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The Russia That Might Have Been

On two separate occasions, Russia was SO CLOSE to avoiding their Communist future.

Bill is back from three months in the Soviet Gulags and execution cells with a story of What Might Have Been — not because of the recent invasion of Ukraine but rather in 1906 and 1917. On two separate occasions, Russia was SO CLOSE to avoiding their Communist future. Steve and Scott help break down this heartbreaking true story.

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38 replies on “The Russia That Might Have Been”

In September of 1863, the Tsar sent the Russian fleet to NYC as a display of support during our Civil War, to successfully discourage Britain and France from entering the war on the side of the dconfederacy.

Excellent historical overview, Bill. I’ll opine a bit here because you’re in my wheelhouse. I was a USAF Russian Language Analyst in the USAF back during the Cold War and flew on hundreds of recon missions along the shores of the old Soviet Union. After serving 11 years I let my enlistment end in 1992, just after the USSR Broke up. Later that year I moved to Moscow as an evangelical missionary, so I was living there during the post-Soviet Chaos and economic collapse that occurred when some former Communist bosses were acquiring the old Soviet state-owned industries at pennies on the dollar and becoming the first generation of oligarchs.
During my service as a missionary I also spent time in Ukraine and Belarus, and got to know the people in all three countries up close and personal.
The training I received in the USAF started in the Defense Language Institute, but I continued studying the culture and history of the USSR and then Russia and the post-Soviet republics.
While I was there there was a documentary film that makes essentially the same point that you have put forth in this video. The title of the documentary was “Россия – Которую Мы Потеряли” The Russia that We Lost. The documentary covers the same cultural phenomenon your video describes, what Steve says is “The Russia that Might Have Been” and covers in detail the cultural accomplishments of Russia particularly from the time of Peter the Great up to the November Revolution. Even as late as 1917 Russia was emerging as a European democracy. The February Revolution put in place a democratic government after the abdication of Alexander II, but the reformist Kerensky government was unable to stand against the violent opportunism of the gang of thugs that took power and created the Soviet Union.
Beginning under the short leadership of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) the purges that destroyed the Russian educated classes began, but the destruction of the Russian culture became a major industry when Stalin took power after Lenin’s death in February 1923. Lenin and Stalin were responsible for more deaths in the USSR before WWII began than the Third Reich caused from 1939-1945 – with tens of millions slaughtered and millions more sent to internal exile in the Gulag Archipelago.
The effect was the wholesale destruction of Russian culture. But Russians are tough, smart, and resourceful. They began to bounce back culturally during the 1990s even as the corruptocrats and oligarchs were slicing up the country’s economy for themselves.
Boris Yeltsin was a true reformer when he began to lead the country toward democracy after the August Coup in 1991 that began the final collapse of the USSR, but he was flawed by alcoholism and weak leadership, and handicapped by the lack of any framework for post-Soviet government in the chaos that followed the USSR’s collapse on Christmas Day in 1991. I was living in Moscow in the first couple of years of that period.
Putin engineered his rise to power, rising from a KGB functionary to become deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and putting together the Ozero Cooperative which became his inner circle when he got to Moscow.
Yeltsin appointed Putin as head of the FSB, the agency which was previously the KGB, and Putin became Deputy Prime MInister and then Prime Minister in 1999. It was in September of 1999 when Putin’s FSB engineered the bombing of Russian apartment buildings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk that killed over 200 Russian civilians, all so Putin could blame the bombings on Chechens as justification for the war against the breakaway Caucaucus region of Chechnya, and use the war to launch his political career. Just a few short months later, Boris Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve, 1999 on the eve of the new millennium, and ceded Presidential authorities to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin effective January 1, 2000.
Putin, now in power for 23 years, has led Russia back into totalitarianism, ending free and open elections. Putin laughs at Stalin’s old dictum, “It’s not who votes who count, it’s those who count the votes”. He’s one-upped Stalin with a new way of doing elections, where it’s not even who counts the votes, but who decides who’s allowed to run for office that determines who wins.
The Russian strongman has overseen a dismantlement of all political rights of Russian citizens, who still enjoy a degree of economic freedoms but basically have outsourced all political thought and action to Putin, who has basically become the only politician in Russia. Russians are no longer citizens, but subjects under Putin, with all opposition press first declared “Foreign Agents” and then either “Undesirable” or “Extremist” organizations and banned altogether.
He did this in the lead-up to the senseless, illegal, invasion of Ukraine, an emerging democratic country that began turning away from Russia with the Orange Revolution of 2004, leading to the election of pro-Democracy President Vikor Yushchenko in 2005. But Putin’s acolytes were still active in Ukraine, trying to undermine democracy and steer the emerging pro-Western capitalist country back toward Russia, engineering the election of Putin puppet Viktor Yanukovych in 2010. Yanukovych shut down democratic reforms and the westward-oriented direction of the country and tried to make Ukraine a Russian vassal again, resulting in the 2014 EuroMaidan revolution that forced him to flee to his Russian masters.
Putin already had military insurgents in the Eastern Ukraine region called the Donetsk Basin (Donbass), who fomented the separatist movementsin Donetsk and Lugansk and began a war of skirmishes with Ukraine. Before the westward-looking government could get on its feet, Putin invaded Crimea and seized the Black Sea peninsula without a shot being fired, beginning the illegal occupation of the Peninsula, declaring it a part of Russia in blatant violation of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in which Russia, the US, and the UK agreed to protect Ukrainian territorial integrity in return for Ukraine’s ceding all its nuclear weapons to Russia’s care, and also in violation of the Minsk Agreement to a ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine.
Putin has systematically jailed and killed opposition journalists and politicians including Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 and Presidential candidate Boris Nemtsov in 2015, and has poisoned Russian expatriates in Britain including Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, who died after being poisoned with radioactive polonium, and Sergei Skripal who survived being poisoned with the internationally banned chemical warfare agent Novichok in 2018. The chemical weapon two Russian GRU agents used poisoned a British constable, who survived and the discarded perfume atomizer the GRU assassins used was found by a civilian named Charlie Rowley and given to his girlfriend Dawn Sturgess. Rowley survived exposure to the chemical weapon but Dawn Sturgess died. Russia never allowed the perpetrators of either attack to be investigated.
This leads me to the distressing segment of my fellow conservatives here in teh US who don’t know anything about Russia or Ukraine who have bought the story that somehow Ukraine is the totalitarian state and Russia’s Putin is somehow a protector of traditional values against a woko-globo-homo cabal of progressives. They listen to people informed by American analysts who regularly appear on Russian propaganda television, people like former colonel Douglas MacGregor, who still spouts the nonsense that Russia is the victim in this war and that Ukraine was the agressor, and convicted pedophile Scott Ritter, whose nonsense is so incoherent it is almost impossible to follow.
Ukrainians are people fighting for the same freedoms that American patriots fought for from 1775-1782, an invasion by a colonial empire, but the British Empire was far more civilized than the brutish horde that is the Russian Army.
Ukraine is winning thanks to aid from the US and our European allies. Those who say this isn’t our war deceive themselves – if Putin is allowed to roll over Ukraine, he will be emboldened to enter the Baltic nations and Poland, all of whom are our NATO allies, and then we will be obligated by Treaty to defend them just as if the US itself was invade under NATO Article V.
Using only 5% of the US defense budget, Ukraine with our aid has been able already to reduce Putin’s military capability by half, and reduced Russia’s army by a full Battalion Tactical Group (600-1000 troops) each day. If Russia can be defeated in Ukraine and their military capability reduced, then they will no longer be able to threaten the Baltics and Poland. I’m a little prejudiced especially about Poland, since my wife is from there and so I have family there.
Those who suggest that Ukraine is a “territorial dispute” or “not our war” are making a cardinal mistake. Ukrainians are the natural allies of American constitutionalists and conservatives. They do not want to be Putin’s serfs. They want to live in a free European country, and right now they are defending Europe from Putin’s Russia as surely as Jan Sobieski defended Europe from the Ottoman horde at the Battle of Vienna. Ukrainians are defending Europe and Western values of freedom and democracy. We see what Putin has done to Russia, and would do to Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland if unchecked. Defeating Putin’s army in Ukraine will be a great return on investment and also help to shape the future of Europe, with Poland and Ukraine emerging with new and greater influence in the course of Europe’s history going forward.

Excellent synopsis of the situation both in Russia proper and Ukraine, and the war between the two.

I hope people take the time to read what you’ve said here. Especially those people who think that Vladimir Putin has somehow magically become the champion of western conservative values. Putin’s a snake and when a snake sheds its skin, it does not become something other than a bigger snake.

We have the opportunity now to not only stop Russian expansion to the East but to exsanguinate Russian military power. We should make good use of both opportunities.

Many so-called Conservatives here in America are more reactionary than conservative. They are looking for any excuse to oppose anything the Biden Administration does. This is stupidity on the same level as Biden’s reactionary policies on Trump accomplishments and doctrines. A prime example is “Trump wanted to build a wall on our southern border so we’re going to open our southern border up completely.” That is unwise and unsound and adopting the same reactionary attitudes on our side is just as unwise and unsound.

I despise the Biden Administration but that’s not the issue. The issue is Russia.

I don’t really give a flying fig for Ukraine either. I wish them well but the freedom and independence of Ukraine is a byproduct of a much, much larger issue. The issue is Russia.

In my view if Ukraine can be saved and Russia soundly repulsed that’s a big plus for Ukraine but … It’s an even bigger plus for the West to put that damn Russian Bear back in his cage before he eats half of Europe. Again.

This is what that war is all about. When people hold forth to the contrary, it’s clear they don’t have a grasp on the situation.

It’s hard for me not to care about these people. As a missionary I lived among them in Russia and Ukraine and Belarus, got to know and love these people. I hate what Putin has done in Russia and caused in Belarus and Ukraine as well.
The other part of the Ukraine war that most Americans don’t realize is that a Ukraine victory also holds forth the best chance we’ve seen in history for an end to Putin’s regime. When Putin falls, his puppet Yanukovych falls in Belarus, and Svitlana Tsikhonouskaya can return to Minsk and take her place as the lawfully elected President of Belarus.
Meanwhile a group of former Russian Parliamentarians have been meeting as a future government in exile in Warsaw. All of these people have been elected as members of Russia’s parliament. One of the leaders is Ilya Ponomarev, who was the only member of the Duma to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which is why he is living outside Russia now.
The “Congress of People’s Deputies” is the name of the body, named for the Russian Parliament during the Yeltsin years. They are putting together a draft constitution and codex of legislation for a two-year interim period following the end of Putin’s regime, to be followed by free and open elections.
The bottom line is, Ukraine’s victory is not only about Ukraine and Europe, but could mean freedom for Russia and Belarus as well. And I for one very much want to see a free and prosperous Russia that is a member of the community of nations, a friend and trading partner to its neighbors instead of a bully and a paranoid dictatorship that tells its people they are surrounded by enemies.
For the record I cast my first vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and remain a committed conservative to this day. I am not a fan of the current administration either, but I am glad of our support for Ukraine for the sake of our own interests, also those of Europe, and, yes, those of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia as well.
Salute from an old zoomie to my USMC brother!

Salute returned 🙂

When I think about these things I look at them from a purely political perspective. I’m a Christian too, though never was a missionary and probably not as “good” a Christian as you are. (Which incidentally motivates a great deal of gratitude from me. I know the sins I need to have forgiven.) I learned early in my adult life that my heart could not withstand the heartbreak of sympathizing and empathizing with every person in the world who’s suffering. I just can’t do it and I wonder sometimes if anyone can except for Jesus himself.

There’s a lot of bad in the world. The more of the world you see, the more obvious that becomes. Americans are spoiled, and I’m glad of that but it does cause some consternation at times.

So when I say “I don’t give a flying fig about Ukraine” I’m speaking from a purely political viewpoint. As I said, I don’t see any way to get Putin out of Ukraine that does not benefit Ukraine directly and that’s a good thing that I’m glad of in regards to the Ukrainians. That said, the future of Ukrainian politics sans Russia is at best a tertiary concern for me personally.

You obviously know the situation on the ground better as far as prospects for the future goes. One attains that kind of insight by close contact and I spent very little time East of the Iron Curtain. Very little but not none, just for the record.

I’ll defer to your superior knowledge of the actual people involved. You have stated details I’m not aware of but you’ve said nothing (much) that I don’t agree with. I’m a bit more iffy than you about the prospects for improvement in the political situation in Russia post Putin. Russians are Russians and in my experience, not speaking of individuals but of the national character — To put it kindly they’re prone to a degree of dastardliness not found in the West.

Thus I hold little confidence that when Putin is gone the Russians won’t just produce another two-faced, backstabbing dictator cut from the same cloth.

That seems to me to be a pattern with Russia and the Russian national character.

Another thing I learned as a young adult is to never, ever trust a Russian (troop, leadership individual, or politician). It was a lesson I hammered home to my son when he enlisted. He would go on to the rank of Commander in the U.S. Navy, now retired, and we’ve had many conversations about this topic in the intervening years. He;s thanked me many times for this lesson as the validity of it became increasingly obvious to him.

One thing Russians I have known and had to interact with has been utterly consistent in my own experience. When it comes to Russia there’s no such thing as being too paranoid.

If we can put the Russian Bear back in his cage then even if Russia once again succumbs to its lust for Dictators, at least the next one will be put on notice that westward expansion is not a good idea.

Taking a long hard look at the information we have now regarding Russian military capacity, I don’t see anything but lack of resolve that might keep us from re-caging that Bear. It’s not a matter of ‘Can we do it?’, it’s more a matter of ‘Do we have the will to do it?’.

Conservatives advocating for Russian victory in Ukraine are culpably confused and sap that will with a vengeance. That reactionary stance is going to be reflected in the choice of political candidates and their platforms here in the U.S.

I’m lucky to have begun my training in the USAF, which helped me to have some insight, but I need to correct something in your comment – I’m NOT a better Christian. My life isn’t an example of what a Christian should be – it’s more of a warning. I’m not a great Christian. I’m a great Sinner, but I serve a Great Savior, whose grace is my only strength, for which I am eternally grateful.

You had a typo there. It is Lukashenko who runs Belarus, not Yanukovich. He predates Putin by a decade, but yes, is completely dependent on him for survival.

Thanks for the correction. Of course I know it’s Luka in Belarus. Egg on my face.

What will follow might be considered a fly in your ointment, but it is how I saw things and how I see them now.

Just for the record, before I start, I think Russia is dead wrong in this conflict, an aggressor and a villain, and it should be defeated (not very likely in my opinion, unfortunately) or at least stopped and forced to return the territory it occupied. Ukraine is in the right and is the victim of aggression, and it should be helped to victory.

I was born and grew up in Moscow. Lived there through Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov and Gorbachov eras of the Soviet Union, as well as the beginning of the Yeltsin era of governing Russia, the hungry start of the early 90s.
I was part of the human chain that formed around the Russian White House (Parliament building) on the second (I think) night of the August ’91 anti-Gorbachov coup. My father was there the first (or was it second) day in the place where tanks killed the three boys. My mother and I then went to form a human shield for Yeltsin and his reformers cooped up in the White House, waiting for the tanks and paratroopers to show up and finish the job. In the event, the tanks never did show up, and in the morning the reformers were out on the balcony telling us through a bullhorn that the coup has been defeated and Gorbachov was flying back to Moscow.

Two years later, in 1993, some of those same reformer comrades of Yeltsin were again cooped up in that same White House. This time Yeltsin did move the tanks against them and did order them to open fire. Which they did. But I was already here by then and too preoccupied with trying to build a life and earn a living to pay much attention to what was happening back there. Plus, I just wanted all that darkness (and that is how it is in my mind’s eye) behind me, so for at least 10 years I did not purposefully keep tabs on their politics and goings on in general.

My wife is from Eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv to be precise, where the majority of population is ethnically Russian, and Russian is (was) the spoken language.
I never did force myself to go back to Russia for a visit, but my wife and I did go to Kharkiv to visit her remaining family in 2007.
Yuschenko was president at the time, they were hopeful in their attempts to come closer to become European, and in the grip of never-ending demonstrations and other democratic processes, which was good to watch, but gave an indication of how unstable they were.
To my wife and me, the visit was thoroughly depressing. It was a third world country, as far as infrastructure/appearance, etc. were concerned.
We visited my wife’s old teacher at one of the most prestigious hospitals (some former student pulled the strings, as is usually the case, “blat”, if you know the term), where she was with a broken hip. That was like being dunked into a nightmare I thought I would never see again.
We went to visit one of my wife’s friends, still within the city limits, but on the outskirts. They don’t have running water, and their sanitary facilities is an outhouse. This is in a city the size of Boston, in the 21 century. The cabby said that had he known ahead of time we’d be going there, he wouldn’t have agreed. The roads are infamous for ripping axels off cars.
Corruption is everywhere and deep and unending. I think Ukraine is considered one of the 5 most corrupt countries in the world, and that is saying something, considering they are bordering Russia and Belarus.
One of my wife’s closest friends introduced us to her boyfriend, who had the look, eyes and mannerisms of a mid-level gangster. While meeting with us (!), he took a roll of bills from that girlfriend of his, my wife’s friend. I think he was her “roof” (you know the term, right?) and that was protection money she paid him for her business. He turned out to be a police lieutenant.

On our arrival, their customs “lost” a bag of mine that contained some accessories for my digital camera and some other items (I wasn’t stupid enough to leave the camera itself in checked in luggage). They had brought the rest of the suitcases, but that bag was missing.
I asked if somebody could go back to the tarmac and look for it, maybe it just fell off. They laughed in my face.
On the way back somebody asked me if I wanted to pay extra (quite a bit extra) to have my luggage tightly wrapped in cellophane. They strongly hinted that that will “help insure nothing got lost.” Of course, I agreed.

Around that time, my wife’s family, who is part ethnically Ukrainian, part Russian and part Jewish, and who, being in Eastern Ukraine, had Russian as their native tongue, was grumbling about the Ukrainian government’s policy towards Eastern Ukraine. How they were forced to use Ukrainian everywhere including schools. How back in the 90s there were entire schools without native Ukrainian speakers, but when inspectors came from Kiev, acting like komissars of old, everyone had to pretend to teach in Ukrainian, even though there were no textbooks in it. The situation was even more heavy-handed in Donbass, where the population is pretty much entirely Russian and never has identified with Ukraine. The same was the case in the Crimea, which was not even part of Ukraine until Khruschev just gave it to her in 1954 when he came to power.

That grumbling (among my wife’s family and most of Eastern Ukraine outside of Donbass) stopped cold when Russia annexed Ukraine. And yes, it was a widely popular move in Russia (the concatenated new word, “krymnash”, “Crimea-is-ours”, became part of the vocabulary). It was also widely popular in Crimea itself, whose almost entirely Russian population never really considered itself Ukrainian, and which was cleansed by Stalin of the indigenous Tatars, who were only allowed to return from their areas of deportation in 1980s (!!!), and who, I suspect, view both Russians and Ukrainians as occupiers.
From what I saw in my wife’s family, there was a sudden resurgence of interest in Ukrainian culture, language and customs in Kharkiv, etc. after that. Nothing unifies a people like a foreign aggression. The rhetoric of it works for Putin to get his people to solidify around him, and the actual aggression from him certainly worked to unify the Ukrainians. The same people who were grumbling about Kiev forcing them into speaking Ukrainian during our visit in 2007 were now diehard Ukrainian patriots wearing traditional Ukrainian vyshivankis and occasionally even trying to speak Ukrainian among themselves.
Now, after the war started, that sentiment is, of course, a hundredfold stronger.

Something that I am personally very attuned to is antisemitism, and Ukraine (and Ukrainians) have traditionally been some of the worst at that. Most of the Jews murdered in Ukraine during the Nazi occupation were ferreted out and killed by Ukrainian collaborators, not Germans themselves. I believe they were worse than the Poles in that regard. Definitely worse than the Russians (and I escaped Russia in huge part because of Russian antisemitism, of which I have lived plenty). That antisemitism predated WWII, and it continued after the war.
It is my impression that it is still there. It is still very popular to blame all the world’s ills on the Jews, Jewish bankers, etc. The standard stuff.
Ironically, having an (ethnically, if not in any other way) Jewish president in Zelensky can coexist with that general antisemitism just fine. Even on the governmental level, where everything they do now is devoted to being as un-Russian as they can manage, there is one area in which they are touchingly in unison with Putin’s government. Every single time there is a UN vote about Israel, Ukraine turns against the U.S. and its other allies (including even generally anti-Israel Europeans!) and votes in-step with Putin and Iran. Every. Single. Time. Including recently when they comically voted for a resolution demanding that Israel surrendered its nukes. While at the same time (justly) complaining that it was nuclear disarmament forced on them in the 90s by the West in exchange for empty guarantees of territorial integrity, that played into their current predicament.

Then we get into what they are now politically.
Zelensky did ban opposition parties at the start of the war, even though they have renounced the Russian aggression and vowed of their members to fight as any other Ukrainian citizen (and to my knowledge do so). He did nationalize TV news channels. There is censorship. They are at war for their survival. They are probably justified in doing some of it, especially given the gigantic number of ethnic Russians who had always considered themselves Russians, the benevolent Elder Brothers in the Great Soviet Union and Russian Empire before that, and are suddenly second class citizens in what under the Tzars was officially known as Lesser Russia (or Small Russia).

So yes, Ukraine is a thoroughly corrupt, chaotic, somewhat despotic (at the moment, perhaps necessarily) country, not a Jeffersonian Empire of Law that we would like to see and our politicos pretend it is. It is, however, undoubtedly closer to that ideal than Russia is. It has a far higher degree of individualism in its national character. To a large extent that is probably because serfdom has not been widespread there nearly to the degree it was in Russian proper, and they have not “integrated” themselves, so to speak, into the “mainland” Russian mentality.
It is still completely statist and collectivist, with people expecting the State to take care of them cradle to grave, but so is the rest of Europe.
All that said, I believe that, given a chance, it can grow into a European country that is less corrupt, more law abiding and respectful of rights, whereas I do not believe that in regards to Russia in any foreseeable future.

More importantly to us, for the West to survive, I think Russian aggression needs to be stopped and reversed. They should not find themselves in a position to do this again, or to attack other NATO countries that they consider part of their lost Empire and thus rightfully theirs, which they do, en masse, in their population.
We should also be weary of their growing alliance with China. Frankly, I don’t know what we could do about that, aside from making sure Putin’s Russia is a definite loser in its attempt at conquest and thus turning it into a net liability for the Chinese instead of a valued ally.

In the end, we need to keep helping Ukraine win this war, out of our own self-interest.

Very good points all – and on the whole I don’t see anything other than an honest assessment. I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence especially.

Thank you.
People like to see the world and black and white. Something is either all good or all bad. If a country is our ally, it is a beacon of democracy. If it is a third-world sh*t**le, to use Trump’s phrase, then it is the worst enemy.
Politicians certainly like to show recipients of aid in the best light, so Ukraine is suddenly presented as something it is not.
I can see how this is tempting when trying to convince the population to spend billions of dollars on somebody else far away, but lying is counterproductive. If they are downplaying Ukraine’s corruption, then what else are they lying about? Maybe the whole aggressor/victim narrative? And suddenly we have a large bunch of conservatives, rightly distrustful of the MSM, actively willing to believe that it is Ukraine that is the villain, simply because the Biden regime says it is the other way around.
But a country can be a corrupt mess and a victim of aggression worthy of help at the same time. Especially when it is in our selfish interest to do so.

It’s fascinating talking to you two and reading what you have to say about the situation current in Ukraine. I admit to some confirmation bias as with less depth and more distance I see things virtually the same way. Everything you guys say reinforces my own opinions.

Less depth because unlike either of you I never lived in Ukraine or Russia. Even so I still have way, way more depth on these issues than the common, well meaning American voter does.

More distance because my AO was largely free Europe and the Middle East. At a ratio of about 30% Europe and about 70% Middle East. A lot of operations in either area are tied to goings on in the other. Operating in those areas one cannot help but brush sleeves with Russians on a regular basis. What I know about Russians is from personal experience not some theory espoused by a Leftist academician in a text book on a dusty shelf somewhere.

Particulars aside, Russia is the real threat. Full stop.

Putin is begging for aid and money from Xe Xin Ping. If he fails to accomplish his goals in Ukraine, and the rest of Europe, that’s going to make him a liability to China. Defeating the Bear also puts the Panda on his heels too.

A lot of so-called Conservatives think Ukraine is none of our business and should be abandoned to whatever fate Russia has in mind for it. That’s just about the worst thing I can imagine happening as far as long term goals are concerned.

I had no idea that “The Russia We Lost” I referred to in my post was available on YouTube. Here’s the link. It’s a powerful documentary, but in Russian.
Produced by Stanislave Goroyukhin, 1992.
https://youtu.be/5Aygl7ybmlg

The narration in Russian is very clear, and the auto-translated Closed captioning, while imperfect, gives enough translation to follow the narration. Click the CC icon to turn on auto-captions in Russian, then click the gear icon and choose auto-translation with English as the destination language.

A suggestion for Bill …

You have to have done a ton of research on your series for the Daily Wire. I’m sure you couldn’t use all of it. Use the pared away bits for Right Angles. The subscribership needs to know more about Russia and the problems it presents. Too many people think of Russia as just another European nation with European issues. Correcting that, and giving us opportunity to discuss it, would be doing the subscribership a great service.

Sorry, I disagree that “it might have been.”
When in the mid-90s, with the Evil Empire just broken apart and everyone so full of hope, my colleagues would often ask me when I think the New Russia will become part of the Enlightened Western Civilization. My answer was “if they can manage to keep to their new declared principles of liberty, it might happen in another two-three centuries.”
I was not taken seriously, because I was a newly arrived immigrant from the belly of the beast, full of grievances, so I was biased and could not be objective.
They didn’t manage it for three centuries. Not even for 10 years. Not even 5, really.
There is such a thing as a mentality of a people. A national character. Whatever you want to call it.
The Russians are different from the Americans or the British or even the Germans. Or the Poles. Or even the Ukrainians. They just are. Cross a border between Russia and Ukraine and look at houses of peasants/farmers. The difference is startling.
From 1/3 to 2/3 of Russian population (depending on locality) has been slaves for hundreds of years. Longer than slavery was a thing in what became the United States. Bill is wrong, serfs in Russia were bought and sold, both officially for about a century (mid-17th to mid-18th) and unofficially with a wink and a nod when it was theoretically outlawed before and after. It is common in Russian literature and history to call Russian serfdom slavery. Their second greatest poet Lermontov called Russia “the land of slaves, the land of masters.”
And they kept being a nation of slaves even when emancipated.
Because long slavery leaves a mark on a population. Oppressing people is just half the problem with it. The other, and more insidious half, is that it breeds a population for whom their entire life is a dependency. It destroys the whole notion of initiative and self-reliance. And all of that stays with them.
Being free is hard work.
In my opinion, one of the major reasons why the Communists were able to enslave the peasants back (and it was indeed serfdom for them) was that they were ready for it. They just reverted to norm. Along with the rest of the population. On both sides of the enslavement.
The Russians want a tzar. They want a strong arm to govern them. A popular notion is that if a husband beats his wife, that means he loves her. A popular saying equates respect with fear. A common idea is that “the tzar-father is kind, but doesn’t know what is going on, the boyars (high nobility) keep it from him.” A population like becoming a jeffersonian republic does not hinge on whether some reformer does or does not get shot.
They want a Tzar-Father, and Putin gave them what they want.

I’ve been trying to tell anyone who will listen that exact same thing for decades. All of that and more but the really important part is Russians are not like us, do not try to think of them in the terms with which you are familiar. They may as well be from another planet and no amount of anthropomorphization is going to make them understandable to the common people of the United States and the Greater West.

Bill puts this very, very well in the first episode of the series he’s been creating for The Daily Wire. When we looked across the Iron Curtain we only saw what we wanted to see, a reflection of ourselves that is no more Russian than a crocodile on the Nile. They saw their reflection when they looked in our direction, they saw us as being like them and we absolutely are not.

The big problem is that until average people in the Free First World understand this, we as a people will continue to fail to deal with Russia in any sort of effective means. Our ‘solutions’ do not solve those particular problems because we don’t even know what the question is. Let alone the answer.

I understand this, I’ve been trying for my whole life since I learned this in my early 20’s, to help people on our side understand too. It appears that you also understand and I’m grateful for another voice added to the effort to get across to our brother citizens what does and does not work with Russia, and why.

Of all the words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.
Russia was close to being part of western society; but failed twice. That is the definition of tragedy.
As to Putin learning from his grandfather who the heroes of Russia really were and wanting to be one of them; well I think about the lessons I learned from Grandfather who fled Italy Post WWI and with the rise of Mussolini. I can see it.

I’m not sure I agree. No, I can’t dispute the history presented in this video. It’s all factual. However, I can’t agree without reservation the conclusions. What Bill Whittle overlooks is the character of the Russian peoples. They are a suspicious people. Let me offer an example. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the world was being mapped. The mapmakers were explorers who kept accurate records and drawings of the places they explored. Their tools included the surveyors transit, a small telescope mounted atop a tall tripod. One Russian guard witnessing a mapmaker at work didn’t recognize this equipment, and shot and killed the mapmaker out of fear that he was up to no good. I don’t know about you, but if I see someone doing something I don’t recognize, I might be curious. I might ask about it (given the chance). I sure as hell wouldn’t murder the person, would you? There are countless other examples I could cite, but I’d rather simply shut up and allow you to watch the video and draw your own conclusions. Just keep in mind that no other people in the world accepted the Republican form of government described in our Constitution. Not even Winston Churchill wanted any parts of it. He preferred having the power to strip people of their rights when necessary, and he did when he felt the need. Given the opportunity as described by Bill, they passed…

Two thoughts: I have always accepted the assertion that Karinsky’s provisional government was doomed because he insisted that Russia continue with the fighting of the Great War. The Russian citizenry was sick of the war, and enraged over the corruption coursing through the munitions procurement process, which resulted in the troops marching off to battle without weapons, being told to scavage a rifle from a dead soldier along the way . An American named Negley Farson wrote a memoir (Way of a Transgressor I believe it is called) which included his days trying to close arms sales deals with the aristocrats in charge.
My second thought might be considered fanciful, but if ever a population needed their Second Amendment gun ownership rights, it was the Russians of early 20th Century.

We are no longer dealing with the Soviets and Putin was a low level staffer with the KGB not an agent I suggest you look to Robert Barns and Viva Frei for more information sadly Bill is stuck with outdated information Putin has am over 80% approval rating in Russia today.

An 80% approval rating in a poll done by a Russian news agency? Not what I am hearing from my eastern European family members.

I occasionally, when I feel I am up to it, read what regular Russians (in Russia) write. I also read what some of my friends, other Soviet/Russian emigrants, but who still have relatives/friends there, write about their interaction with those relatives/friends.
Unfortunately, it is not about polling agencies. Russian approval of “their boys” fighting in Ukraine is real. Some of them (not a majority, from what I saw) might have disapproved of the invasion initially, but by now are all in, because now it is about supporting “their boys.” And because what else can they do. And because life goes on. And because far from everybody is willing or able or has an opportunity to drop everything and start from scratch somewhere else. And so they, including those theoretically opposed to Putin’s government, do buy into any reasoning put up by their state propaganda that allows them to rationalize this away.
From what I hear, the vast majority of men called up just show up. They don’t try to avoid going, like people did en masse during the Chechen Wars or even in my time, when so many families did everything they could to avoid getting their kids shipped to Afghanistan. Now? People just show up. Because “their country needs them, and that’s what men do.”
And hey, if their son/husband gets killed, they get a something like 10 million rubles (7.5 from the federal government plus 1-3 from their local province). That is A LOT of money for a family outside of Moscow/St.Petersburg. Their “flyover country” is basically a wasteland with generations of people living with zero prospects. Life there is terrible and hopeless. I would bet that support for Putin outside the above two cities is not 80%, it is likely close to 100.

Samuel thanks for the reply. I guess my first question would be: Is the support for “their boys” really the same as support for Putin? Is there a belief at all that without Putin, their boys would be able to come home?
A general support for the soldier is not the same as support for the head of the government. But, as you well know, Russians don’t think the same as people of eastern european decent who have always lived in America.

<< Is there a belief at all that without Putin, their boys would be able to come home?>>
Ron, for them that is the wrong question. The right question is, is it a duty for the boys to die for their country? And the leader, who represents the country, says that is what the country needs.
They pretty much equate Putin with Russia. They can’t not do it. They’ve done it for centuries.
In 1914, they went into battle yelling “For the Tzar, for the Faith, for the Motherland.” In 1941, they died with the words “For the Motherland, for Stalin.”
Can you picture an American Marine or Soldier sacrificing his life in a hopeless attack with the name of <insert-name-of-president> on his lips? The very notion is absurd, laughable, right?
They are just different. They think differently. Their values are different.
“Their boys” are dying for Mother Russia, and it is their duty to do so. Putin, being the new Tzar-Father figure (and cosplaying Stalin while he is at it) is an inseparable part of the “Mother Russia” thing. In my childhood one of the never changing slogans (you can see it painted on red banners in any footage of numerous parades) was “the People and the Party are One.” Same deal. The figurehead changed. The devotion didn’t.
The “special military operation” (he has prohibited them from calling it a war, it was a felony for one to do so, probably still is) is made into a new Great Patriotic War (except don’t call it a war), defending Mother Russia against the Ukrainian Nazis and encroaching NATO.
This unifies them, and they do believe it. Not least because they want to. Nobody wants to feel like a “baddie.” It weighs on one. People will convince themselves they are in the right no matter what they do. That part of human nature is generic. But some do it easier than others.

There is a famous Russian play/book that discusses participation of regular people in evil, “The Dragon” by Evgeny Schwartz. It was only unbanned in the late 80s.
One of the servants of the (dictator) Dragon, a former friend of the protagonist, defends himself by saying that it wasn’t his fault, he was taught to do what he did. The protagonist says “Everybody was taught it. But why did you choose to be the best student?”
When it comes to building themselves a totalitarian system, the Russians (and the Chinese for that matter) are the best students. They are just good at it.

Samuel, thank you for your insights. You’ve given us much to think about in just a few paragraphs.
As Americans, one of the things we’ve always known in general terms is it doesn’t matter if my neighbor is of Italian/Polish/German/English/Kenyan . . . decent, we all basically think in a similar, having grown up here. We believe that on a basic level, we all want the same things.
But here you throw a wrench pointing out that for 100+ years, Russians have not thought the same way.
We all see through our own prism. And this also points out that using the color of one’s skin as any type of determinant is foolish at its root. The Caucasus Mountains divide Eastern Europe and Western Asia after all. It doesn’t get much more Caucasian then my Polish ancestors and the Russians of the western part of Russian.
Yet, we see and think differently based on where we grew up.
Luck of the draw as much as anything.

Ron,
A word of caution. Immigrants are (in general) different from the population from which they depart. There is self-selection going on with that. It is the most individualistic people who can cut the ties and start from scratch in the land of “there be dragons,” often without even knowing the language. It is an atypical Russian or Ukrainian or Iranian who would want to drop everything and come to America in search of a better life or more freedom. Often, when they run from something, as opposed to to something, they are usually dissatisfied precisely with the national character we are discussing, and they make their move to wholly adopt the ideal that their new country is supposed to be, as opposed to what it actually is.

Of course, there are also those who bring their mentality with them, including cradle-to-grave entitlement.
But in my experience with other Soviet immigrants, those are a small minority. The vast majority of my generation and earlier integrated without a backwards glance and did their best to build a life for themselves and their children.

True what you say. My maternal grandfather was fleeing the rise of Mussolini and actual fascism.

… and that’s one of the problems with getting people to understand Russia and Russians. An 80% approval rate for Putin doesn’t equate to what an 80% approval rate for an American President would represent. It’s comparing apples to alligators, it doesn’t mean the same thing there as it does here.

Yet Americans will point to an 80% approval of Putin as if that meant something they can understand and draw an equivalency with in their own experience. It absolutely does not. Every time I see an American do something like that I cringe because what they’re demonstrating is their utter lack of grasp for the situation and they THINK they understand it. Which makes it nearly impossible to educate them on the actual situation.

Putin was a low level staffer and Stalin was a nobody thug. Russia has a habit of elevating the worst.

You have the symptoms conflated with the disease. The Russian mindset that led to the Soviet Union predated the USSR and post dates it as well. It’s not that we’re no longer dealing with the Soviets, they just turned their collars around and we’re dealing with the same sorts of people no matter what name they call themselves by. Be that Soviet or Federation, which BTW both mean roughly the same thing.

Russia didn’t suddenly and magically become “good” just because the Soviet Union met its inevitable demise. SSDD with those guys.

Twenty years ago, Mrs. jaknoz and I thought we might adopt a Russian female orphan. It was supposed to be 6 weeks with them here and then, if the girl was OK with it, 6 weeks over there, then the finalizing. Keep in mind that I’m a well-to-do professional with two great sons and an amazing wife who worked full-time. We lived in a beautiful home on a scenic river next to a national park, a fantasy location in a modern city in the best country in the world.
We were in our forties, too old to qualify for a youth, so we were looking at 12-13 year-olds. We swung and missed twice. The first girl was smarter than all of us put together and idolized the super-model security officer for a high ranking Russian official who died in a gun fight in downtown Moscow in a blaze of gunfire. She wanted to follow in her romanticized idea of that woman’s footsteps. The second was similarly in love with an idea of Russia that was romantically tied to crazy ideals.
Magically becoming our daughter would be akin to winning the lottery. But it didn’t happen. Russia is a dysfunctional ideal that is far past being able to explain away logically, so tragically failed that even the fantasy of its agency is suitable only for 12 year-old girls.
Later, grown and looking back, both girls later wrote us, unable to logically explain why they chose to not be adopted. Dumbest thing ever, they said.
At the time, we cared mostly that we not get one of the countless babies with fetal alcohol syndrome, as Vodka is more important than life for many in that country. My opinion is that they would be much greater adversaries if they could stay sober and serious, as their intelligence is far superior to ours. But not their wisdom.
Russia is hopeless, a tragically flawed country with tragically doomed people. Solzhenitsyn, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, the Russian Ballet, ……. They don’t lack for talent. An impossibly large country blessed with so much in the way of natural abundance, they’ve managed to screw it all up.
It just helps amplify our country’s blessedness in contrast. Our founding fathers we a miracle. We are so lucky. Why can’t people recognize how fortunate we are?

Russia kind of reminds me of what the Soviet Socialist Repooblik of Kalifornia has become. Different particulars, same results.

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