Posted on 05/13/2022 4:47:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
The two main drivers of Russia’s initiation of its war in Ukraine are a deep sense of wounded national pride and deeply ingrained paranoia. The undignified collapse of the Soviet Union was a bitter humiliation for the men of Vladimir Putin’s generation. Putin expressed a view common in Russia when he said the fall of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” Recovering the lost glory of the Soviet Union’s superpower status is a national obsession. And paranoia is deeply ingrained in Russian political culture, where conspiracies and plots are suspected around every corner.
I spent four years on Russian state television (2015-2019), appearing daily on two of Russia’s most popular political talk shows, Mesto Vstrechi (Meeting Place) and Vremya Pokazhet (Time Will Tell). I was the token American, anti-Kremlin, pro-liberal democracy, pro-Ukraine. My interlocutors were mostly members of the Duma and Federation Council, Kremlin officials, political analysts, and journalists, mostly pro-Putin and strident nationalists.
During these four years I spent hundreds of hours backstage speaking with these members of Russia’s political class. The main point they all stressed was that Russia is and must be America’s geopolitical equal. It mattered not that America’s economy is fifteen times larger than Russia’s, or that every one of them owned an iPhone. What mattered was that Russia has a huge nuclear arsenal and the ability to inflict total devastation on the United States.
Behind much of this profound sense of insecurity and inadequacy is the unexpected and inglorious collapse of the Soviet Union. Even though by the late 1980s the Soviet system was incapable of producing such simple basics as sausage and toilet paper, at least the Soviet Union was an undisputed superpower. For many Russians (particularly the men who serve at senior levels of government today) this provided some psychological comfort despite the material deprivations of Soviet life. And in a period of only two years, that system simply gave up the ghost, with no struggle to save itself.
The "wild 90s” of Yeltsin’s presidency were a new series of humiliations. The economy shrank by half, the ruble lost 99 percent of its value. Doctors and physics professors turned to driving taxis to eke out a living. Women turned to selling their bodies, I remember on Friday nights dozens of prostitutes soliciting clients right in front of the Russian parliament. And then there was the war in Chechnya, a tiny republic of a million people managed to defeat the Russian Army, successor to the army that defeated the mighty Nazi war machine.
Since those bleak days, the modern Kremlin has always envied and resented America’s global status as undisputed world superpower. America has unequaled military strength and an unparalleled ability to project power worldwide and unilaterally. It confounds them that America has diplomatic and military allies around the world.
That brings up a second important factor in Russia’s worldview: paranoia. For centuries, conspiracies and coups have been part and parcel of Russian power politics. Ivan the Terrible beat his own son Ivan Ivanovich to death. Tsar Paul I was stabbed to death by officers loyal to his son Alexander. Priest Rasputin was poisoned, stabbed, and shot by aristocratic officers in the Tsar’s court. Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were executed by firing squad in a basement in Yekaterinburg. Most leading Bolsheviks perished in Stalin’s purges, along with another million victims. When Georgy Malenkov lost his power struggle to Nikita Khrushchev, he was astonished that he was merely demoted and not summarily shot.
This paranoia extends to foreign policy and national security. During the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union some 20 million Soviet citizens died and entire cities were destroyed. This history understandably left Russians with a permanent wariness about Germany and Western Europe.
For Russians, it’s always 1945. That’s also because victory in The Great Patriotic War is revered as Russia’s greatest accomplishment. Maybe the Americans landed a man on the moon, but Russians defeated Hitler. (In their view, single-handedly.) Fear of invasion from the west runs deep in the Russian psyche, rational or not.
For Russians, NATO is an existential threat. The Russian political figures I know are convinced that NATO and America in particular are intent on destroying the Russian state and stealing Russia’s natural resources. Many times, I tried in vain to explain that it is cheaper and easier just to buy Russian oil and natural gas at market prices than to invade and occupy Russia. But they see in America a gangster state in their own image.
The Kremlin establishment was also horrified by NATO enlargement. Russian political elites couldn’t understand that countries that had endured more than four decades of Russian occupation might wish to seek protection from future Russian aggression. Rather, in a classic example of projection, they saw NATO expansion as an act of aggressive intent directed at them.
Moscow saw the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 as yet another Western plot. Mass protests in Kyiv were met with shocking violence by the regime, and Yanukovych fled to Russia when his own security forces defected to the opposition. But in the paranoid imagination of the Kremlin this was just another anti-Moscow coup planned and executed by hostile powers, right in Moscow’s own backyard.
Now Russia is waging a ruthless war against Ukraine. Why? Ukraine was not going to join NATO anytime in the foreseeable future. The Kremlin fears a deeper working relationship between NATO and Ukraine. In their feverish nightmares, Ukraine would be a launching point for NATO tanks driving on Moscow. It matters not that nobody has any plans to invade and subjugate Russia.
And a conquest of Kyiv would show Washington and the rest of the world that Moscow is a power to be contended with, also capable of projecting power at will. A quick and easy defeat of Ukraine was meant to salve Russia’s wounded pride, to assure Putin and his minions that Russia matters on the world stage.
Things have not gone according to the Kremlin’s original plan. Defeat in Ukraine will not encourage introspection and humility. I fear that Russia will emerge even more dangerous than ever, having new grudges to nurse and even more prone to schizophrenic insecurities.
A psychoanalysis of Russians alone is not useful. Let’s get the Democrats on the couch with them.
A psychoanalysis of Russians alone is not useful. Let’s get the Democrats on the couch with them.
“I remember on Friday nights dozens of prostitutes soliciting clients right in front of the Russian parliament.”
Whores soliciting other whores.
L
Our Deep State makes the Russians look like pikers.
“Behind much of this profound sense of insecurity and inadequacy is the unexpected and inglorious collapse of the Soviet Union. Even though by the late 1980s the Soviet system was incapable of producing such simple basics as sausage and toilet paper, at least the Soviet Union was an undisputed superpower. For many Russians (particularly the men who serve at senior levels of government today) this provided some psychological comfort despite the material deprivations of Soviet life. And in a period of only two years, that system simply gave up the ghost, with no struggle to save itself.”
The Rooskies have been very successful in promoting supporters of the same political system here in the US.
We’re not all that far behind the USSR.
“America’s economy is fifteen times larger than Russia’s”
Russians eat a comparable amount of food and get a comparable amount of education and health care.
During that last job, I led a US military team into Bishkek Kirghizstan and I was assigned a Russian infantry company to me to unload aircraft, guard shipments/warehouses, and provide distribution support. At the end of the first week, the local commander invited me to dinner one evening and I was taken to a very highly secure building and when inside saw a bunch of party food laid out, a bunch of grim officers, and a very angry and obviously drunk colonel in charge.
He laid into me as soon as I was inside the door: "We don't need your aid - we're not a second-class power and those troops you have had working for you are the same young people you planned to kill the last 45 years. I resent your aircraft on my airfield and I would prefer it if you just left!"
I asked if I could speak and the colonel nodded. I said that "those troops he gave me were good kids and worked well for me and I liked them - could I keep them?" Some of the officers laughed at that. Then I said "about the humanitarian aid - it's a gesture of friendship from the US armed forces while Moscow is having difficulties to help your veteran's hospitals, orphanages, retirement homes. It's our hand extending to you in friendship." After a pause I said "you've seen the American economy - we could have the same problem soon enough - wouldn't you help us?"
At that point my drunk colonel smiled and said "let's eat!" and it was a lot of fun - he gave me a statue of Lenin that I still have.
It was just wounded pride.
We can only hope that Russia’s nukes are as out dated and shoddy as their conventional arsenal seems to be.
Biden’s puppeteers seem to be trying their hardest to drag us into WW3.
(Yes, I hope Ukraine kicks Russia’s a$$)
They see Ukraine as by rights a part of the historic Russian empire, that an independent Ukraine has no legitimacy. Russia cannot be whole until its borders are restored, not so much to Soviet times, but to its pre-Soviet territory.
Why now? I believe a couple of things played into it. One, the debacle in Kabul showed them that the current White House would not oppose them. And two, I suspect Putin got bad news from the doctor, so his time is now short. He wants to cement his place in history as the one who restored Russia to its historic borders.
He did not expect a real war. He believed that Kiev would collapse within days, and the whole operation would be relatively bloodless. He believed that a substantial portion of Ukrainians would welcome a return to the fold, and that the weak government in Kiev would simply flee. And he believed NATO would not interfere, that they had no interest in defending a country outside the alliance.
He miscalculated, and the result has been what we all see, an ugly and bloody slugfest that has killed thousands of Russians and Ukrainians alike, and has destroyed his legacy. He is determined to see it through, though, to try and forge some kind of victory that will make it all worth the cost.
“The Kremlin establishment was also horrified by NATO enlargement.”
They were specifically concerned about it on their borders; we’d be the same way if we had a border with ChiComs or North Korea. We invaded Mexico prior to our WWI involvement because the instability was crossing our border.
“Moscow saw the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 as yet another Western plot. Mass protests in Kyiv were met with shocking violence by the regime, and Yanukovych fled to Russia when his own security forces defected to the opposition.”
He was a Donbass guy I believe and many locals back home didn’t take it well. They felt cheated and fought for local autonomy. This led to Russia getting involved directly. That’s my understanding.
Russian paranoia (and accompanying inferiority complex) far predates the USSR. They have been being terrorized by their own national secret police since the 16th Century (Ivan the Terrible’s Oprichnina). And for most of two centuries before that they were persistent victims of persecution and extortion by a Muhammadan mafia (the Golden Horde) living in what today would be southern Ukraine. There to this day is a street in Moscow (Ulitsa Bolshaya Ordinka) named to commemorate the Muslims coming to collect their “tribute.”
It’s been ingrained in their culture for half a millennium.
This should be the epithet placed on the headstones of Leftists worldwide. It explains why all of the Fake News stories about Trump, were simply regurgitations of Hillary's crimes. It explains now why stories about all of Biden's failures are explained as "Russian dis-information". Whenever a Democrat accuses you of anything, investigate them for doing it.
It is not even close.
I have a close friend who was a missionary in Russia for several years. During a University class, there was a field trip, and he bought some meat to cook for the class. The Russian teacher told him it was the first meat she had eaten in years, because it was too expensive.
The Russian health care system is a joke. It is one of the reasons their life expectancy is five years lower than people in the United States.
The US is far from perfect, but we are a society where the poor people are fat.
Hillary told us it was the Russians and Trump. Projection. Our Democrats include 40% membership in DSSA or Dem Socialists of America, and some even in Communist Party USA. The first step is to outlaw these to organizations run from Russia. Russia traitors borne in the names of Maxine Waters, Bernie Sanders, Hillary, Obama, Biden, or the Chinese kind like Biden, Hillary, Mitch Mc(r), etc., are the worst. They have pushed Americans into the socialist camp for profit. Someday Biden is going on bended knee to give a Marines sword to Val and Xi in a ceremony at the UN at this rate.
“They see Ukraine as by rights a part of the historic Russian empire, that an independent Ukraine has no legitimacy. Russia cannot be whole until its borders are restored, not so much to Soviet times, but to its pre-Soviet territory.”
It is my understanding that the “Rus” have developed a split. That which has been under Polish influence is Ukrainian. Modern Russia comes from the expanding control and area of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
Ukraine as a political entity dates from the time of the Russian Revolution, when the cultural entity of Ukraine was expanded to become a political entity by Ukrainians, who saw an opportunity to do so with the dowwfall of the Czar and the occupation of area by the Central Powers. The Russians in Moscow were fighting for survival and had to accept a new political entity called Ukraine.
Most of the territory now occupied by Russian forces was once held by Moslems. This is not the first invasion of these areas by Russian forces.
Our poor people are fat because they eat junk food.
I was in Paris and did not see obese people. In the Louvre, when I saw fat people I waited for them say some English. One time I heard some German.
The French eat well.
An excellent write-up in my opinion. While there are some minor disputes, the thrust is certainly correct. A factor to add on the Russian psyche is that while paranoia is a major factor, the general population appears to be far more subservient than one would find in the developed world. However much is from the old Soviet Union and how much is from the ‘natural’ psyche is unknowable but it is inarguable that it exists.
The greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century was allowing communist East Germany to take over West Germany. German unification has been a disaster for Free Europe. It did what Hitler could never do, which was to take over and control all of Europe using Brussels as it’s proxy. /spit
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.