Russian Culture Minister, the extra chromosome and Tchaikovsky

Ho ho ho. As far as mysterious headlines are concerned, this one surely must be at the top, ain't it? But everything will be illuminated shortly. Starting with this:

Vladimir Medinsky, Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation:

"I think that after all the disasters that hit Russia in the twentieth century, beginning with World War I and ending with the "Perestroika", the fact that Russia has been preserved and developed, proves that our people have one extra chromosome."

The Hon. Minister of Culture isn't aware that an extra chromosome is a symptom of one of several serious disorders, one of which is Down Syndrome.

Prof Medinsky is also known to issue the following statements:

"There is no evidence that Tchaikovsky was a homosexual", Vladimir Medinsky told Interfax news agency, as he spoke about the biopic by acclaimed screenwriter Yuri Arabov.

Beg your pardon? Evidence?

From here:

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact "deserves a monument."

The U.S.S.R. never occupied the Baltic states, it just "incorporated" them.

An infamous picture of a Nazi-Soviet military parade in Poland in 1939 was "photoshopped."

Anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia has been "greatly exaggerated."

More on this natural treasure, including some details about his education and scientific "career" in this article. One quote from its last paragraph:

Perhaps the simplest explanation [re Medinsky and the job he got] is given by Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Moscow-based Panorama think tank. The Kremlin, he suggests, simply couldn't find anybody else. "It's not the kind of position that people fight for. It's not easy to find a person for this post," Pribylovsky says. "Perhaps there was a competition between fools and they simply chose the most patriotic one."

In any case, there are all the good reasons to suspect that, unlike most of the Russian people, prof Medinsky got more than the normal share of chromosomes.