After Ivan the Terrible died, he left a power vacuum, and Russia went through a number of rulers over the next few years.

The list included one notable ruler, who wasn’t Russian at all.  Known as False Dmitriy, this guy was actually Polish, and claimed to be the lost son of Ivan.

He ruled for a brief 10 months, until he was discovered to be an impostor.

Once he was discovered, he was killed, and put on display as a warning to other would be impostors.*  Then they sent him home “Russian Style”, which apparently means burning his body and stuffing the remnants into a cannon, which was shot in the direction of Poland.

*The warning didn’t work so well, as two other False Dmitriys eventually showed up.

Proving that even bad ideas can be copied, the Russians had their own space shuttle.

Called the Buran, the Russian shuttle was somehow even less successful than its American counterpart. It only made one unmanned flight in 1988 before the program was canceled.

In 2002 the hangar that held the Buran collapsed, and the shuttle was destroyed.

Smart Power!

Russia is weighing changes to its military doctrine that would allow for a “preventive” nuclear strike against its enemies — even those armed only with conventional weapons. The news comes just as American diplomats are trying to get Russia to cut down its nuclear stockpile, and put the squeeze on Iran’s suspect nuclear program.

Or, in other words, Russia sees our pathetic and feckless foreign policy and knows that we’re to pussy to do anything about stopping them.

Pity the former Soviet territories that step out of line…

What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to repel conventionally armed attackers, “not only in large-scale, but also in a regional and even a local war.”

Hey Georgia!  Got that?  If you don’t shut up we’ll nuke you.  And all that will happen to us is we’ll be the subject of a few meaningless UN resolutions.

Good thing we canceled that missile defense shield.