Now that a new tsar has been legitimized in Russia, and Alexei Navalny, his most formidable opponent is in Germany recovering from a “mysterious” poison, I can write with certainty that nothing ever changes in Russia.
We can trust the Russians to be Russians. They have been bullies from the day Muscovy emerged from the swamps of the Eurasian North.
“It has been difficult for the Western mind to comprehend the Russian philosophy of making conquests of her neighbors a way of life,” wrote Indiana Congressman William G. Bray in his 1963 book “Russian Frontiers: From Muscovy to Khrushchev.” He observed: “Russian aggression during the last five centuries has devoured 46 races, speaking 61 different languages, and her appetite remains unquenched.”
The Kremlin will always find an excuse to covet territory adjoining Russia. There will always be a new “near abroad,” a new threatening frontier to conquer. The pattern is always the same. First come the troops to close all centers of religious worship except the Russian Orthodox Church. Russification is next.
The Russian people enjoyed freedom only twice in their history. The first time was in 1917 when they revolted against the Romanov tsar. That revolution was highjacked by the Bolsheviks. A second moment was a brief period following the collapse of the Communists and the rise of Boris Yeltsin. Elections were relatively free, civil institutions were beginning to flourish, freedom of speech returned. That political oasis ended when President Yeltsin handed power over to Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative, late in 1999. The true Russia was back.
Russian identity today, as then, rests on three pillars. The first is autocracy: tsar, commissar, tsar again, it doesn’t matter. Russians prefer order and predictability over freedom.
The second pillar is orthodoxy; religious or soviet, the goal is group think. President Putin knows his people. That’s why Russian Orthodoxy is such a significant component of his reign.
The third pillar is “narodnichestvo,” roughly translated as national identity. Today this pillar seems to be in a state of flux.
Russian behavior, however, remains the same. Brad Thor, my favorite spy-thriller author, nailed Russian behavior today in his novel “Backlash”: “The Russians wanted to enjoy the peace and prosperity of the civilized world, without the encumbrances of following any of its laws. They wanted their sovereign territory respected, their system of government respected, their ability for self-determination respected and on and on.”
“What they don’t want is to be forced to play by the same rules as everyone else. They fomented revolutions, invaded and annexed other sovereign nations, violated international agreements, murdered journalists, murdered dissidents, and strove to subvert democratic elections and other democratic processes throughout the Western world,” he noted.
When nations push back, as when NATO was expanded to Russia’s border, the Kremlin cries “foul” and claims victimhood.
A fascinating review of Russia today can be found in “The Return of the Russian Leviathan” by Prof. Sergei Medvedev of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “Russia has built its whole external and internal agenda on the demonizing of the Ukrainian Maidan,” he writes, “filling air time on television and radio with endless talk shows about Ukraine in such a way that if Ukraine suddenly disappeared, Russia would crash to the ground.”
“Russia does not consider Ukraine a state but an ethnography… a sort of lesser Russia,” Prof. Medvedev continues. “That is why the Ukrainian revolution of 2004 and particularly the second of 2013-2014 were such a blow to Russian pride. The declaration about their values and priorities were a clear demonstration that Ukrainians did not want to be simply ‘the little brother.’ And the Crimea and the Donbas were the ‘Russian world’s’ answer to the Maidan…”
“Russia seems to be living in a fantasy world’, argues Prof. Medvedev, “an endless TV serial, a parallel reality, where fascists march around Kiev [sic], where Ukrainians, not Donbas rebels shoot down MH17…”
“The myth about Ukrainian fascism,” Prof. Medvedev believes, “grew out of the state’s teenage complexes, the elite’s childish disappointment and the social infantilism of the population.”
“In the 21st century Russia’s principal export is not oil or gas, but fear… The manufacture of fear is part of the very essence of Russian history, both in Russia’s relations with the West and the day-to-day relationship of the individual and the state.” When the people of Belarus were protesting a stolen election recently, President Putin warned the West against interference.
Prof. Medvedev concludes: “Putin has created in Russia a nation at war, which has battened down the hatches and is looking at the world through the sights of a tank.”
Germany admitted its crimes under Adolf Hitler and has paid billions of dollars in compensation to Holocaust survivors and their children, as well as to Ukrainian slave laborers. Russia has yet to admit Stalin’s crimes, let alone pay any compensation to victims and their families.
Article 5 of the NATO treaty is clear. If one NATO country is attacked, other NATO members are obliged to come to its defense. If Mr. Putin decides to invade one of the Baltic countries, say Latvia, which has a large Russian-speaking minority (37 percent) that might suddenly need “protection,” will the U.S. come to her assistance? Americans are tired of war. Latvia? Who cares!
Much to think about, dear reader, much to think about.
Myron Kuropas’s e-mail address is [email protected].