This article is similar to going to the dermatologist to have a mole inspected and being told it’s actually a malignant melanoma.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/12/putins-thousand-year-wa…
**Putin’s Thousand-Year War**
**The reasons for his anti-Western enmity stretch back over Russia’s entire history — and they will be with us for a long time.**
**March 12, 2022, 6:00 AM**
**By Michael Hirsh, a senior correspondent at Foreign Policy**
**....**
**Russia's perceived humiliations go back a long, long way — not just in the 30 years since the Cold War ended, nor even in the 100 years since the Soviet Union was formed in 1922. They reach all the way back to the European Enlightenment of more than three centuries ago, which gave rise to liberty, democracy, and human rights. To Russian nationalists like Putin, these developments have gradually come to eclipse Russia’s distinct character as a civilization.**
**By his own account, Putin sees himself not as the heir to the Soviets but as a champion of Russian civilization and Moscow’s Eurasian empire, whose roots extend back to a much earlier Vladimir — St. Vladimir, the Grand Prince of Kyiv from about 980 to 1015. St. Vladimir was ruler of what the Russians consider their first empire, the Slavic state known as Kievan Rus - based, of course, in Kyiv, the capital of what is now Ukraine. It is why, like Putin, many Russians refer to Kievan Rus as “the cradle of Russian civilization” and Kyiv as “the mother of Russian cities.”...**
**In the early 19th century, the Russian answer to the French Revolution’s Enlightenment creed, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Freedom, Equality, Fraternity), was “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality” — which Sergey Uvarov, minister of public education to Tsar Nicholas I, formulated as the conceptual foundation of the Russian Empire. ...** [end quote]
As a thorough member of the Enlightenment, I can’t understand why anyone (except, of course, the autocrats) would prefer the Russian conceptual foundation. My attitude, itself, is an outgrowth of the Enlightenment as embodied in the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
Historically, Russian autocrats never, ever cared in the slightest about the consent of the governed! The fate of the ordinary Russian throughout centuries was exploitation and often starvation.
According to the article, Dostoevsky wrote: “To the people the Czar is the incarnation of themselves, their whole ideology, their hopes and beliefs.” Of course, that was in 1881, but it’s possible that this culture persisted in the 20th century during the personality cult of Stalin (which was enforced by death). This culture craves autocracy and rejects the “decadence” of the individualistic Enlightenment civilization.
Two key issues:
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Having been invaded by Napoleon and Hitler, Russia craves a deep buffer between Europe and its heartland.
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Russia and the U.S.S.R. controlled vast swathes of eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States. Putin wants to restore the empire, which means resorbing NATO countries as well as Ukraine. Not to mention the historic tendency of successful imperialistic invaders to continue as long as they are successful…which led Napoleon to Moscow and could easily lead Putin to Germany and beyond.
The roots of Putin’s antipathy for the West are plunged deep into the ancient soils of historic Russia…especially since he is the autocrat. There is no way that economic sanctions will divert Putin from his intention of taking over Ukraine. The question is whether he will continue his imperialistic campaign, in which case it might be better to defend Ukraine with full NATO powers. Which could lead to World War 3.
Wendy