From: Mark Mallarde [Email him]

One of the unique joys of being a single male in Los Angeles is meeting Russian women and discovering what life was life for them (or their parents) during the “Evil Empire.” As a kid during the Cold War, I often wished I could talk to the people behind the Iron Curtain. I never guessed my chance would arrive 30 years later over cocktails.

A recent Russian date—whom I’ll call “Katrina”—grew up in Sochi, the province on the Black Sea that will be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. She is the daughter of a doctor and a university professor—both still in Russia. Katrina said that there are only three places in Russia in which to be: Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi. The Black Sea moderates the climate in Sochi where it stays temperate as long as you are not high in the mountains. The climate sounds like Los Angeles.

According to Katrina, around the time of the Chechen civil war several thousands of Chechens fled west to Sochi. Unlike in the U.S., Russians do not consider Chechens “white,” as our media gloated after the attacks. Russians consider them a separate race like Persians or Turks.

The Chechens’ race, however, was not why the people in Sochi were not enthusiastic about their arrival. It was the increase in crime—including the raping of Sochi women. In Russia, everyone knows that Chechens are trouble. Political correctness does not confuse the matter.

Then it was announced that the United States had agreed to accept all of the several thousand Chechens that relocated to Sochi as “refugees.”

Katrina said that the people in Sochi all thought that Americans were fools to invite Chechens into their country. “They have no idea what they are doing,” Katrina said everyone was thinking. They had a point.

See previous letters from Mark Mallarde.

James Fulford writes: The United States admits refugees from places where there’s a lot of murder going on. As far back as the nineteenth century, it has had problems caused by admitting the murderers as well as the victims.

In one of my earliest pieces here, I pointed out that this is part of the plot of Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play, The Melting Pot—David Quixano, a pogrom refugee, orphaned by violence in Russia, finds himself face to face with the Russian baron who ordered the pogrom.

It's also always a possibility than a man who claims to be persecuted might better be described as a fugitive from justice—Unicorn Killer Ira Einhorn spent years living in France, where he told the French that he was being persecuted by the evil Americans.