Posted on 07/10/2025 6:37:54 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Suzanne Massie first met President Reagan in January 1984, when US-Soviet relations were at their iciest: the previous year Reagan had labelled the Soviet Union the “evil empire”.
Massie was not an academic, but she had written a book about Russian culture called Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia that had caught Reagan’s eye, and she was summoned to the Oval Office for a five-minute chat that lasted 25.
She proceeded to tell him what his hardline, all-male, fervently anti-communist advisers had not: that there was a huge gulf between the Russian people and their Soviet rulers, and that despite decades of brutal repression, the Russian Orthodox Church had three times as many members as the Communist Party.
She humanised the Russian people in a way Reagan had never heard before. She cut through what she called Washington’s “official blindness”, stressing that the words “Soviet” and “Russian” were not synonymous. He summoned her 21 times during the remaining five years of his presidency, and occasionally used her as a back channel for communicating with Moscow.
Reagan called Massie “the greatest student I know of the Russian people”. Others labelled her “Reagan’s window on the Soviet Union”, “Reagan’s Russian whisperer” and “the woman who ended the Cold War”.
…Perhaps her single most concrete contribution, however, was a single phrase.
At a lunch with Reagan on the eve of his 1986 summit with Gorbachev in Reykjavik, she asked what he wanted to achieve. He replied: “I want to get rid of those atomic weapons — every one!” She told him: “The Russians often like to talk in proverbs and there’s one that might be useful. You’re an actor. You can learn it in a minute:
‘Trust but verify’ (Doveryai no proveryai).”
(Excerpt) Read more at thetimes.com ...
Suzanne, thank you for a quote I use to this day.
Thank you, CondoleezzaProtege, for finding and posting this.
She literally helped change the world for the better, through a near accidental association with a key person we all cherish.
May she be with God.
I’ve always maintained that the U.S. and Russia should be natural allies. We would be mutual economic, diplomatic, military and cultural counterweights against China. Unfortunately they seem to have a penchant for isolation, not really willing to be a part of the West.
Well we have a penchant for global empire that they don’t want to bow down to. And there is the problem. The dark part of our history is that we are accustomed to going our own way in our own hemisphere and after WW1 began to dominate the world. By the end of WWII our hegemony, except for red China and the SOviet Union was complete in our own mind. Part of our crisis is learning how to have allies as partners and not as begrudging subordinates. The Thucydides Trap is well chosen because Athens was brought down by its hubris and its failure to treat it’s allies as friends rather than just tribute paying suboridnates.
You’re welcome! I am curious to know how she felt about everything unfolding between Russia and Ukraine. I would imagine it saddened her.
“…a magical and prophetic glowing or burning bird from a faraway land which is both a blessing and a harbinger of doom to its captor… - Wikipedia
Yup. Sounds Russian.
The US wanted nothing to do with either world war, but got dragged into both.
The US setup institutions like the UN and the Bretton Woods agreements to find alternatives to great power wars to settle international disputes. It spent 4% of GDP for years on a massive aid program to Europe that was also offered to Eastern Europe. It assisted Japan's reconstruction also.
Stalin would have none of it and the Soviet Union spent the next 40+ years fomenting subversion and wars all over the globe seeking to outmaneuver and destroy the structures the US put into place after WWII.
A separation between the people and the state makes sense only in political regimes where the people exercise some control. That has basically never been the case in Russia for 500 years. There are no intermediary institutions capable of mediating and bending the state to the people's will in Russia: there are only demoralized, atomized individuals and the enormous colossus of the Russian state. There can be loose associations of individuals within the state bureaucracy or military (in Russia, usually looters), but no matter how powerful they seem they may be arrested, executed or thrown out of a window at any time if the primary authority so wills it.
The Russian regime exists like a giant amoeba, absorbing the wealth and lives of its citizens and those of neighboring states who get ingested. It's only goal its own wealth and power.
Are you paid to write that garbage.
I see what you mean.
We may say that to play in our game you have to obey the rules and the game has to have benefits to the US and not just costs, both of which are what Trump is in fact trying to reassert. Other countries may find that offer agreeable or not: as long as they don't pose a credible threat, we don't care. Look at Venezuela and Nicaragua, both now controlled by Communist regimes. In the Cold War we would have never tolerated that. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, we don't care. In the 1960s, France asked US troops to leave and NATO headquarters to exit Paris. Our troops left and NATO moved to Brussels. Think the Poles could have asked for the same with the Soviet Union?
So in what sense are we an empire?
Maybe the hate us for co-opting it and slapping it on the hood of a Pontiac. ;^)
From Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
🏎️🐦🔥
No you don't have to annex territories to exercise imperial control. You just have to have some levers of control to do that.
Amazing insight.
That may have given us leverage, but it was not forced upon them and they are free, as BRICS shows, to try to start another payment system.
As I said, if you want to play in the game we setup, you have to play by the rules. That's not coercive. It was, in fact, more generous than any other power in history given the unparalleled position the US enjoyed in 1945.
“She proceeded to tell him what his hardline, all-male, fervently anti-communist advisers had not: that there was a huge gulf between the Russian people and their Soviet rulers”
Very true back then, but with Putin at around 80%, not so true now.
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