NEWS AND VIEWS: Russia is still Russia (12/26/93)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Russia is still Russia

by Myron B. Kuropas

The rise of Vladimir Zhirinovsky is a wake-up call for America. It's time to rethink our policy towards Russia.

Three times during the past 80 years, Americans have saved Russians from disaster. And each time the result has been catastrophic for the world.

The first such calamity began at the 1918 Versailles peace talks. The American delegation vigorously pushed for a "unified Russia" at a time when the tsarist Russian prisonhouse of nations was collapsing. When Lenin sought to restore the Russian empire, the United States helped him consolidate his power by providing "humanitarian aid."

The second time America restored Russia was in 1933, during the height of Stalin's forced famine in Ukraine. Ignoring a precedent followed by three previous American presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt formally recognized the Soviet Union providing Joseph Stalin with the markets he so desperately needed to industrialize his backward empire.

The last time the United States erred egregiously was at Yalta. Hoping to appease Stalin's insatiable appetite for more territories, President Roosevelt handed Stalin half of Europe.

Neither the U.S. State Department nor America's academic "experts" have ever fully understood Russia and its people. In suggesting policies and strategies, they have yet to appreciate the fact that Russia's centuries-old raison d'etre is imperialism fueled by the principles of autocracy (tsar or commissar), orthodoxy (religious or Marxist/Leninist), and "narod" or people (serf or Soviet).

The collapse of communism does not mean the end of Russian expansionism. Russia today is seeking a new autocracy, another orthodoxy, a redefinition of "narod."

Now that Vladimir Zhirinovsky has shown the way, watch President Boris Yeltsin, flush with greater constitutional powers, become more personally autocratic, nationalistically orthodox, and domestically conciliatory towards the Russian people. Expansionism will follow consolidation as night follows day.

It's time for a new containment policy towards Russia, one based on a cordon sanitaire of strong, democratic nations in central and eastern Europe headed by Finland, the Baltic nations, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine.

It's also time for amateurism in the State Department to end. Warren Christopher must go, and Zbigniew Brzezinski must return.

Myron B. Kuropas Ph.D. is an adjunct professor at Northern Illinois University.

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