The Russian mind is nearly impossible to fathom for a non-Russian, even for one who has read Dostoyevsky in the original. But, even if doing it directly may be out of the question, there is still a reasonable possibility of getting a clue about its workings from divining its shadows, Platonically speaking, in the Caves of History, namely, the history of 1812...
Napoleon was allowed to move into Moscow, yet instead of receiving the city’s keys from the defeated and humbled nation, he lost his Grand Armée, and then lost the war, while the Russians used the temporary loss of their greatest city as the first stepping stone to the eventual victory.
Study and learn! History repeats itself. The seeming, yet so deceptive, Russian surrender on all fronts, in the 1990’s, is now turning into Russia’s global victory, which honestly was unthinkable, and probably impossible, at the height of the Cold War.
… Those who wish to understand this better, must read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in the original, which incidentally requires the knowledge of three languages, both literally and figuratively: Russian, Napoleon’s French, and Hitler’s German.
Napoleon was allowed to move into Moscow, yet instead of receiving the city’s keys from the defeated and humbled nation, he lost his Grand Armée, and then lost the war, while the Russians used the temporary loss of their greatest city as the first stepping stone to the eventual victory.
Study and learn! History repeats itself. The seeming, yet so deceptive, Russian surrender on all fronts, in the 1990’s, is now turning into Russia’s global victory, which honestly was unthinkable, and probably impossible, at the height of the Cold War.
… Those who wish to understand this better, must read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in the original, which incidentally requires the knowledge of three languages, both literally and figuratively: Russian, Napoleon’s French, and Hitler’s German.
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