To read historian Adam Zamoyski, one would be forgiven for thinking the entire universe revolves around Poland. Poland is the light. Poland is the shining aura of civilization. Poland gifted the world democracy, progress, and enlightenment. Without Poland, we'd all still be dragging our knuckles across fecal covered cave floors and donning loincloths to go hunt animals with sharpened sticks.
I'm not knocking Zamoyski, who is an otherwise brilliant historian, and whose fanatical reverence of Poland is perhaps a necessary antidote to Vonnegut's reduction of the Poles to the "involuntary clowns of the Second World War." But my maternal side is all Polish, and I grew up in an area largely populated not only with Poles, but with other eastern Europeans of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Slavic variety. And decades of personal experience have exposed me to a certain chauvinism that runs through eastern European communities.
Long gone are the days of my great grandparents, who were proud to have earned their American citizenship and were humble and wise enough to express gratitude that, yes, maybe this country prioritized freedom and offered opportunity more effectively than did the homelands from whence they fled.
This isn't to say my Eastern European neighbors don't bicker amongst each other about which of their native countries would be Last Man Standing should eugenicist aliens descend from on high to wipe the earth clean of the degenerate lesser races. But the one opinion they can generally agree on is that, whoever it would be, it certainly wouldn't be Americans, those same Americans who opened their doors to the millions upon millions of these huddled masses from their Glorious Homelands. Apparently, fake gold chains, outdated crew cuts, and atrocious techno music will ward off danger better than our AR-15s.
Again, this is only my personal experience, and my generalizations aren't meant to apply to every single Eastern European immigrant, many of whom are still truly grateful to be here. But regarding the animus and hostility towards Americans, I've noticed this distinctly among the Russians. There is a strong nationalist trend among many of them here which continues to regard the United States as the undeserved victor of the Cold War. They see themselves as cultured and cosmopolitan in contrast to our sloppy consumerism. They see themselves as mentally disciplined enough to endure the hardships of life in ways our pudgy American fingers could never grasp. They sneer at the America they were forced to flock to after America "cheated" by outlasting the Soviet Union.
And these chauvinists are not as old as you'd think.
The history of Russia is the definition of tragedy. From the time of the czars until now, Russians have been subjected to repression, humiliation, military defeat, and genocide, almost always at the hands of their own rulers. Yet public opinion polls taken in Russia, even during the lowest points of the current invasion of Ukraine, continue to show solid public support for the government.
Why?
For this to make sense, their history must be understood. During the modernization of Europe and the expansion of its various empires in the 19th century, Russia found itself increasingly lagging behind. Despite its emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the liberalization of its institutions and the modernization of its industries advanced at a snail's pace. This, in turn, retarded its economic growth, which continued to wallow in pseudo-feudalism. In practical terms, this meant that the Russian intelligentsia, just as arrogant and stupid as the intelligentsia in Europe, looked to the West with increasing envy and frustration.
At the time of the early 20th century, Russia's backwardness was largely blamed on the lethargy and hubris of Czar Nicholas II. Yet the West, particularly an expansionist, imperial Europe, was still seen as the "enemy," not because of any actual threat to Russian territory, but because of Europe's refusal to recognize Russia as an equal to be reckoned with, a peer who also deserved their rightful place as powerbroker on the world stage.
Through Russian eyes, theirs was the nation that drove Napoleon from Moscow, back across the continent to Fontainebleau. Theirs was the culture that gave the world Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky. Theirs boasted world class cities like St. Petersburg, an epicenter all its own of architectural masterpiece. The West's refusal to take them seriously was an affront to national pride.
The Russian Revolution and the overthrow of the czar was as much a response to this foreign affront as it was any feigned concern about the plight of the serfs (who largely opposed the urbanite Communists). During czarist rule, Vladimir Lenin spent a good amount of effort encouraging the peripheral Russian territories (Kazakhstan, Georgia, etc.) to break away and declare independence from the czarist regime. Which they did.
And as soon as Lenin took control of the government, he began forcing these newly independent nations back under the Russian jackboot as "socialist republics." That this aggression was a complete hypocrisy to the "independence" Lenin was encouraging just a few years prior didn't matter to his supporters. Nor did it matter that, by the mid-1920s, it was beyond evident that Communist rule had been a complete failure. Lenin's military aggression against their piddling neighbors (now deemed to be encircling "threats" on the leash of foreign capitalists...sound familiar?) restored national pride to an intelligentsia for whom this price superseded the wellbeing of their fellow citizens.
Lenin established the Cheka, opened the first gulag camps, and unleashed a wave of murder and repression upon the Russians that far exceeded the worst excesses of any czar. After Lenin's death, Stalin said, "Hold my vodka," and showed his fellow countrymen just what a rank amateur Lenin was when it came to totalitarian rule. During his "comradeship," over 25 million Russians perished, either in the gulag camps or on the front.
Yet, recent polling shows Stalin with a 70% popularity rating in Russia. Part of this is explained by the myth, often repeated by Western historians who should know better, that the Soviet Union was largely, if not solely, responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany. This myth attributes Russian victory on the Eastern Front to an explosion of Russian patriotism, coupled with superhuman courage, which caused the oft-unarmed Uralite infantrymen to selflessly rush headlong into German machinegun fire with nary a thought for anything other than love for the motherland.
The reality of history is that the Soviet Union was on the verge of total defeat, due in no small part to those infantrymen surrendering to the tune of hundreds of thousands per day. Had the Soviets not been heavily supplied by the capitalist Americans, had not Hitler foolishly overstretched his armies in North Africa and on the Atlantic Wall, and had President Roosevelt not treated Stalin with the undeserved deference he did, Russia would have collapsed within a few more months of war.
Fast forward to Vladimir Putin, who has called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. He thinks so not because he feels communism will clothe and feed the Russian people better than capitalism. He thinks so because its demise knocked Russia off the stage of global relevance. Putin's priority is Russian status, not economic development or civil rights.
Years of Russian polling show that most Russians agree with him. While his popularity can sag during times of economic stagnation, it rises during times of invasions against neighboring countries. That these invasions and occupations are justified with the most ridiculous of pretenses matters not. These "justifications" are given half-mockingly and condescendingly for the consumption of gullible Western audiences. Had Putin simply walked up to a microphone and said, "Today we invaded Ukraine because we can. We're taking it because we want to. The West will learn to respect us, one way or another," his polling would be just as high, if not higher. Putin is not the disease. He is merely a symptom of the societal Russian mindset that believes it is due a deference which hasn't been properly genuflected. The entire body politic is infected with it.
Yet for all their talk about the superiority of high Russian culture over porcine American cheeseburger inhaling, their immediate rush to apply brute, genocidal force towards making their neighbors appreciate all their civilizational enlightenment isn't reflective of the confidence such a culture would naturally possess. Instead, it reflects cowardice and self-doubt. It reflects a collective inability to reflect on their own failures rather than to ludicrously blame them on toothless neighbors a fraction their size. It reflects the bitter envy of Cain, who killed his own brother for outshining him. It reflects a sick sociopathy and a willing enslavement to our vilest passions that would mortify the likes of Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky.
Laziness factors in as well, not in the physical sense, but in a mental aversion towards doing the hard work of rebuilding a culture that focuses on self-betterment, internal progress, and societal reform. That sort of work is boring and takes generations. Much like Florence's Duomo, those who begin building it will be dead long before its completion.
But if nationalist Russians want their homeland not just to survive but to thrive, then this slow rebuild is what needs to be done. Try as they might, they won't reclaim their supposed lost position on the world stage with nukes and a nostalgic memory of one of history's worst butchers.
The High Russian society of the late 19th century and its magnificent cultural achievements were obliterated by your forefathers as "counterrevolutionary." Not by America. Not by Ukraine. Not by NATO, or the Jews, or the Japanese, or the southern Sri Lankans, or anyone else you'll end up blaming for your misfortunes. By you. The stubborn refusal of an entire society, for generations on end, to humbly admit to their historical mistakes and to make long-term cultural adjustments to prevent their recurrences, speaks to an immature, tantrum-in-the-supermarket obstinacy so embarrassing it would shock the most undisciplined of feral kindergarteners.
If your priority remains elbowing your way back to the big boy table, as polling shows it is, then act like it. Act like you deserve it. Because right now, nobody wants anything to do with you. If your nation was as confident as it is bullying, you would have people fleeing to Russia rather than away from it. You would attract investment. You would attract brain power. Families would grow. Music and arts would again blossom. You could once again take pride...actual, tangible, and earned pride...in your country.
As it stands, Russia isn't a place that outsiders look to with any sense of overwhelming awe. The suicide rate in Russia is 24.1 per 100,000 people, the fifth highest in the world. Around 22% of Russians suffer from clinical depression. In 2023, Russians consumed 2.3 billion liters of alcohol. And the Russian birthrate is 1.42 children per woman (the minimum replacement rate is 2.1) and continues to fall.
Are these the reflections of a nation worthy of glory and emulation?
During this societal decline, Putin has launched no less than five unprovoked wars. But respect isn't given to a weak bully who happens to brandish a big stick. And that's what Russia is on the world stage...a weak, drunk, sterile bully who happens to brandish nuclear weapons. Not powerful. Certainly not confident. Not to mention it is increasingly reliant on its bully mentor, China. From a realpolitik standpoint, Russia is basically North Korea with more snow.
The 20th century taught the capitalist world that imperial expansion was a net loss, and not worth the trouble. England became great because of its centuries' long economic and political reforms, not because it colonized Nigeria. The United States was born great because it adopted and expanded upon these reforms from its inception, not because they later defeated the Apache or colonized Guam. But before cutting their colonies loose, nations like England, France, and Belgium had to concede not military defeat, but that their assumptions for achieving national greatness and global influence were incorrect and counterproductive.
As long as Russia refuses to learn this vital lesson, it will continue to get its rear end handed to it by the likes of Afghanistan and Ukraine, just as the French did in Algeria and Vietnam.
For eighty years of communist rule, Russian society was brainwashed into believing that America and the West were the bad guys holding Russia back. But the KGB ain't what it used to be, and for decades now, Russians have had access to plenty of alternate sources of news. In this day and age, Russians who don't understand the causes of their predicament simply don't want to understand them.
To make their nation great, they'll need to take a hard look in the mirror, The responsibility is theirs to fix their own broken, rotting society before exporting its supposed virtues at gunpoint to surrounding areas. But without confidence in themselves as people worthy of self-governance, they'll forever drift towards whatever strongman promises them the distractions of conquest and glory while he continues to shorten their own leashes.
Scholars estimate that when God commanded Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, only about 20% or so actually heeded the call. Most of them preferred slavery to the unknown, and opted to stay. Human nature favors the devil we know, and the last century of Russian history is no exception. But until they're willing to recognize their own system for the monstrosity it is, and that its perpetuation rests entirely on their own choices, they'll continue to drag blocks to build Putin's bloody pyramids.
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