IT'S RUSSIA, STUPID!

(The title of this Russian section is clearly addressing the American audience, which, better than anybody else, is familiar with James Carville’s famous dictum “It’s the economy, stupid!” from the 1992 Presidential Campaign of Bill Clinton versus George Herbert Walker Bush.
Why do I address this Russian section to America?! Because, with the future of the world largely depending on the bilateral relationship between America and Russia, I have seen that the events of the last two decades have dramatically undermined this relationship through the complete loss of respect for post-Soviet Russia on the part of the American political establishment, the gleefully rapacious greed of the American business establishment, and the effective silencing of the more sensible portion of the otherwise insanely biased and agenda-driven American academic community. Therefore, I am convinced that today, after so much harm has already been done, the key to ameliorating the current crisis at the core of the so-called new post-Soviet world order is not in trying to modify the Russian behavior, toward a pro-American stance, but in exposing the mistakes made by the American decision-makers during the disastrous Yeltsin years in the 1990’s and in trying to learn from them. Thus, by addressing America, with the purpose of improving the understanding of the reality of the Russian situation, and by explaining the historical Russian mindset, I am trying to perform the most valuable public service that I can possibly perform for the joint benefit of this nation and of Russia, and for the sake of world peace.)

Welcome to the Russian Section, which, as the title says for itself, is about the “fierce urgency” of a much better understanding of Russia than what the American public has been allowed to understand, up to now, by the authority of the American Academia, by the media, and by the Washington establishment, as a whole, as I myself have finally realized with the chilling certainty of an innocent, who has stumbled upon a sinister conspiracy, in which he himself does not wish to believe.
The American understanding of Russia has been totally inadequate, as the following example illustrates: In the past quarter-century, the image of Russia in the United States has undergone a violent swing, from one extreme to the other, first as President Reagan’s all-powerful Evil Empire, bent on world domination, then, virtually overnight, as nothing better than a third-rate “Upper Volta with weapons,” while those selfsame apocalyptic weapons, even though still capable of wiping the United States off the map, somehow no longer seemed to be giving anyone cause for concern. (Except in some of those scary thriller-movie scenario where they would be stolen, on their route to the nuclear pound, by some enterprising arms dealer, and sold, for an enormous profit, to a bunch of hell-bent terrorist maniacs with a lot of cash to burn.)
Meanwhile, Russia was catastrophically marked down, and without good reason at that, from the position of the other superpower on an almost equal footing with the United States to a pathetic has-been, “a woman of no importance.” Why without good reason? First and foremost, because those strategic nuclear weapons did not just disappear, did not just go away somewhere to a safe place,--- but, in accordance with the clever Sergeev Doctrine, were just as capable to obliterate the United States after the collapse of the USSR as ever before, at the height of Soviet military power.
(For the record, the essence of the Sergeev Doctrine was in maintaining, even under the adverse conditions of Yeltsin’s Russia, the nation’s ability to deter the United States by preserving, with no expense spared, the nuclear second strike capability, that is, the capacity to destroy the United States even after having been attacked first, which, is of course, the cornerstone of MAD, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence.)
Then, of course, there was Siberia, with her obscenely rich natural resources: still an integral part of Russia, despite the complaints and insinuations in Washington that the time had come to redistribute the Siberian wealth among a few much worthier aspirants to it, with the actual short list of one, namely the United States. And then, the colossal Russian energy reserves had not suddenly dried up either, despite the persistent belief that the good friend of America, Mr. Khodorkovsky, was just about to start pumping the Russian oil for “the only remaining superpower’s” benefit. (For those who might understandably think I am making this up, see the actual telltale articles about Mr. Khodorkovsky as the face of new Russia in the American press, prior to his downfall.)
There were also many other such expectations, all amounting to the incredibly delusional “wishful thinking” that Russia, once fallen, could no longer get up. Shame on the American historians, who apparently failed to brief the authorities in Washington, and the American media pundits, that on several previous occasions that Russia had fallen hard, she would be always getting up again, soon, stronger than ever. The disintegration of the Tsarist Russian Empire in 1917 was far more violent and hurtful than the Yeltsin “revolution,” yet in the raging flames of a horrific civil war, the Soviet Union was about to be born, that dreaded other superpower, fated to become the awe-inspiring monster, crashing (sic!) every American citizen’s dreams and turning them into nightmares, which now suddenly also seemed to disappear forever. (In fact, they never had, but were driven deeper into the American subconscious…)
I said it before, and I will never stop saying it again and again, until this fact really sinks through, that it was not some theatrical grandstanding on Winston Churchill’s part, when he called Russia “a Riddle wrapped in a Mystery inside an Enigma.” Perhaps he was talking about a different Russia from what America thought it was myopically looking at, in the early 1990’s, at the time of the Soviet collapse?…
So, will the real Russia please stand up?! The purpose of this section is, if not to convince those Americans, whose mind has already been set, then, at least, to restore some kind of sensible balance in the minds less stubborn and not yet fossilized beyond the hope of redemption.