain a proportion of much older eau-de-vie.  It’s for that reason some cognacs are sold without an official designation attached, if it’s thought by the house the label might confuse or inaccurately portray nature of the blend.  Rémy Martin’s 1738 Royal Accord by contains eau-de-vie aged between four & twenty years and thus, technically, is a VSOP but the house chose to forego a designation because it would tend to undersell the value of blend which included eaux-de-vie aged up to twenty years.

Most expensive: Henri IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac Grande Champagne.  Listed at almost US$2 million, it’s bottled in crystal which is dipped in 24-karat gold and Sterling platinum with 6,500 certified cut diamonds as decoration.  Said now to be aimed at the Middle-East market since the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Politburo cracked down on such extravagances, it’s assumed not many mix this with Coca-Cola.

Highly regarded: Remy Martin’s Louis XIII Grande Champagne Très Vieille Age Inconnu (pre-1950).  There was an official price list on which this appeared but, because of limited supply, it’s really only indicative and most sell at auction, the highest known paid for a decanter thought to be the US$44,630 achieved in a private Hong Kong sale in 2013.

Most fancy box: Camus Cuvee 5.150.  Camus use a sequential numbering system for their more interesting releases, the 5.150 the fifth release in their master collection which marked the company’s sesquicentenary (150 years).  With production limited to a run of 1,482, thoughtfully the crystal decanter was supplied with a brace of tasting glasses, presumably to dissuade those buyers tempted to drink straight from the bottle.  According to Camus, the 5.150 is a blend of five distinct and rare eaux-de-vie from five different regions and is unique in the history of cognac.  A bottle was listed at US$13,500.

Most interesting choice of packaging materials: Hennessy Beaute du Siecle Cognac.  Unusually in an industry which tends to favor creations made from precious metals and stones when packaging its more extravagant products, Hennessy’s most expensive cognac comes in a one litre bottle and a container styled in the manner of an art deco jewel-box, rendered in aluminum and bronze.  Limited to an edition of one-hundred and priced at US$194,927, the designer was French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel (b 1964).

Most expensive by the glass: Croizet Cognac Leonie 1858. General Eisenhower is said on the eve of the D-Day landings in 1944 to have shared a couple of nips of the 1858 with Winston Churchill, the bottle liberated from somewhere.  One sold at auction in 2011 for US$156,760 but for a more manageable US$8,764, it’s available by the glass (a 40 ml (1.3 oz) nip) at the InterContinental in Hong Kong.  Founded in 1805, Croizet is one of the older cognac houses and bottles only single vintages, a rarity in the industry but not even they can replicate the original.  It was distilled with grapes picked from vines with a lineage back to those planted by Julius Caesar’s armies in 55 BC and is the only cognac of its kind left because the vines were destroyed in the great phylloxera crisis of the 1870s.  At US$8,764 a nip, supply is dwindling slowly but, once gone, that’s it.  To encourage consumption, the InterContinental Hong Kong’s Lobby Lounge uses it in what’s claimed to be the world’s most expensive cocktail, the US$13,919 Winston which includes also Grand Marnier, Chartreuse VEP and Angostura bitters.  Better value for money is probably the hotel’s VVIP Presidential Suite Cognac Croizet Experience which, for US$166,117, includes a two-night stay in the Presidential Suite, a bottle of the 1858, a paired menu created by their Executive Chef and exclusive access to the Cognac Croizet vineyards for up to four people in Charentes, near Bordeaux.  During the one-night stay, there's a tour of the estate, gourmet dining and a cognac-blending tutorial from the cellar master.

Best value: Frapin Château Fontpinot XO. It tends to retail around US$175 (US$2000 a dozen)) and is one of the most rewarding XO blends.  Although many treat the language of wine tasting with some derision, just inhaling the vapors of the Fontpinot XO really does  summon thoughts of dark chocolate, still juicy dried fruit, warm caramel and herbs.  There are many more expensive cognacs with a similar taste but few match the endless aromatics of this one.  It’s a economical purchase too because one tends to neglect drinking, just to longer enjoy breathing it in.

Oldest vintage sold at auction: Gautier Cognac 1762.  In 2020, a bottle of Gautier Cognac 1762, the largest of the three known still to exist, was sold by Sotheby’s for US$144,525.  In 1762, Britain was entering the Seven Years’ War, Catherine II was empress of Russia, Mozart was six years old and George Washington had just turned thirty.  Cognac remains cheap by auction standards, the record price achieved by wine being the US$558,000 realized by a 1945 Romanee-Conti while ancient bottles of single-malt Scotch whisky have sold for almost US$2 million.  The new owner was described only as “an Asian private collector” and Sotheby’s added the buyer would get to “enjoy a bespoke experience at Maison Gautier, courtesy of the distillery” as part of his winning bid.

The future of the contents isn’t known but the auction house claimed, though some two-hundred and sixty years on, it should still be drinkable.  Their expert revealed the opinion is based on (1) the ullage (level of liquid inside) which was high, suggesting that the seal had not been compromised so evaporation was thus minimal and (2) a pleasing OBE (old bottle effect), the quality of which is determined by whether it imparts either a pleasant “tropical” note or the less appealing “porridge-y” sound.  He did add however that because glass isn’t entirely inert, it would have imparted some flavor of its own.  That notwithstanding, he suspected the depth of flavor from grapes grown on ancient root stock could give the spirit a complexity different from that known in the modern era.

Veto

Veto (pronounced vee-toh)

(1) In constitutional law, the power or right vested in one branch of a government to cancel or postpone the decisions, enactments etc of another branch, especially the right of a president, governor, or other chief executive to reject bills passed by a legislature.

(2) The exercise of this right.

(3) In the UN Security Council, a non-concurring vote by which one of the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK & US) can overrule the actions or decisions of the meeting on most substantive matters.  By practice and convention, in the context of geopolitics, this is "the veto power".

(4) Emphatically to prohibit something.

1620–1630: From the Latin vetō (I forbid), the first person singular present indicative of vetāre (forbid, prohibit, oppose, hinder (perfect active vetuī, supine vetitum)) from the earlier votō & votāre, from the Proto-Italic wetā(je)-, from the primitive Indo-European weth- (to say).  In ancient Rome, the vetō was the technical term for a protest interposed by a tribune of the people against any measure of the Senate or of the magistrates.  As a verb, use dates from 1706.  Veto is a noun, verb and adjective, vetoless is a (non-standard) adjective and vetoer is a noun; the noun plural is vetoes.  In the language of the diplomatic toolbox the related forms pre-veto, re-veto, un-veto & non-veto, used with and without the hyphen.

The best known power of veto is that exercised by the five permanent members (P5) of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).  The UNSC is an organ of the UN which uniquely possesses the authority to issue resolutions binding upon member states and its powers include creating peacekeeping missions, imposing international sanctions and authorizing military action.  The UNSC has a standing membership of fifteen, five of which (China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA) hold permanent seats, the remaining ten elected by the UNGA (UN General Assembly) on a regional basis for two year terms.  P5 representatives can veto any substantive resolution including the admission of new UN member states or nominations for UN Secretary-General (the UN’s CEO).  The term “united nations” was used as early as 1943, essentially as a synonym for the anti-Axis allies and was later adopted as the name for the international organization which replaced the League of Nations (LoN, 1920-1946) which had in the 1930s proved ineffectual in its attempts to maintain peace.  When the UN was created, its structural arrangements were designed to try to avoid the problems which beset the LoN which, under its covenant, could reach decisions only by unanimous vote and this rule applied both to the League's council (which the specific responsibility of maintaining peace) and the all-member assembly.  In effect, each member state of the League had the power of the veto, and, except for procedural matters and a few specified topics, a single "nay" killed any resolution.  Learning from this mistake, the founders of the UN decided all its organs and subsidiary bodies should make decisions by some type of majority vote (although when dealing with particularly contentious matters things have sometimes awaited a resolution until a consensus emerges).

The creators of the UN Charter always conceived the three victorious “great powers” of World War II (1939-1945), the UK, US & USSR, because of their roles in the establishment of the UN, would continue to play important roles in the maintenance of international peace and security and thus would have permanent seats on the UNSC with the power to veto resolutions.  To this arrangement was added (4) France (at the insistence of Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who wished to re-build the power of France as a counterweight to Germany and (5) China, included because Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1940 US president 1933-1945) was perceptive in predicting the country’s importance in the years to come.  This veto is however a power only in the negative.  Not one of the permanent members nor even all five voting in (an admittedly improbable) block can impose their will in the absence of an overall majority vote of the Security Council.  Nor is an affirmative vote from one or all of the permanent five necessary: If a permanent member does not agree with a resolution but does not wish to cast a veto, it may choose to abstain, thus allowing the resolution to be adopted if it obtains the required majority among the fifteen.

Lindsay Lohan meeting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), Ankara, January 2017.

As part of her efforts during 2017 drawing attention to the plight of Syrian refugees, Lindsay Lohan was received by the president of Türkiye.  As well as issuing a statement on the troubles of refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) in the region, Ms Lohan also commented on another matter raised by Mr Erdogan: the need to reform the structure of the UNSC which still exists in substantially the form created in 1945, despite the world’s economic and geopolitical realities having since much changed with only the compositional alteration being the PRC (People's Republic of China) in 1971 taking the place of the renegade province of Taiwan, pursuant to UNGA Resolution 2758, which recognized the PRC as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and expelled “the representatives” of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan.  In an Instagram post, Ms Lohan used the phrase “the world is bigger than five.  Five big nations made promises but they did not keep them.”  Despite her efforts, reform of the UNSC has advanced little because although consensus might be reached on extending permanent membership to certain nations, it remains doubtful all of the P5 (the permanent five members) would achieve consensus for this including the veto.  That would have the effect of replacing the present two-tier structure with three layers and it seems also unlikely a state like India would accept the “second class status” inherent in a permanent seat with no veto.

The Vatican, the CCP and the bishops, real & fake

A well-known and economically significant niche in modern Chinese manufacturing is fakes.  Most obvious are fake Rolexes, fake Range Rovers et al but Peking for decades produced fake bishops.  After the Holy See and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sundered diplomatic relations in 1951, papal appointments to Chinese bishoprics were not recognized by Peking which appointed their own.  In retaliation, popes refused to acknowledge the fakes who in turn ignored him, the amusing clerical stand-off lasting until January 2018 when negotiations appeared to produce a face-saving (sort-of) concordat.  As a prelude, Rome retired or re-deployed a number of their bishops in order to make way for new (once-fake) bishops, nominated by the CCP and, in a telling gesture, Pope Francis (b 1936; pope 2013-2025) re-admitted to "full ecclesial communion" seven living Chinese bishops who were ordained before the deal without Vatican approval, and had thus incurred a latae sententiae (literally "of a judgment having been brought") penalty.  Long a feature of the Catholic Church's canon law, a latae sententiae works as an administrative act, the liability for which is imposed ipsō factō (literally "by the same fact" and in law understood as "something inherently consequent upon the act").  What that means is the penalty is applied at the moment the unlawful act is done; no judicial or administrative actions needs be taken for this to happen.  Thus, at the point of non-Vatican approved ordination, all fake bishops were excommunicated.

On 22 September 2018, a provisional agreement was signed.  It (1) cleared the Chinese decks of any bishops (fake or real) not acceptable to either side, (2) granted the CCP the right to nominate bishops (the list created with the help of a CCP-run group called the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) and (3) granted the pope a right of veto.  Although not mentioned by either side, the most important understanding between the parties seemed to be the hints the CCP sent through diplomatic channels that the pope would find their lists of nominees “helpful”.  If so, such a document deserved to be thought "a secret protocol" to the "Holy See-CCP Pact but however the sausages were made, it was a diplomatic triumph for Beijing.  Although Rome at the time noted it was a “provisional agreement”, many observed that unless things proved most unsatisfactory, it was doubtful Rome would be anxious again to draw attention to the matter because, whatever the political or theological implications, to acquiesce to the pope as cipher would diminish the church’s mystique.

Things may be worse even than the cynics had predicted.  In late 2020 the two-year deal handling the appointment of Chinese bishops was extended after an exchange of notes verbales (in diplomatic language, something more formal than an aide-mémoire and less formal than a note, drafted in the third person and never signed), both sides apparently wishing to continue the pact, albeit still (technically) on a temporary basis.  The uneasy entente seems however not to have lasted, Beijing in 2021, through bureaucratic process, acting as if it had never existed by issuing Order No. 15 (new administrative rules for religious affairs) which included an article on establishing a process for the selection of Catholic bishops in China after 1 May 2021.  The new edict makes no mention of any papal role in the process and certainly not a right to approve or veto episcopal appointments in China, the very thing which was celebrated in Rome as the substantive concession gained from the CCP.

Still, Beijing’s new rules have the benefit of clarity and while it's doubtful Francis held many illusions about the nature of CCP rule, he certainly had certainty for the remainder of his pontificate.  Order No. 15 requires clergy of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church (CPCC) to “adhere to the principle of independent and self-administered religion in China” and actively support “the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” and “the socialist system,” as well as to “practice the core values of socialism.”  They must also promote “social harmony” which is usually interpreted as conformity of thought with those of the CCP (although in recent years that has come increasingly to be identified with the thoughts of comrade Xi Jinping (b 1953; paramount leader of China since 2012) which, historically, is an interesting comparison with the times of comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1949-1976).  Essentially, the CPCC is an arm of the CCP regime (something like "the PLA (People's Liberation Army" at prayer") and formalizing this is the requirement for bishops and priests to be licensed for ministry, much the same process as being allowed to practice as a driving instructor or electrician.

All this is presumably was a disappointment to the pope though it’s unlikely to have surprised to his critics, some of whom, when the agreement was announced in 2018 and upon renewal in 2020, predicted it would be honored by Beijing only while it proved useful for them to weaken the “underground” church and allow the CCP to assert institutional control over the CPCC.  At the time of the renewal, the Vatican issued a statement saying the agreement was “essential to guarantee the ordinary life of the Church in China.”  The CCP doubtlessly agreed with that which is why they have broken the agreement, and, if asked, presumably they would point out that, legally, it really didn’t exist, the text never having been published and only ever discussed by diplomats.  Although there are (by the Vatican's estimates) only some five million Chinese Catholics among a population of some 1.4 billion, that's still five-million potential malcontents and as the "Godless atheists" of the CCP know from their history books, that's enough to cause problems and if problems can be solved in the "preferred" CCP manner, they must be "managed".

Beware of imitations.  British Range Rover Evoque (left) and Chinese Landwind X7 (right).

Although not matching the original in specification or capabilities, the Landwind X7 sold in China for around a third what was charged for an Evoque and while it took a trained eye to tell the difference between the two, Chinese capitalism rose to the occasion and, within weeks, kits were on the market containing the badges and moldings needed to make the replication closer to exact.  Remarkably, eventually, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) won a landmark legal case (in a Chinese court!), the judges holding the “…Evoque has five unique features that were copied directly” and that the X7’s similarity “…has led to widespread consumer confusion.”  In a decision which was the first by a Chinese court ruling favor of a foreign automaker in such a case, it was ordered Landwind immediately cease sales of the vehicle and pay compensation to JLR.  It was a bit hypocritical for the British to complain because for years shamelessly the British industry "borrowed" styling from Detroit and in the early, cash-strapped, post-war years, the Standard Motor Company (later Standard-Triumph) sent their chief stylist to sit with his sketch-pad outside the US embassy in London to "harvest" ideas from the new American cars being driven by diplomats and other staff.  That's why Standard's Phase I Vanguard (the so-called "humpback", 1947-1953) so resembles a 1946 Plymouth, somewhat unhappily shrunk in every dimension except height.  One can debate the ethics of what Landwind did but as an act of visual cloning, they did it well and as Chinese historians gleefully will attest, when it comes to cynicism and hypocrisy, the British have centuries of practice.    

Beware of imitations.  Joseph Guo Jincai (b 1968, left) was in 2010 ordained Bishop of Chengde (Hebei) today without the approval of the pope.  He is a member of the China Committee on Religion and Peace and was appointed a deputy to the thirteenth National People's Congress.  Because of the circumstances of his ordination as a bishop, he was excommunicated latae sententiae but later had the consolation of being elected vice-president of Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.  In September 2018, Francis lifted the excommunication of Joseph Guo Jincai and other six bishops previously appointed by the Chinese government without pontifical mandate.  What Francis did was something like the "re-personing" granted in post-Soviet Russia to those "un-personed" under communist rule.

Politically, one has to admire the CCP’s tactics.  Beijing pursued the 2018 deal only to exterminate the underground Catholic Church which, although for decades doughty in their resistance to persecution by the CCP (including pogroms during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)), were compelled to transfer their allegiance to the CPCC once it received the pope’s imprimatur.  After the agreement, Chinese authorities rounded up underground Catholic clergy, warning that they would defy the pope if they continued baptizing, ordaining new clergy and praying in unregistered churches; most of those persuaded became part of the CPCC and those unconvinced resigned their ministries and returned to private life.  According to insiders, a rump underground movement still exists but it seems the CCP now regard the remnant as a terrorist organization (a la the subversive Falun Gong) and are pursuing them accordingly.

The central committee of the CCP's politburo contains operators highly skilled in the art of political opportunism and in 2025 they demonstrated their prowess during the brief interregnum between the death of PFrancis and the election of Leo XIV (b 1955; pope since 2025) when unilaterally they “elected” two bishops, one of them to a diocese already led by a Vatican-appointed bishop.  The clever maneuver took advantage of the fact that during this sede vacante (the vacancy of an episcopal see), the Holy See had been unable to ratify episcopal nominations.  The CCP clearly regards its elections as a fait accompli and one technically within the terms of the 2018 provisional agreement (most recently renewed in October 2024), adopting the pragmatic position of “what’s done is done and can’t be undone”.  The Vatican lawyers might demur and even though the terms of the agreement have never been published, the convention had evolved that Beijing would present to the Vatican a single candidate chosen by assemblies of the clergy affiliated by the CCPA; this nominee the pope could the appoint or not.  In 2025, the argument is that no veto was exercised which, during a sede vacante, was of course impossible but it’s no secret that in recent years Beijing has on a number of occasions violated the agreement.  The CCP are of the “how many divisions has he got” school established by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), practiced with the “take whatever you can grab” ethos of capitalism which modern China has embraced with muscular efficiency.

The files were among the many piled in Leo’s in-tray and keenly Vaticanologists awaited his response and the new pope didn’t long delay, in June 2025 appointing Bishop Joseph Lin Yuntuan (b 1952) as an assistant in Fuzhou, the capital of the south-eastern Fujian province.  Unlike bishoprics elsewhere, analysts made no mention of whether the appointee belong to the “liberal” or “conservative” factions but focused instead on both sides exhibiting a clear desire to “continue on the path of reconciliation”.  In a statement, the Holy See Press Office stressed “final decision-making power” remained with the pope while for Beijing the attraction was the (substantial) resolution of the decades-long split between the underground church loyal to Rome and the state-supervised CCPA although there are doubtless still renegades being pursued.  Lin had in 2017 been ordained a bishop in the underground church and had the CCP wished to maintain an antagonism it could of course declined to countenance the appointment of a character with such a dubious past but the installation’s rubber-stamping in both states seems a clear indication both wish to maintain the still uneasy accord.  During the ceremony, Bishop Lin swore to abide by Chinese laws and safeguard social harmony.

Gulag

Gulag (pronounced goo-lahg)

(1) The system of forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union (with initial capital).

(2) Individually, a Soviet forced-labor camp (usually with initial capital).

(3) By association, any prison or detention camp, especially one used for political prisoners (usually not with initial capital).

(4) Figuratively, any place regarded as undesirable or one perceived as being a “punishment-post” (not with initial capital).

(5) Figuratively, any system used to silence dissent (not with initial capital).

1930-1931: From the Russian ГУЛА́Г (GULÁG, GULag or Gulág), the acronym (Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj) translated usually as “Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps” but also, inter alia, “Chief Administration of Corrective-Labor Camps”, “Main Directorate for Places of Detention”, “Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps” etc.).  The noun plural was Gulags.

An example of the way in which a bland acronym (like the 1933 Gestapo (an abbreviated form of the German Geheime Staatspolizei (the construct being Ge(heime) Sta(ats)po(lizei), literally “secret state police”) can become a byword for something awful, although technically, the acronym GULag (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj (Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps)) didn’t come into use until 1930, the origin of what quickly would evolve into a vast, nation-wide network of concentration camps lies in the legal device created almost immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917.  This was the concept of the “class enemy”, a logical crime to gazette under Marxist-Leninist theory and one that could be applied literally to anybody, regardless of their conduct; it was essentially the same idea as the crime of “unspecified offences” which appears in the judicial sentences of some authoritarian states.  Russia, as many of the Bolsheviks knew from personal experience, had a long tradition of “internal exile” and the new regime extended this concept, creating concentration camps for class enemies where convicts were required to perform useful manual labor (forestry, mining, quarrying etc).

The early camps, authorized by decree in April 1919, were the prisoner of war (POW) facilities which had become redundant after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) which concluded hostilities between Russia and the Central Powers although the first model camp was in the White Sea region, in what were once the Orthodox Church's monastery buildings on the Solovetsky Islands and the first prisoners were anti-Bolsheviks, mostly left-wing intellectuals and members of the White Army.  The Cheka, the Russian secret police (the first in the alphabet soup of the names adopted (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH, MGB, (most famously) KGB & FSB), was allocated the role of administration.  Reflecting the love secret police everywhere have for mysterious acronyms, the Cheka created SLON (Northern Camps of Special Significance) as an administrative template for the Solovetsky Islands which, briefly, was the only camp complex in the Soviet state.  The number of concentration (usually described as “correctional labor”) camps grew sufficiently during the 1920s to outgrow the bureaucratic structures initially formed by the Cheka and in 1930 the GULag was created as a separate division of the secret police which worked in conjunction with the Soviet Ministry of the Interior overseeing the use of the physical labor of prisoners.  Although the camps were sometimes used for those guilty of “normal” criminal offences, the great majority of inmates were political prisoners who were sometimes genuine political dissidents but could be there for entirely arbitrary reasons or even as victims of personal vendettas.  In these aspects there are parallels with the Nazi's concentration camps which also worked as systems of coercion, punishment & repression although the GULag never had a programme industrially to exterminate an entire race.  There was another striking similarity in the camp architecture of the two dictatorships which were nominally ideological opponents.  The German equivalent of the GULag, the Konzentrationlager is remembered for the words Arbeit macht frei (work makes you free) rendered in wrought iron above the gates of Auschwitz I; the inscription через труд (through labor (ie get back home through working)) was the message at the prisoners' entrance to the Magaden camp in Siberia.      

What is sometime neglected in the history of the GULag (and other systems of concentration camps) is that while it is well-understood as part of a system of repression, there were genuine attempts to locate the camps in places where the labor extracted from the inmates could be applied to the maximum benefit for the state, something of great significance because in 1929 comrade Stalin (1878–1953; Soviet leader 1922–1953) announced a programme of rapid industrialization and the first of a succession of five-year plans. In support of this, the Politburo abolished any distinction between political and other crimes and intruded a unified network of camps to replace the hitherto dual prison system.  From this point, accelerating from the mid-1930s, archipelagos of camps were built (substantially by the prisoners) close to sites of huge economic projects such as a canal from the White Sea to the Baltic Sea, gold mining in Kolyma and lines of communications such as the Baikal-Amur Mainline.

The GULag’s second great growth spurt happened during Stalin’s “Great Terror” in 1936-1938 when the upper echelons of the Communist Party, the armed forces, the civil service and even the GULag management were subject to purges and while there were many executions, most were sent to the camps which, never designed for such numbers, were unable to handle the mass influx and the already high death rate increased sometimes threefold.  During comrade Stalin's great purges, the (whispered) joke was that the Russian population consisted of (1) those in the gulag, (2) those just released and (3) those about to go back.  On a somewhat smaller scale, rapid inflows also happened in the early years of World War II because of the need to imprison those deported from territory just occupied by the Soviet Union (Eastern Poland, the Baltics, Bessarabia) but this pressure on capacity was more than off-set by the sudden release of many prisoners to meet the needs of the Red Army which had suffered massive losses in the Nazi invasion.  Needing troops, all was suddenly forgiven and it wouldn’t be until 1945 that the numbers in the camps began again to trend upwards, reflecting the waves of arrests among the ranks of the Red Army, former German POWs and ethnic minorities, including Soviet Jews.  The Cold War also fed the GULag.  In 1948-1949, Stalin launched the construction of new megalomaniacal projects, including the Volga-Don Canal, new power stations, dams, and communications, among them the Dead Road and a tunnel and railway to Sakhalin Island, both of which, despite a horrific death-toll, proved impossible to build and were cancelled when Stalin died in 1953.

After Stalin’s death, an amnesty was announced for many of those serving sentences for criminal offences and almost all of those deemed to have committed “minor offences” were released although political prisoners remained imprisoned and it wasn’t until “the thaw” under Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) that widespread releases were ordered after almost four million political crime cases were reviewed and in 1957, as one of a number of reforms, the GULag was abolished and most of the camps shut down.  Khrushchev himself announced that the Soviet economy would no longer based on the slave labor of prisoners which, as a piece of economic analysis was true but while the numbers of political prisoners fell, they did not disappear although they tended now to be only imprisoned for genuine opposition to the regime, dispatched most frequently to labor camps in Mordovia or in camps clustered around the Urals. The conditions remained grim but the death rates were tiny compared to those suffered in Stalin’s time but what also disguised the extent of post-Stalinist repression was than many dissidents were technically not imprisoned but instead declared insane and incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals, many of which closely resembled prisons.  There, the “insane” were often subject to cruel & unusual “medical” procedures.

The number of people who passed through the GULag can never exactly be known but, using archival material which became accessible after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, historians have estimated between 15-18 million were imprisoned and the death-toll may have been almost 10%, the overwhelming majority of whom were from Russia or the constituent republics of the USSR but others were foreigners, mostly Czechoslovaks, Poles, Hungarians & Frenchmen.  The network of camps dotted around the USSR consisted of almost 500 administrative centres, each running as few as dozens or as many as hundreds of individual camps, historians having documented just under 30,000.  In the West the term GULag became widely known only after the publication in 1973 Russian of novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's (1918–2008) three-volume The Gulag Archipelago, described by the author as "An Experiment in Literary Investigation" which he wrote between 1958-1968, using documentary sources including legal papers, interviews, diaries, statements and his personal experience as a GULag prisoner.

Map of the GULag camp distribution, Plain Talk magazine, 1950.

However, both the system of slavery and the word “GULag” had, during comrade Stalin’s time, been publicized in the West, remarkably accurate maps published in 1950 in the US in Plain Talk (A US anti-communist monthly magazine, 1946–1950) magazine but, despite it being the high Cold War, the revelations didn’t resonate in public consciousness as they would a generation later when Solzhenitsyn released The Gulag Archipelago.