ON THE PROSPECTS OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA

Will To Socialism. A General Observation.

They say, “it takes all sorts to make a world,” and it is equally true that it takes all sorts to make a nation, any nation. There are rebels and conformists, individualists and collectivists, dreamers and schemers, living all of them in our immediate neighborhood, to say nothing of our city, or province, or country. “Socialism” and “capitalism” of human nature are not separated by barbed wire or by any other type of physical borders. To say it in one word, they coexist.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many capitalistically-minded individuals in Russia: among ethnic Russians as well as among other ethnic groups. It is however the dominant social attitude, which determines whether an entire nation can be called capitalistically or socialistically-minded, and Russia happens to be most certainly of the latter variety.

I believe that the more nationalistic and close-knit the nation is, the more socialistically-minded it becomes. It was the Grossdeutsches nationalist elation of “Einig, Einig, Einig!!!” that impelled the Germans en-masse to relish the sweet socialist coating of Hitler’s national-socialist poison pill. Earlier, it wasn’t Karl Marx per se, with his proletarian internationalism, but the great socialist idea, nationalistically internalized, and given an unmistakable chauvinistic push by its grand internationalist dimension, that swept Russia off her feet into a turbulent love affair with Lenin’s Bolshevism settling down in a marriage to the institutionalized socialism of Comrade Stalin.

The basic criterion for socialist mentality is whether the rich of the nation tend to identify themselves more with the poor of their own nation than with the rich of the world. If they do, the national will to the domestic redistribution of wealth inside that particular national family grows strong enough for socialism to thrive. In case the rich become anti-nationalist, unwilling to share their wealth through higher taxation and other such means, a social revolution will undoubtedly occur, as long as the poor are united and determined to achieve their goals by a common effort... But the latter is by no means always the case.

The biggest enemy of socialism is dissimilationist multiculturalism, which is currently plaguing the richest nations of Europe. The poorest strata of their native populations become hostile to socialism, seeing enemy in the foreigners who come to their countries to feed off their wealth without the accompanying desire to be a part of the family that feeds them. If socialism is what attracts these foreigners, then to hell with socialism! This attitude, however, does not result in a retreat of institutional socialism, but brings out social unrest and political instability, which are impossible to control without radical changes in the immigration policies.

Ironically, such political unrest has no place in the United States, and the chances of socialism here are slim, and getting slimmer. I attribute this to the fact that American multiculturalism has already eroded the social fabric of American society to the point where it has become a "virtual" society, so much fragmented that there seem to be a number of different groups, alien to each other, living under one geographical “roof,” somehow still covering the fifty states of the Union. Lamentably, I say, authentic American nationalism is increasingly becoming an artificial notion, and under such conditions the nation cannot have a will to socialism, but it is getting rather dangerously stressed along the fault lines of mutual ethnic animosities, aggravated by an utter loss of faith, by now, in the basic government institutions.

Despite many troubling occurrences, I do not see a similar danger threatening Russia. I think that the nation has learned how to deal with its own problems of multiculturalism, where intercultural animosities are more of an aberration than a systemic disorder or an omen of things to come. Separatist extremism is undoubtedly a serious problem, but there is enough national cohesion and a strong national will to withstand its challenge and persevere. The role of the Russian Orthodox Church in it, as a unifying and stabilizing factor, cannot be overestimated. By the same token, The Russian Church remains a bastion of Christian socialism in its social outlook, and through the Church this social outlook is maintained and continually reinforced in the Russian national psyche. Thus, in spite of all challenges to it, and maybe partly because of them, socialist mentality is alive and well in Russia, while capitalism remains largely a foreign body that can never become internalized.

On The Prospects Of Capitalism In Russia, In More Specific Terms.

The main point of my previous posting (Crisis Of Socialism In Russia) was that, despite the ambiguity of the current political and economic situation in Russia, it is safe to say that Russian socialism, still in a state of crisis, although not as acute as during the Yeltsin years, may have retreated since the collapse of the USSR, but has hardly yielded its legitimately held status as Russia’s dominant economic and social ideology to the rudely intruding bastard of capitalism. So, what are the viable possibilities, if any, of some sort of capitalism still taking root in Russian soil?

“…The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm.” What Tocqueville so brilliantly observed nearly two centuries ago still holds true today. In today’s Russia, only a tiny minority wants freedom, whereas an overwhelming majority demands security, both in terms of a strong powerful state and in terms of socialist welfare principles at the foundation of society. What Russia had in the 1990’s was an aberration, "capitalism from above," leading to gross excesses, corruption, crime, and a violent shock to the traditional Russian concept of nationhood. The nation is now returning from the exception to the rule, which, in economic terms, means socialism on the local human level, and on the larger scale state capitalism, perhaps. as run by the state-controlled class of wealthy, but politically powerless “entrepreneurs,” or rather more accurately “managers,” whose personal wealth is also controlled by the government, in the sense of how these people ought to be spending their “own money,” whether on the return of Russian treasures from abroad, or on the revitalization of Russia’s sports, or on providing financial infusions into arts and sciences, on the rehabilitation of underdeveloped regions and provinces, and, most conspicuously, on buying strategically valuable Western companies and properties, and otherwise engaging in key international business activities, disingenuously maintaining the convenient façade of a private enterprise, but at all times having the Kremlin giant pulling the strings as the “silent partner.” (In this sense that government is pulling corporate strings, I should not single out Russia, as if all other great powers are exempt, particularly when economic enterprise goes international or touches upon the military and national security departments, where national governments normally demand, and get, submission of private economic interests to what they see as political and national security interests.)

Russia of Christian Orthodox faith and pure socialist morality, symbolized by the baptismal cross, proudly displayed on Vladimir Putin’s bare chest. Such is the country which America has been stubbornly trying to convert into her ultra-capitalist Pax-American religion, in the delusional hope of achieving success. Surely, the best she is getting out of this deal is Russia’s reciprocation with hypocrisy and cynical manipulation. All the rest is more toxic smoke and crooked mirrors.

As a matter of fundamental principle, I have repeatedly asserted that Russia is a nation that is both culturally and ideologically incompatible with capitalism, and, contrary to the prevailing opinion of those American scholars, who have been trying to shape this country’s Russian policy under the preponderant and obsessive idea of cultivating pro-Western entrepreneurs into positions of political prominence in Russia, I have gone on record time and again to warn whomsoever it may concern that Russia will under no circumstances allow herself to be governed by money, and, should America persist in thinking in that direction and foolishly keep acting out this fallacious assumption in her foreign policy, she is surely in for a big disappointment.

Washington’s disastrous support of Khodorkovsky is just one such case in point. I wish my voice had been heard decades ago by this country’s policy-makers, or at least allowed to be considered as one of several, in an honest competition of opposing opinions, where, I am sure, mine would have made a difference, if not prevailed. Now, while they were recklessly thinking that they were building up “their man” Khodorkovsky, they were in fact only empowering Russia to become a global energy broker, and, in the process, have been enormously successful in fueling Russia’s anti-American prejudice.

But, I guess, my pill has been too bitter to swallow for Washington politicians. If they prefer to listen to that other opinion, however, of those “Russians” who are paid heftily in US dollars to provide it, just do me this favor: remember the story of the so-called Iraqi National Congress and of a certain Ahmed Chalabi, whose credibility was about the same as that of Washington’s "Russian advisers," only in Russia’s case, the mistakes seemed less apparent for a while, but they will surely prove much costlier in the long run.

CRISIS OF SOCIALISM IN RUSSIA

Soviet society in my time had a lot of very serious shortcomings, but, as I am looking back, these days, into the past and across the distance of half the globe, I can also see its wonderful strengths, stemming from its socialist founding principles, too solid, even in decay, to be spoiled by their imperfect practice.

In those days, education was excellent and free, plus some rather small, but livable scholarships were given to college students. Salaries were very low, but sensible, considering large subsidies on the necessities, and numerous free services to the public. Health care was modest, but it was free and with a personal touch, as the doctors were making house calls routinely, and most of them followed the social moral code, by behaving nicely and considerately with the patient. Housing was barely adequate, but heavily subsidized, and with no slums for people to live in. Homelessness was of course outlawed, and so was unemployment. Basic foods were quite accessible and of good quality, and they were heavily subsidized. Fancy foods were available, but an effort had to be made to find them and to spend  extra time and money to purchase them. Personal cars were a matter of rare luxury, but public transportation was quite extensive, and the fares, including taxi cab fares, were ridiculously low. (I am talking here about the lives of the regular folks, and mainly in the large cities. Privileged persons everywhere enjoyed special perks, not so much in wealth, which no one had in loads of plenty, as in somewhat better living conditions, and in access to goods in short supply, which other people could only have by spending a lot of time chasing after them, and by a stroke of good luck as well.)

This all ended, as I understand, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with the sudden advent of what the West calls free market capitalism, while the Russians call it a pandemonium of greed and profiteering. Suddenly, the society was split into a few very rich and a great many very poor. Suddenly people were out of their homes and living in the streets, finding out for the first time in their lives that there were such bad things as hunger, destitution, and shockingly un-Christian social indifference. Capitalism had revealed its ugly face in the allegedly impregnable bastion of socialism and Christian morality, which had been Soviet Russia. Capitalism was unleashed upon Russia just like criminal lawlessness and primeval chaos had been unleashed upon her in the early years of the Soviet power. Was it there to stay, or was it like the Bolshevik horror of the earlier times just a scary thing that came to pass (literally)?

Some welcomed it with glee, others cursed it with dismay, but I would not be either that optimistic or that pessimistic, treating that new Russian capitalism of the Yeltsin era (which has indeed spilled into the Putin comeback of great-Russian nationalism) as a thing with any staying power. Capitalism can never triumph in Russia. All we can be talking about is the post-Soviet and current crisis of her natural, inherent socialism. Under Putin, we have already seen some elements of socialism creeping back into the Russian life, but so far not on the banner of the knight on the white horse, sweeping away the filth of the despicable impostors daring to proclaim themselves Russia’s new owners, but as an overly cautious and still frightened refugee, returning to his home town, previously taken over by a gang of criminals, in the rear of a rather ambiguous liberating posse, which has welcomed the old residents back, but has not yet punished or even dispossessed the evil intruders.

But, I propose, a full reinstatement of Russia’s Christian-minded, and Christian-hearted, socialism is only a matter of time. Russia’s infamous billionaires-oligarchs may look big on the Forbes Rich List, but they are all colossi with the feet of clay, as they wield no political power in Russia and are quite defenseless against the combined historical forces of the State-Church Duumvirate, and of Russia’s 500+-year-old Third Rome destiny.

(The next entry will continue the subject raised in this one.)

CHAINS IN PARADISE

This entry ought not to be seen as its author’s endorsement of a particular social system, although I’ve long made it transparent that I believe that socialism is the most natural system for Russia, organically ingrained in the Russian national soul. Instead, it should be treated as a continuation of a very complicated and badly neglected intellectual argument, currently suppressed by the demands of political correctness, on one side, and rather disingenuous circumspection, on the other.

Seemingly dated, but in fact time-transcending, this entry discusses one of the biggest mistakes of the Soviet political establishment, in unnecessarily denying essential political freedoms to those people who ought to have been persuaded that the Soviet way of life was superior to the Western way of life, and thus making the Soviet way of life appear inferior. I may refer to a similar logic of Giovanni Gentile, who honestly believed that Fascist totalitarianism in Italy did not require any political repression, because it was capable to prove its own superiority by the sheer force of the example. (Again, this is not about social comparisons, but only about the elementary logic of such practice!)

The big question here is, of course, whether political repression is so essential to the principle of totalitarian state that no logic to the contrary can convince the state to abandon its own foundation. Political repression has various forms and in more nuanced ways it is necessarily present even in the freest democratic societies, but it is much more prominent and unmistakable in totalitarian societies, where political hypocrisy does not rise to the higher levels of refinement, as it does in free societies. As a result, every citizen of the totalitarian state is perfectly aware of the fact of such repression (take it or leave it), whereas in free societies there is an abject lack of such awareness and the actual level of effectiveness of public indoctrination and brainwashing is paradoxically incomparably higher than in totalitarian societies.

The question however remains whether it is possible to reduce the level of political oppression in controlled societies, introducing a De Gaulle-style dirigisme into both the socio-political and the economic life of such societies, and in this respect certain trends toward dirigisme in Russia, as encouraged by Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev have a potential to go far in liberating an essentially totalitarian society from its structural reliance on what I am calling “chains in paradise.”

ARTISTS OF VIOLENCE VERSUS THE CON ARTISTS

We are not done with the Nietzsche-Russia connection, in case anybody thought otherwise. The next useful comment on Russia is inspired by another remarkable passage in Nietzsche:

“…It is the same active force that is at work on a grander scale in those artists of violence and organizers who build states.” (From Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals; 2nd Essay [18])

America, facing Russia ever since the days of Tocqueville across the bridge of the centuries into the future, has to make her choice, finally, as to which face of Russia she is determined to see through the dense fog of mistaken impressions, false ideologies, and failed agendas. One is the terrible face of the Nietzschean Artist of Violence, the other is that of a con artist. Both faces are real, but one of them is authentic, while the other one is dissimulating, and the big question is which, and which alone, of these two faces America is prepared to acknowledge, as the two of them deliver irreconcilable messages.

It is now clear why I am quoting Nietzsche’s passage here. Ivan Grozny, Peter the Great, Comrade Stalin, to mention just these three… “those artists of violence and organizers who build states.” There is a fascination among great nations, who give birth to thinkers like Bakunin, for their “passion for destruction as a creative passion,” to repeat Bakunin’s golden saw. Such nations abominate the carriers of what they call “bourgeois morality,” who are rich, settled, and supremely arrogant in their self-contentment. Russia has a mixed bag of feelings toward America, both positive and negative, but chief among them is a sense of almost-Nietzschean “blond-beast” superiority of creative savages over the rich, ergo, decadent, and ergo decaying, civilizations. This is why, even when admiring America, the Russians will never settle for the role of followers and  emulators of their rich and powerful antagonists.

Russia is, at heart, a Christian-communist nation, that despises money as “the root of all evil,” that despises the rich as the worshippers of the dark prince of the world. None of the rich will ever attain political power in Russia, because the nation sees them as an abomination, rather than as paragons of success and people’s role models.

The past and future of Russia belongs not to the businessman, but to the terrible artist of violence. One must not squirm on hearing the word violence: to squirm is a show of hypocrisy. Violence, alas, is the normal state of our world, and the most civilized nations indulge in it no less, and perhaps even more, scale-wise, than the most barbaric ones. It must therefore be more commendable to be an artist of violence than, say, a manager or a wage-earner of violence, or--God forbid!--a plain butcher.

The Russian artist of violence is dressed in a perfectly modern, albeit definitely conservative suit these days, perhaps, affecting certain refined manners required in our civilized society, but when you look deep into his soul (not just pretending to do it, but honestly, with an acute perception and comprehension) you will see an active force at work, the organizer who builds states, you will see the tyrant-servant of the State. For, such is the one and only possible leader of Russia. The tyrant-servant for whom money means nothing, for whom personal enrichment is a crime against the Russian nation. He is not to be feared as destroyer of civilizations for he is a conservator of the civilization. He is benignly disposed toward foreigners, as long as the foreigners show him respect and good will. As long as the foreigners understand that Russia is his business, not theirs. Inside Russia, however, he is a creator-destroyer, an artist of violence who builds his own state as he sees fit and in unison with what he sees as the common national will.

But then there is another “face” of Russia, the one instantly recognizable on the American television screen, whenever America talks about Russia. It seems that I must be completely off the wall, when you hear those experts talking about the prospects of a Berezovsky or a Khodorkovsky to take control in Russia. In their logic, money is power. A Russian billionaire must be a thousand times more powerful than a Russian millionaire, and a zillion times more powerful than a pauper like Mr. Putin, unless, of course, Mr. Putin is a closet multi-billionaire himself…

Before I go any further, let me draw your attention to a momentous and most revealing interview given by the former oligarch Berezovsky some time in 2003, by that time already out of favor and living in Britain, to the American television. The interviewer’s question was about the “privatization crimes” in Russia, and here is Mr. Berezovsky’s “I am not a crook” moment. I am quoting from memory, but accurately in essence:

“No,” he said, “there were no privatization crimes in Russia in the 1990’s. It is just that most Russians are completely ignorant and unintelligent about the workings of the capitalist system, while people like myself, Khodorkovsky, and others, who understand such things, took the initiative, and, in the process, have indeed accumulated some wealth. You had your own robber barons, you know, and nobody here seems to mind, in retrospect, what they did, and they became the pillars of your society, and founders of dynasties.”

In other words, capitalism in Russia is impossible, unless the political power goes to the entrepreneurs, like Berezovsky and his capitalistically-savvy crowd. Take it or leave it! Consequently, if you do not like Putin, then support him and people like him.

This is what you must expect to get when you listen to men, like Berezovsky. But America’s problem is that they are not the face of Russia, but the face of a con artist, impersonating Russia to the American audiences. The sooner America understands this con game, the better for her and for the millions of those Russian Jews who do not wish to have anything to do with the capitalist crowd which Washington is so eager to cultivate. It is a big mistake to presume that if one is Jewish, one has to be an Ayn Rand. (You cannot be more rabidly pro-capitalism than she was!) But this is a huge anti-historical deception. Among prominent Jewish personalities there have been far-far more pro-socialists than pro-capitalists. This is a cold historical fact, and people such as Berezovsky and his Western sponsors and admirers are badly hurting the Jewish image in the world by so grossly misrepresenting it, as if all the Jews were some pro-capitalistic monolith, a worldwide conspiracy of the rich against the poor… That’s what I would call the worst kind of anti-Semitism!

Ironically, today in Israel, in a terribly underreported still developing story, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews are passionately demonstrating against the excesses of capitalism, in favor of outright socialism, which some of them, in a sort of compromise with America, like to identify with Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society.” (See my entry Great Society, where I applaud LBJ's effort, which, I believe, is based on socialist ethical foundations.)

…Sometimes I feel very angry, sometimes very sad. What I am writing now, what I’ve been saying all these years, is of paramount importance, but there is no one in the agenda-driven Washington inclined to heed my words. And it doesn’t make me feel any better that “at least I tried…”

PASSION FOR DESTRUCTION

(For much more on the Bakunin-Nietzsche connection, which is unrepresented here, and on how Nietzsche may have actually “borrowed” Bakunin’s “passion for destruction” see my entry Nietzsche the Bakuninian? in the Nietzsche section, to be posted later, and also the earlier entry Russia And Nietzsche, which has been posted.

Unlike what it may seem at first sight, this is not a history entry, but an intriguing trip into Russia’s national psychology, and, as such, there is no doubt that it belongs in this Russian section. Whenever history keeps repeating itself, it is no longer history but character coming to the forefront. Thus “passion for destruction” tells a lot not just about Russia’s past, but also about her present and her future.)

...This really-really scary aspect of the Russian national psyche: its ready acceptance and willing complicity in the large-scale national tragedies which have plagued Russia over the centuries, earning her the epithet of the long-suffering nation, is here under scrutiny again, this time under a different, Bakuninian angle.

Bakunin's life story reads like an action-adventure thriller, filled with daring struggles, luck and absence thereof, association with a most-wanted criminal, capture, imprisonment, escape, worldwide travel, with the police in pursuit, a wrestling match with no less than Karl Marx for control of Marx’s First International, plus a large collection of highly provocative writing, some still unpublished. But there is no point for me to retell his adventures. Believe me, Bakunin is worth it.

The circumstances of his life are either well-known to the reader, in which case there is no need to go over them again, or else, completely unknown, in which case the reader is advised to read more about him elsewhere, and, preferably, from a number of different sources, in order to form a composite picture, as most accounts of his life and work are rather inadequate in themselves.

(For the record, Bakunin ‘lost’ his bid for the control of the First International, and walked out, taking the host of his followers with him. As a result of his walkout, the said organization soon collapsed, and most of its leaders were forced to move to America, where their effort dwindled. A Pyrrhic victory for the victors, if you ask me…)

In this entry, however, I am concentrating on two foremost items of Bakunin’s legacy. One, is his passion for destruction, capsulated in the famous dictum: “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.” Here is a passage from my book Stalin, and Other Family, where I comment on this momentous sentence:

"Returning to Russia from Australia in the late spring of 1917... Artem found her in disarray. The law had completely broken down, and armed bands of army deserters were let loose on the countryside, pillaging, raping, murdering people... And the earth was without form...
Artem was a Russian, and he thought like a Russian. In the midst of chaos, he was exhilarated and quoted the Scriptures. He was a witness to Creation in its earliest stage.

Artem was not alone in his thoughts. He had read the great Bakunin and found in him a kindred spirit. As befits a true Russian, he interpreted Bakunin in his own personal way which, I suspect, is the only way to interpret Bakunin correctly.

The first stage of Creation, according to Bakunin, is indeed a total and complete destruction. God did not take some worn-out world, and patch it up. He created out-of-nothing! Let there be darkness, and then, the Spirit of God will hover over you, and God will say, “Let there be Light,” and a new light will shine!
The Russians are an amazing people. They let loose Godlessness, in order to compare themselves to God!

In my own experience, I have found the Russian elite in perfect tune with my grandfather’s interpretation of Bakunin. Karl Marx comes and goes, but Bakunin always stays, because Bakunin is Russia."

Here, uncannily, but maybe not so unexpectedly, we can clearly hear Nietzsche, with his creator-creature cosmogony, and the concomitant passion for suffering, which is as great in destruction as in creation, and through that great suffering, the borderline between the destructive and constructive stages of creation has been erased, and these two stages are fused into one, and made indistinguishable.

The second largest item of Bakunin’s legacy is his glorification of the master criminal as the prime mover of progress, the gold reserve and the lifeblood of the nation. (Ironically, Bakunin’s criminal ideal was for some time personified in the real-life criminal Sergei Nechayev, but after a while, having been conned and robbed blind by his dangerous friend and hero, Bakunin could find nothing better than denounce Nechayev, but not his infatuation with the Russian master criminal as a generality.) Here is another excerpt from that same Stalin book, where I picture Stalin taking lessons from Bakunin’s ghost:

"Stalin always knew what he wanted. Before the Revolution, Lenin and most of the other Bolshevik leaders were all living abroad, separated from the “home base,” which they dared to represent. Stalin, on the other hand, made himself indispensable inside Russia. Disdainful of the ideologues in his own party who sought popularity among the industrial workers, or in those other parties who tried to appeal to the peasants, or to the intelligentsia, Stalin instinctively followed the counsel of whom else but the legendary Bakunin, whose keen understanding of Russia’s revolutionary potential was second to none.

It was Bakunin who saw the authentic power base of the successful revolutionist in his ties to the criminal underworld. Bakunin had named the criminals the best, most active, and most creative force, the lifeblood of the nation. To the dismay of his ignorant comrades, Stalin demolished the barrier between the politicals and the felons. He showed his respect to murderers and robbers, and they happily admitted him into their exclusive circle. Because he was a 'political,' they allowed him to become their 'Godfather.'”

My last reference to Godfather is, of course, another case of pandering to my American audiences, but it is done for the good cause of sharpening their associative reflexes thus bringing my point home to them with greatest clarity and distinction. But otherwise, it is all rather chilling, to realize that Russia’s national path to greatness is laid through grandscale destruction and terrible misery of her long-suffering people.

(Postscript. I suggest that the reader should not treat the subject of the State versus its Criminal Subworld too lightly. As a result of the collapse of the Tsarist order in 1917, at least a million-strong criminal army was released into the wild, and the matter of who would control whom was by no means a trivial matter. It was a huge boon for Stalin that he was in control, and when, in the run-up to, and during the Great Terror of the 1930’s, he destroyed all those criminals who had proved unruly, their large numbers further swelled the numbers of Stalin’s victims. Which goes a long way to corroborate my father General Artem’s perfectly logical point to the effect that one innocent victim’s tragic fate does not imply that ninety-nine guilty ones had been unjustly punished.

On a related matter, these days there have been insinuations that Putin’s-Medvedev’s Russia has become a mafia state, further implying that the Russian government is actually running the Russian criminal empire. It is no secret, I will argue, that mafia-type organizations exist in every country, with varying degrees of influence on the affairs of the state. One might safely assume, however, that for the health of the state, it is better for the government to control the mafia than the other way around… Thus, incidentally, three cheers for the American Government being able to put the American Mafia to good use in World War II…

But all this and more will be the subject of a whole different entry, to be posted later.)

ALLEGORY OF THE SNAKE

My interest in the Allegory of the Snake dates back to my childhood, when a family friend Anatoli Ivanovich Zimin, a prominent scientist and religious mystic, used it to compare Russia in times of troubles to a snake:

“People say, Be wise as a serpent. But what is the wisdom of a serpent? He knows the secret of eternal youth. Just shed your skin, even if it makes you sick and helpless for a while, then coil up and wait in the shadows, for the new skin to grow, and make you young again. That is exactly what Russia has been doing from time to time.”

This intriguing allegory is totally consistent with the Russian mystical explanation of why it so happens that, while all other civilizations bloom and wither away (botanically speaking, as the great Russian Slavophil thinker and author of Russia and Europe Nikolai Danilevsky was a botanist by profession), Russia alone has been blessed by God’s Providence with the gift of eternal rejuvenation. (The magical bird Phoenix, continually resurrected from its ashes, has also been used as an allegory for Russia.)

And now the big question, in case someone should wonder. How can something so “evil” as a snake can be used as an allegory for Russia, without implying that Russia herself must be evil by association?

The answer is short and convincing, as it appeals to the authority of none other than Jesus Himself. To begin with, Russia isn’t a snake, but rather like a snake, which makes an important difference. After all, the ability to shed skin does not define the snake as such, especially when used as an allegory. Now, here is what Jesus commands his disciples, in Matthew 10:16:

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

Apparently, there is no evil in being “as a serpent” (as long as you do not do harm), if Jesus Ipse says so!

VIRTUE ARISING REFRESHED

…How often, I wonder, can a key to the Russian mystery be found in a quote from Nietzsche? Quite often, I reply to myself…

This entry is not exactly about yet another Nietzschean prognostication concerning Russia, It is rather about a beautiful metaphor of his, which allows me to illuminate a very fine point in Russia’s regard.

Here is a line from Nietzsche’s Menschliches (83), where he uncannily stumbles upon the key to yet another deep Russian mystery:

“Sleep of virtue. When virtue has slept, it will arise refreshed.”

How many times has Russia been called a sleeping giant by her careful watchers? Imagine that giant as an eternal sinner, possessing mortal (but perpetually regenerating) flesh, taken over by sin, and thus deserving the great suffering, inflicted on her for her redemption, whereas her immortal soul is pure and virtuous, but that soul, that virtue, has been fast asleep deep inside her bosom.

Why is that virtue asleep? An analogy can be made here to the greatest folk hero of Russia’s legends, Ilya Muromets. For the first thirty years of his life, he was a helpless invalid, immobilized in his bed, on top of a warm Russian stove. After those thirty years, he rose up, fresh and all-powerful, and ready for great deeds.

Ilya Muromets has often been compared to Russia as a whole, but, being a paragon of strength and virtue, I might just as well liken him to the Russian soul. It is the soul, not the body, which is asleep. No wonder then that this ostensibly legendary folk hero has been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as one of her most venerated Saints, assuming, rather spuriously, the existence of a real person behind the folk legend.

Once again, why would the Russian soul be asleep? But why, then, would Ilya Muromets be lying prostrated on top of his stove, we may ask? The legend doesn’t say why, but a paraphrase from Shakespeare may serve as a tentative answer: "Tired with all this, for restful [...sleep] I cry…"

And here is my full answer, as applicable to this Russian mystery: Like Ilya Muromets, the Russian soul has been asleep, exhausted from the sinfulness of the body.

Such, in a deep mystical sense, was the rationale of the Russian Keepers of the Nation for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. They realized that the Russian National-Christian spirit, the mighty force of the Third Rome, was asleep in the nation, exhausted by the hypocrisy of the political power, which had turned Russia’s religion into a lap dog of the State, bringing to mind a weird variation on the Kierkegaardian skepticism concerning all established religions.

Unlike the great Dane’s concern that the established Church in Denmark (as anywhere else where religion is established) had been inevitably corrupted by its own political power, the Russian Church, under the Tsars, was completely powerless politically, but was overburdened by an illusion of its ineptitude, unable to achieve a balance between the tremendous power of the Orthodox religion and its own pathetic ineffectiveness and decay. As a result, the prestige of the Church had plummeted, while the prestige of the Orthodox faith was in the dumps as well. The Third Rome mission of Russia was in gravest jeopardy, and her soul, her virtue, needed to wake up from its long slumber!

(I must refer the reader to the most meaningful exchange, in this regard, between Stalin and the great writer Mikhail Bulgakov, presented in my yet unposted entry Stalin And Bulgakov’s White Guard, from which I’m now quoting just this one short passage:

Stalin loved Bulgakov and liked to talk to him, and personally protected him from persecution on account of his extremely unorthodox views and writings. On one particular occasion, when Bulgakov was bitterly complaining to him about religious persecution in the USSR, Stalin briefly commiserated with him, but then turned the tables on the writer in their historically memorable exchange. He reminded Bulgakov how before the Bolshevik Revolution Bulgakov used to be a religion-spurning atheist, and now look what our Revolution has done to you: It has turned you into a Russia-loving champion of Christian Orthodoxy!

Bulgakov was quick to get the point, and registered his stunned agreement with Stalin then and there.)

Considering the urgent necessity of a profound religious revival for Russia’s spiritual revival, the Keepers of the Russian Nation thus allowed the horrific shock of the Bolshevik Revolution, with its “added benefit” of a vicious religious persecution, to serve as a wakeup jolt for the long-sleeping Orthodox virtue, so that it could arise refreshed, and fulfill its historical mission. Considering that the Russian mind counts time in centuries, and not in modern Western media’s 24-hour news cycles, here is a veritable case of a mission accomplished, as evidenced by the tremendous role played by the Russian Orthodox Church in today’s political, spiritual, and cultural life of the Russian society.

Virtue has slept, and is arising refreshed…

THE BLESSEDNESS OF SUFFERING

There are a number of different criteria, under which Russia qualifies for the mantle of the Third Rome, but none among them qualifies her so instantly and so categorically as the idea of the blessedness of suffering, deeply and naturally rooted inside the Russian national psyche.

The blessedness of suffering, the Christian duty and mission to accept the suffering, ‘prinyat’ stradaniye,’ as the Russians say, is a concept particularly akin to the martyrdom spirit of Early Christianity, and in this spiritual affinity with the purest form of Christianity that ever existed, Russia finds her legitimacy to be the ultimate moral leader of the Christendom.

It is important, however, to emphasize the passive nature of the Russian acceptance of suffering, as opposed to the active seeking of suffering, characterizing the missionary spirit of the Early Christianity. This is not to suggest that the active form is absent in the Russian tradition. Anyone who has read Dostoyevsky’s greatest novels or, say, Tolstoy’s Christian-philosophical works, such as Voskresenie (Resurrection), will find there an active desire to take the suffering as a punishment for sin (sometimes a deliberate sin is perpetrated, just to invite the punishment), so that through the triple act of public confession, repentance, and punishment in this world, redemption can be achieved, and eternal salvation eventually obtained.

As an interesting nuance, it might fascinate the historians of the American-Soviet confrontation during the official cold war era that the Russians never sought military superiority over the United States, not because it was either prohibitively expensive or totally impossible to achieve, but because it was unnecessary. Their reasoning was that simple military parity, symmetrical or asymmetrical, was already sufficient for overall superiority, for the Russian capacity to endure the suffering of war was incomparably superior to any other nation’s, and most certainly that of the United States. (In more down-to-earth terms, Americans, being so much richer than the Russians, had, all other things equal, far more to lose.) This fact, of course, has more than a historical value. Today’s Russo-American confrontation may be spinned differently than it was done before, but in reality, it is no less significant than the superpower rivalry of the cold war years, and the same concerns as before will have to apply, whether one wants it or not.

And finally, as promised, here is Nietzsche speaking in defense and in glorification of suffering as such, in Jenseits 225.The passage comes from Part Seven: Our Virtues, which means that he sees suffering as man’s main road to virtue.

"You want to abolish suffering. And we? It really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. Wellbeing as you understand it--- that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible--- that makes his destruction desirable… The discipline of suffering, of great suffering, do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? The tension of the soul in unhappiness that cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, inventiveness and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting, exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, and greatness, was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? In man, creature and creator are united… And your pity is for the creature in man, for what must be formed, broken, forged, torn, burnt, made incandescent, and purified--- that which necessarily must and should suffer?"

(Anyone who has just read this passage with attention need not wonder anymore why the authentic Russian thinkers have always felt such a great affinity with Nietzsche!)

Here is perhaps our strongest philosophical testimony, on behalf of the defense, in the trial of Why Russia is indeed important. Paradoxically, it is the Orthodox Christian faith aspect that defines the Russian positive attitude to suffering, whereas Nietzsche’s apologia of suffering, within the creator-creature paradigm, goes hand in hand with his rejection of the Christian concept of suffering. These two motivations are ostensibly mutually exclusive, but the results, in both these cases, are identical. While it is grotesquely inconceivable that Nietzsche himself should suddenly become a champion of Christian suffering, I can only assume that, just as in the case of his creative child, he is ascending that same high mountain that the Orthodox Christian Russia does, but along his own path of the lonely genius, only to find that at the top all great religions and great philosophies are bound to meet, and there finally discover the great secret that, although they had all climbed differently, yet they all have reached the same summit.

As for Russia herself, here is yet another repudiation of the New Christianity philosophers of the early 20th century, Merezhkovsky et alia, who promoted their enlightened alternative to Russia’s glum glorification of suffering, in reconstituting corpus Russicus by attaching the head of Christ (after all, Russia was to remain a Christian nation!) to the body of Apollo. The Creator would thus stay as before, but the Creature would be transformed into an unsuffering, self-loving co-Deity. Guess what the result of this would have been?! Say good-bye to Nietzsche’s discipline of suffering, great suffering, and, together with it, to profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, and greatness… Indeed, here is where Merezhkovsky had gone wrong. Although one cannot deny him his native Russianness, his New Christianity reveals a deep confusion and a hard deadlock, which only the Bolshevik Revolution could overpower with its sword, like Gordius and his knot.

And thus, here is the profoundly compelling validation of my controversial thesis, for which I have received no applause from my befuddled American audiences, that the infamous Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was never a tragic aberration in the course of Russian history, but a deliberate self-inflicted wound, in harmony with the national urge to take the great suffering, and the blessing that comes with it.

RUSSIA AND NIETZSCHE

Throughout the Russian section the reader will notice plenty of references to Nietzsche and quite a few long quotes from him. This shouldn’t be surprising, of course, as I am fond of Nietzsche anyway, and like to quote him at the first opportunity in all of my sections. But before I proceed to my next entry, the Russia-Nietzsche connection has to be briefly explained, to emphasize its significance outside any personal attachments. Such is the purpose of this entry.

My particular love for Nietzsche, in spite of our numerous points of disagreement, is more than a matter of personal predilection. Being a Russian, I find a peculiar “Russianness,” a kindred spirit, if you like, in the great German (who was incidentally partly Slavic, but I wouldn’t invest too much into his Slavic genes). His dashingly brave thinking, a penchant for fatalism, and several other oddities, are endearing not just to me, but to any true Russian, hence an incredible admiration for him, bordering on veneration, on the part of the Russian Intelligentsia as a whole.

Nietzsche had a keen “sixth sense” allowing him to discern Russia’s coming world-historical prominence, and, most remarkably, he was pointing in the right direction as to where Russia’s global greatness would be coming from. Here is an earthshaking passage from his Jenseits-208:

“The sickness of the will is spread unevenly over Europe. It looks strongest where culture has been at home longest; it disappears to the extent, to which the barbarian still (or again) claims his rights under the loose garments of Western culture. In France today the will is most seriously sick.

“The strength to will is a little greater in Germany; but it is much stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, not to speak of Italy, which is too young to know what it wants. But it is the strongest and most amazing in Russia. There the strength to will has long been accumulated and stored up, there the will, unsure whether to negate or to affirm, is waiting, menacingly, to be discharged.

“I do not say this because I want it to happen: the opposite would be more after my heart-- I mean, such an increase in the menace of Russia, that Europe would have to resolve to become menacing, too, namely, to acquire one will by means of a new caste that would rule Europe, a long terrible will of its own that would be able to cast its goals millennia hence, so, the long-drawn-out comedy of its many splinter states, as well as its dynastic and democratic splinter wills, would come to an end. The time for petty politics is over: the very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth, the compulsion to large-scale politics.”

The colossal futuristic value of his prognostication will be properly discussed in the Nietzsche section, but, so far, it is important to discern Nietzsche’s underlying approval of Russia, in his attribution to her of the very same characteristic (strength of the will), which is obviously the dearest to his heart.

As we will be discussing later, in the coming entry on the blessedness of suffering, the Russian attitude to suffering constitutes a peculiar strength of Russia’s national character, and Nietzsche remarkably agrees with this:

“…They (mischief-makers) submitted to punishment as one submits to an illness, or to a misfortune, or to death, with that stout-hearted fatalism without rebellion, through which the Russians, for example, are still having an advantage over us Westerners in dealing with life.” (Genealogie, II:15)

As for the Russian fatalism, it is indeed a national characteristic, observed by every great Russian writer. I particularly recommend to the reader Lermontov’s brilliant short story The Fatalist (which constitutes a part of his experimental novel A Hero of Our Time), in which this trait has been taken to a revealing extreme.

And finally, here is an astonishing similarity between Bakunin’s passion for destruction as also a creative passion, and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, quoted here from his Ecce Homo, Why I am a Destiny, Section 2:

“And whoever wants to be a creator in good and evil, must first be an annihilator, and break values. Thus the highest evil belongs to the greatest goodness: but this is being creative.”

It is worth repeating here that Nietzsche may actually have got this idea from reading Bakunin (although I wouldn't be too surprised if he had come to it by himself, revealing an affinity in their thinking patterns), as he must surely have taken the word nihilist, which he likes so much, from the Russian writer Turgenev, who had coined this word in the first place, or from Dostoyevsky, who later used it in his novel Besy (The Demons).

A RUSSIAN IN CHINA

Russicus sum, nihil alieni a me alienum puto…
My two-year stay in China at an impressionable early age could not fail to stimulate within me an especially heightened aesthetic appreciation of Oriental culture. Not at the expense of my native Western culture, mind you, but as a healthy addition to it, a “separate admiration,” intensified by the nostalgic touch of associating China with a precious part of my childhood.

This is not the Mirror section, however, and personal reminiscences have limited place here. My intention is to raise a curious question in connection with this personal involvement of mine with the Chinese culture, in particular, and with non-Western culture in general, and this is a good place to do it.

As the world’s Third Rome, at least in her self-perception, does Russia stake her claim on what is Rome’s actual domain in modern times, that is, the Christian world, or does her ambition reach beyond the confines of Western Civilization? On the one hand, the Church component of the Great Russian Duumvirate has not claimed the non-Christian world as its sphere of influence, and thus, no interest in such global outreach can be attributed to Russia’s Manifest Destiny.

On the other hand, however, the State component of the Great Russian Duumvirate claims the four religions of the Russian Empire as its legitimate assets, and thus goes beyond the Christian element of the Third Rome Doctrine.

It turns out that our Third Rome has a well-marked political and supra-religious aspect to it, but how much effect this aspect has on the whole is a much more elusive consideration than may appear at first sight. We must re-emphasize first and foremost that Russia’s Manifest Destiny is inconceivable without the religious component, and thus the purely political element has to take a back seat to an organic combination of both. It does not mean that Russia has no political interest outside the Church-State mix. In fact, it is very much involved with the totality of the international structure, and in our modern day and age anything less than a full global outlook is unthinkable.

The answer is that as far as her Manifest Destiny is concerned, Russia claims the Christian world as her own domain, while her multiethnic and multi-religious political composition provides her with a huge leverage to sit at the same table with the other cultures, particularly the Islamic nations, as their equal, but only as an equal. Hence Russia’s historical propensity to make alliances with the Eastern nations against the enemies from the West. (Alexander Nevsky and Batu-Khan, Stalin and Yamamoto, etc.) Even though politically explainable without a recourse to mysticism, the latter becomes a helpful illuminating tool in an in-depth analysis of the overall Russian political philosophy, her strategies, and often even her tactics.

And lastly, seeing herself as a repository of world culture, Russia does not possess an inherent mechanism of discrimination of non-Christian cultures in favor of the Western Christian culture. Just as she embraced Pushkin’s African ancestor, and so many others, as her own, she is always ready to embrace any Chinese, Japanese, or any other Oriental newcomer to the fold of her Russianness, and so, she is always prepared to say to them and to others, in any language, including this Latin paraphrase of the famous Terentius quote: Russicus sum, nihil alieni a me alienum puto. (I am Russian, therefore nothing alien is alien to me.)

RUSSIA AND THE JEWS

As a very special type of Russia’s relationship with the foreigners, stands out her relationship with the Jews. In the light (or should I say in the darkness?) of the West’s grotesque misconceptions about the role that the Jews have played in Russian society, the subject acquires a definite and poignant relevance, which goes well beyond any general issues previously discussed. This is why a separate entry is so very much in order.

Seen from a non-specific angle, Russia has looked upon Russian Jews just the same as she has looked upon the other minorities. Those Jews who wished to become fully Russified were always welcome to baptism in the Russian Orthodox Church, but those who did not wish to be assimilated, formed a legitimate minority within the Russian society, and only the loyalty to the State criterion was expected to be met in their case. Insofar as religion is concerned, Judaism has been one of the four recognized religions in Russia, but should a Jew wish to identify himself or herself as an atheist, no eyebrows would be raised.

It is important to understand that historically cultured Russians had contact primarily with cultured Jews, treating them with respect, as members of the same enlightened class as they themselves belonged to. (One shouldn't however seek a parallel here with what I have jokingly referred to as a "doctors without borders" situation of the earlier ages, when the well-educated Latin-speaking intellectuals, the “doctors,” identified themselves more with their learned kind across the European Continent, than with their blood brethren back “home.” Nationality, for the Russians, since the early times, tied them all around their common Russianness, hence the unique Russian concept of Svyataya Rus [Saint Rus], that makes adherence to one’s Russianness a religious duty, and its renunciation, a blasphemy.)

It is also notable that rural Russians had no contact at all with large Jewish populations, but welcomed Jews as primarily physicians and teachers, that is, as members of highly respected professions, thus always seeing them in the best possible light. It was only among certain minorities of the old Russian Empire, such as the Ukrainians, the Poles, etc., who used to be neighbors with the Jewish shtetls scattered all over their territory, where the notorious intense historical antipathy toward the Jews had developed, and could be unpleasantly referred to as group anti-Semitism.

There is, however, yet another dimension to the question of Russia and the Jews. It is a very delicate matter to discuss, but without understanding it a key piece of the global strategic jigsaw puzzle will be missing, and the whole picture will be necessarily distorted beyond recognition.

After World War II, the attitude of Russian and European Jewry (many of whom have since come to Israel, and now constitute a probable majority of the Israeli population) toward Russia (and the Soviet Union) was extremely positive. It was generally recognized among Soviet Jews that the Soviet State had been treating them fairly, as a legitimate minority, without any trace of nation-sponsored anti-Semitism, so characteristic of so many other nations. Of all those sent to the Gulag, none were sent there for being Jewish. Moreover, Stalin himself was held in high esteem, and even referred to as a “righteous Gentile” (the same honor had also been bestowed on Napoleon!), for having saved close to two million Jews from the Holocaust, by relocating them eastward, from the Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland and Western Russia, prior to Hitler’s attack on Russia in June 1941. Eventually, many of these Jews would settle in Israel, in the early years of its existence as an independent State, none of them ever forgetting to whom they owed their survival at the time when the ships carrying Jewish refugees from Europe were being turned back by the Western Powers, thus condemning the passengers to eventual extermination in the Nazi death camps.

On the other hand, there was always, among the Russian Jews, a bitter animus toward the West (much worse than it ever was among the Russian Gentiles) for the deliberate procrastination in opening the Second Front against Germany in World War II. Had it been opened in 1942, or even in 1943, my Jewish acquaintances would argue, six million Jews would not have died in the Holocaust!

Not surprisingly then, the Russians have looked upon the Jews of the world as their ace in the hole, and they have also regarded the American Jews, attaining an increasing, and these days overwhelming, control in the American political life, and in the formulation of American foreign policy, as ‘the fifth column’ of American society. I have told this story before, but its key point cannot be overstated, that my former boss at the USA Institute in Moscow Georgi Arbatov (who was himself Jewish) personally recommended to the Kremlin that Moscow’s secret weapon against the United States ought to be the Jewish Card, and that the naturally patriotic Soviet Jews were to be more frequently and decisively put on the frontlines of the Soviet side of the Cold War.

“When an American Jew sees an [ethnic] Russian," Arbatov insisted, "he sees him as his Soviet adversary. But when he sees a Russian [ethnic] Jew, he treats him as a fellow Jew, and opens up to him more than he would ever do to his Gentile American compatriots.”

…I know that the common impression in America regarding the attitude of Russian Jews toward Russia and the West is quite different from what I have just described, and I do realize that this fact is rather hard to take, but this is what I know to be the truth, and I feel that this knowledge is of considerable importance.

(As I noted in the above discussion, the question of Russia and the Jews has indeed been much broader than its ordinary implications, and its geopolitical consequences are colossal, which subject I will be returning to again and again.)

WHAT DO YOU KNOW! A POSTSCRIPT TO THE BERLIN WALL

The sophisticated readers of my blog are well aware of the fact that I have by now released quite a few “hot potatoes” (about 10% of my book lot, which is quite a few!) from my private collection of historical secrets. They must also be aware that, for several understandable reasons, I have edited a number of my blog posts, as compared to their book versions, leaving certain names and other sources out of the public view, as well as temporarily suppressing the most explosive and controversial details.

Several highly provocative references to “the mystery of the Berlin Wall” were also withheld from my most recently published entry The Mystery Of The Berlin Wall (August 13, 2011). In an earlier (March 1, 2011) blog posting Secret History Of The Iron Curtain, my very brief reference to the Berlin Wall read just this: “Talk about historical misconceptions! Churchill’s Iron Curtain signified the collapse of Stalin’s European dream, just as the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 signified the collapse of Khrushchev’s dream to make West Berlin part of East Germany.”

Now, for copyright purposes and to keep the record straight, I am keeping three archived computer versions of my book drafts, “vintage” 2008, 2009, and 2010 (in addition to the current working version which will be archived at the end of 2011, and so on.) My references to the Berlin Wall, preserved in the 2008 version, included the much revered name of the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967, in office 1949-1963), who was declared the Greatest German in History (ahead of Martin Luther and Karl Marx) in a recent German national poll. I confess that I found it inappropriate to make public the fact that, prior to the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall, intense negotiations had been underway for a number of years, which directly involved Chancellor Adenauer (sic!) regarding the swapping of West Berlin to East Germany, in exchange for certain parts of the GDR supposedly going to the FRG.

In my treatment of this subject, I made sure to point out that these secret negotiations couldn’t be reduced to some joint personal whim of Herr Adenauer and Comrade Khrushchev. Both their governments necessarily had to be involved. It is obvious that the government of the FRG saw West Berlin as a logistical nightmare and wished to get rid of it for the right price. It is also obvious that in Moscow’s eyes the price wasn’t right. Thus the negotiations failed, and Khrushchev with a heavy heart (he had been all for the deal!) consented to the construction of the Wall, which indeed finalized West Berlin's sovereignty.

…End of story? Not quite! The failure of the negotiations over the fate of West Berlin can also be explained by strategic considerations, insofar as Moscow was concerned. As I mentioned elsewhere, the USSR never wanted Germany to be divided, as a divided Germany invited the United States to stay in Europe, to defend the Western part. Now, the annexation of West Berlin would geographically “normalize” that division into East proper and West proper. However, with West Berlin “independent” of East Germany, a geographical abnormality was perpetuated, creating an “eyesore” for every German soul, and keeping the German dream of reunification, seen as strategically advantageous for the USSR, alive and ever-fresh. Thus, no price for the annexation of West Berlin was probably good enough, in terms of Soviet strategic interests.

…End of story? Not quite! Why am I talking about this now, having withheld this information from my blog only recently, that is only a few days ago? The reason for my present talkativeness is the just released article in the highly prestigious German publication Spiegel under the title: Secret Documents Released: Adenauer Wanted to Swap West Berlin for Parts of GDR. (By Klaus Wiegrefe, 08/15/2011.) To be sure, it tells the story differently from the way I know it and how I am telling it, but it all boils down to the same fact, revealed by the Spiegel title, which I had previously found too explosive to reveal on my own, particularly, having no corroborating hard evidence in my possession.

What do you know! Another great taboo lifted… Perhaps I should be less punctilious about my own rules of publishing etiquette?… Nah!…

THE MYSTERY OF THE BERLIN WALL

In commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the building of the infamous Berlin Wall (13th August, 1961 -- 13th August, 2011), I am now posting this quick comment, reiterating in part a previously made comment (see my earlier posted entry Secret History Of The Iron Curtain), then a propos, but here at center-stage.

They say with good reason that perceptions are everything. Indeed, too often the reality of things and events is completely concealed behind their propaganda-induced or simply mistaken popular perceptions. The case of the Berlin Wall is one of a biased perception, supported by powerful imagery, a host of cold war legends built around it, by now too entrenched to be supplanted by any evidence to the contrary.

Was the Berlin Wall a bad thing or a good thing? A bad thing, of course!!! But was it all bad? There ought to be no “second opinion” on this, and yet there is.

There are two contrarian things to say on this subject, both amounting to the fact that the Berlin Wall might not have been such a bad thing, after all. First this:

It is very difficult for today’s audience, accustomed to the dominant negative symbolism of the Berlin Wall, to look beyond that symbolism, going back to the situation in Berlin before the Wall was built.

Does the phrase the Berlin Blockade ring a bell? The Soviet blockade of “West” Berlin in 1948-1949 was a reflection of the Soviet strategic desire to end the four-partite military occupation of Berlin, so that the city as a whole, located deep inside Soviet-controlled East Germany, would eventually bow to the inevitable and become completely dependent on the USSR. With this in mind, the formal status of military occupation of East Germany was lifted, and the Soviet sector of Berlin became the capital of GDR. Although the blockade failed, Moscow’s plan to control all Berlin did not die in 1949, but lingered on until… 1961!

Yes, indeed! The building of the Berlin Wall, whose somber anniversary is being commemorated today, has been a sign of Moscow’s recognition of West Berlin’s total independence from the GDR and Soviet control. It is easy to see it as a symbol of enslavement of the people of East Germany, who would now find it much more difficult to move to West Berlin, and I understand the legitimacy of such perception, but here we are coming to my second, more general point.

The Berlin Wall represented a forced physical division of Germany along the battle lines of the continuing Cold War. It is no news to anyone that Germany herself had no say in this matter, but I know from a number of very credible Germans, both East and West, that hardly any of them ever subscribed to such a division, but continued to view themselves as members of one German nation. It is therefore impossible to imagine that at any time during the Cold War any German would obediently acquiesce to a start of a hot World War III, immediately pitching a German against a German, and thus, in a kind of crooked way, the division of Germany had become a major impediment to a superpower war in Europe.

In this respect, the physical Berlin Wall, as a part of a larger Wall cutting one Germany into two unwilling parts, helped reduce the occurrences of provocation and sabotage by either side, or perhaps by an outside troublemaker, which might further jeopardize the already fragile coldwar peace, and thus served as a positive factor in keeping to a minimum the excesses of the superpower conflict in Central Europe.

…Mind you, I am not trying to downplay the human tragedy of the Berlin Wall. But things are not simple in this case, and, by the same token as I am willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the public perception, the “second opinion” here expressed ought not to be dismissed either, as it reflects a crucial aspect of the reality of those seemingly distant times.

ON RUSSIAN "RUSSIANNESS"

(This entry continues where the previous entry Nationalism Versus Internationalism left off.)

We have talked about it a lot already. Although there may be some impressions to the contrary, the Russians have never been racist or anti-foreign per se in all their history, which, as I’ve been saying again and again, officially started with a complete foreigner: the Viking Prince Rurik becoming the founder of Russia’s first royal dynasty, lasting until early 17th century and superseded by the Romanovs, also of foreign descent, in 1613. Even before Peter the Great, there had been a long-standing tradition of hiring capable foreigners for highly skilled jobs, and the early Russian regular army, the Reiters, included countless thousands of foreign soldiers, particularly in commanding positions. Most of these, attracted by the lavishness of their Russian upkeep, preferred to settle down in Russia, and became Russified. We shall discuss shortly what constituted “Russification.”

Yes, there was a strong prejudice against foreign, particularly Western nations, suspected (justly) of plotting to do harm to Mother Russia, but this prejudice seldom transferred to foreign individuals, never turned into a full-blown xenophobia, even in times of war. My early ancestor Iacobus Michniewicz, a Polish nobleman in the retinue of "Tsarina" Marina Mniszech, wife of the impostor Tsar False Dimitri I, arriving in Moscow in 1606, had the lifesaving wisdom to renounce Catholicism, and to convert into the Russian Orthodox Faith… (oops, I am giving away the store!), which was the only reason why he was spared the gruesome fate of his Catholicism-proselytizing brethren, when the anti-Polish uprising began, and, being now fully accepted into the Russian fold as a Russian, even received a couple of Russian estates, to compensate him for the loss of the Polish ones, as a result of his “apostasy.”

What is most remarkable about this story of my Polish ancestor is that for a large part of his subsequent life, Russia was at war with Poland, and the Poles were bitterly hated all across Russia. Yet no one would ever hold his native Polishness against this recent Polish invader, as he was treated as a 100% Russian from then on.

So, here is the secret of Russian Russianness. You don’t have to be born a Russian, to be a Russian. You can be a 100% German, like Catherine II the Great, or a Tatar, like Nikolai Karamzin’s paternal ancestor Kara Murza, or a Turk, like Vasili Zhukovsky’s mother, or a Negro, like Alexander Pushkin’s maternal ancestors, but none of this will matter, as long as you have been properly baptized by the Russian Orthodox Church,--- for it is your Russian Orthodox religious allegiance, consecrated by the Russian Church (not to be confused with Eastern Orthodoxy in general, which has no such upshot!), which makes you a 100% Russian, and this is it.

In other words, Russian nationalism centers around the Russian Orthodox Church, which alone determines “Russianness” as such. Those modern-day Russian ‘skinheads’ and ‘fascists,’ who beat up and kill foreign-looking victims, are not Russian at heart, in the proper sense of the word, but a bunch of ignorant, bigoted degenerates, who have no respect, no knowledge, no understanding of what it means to be a true Russian. Would they have harmed a Pushkin in their midst? Probably! Thus they are the worst kind of unforgivable criminals, who sin against Russia’s national spirit, and against Russia’s God!

But harming a non-Russian (that is, a non-Russian Orthodox) foreigner who does not carry a sword against Mother Russia is an equally dire offense. For the sake of the Russian national soul, I sincerely hope that all such xenophobic crimes are going to be answered with the strongest punishment permitted by law, and that this law will be further strengthened to impose the maximum possible penalty in all such cases.

Getting back to the question of being a proper “Russian,” as opposed to being a citizen of this multinational Empire, which oftentimes implies different ethnicities and different religions, all non-Russian citizens of the multinational Russian empire, are accepted as protected minorities, on the condition of their unquestionable loyalty (no ‘dual citizenship,’ thank you!) to the Russian State. In the absence of the latter, that is, of loyalty to the State, all the rest are essentially endangered species, marked for eventual extinction. The recently introduced definition of ‘Russians Abroad’ is a curious trend of reestablishing the superpower reach, which the Soviet Union strove to establish by adopting its internationalist, “Marxist” posture in the early stages of the Soviet power, and then, rather unsuccessfully, tried to shed, or transform, throughout the later part of the Soviet history, eventually resulting in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This post-Soviet international outreach by Russia is far more organic and natural, no longer based on the overly ambiguous Bolshevik deception, but on the true nationalist principles, and on the primacy of the Russian Church, as the unifying force, and it strongly reinforces Russia’s adherence to the Third Rome Doctrine, rooted in the 500+ years of the historical tradition determining the development of the Russian nationhood.

Those in the West who do not understand the significance of my description are contributing to the further decline of Western Civilization in general, and of America’s standing in the world, in particular. As a matter of fact, in order for America to survive as a Great Power (notice my use of the indefinite article!), she must, before it may be too late, reconsider and reevaluate the basic concepts of American nationalism, American nationhood, dual citizenship, and such. A proper understanding of one’s own national identity will result in greater respect for other people’s nationalism, and will hopefully help clear the poisoned air of international relations. Otherwise, the doomsday “writing on the wall” has surely been written…

…But can this culturally illiterate generation of the great American nation still read? I sincerely hope so!

NATIONALISM VERSUS INTERNATIONALISM

One of my aphorisms, already posted somewhere on this blog, says this: “Statesmanship is politics at its best, which is the practice of enlightened nationalism.” What is nationalism, then? At its best, it is an acute appreciation of one’s nationhood, history, tradition, continuity; and a pursuit of one’s country’s interest above personal or any other interests, should they ever come in conflict with the national interest. Patriotism and nationalism are clearly interchangeable in this context, but I am deliberately using the more ambiguous word to contrast its positive implications against the backdrop of Globalism, or Internationalism, or a "world without borders-ism," which is of course one of the phoniest concepts ever invented by the strong to justify their intrusion in the affairs of the weak. (No two-way street here!) In reality, however, Globalism has turned into a perversion of the idea of “superpower interest,” becoming pernicious in its effect on the American nation, completely diffusing the real concept of American national interest, and also resulting in a catastrophic underestimation of the power of nationalism in modern world, which has effectively undermined American foreign policy and America’s erstwhile lofty standing and great prestige in the perceptions of the world, resulting in failure and humiliation.

Indeed, nationalism around the world is alive, and extremely well, in fact, far better than could be normally expected, thanks in large part to Washington’s global push to impose a superpower-US-controlled world order on the unwilling “them.” (In case this was not noticed, here was a little play on us and them.)

Capsulating this thought, America’s international posture of the last two decades, although claiming to be a representation of American national interest, has been a substitute for the latter, and at the latter’s expense. What is even worse, no self-delusion can delude a keen observer who has his own stake in the game. In our interconnected and interdependent world, one party’s folly leads to another party’s folly, as that party seeks to take advantage of the perceived missteps of its opponent instead of pursuing a normal course of the game as ought to have been the case under normal circumstances.

Under normal circumstances, as we are speaking about America and Russia now, it would have been useful for us to first examine what constitutes the particular brand of Great-Russian nationalism, with its necessary and natural projection into the concept of Russian national interest. Instead, however, we are obliged to discuss, albeit very briefly, the practical matter of Russian behavior under an American global offensive.

In such a case, as I have observed elsewhere, Russia’s policy becomes much more manipulative than during normal times, in the sense that oftentimes Russia appears more interested in taking an anti-American action than in pursuing a principled pro-Russia course, which is, of course, a matter of tactical nuance, where the difference of a particular manipulative action from a strategy-based action is determined by the difference in their underlying priorities. In other words, the desire to punish prevails over the constructive imperative, or, differently put, the tactical urge trumps the strategic objective. Needless to say, this situation cannot be seen as healthy either for the one side or for the other.

Who was the first to spoil the good game of superpower sportsmanship? A wise man will answer by putting his finger on the Russians for rigging the chess game through a devilishly ingenious sacrifice, which looked like a self-immolation. I would, however, blame America for taking the bait and stupidly starting the feast of victorious gloating before all the pawns had been counted. For, as we should know from the game of chess, in the absence of a surefire checkmate, one must always watch for the pawns, who are the only combatants on the board, capable of a surprise promotion…Boom!!!

As a result of this obscene gloating, the reservoir of goodwill, which Russia had always had for America, in normal times, had evaporated, and now, instead of being perceived as an esteemed ‘rival-as-usual,’ America has become a mortal enemy, switching Russia’s mental attitude to the war mode.

...Having been forced, by the dictates of current events, to focus on an abnormality, it is still imperative for us to understand Russia’s normal actuality of inherent nationalism, and the way to start looking at it, is, first, to understand what constitutes the concept of Russian Russianness.

This will be the subject of my next entry.

GENIUS LOCI OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY

Continuing my To Russia with Greatness series, this primarily informative entry is about one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived, Swiss-born Leonhard Euler. The title points to Euler’s characterization made by the great Soviet physicist Academician Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov: “Together with Peter I and Lomonosov, Euler had become the good genius of our Academy, defining its glory, its fortitude, and its productiveness.”

Leonhard Euler needs no introduction to the science world, but perhaps he needs one for the general reader. Here is such an introduction formally quoted from Webster’s Biographical Dictionary.---

Euler, Leonhard. 1707-1783. Swiss mathematician and physicist; one of the founders of pure mathematics. Called to St. Petersburg by Catherine I (1727), where he became Professor of Physics (1730), and later of Mathematics (1733); called to Berlin by Frederick the Great (1741), becoming Director of Mathematics at the Academy of Science (1744); recalled to St. Petersburg (1766). Lost sight of one eye in 1735, and of the other in 1766, but continued working. Founder of the calculus of variation, on which he published the first textbook; author of works on analytic mathematics, algebra, and other mathematical subjects, and also on analytic mechanics, hydrodynamics, astronomy, optics, and acoustics. He devised a system of logarithms to facilitate musical calculations.

This is obviously both an incomplete and rather inadequate representation of the great Euler. To begin with, it does not state that he was indeed a world-historical pillar of mathematics and science, to whom Gauss and a host of important others would pay an impassioned tribute. He was also a kind and generous man who had nothing but good words and good deeds for every living soul who ever crossed his path, whether deservedly or not. But the most important feature of his life, in the context of this section and perhaps in the context of his whole life, was his long-standing connection to Russia. It was indeed Russia who gave him his first and career-defining employment before he had reached the young age of twenty. Having spent fourteen years at the St. Petersburg Academy, he rather rashly moved to Berlin in 1741, during the period of serious political instability in Russia, but even there, in Berlin, he was still receiving generous financial support from the new Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, and continued to be counted as an Academy Member. In 1766 the new Empress of Russia Catherine the Great offered Euler a dream deal to return, and so he did, to remain in the country for the rest of his life and to be buried there as a Russian genius of foreign birth, but of native spirit. Not surprisingly, and with good justification, Russia has called him Russian, and he reciprocated by having acquired a fluency in the Russian language and an admitted attachment to his adoptive country. (My reader should be reminded that for two hundred years from Peter the Great until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, there was no need for any foreigner either in St. Petersburg or in Moscow to learn Russian, as French and German were predominantly spoken at the Court and by all educated Russian nobility, at the expense of their own Russian language.

Euler’s life in Russia is one of the best examples of a foreign genius coming "to Russia with Greatness," and Russia opening her arms with generosity and appreciation, to result in a most wonderful marriage.

FATHER OF SPUTNIK

It was during Khrushchev’s Glorious Decade rule that two groundbreaking international achievements were made, namely, the launch of the first Sputnik in 1957, and the first manned space flight in 1961. Truthfully, neither was exactly attributable to Khrushchev’s leadership, as both of them had started well before his time under Stalin in a broad sense, and under Beria in a narrower administrative sense. Yet, both of these events did indeed happen on Khrushchev’s watch, for which he can indeed get some formal credit.

The focus of this entry is the fundamental achievement made possible thanks in large part to the genius of a foreigner. Robert Bartini was an Italian-born Soviet aircraft designer and space pioneer. The great Russian rocket designer Sergei Korolev called himself “Bartini’s pupil,” and the name father of the Sputnik has been associated not with Korolev or another Russian name, but with Bartini. An Italian aristocrat, he had become a Communist and after the fascist takeover of 1922 he was sent to the USSR by the Italian Communist Party in 1923, and remained a Soviet citizen for the rest of his life.

Despite his father’s fabulous wealth (which he donated to the Italian communists), he chose the road of hard work and intense technical education. Trained as an aircraft pilot, he also graduated from the Milan Institute of Technology as an aircraft engineer and physicist, showing prodigious talents not only in his professional field, but in an array of other applications and interests, such as philosophy and cosmogony. He created the unique theory of a six-dimensional world, where time, like space, has its own three dimensions. This theory is known as “Bartini’s World.”

In Moscow, Bartini became instantly prominent as an aircraft designer. He was given the rank of kombrig (equivalent to major general) at the early age of thirty-one. In 1938 he was “arrested,” allegedly because of his nominal connection to "the enemy" Marshal Tukhachevsky, in addition to being accused of working for Mussolini. He was not judged harshly, however, and during his “imprisonment” (which some knowledgeable people would later insist had been done for his own protection!) he was working in fact on the development of new aircraft, having been appointed head of a “prison designer bureau.” He was released from prison in 1946 (that is, soon after the end of the war) and continued his work as a free man now. At different times he was closely associated, aside from Korolev, with Ilyushin, Yakovlev, Antonov, and others (most of whom did their own prison stint as well). His brainstorms and developments in experimental aviation made Soviet exploration of Space an early reality. Korolev said of him: “We all owe Bartini a great lot. Without Bartini, we would not have had the Sputnik.”

He remained creatively and physically active until his death in 1974. Here was a brilliant example of what I have called To Russia with Greatness. It was not a smooth ride for him, and not through any fault of his, but in the end, he entered Russian history as a hero. After all, even though Russia was rather rude to him at one time, she never failed to appreciate his genius. I would take that over polite marginalization any time.

RUSSIA'S DRILL SERGEANTS: HEIRS OF CHARLEMAGNE

Among the new and valuable skills which Russia learned from foreigners was the art of war, that is, military organization, elements of strategy and tactics. Predictably, these lessons were to come from two outstanding authorities on the subject: Germany and France, the heirs of Charlemagne, no less!

In a historical overview, we may notice that all Russian rulers, starting early on, showed an active interest in the foreign know-how in military matters. A specific interest in German artists of war started back with Ivan Grozny, and was of course mightily rekindled by Peter the Great.

The inordinate love for Prussia, exhibited by Catherine the Great’s husband Peter III, was among the causes of his prompt assassination, yet his practice of emulating the Prussian drill and the other features of German military Ordnung did not die with him, but was retained  by his successors, particularly prominent--- perhaps to excess--- during the reign of his (“dubious”) son Emperor Pavel I, who was also assassinated.

The most profoundly influential theorist of military matters in Russia, both in his lifetime and over all subsequent generations of Russia’s war strategists, was the Prussian officer and a thinker of genius Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), who served with the Russian army during the Napoleonic invasion, and later distinguished himself by his books on the philosophy, psychology, and practice of war, most specifically, a three-volume opus Vom Kriege (published posthumously in 1833), which would become one of the staples in Russian military academies from then on. (My father General Artem diligently studied Clausewitz’ Werke during his academy years, as part of the mandatory curriculum!)

A further example of German influence on Russian/Soviet military thinking was the careful study by Soviet military strategists (and remarkably by Stalin himself) of the thinking of the great German military strategist Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (1800-1891). The famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 was rationalized by Stalin in accordance with Moltke’s thinking, namely, that the Pact was not a strategic course to be followed, but only a temporarily acceptable option, with a host of other available contingencies never actually taken off the drawing board. In practical terms, this meant that the option of an imminent war with Germany was always under consideration, and Hitler’s sudden breach of the Pact could not possibly catch Stalin off guard. (There was only an intense desire to affect the timing of the breach, so that it would happen later, rather than sooner, in order to allow the next generation of Soviet weaponry to be ready for the action. When the war actually started, it came not as a shocking surprise, but as an acute disappointment in having been unable to hold it off any longer.)

An interesting example of Russia’s use of foreign military genius is the case of the Frenchman Charles De Gaulle. (I have devoted a separate entry to De Gaulle under the title Le Général, which I have already posted on this blog.) A professional soldier and a great military thinker, De Gaulle foresaw the advent of highly mobile mechanized military units determining the difference between success and failure in the coming wars, and in his writings (Le Fil de l’Épee, 1932, Vers l’Armée de Métier, 1934 and La France et Son Armée, 1938), he had advocated speedy construction of large quantities of tanks and training of specialized personnel to man these new armor divisions. Ironically, De Gaulle’s urging fell on deaf ears in his own country and in many others, with only two nations heeding his advice, and those were Germany and Russia. As subsequent history tells us, Hitler’s utilization of De Gaulle’s ideas (courtesy of De Gaulle's  biggest enthusiast in Germany General Guderian) was to account for the Wehrmacht’s overwhelming military superiority over France and other nations of Europe in the early stages of World War II, whereas the Russians were to get the final edge, breaking the German Panzer’s back with their own superior version of the Frenchman’s vision, as they combined superb operational skills with the technical advantages of their legendary wondertank T-34, in the titanic tank battle of Kursk in 1943.

TO RUSSIA WITH GREATNESS

From Russia with Brains (see my previously posted entry under this title) was never a one-way street. To Russia with Greatness has always been the other side of it. The following several entries are devoted to the subject of how great foreigners were always welcome to Russia and treated as Russia's own.

 It is a crucial point for understanding that the Russians have never stood in awe of foreigners. Only those of them have been welcome who would come with benign intentions, or those who were duly invited. But woe to those great ones who, like Napoleon, would come without an invitation. No matter how greatly the French Emperor had been admired by the Russian liberally-minded nobility, and even by the Emperor  Alexander I himself, once Napoleon had forcefully invaded Russia, he was immediately doomed to meet the fate of all Russia’s enemies, later shared by Hitler.

The history of Russia ostensibly starts in the year 862 AD, with the rule of a complete foreigner, invited by the nation’s wise men to establish law and order in the lawless and orderless land, and, in the process of so doing, to bring out its colossal potential for greatness. It is truly a mark of the nation’s inherent greatness to encourage great foreigners to come into its fold bringing their greatness with them, and to appreciate them in the highest possible degree by treating them as her own natural-born offspring.
Starting with Rurik and the dynasty which he established, we must note that the last royal Romanov dynasty (1613-1917), despite its Russian-sounding name, was also of a foreign origin, descending from one German nobleman Andrei Kobyla, who had come to Russia from Prussia in the fourteenth century, and settled there. There was a later effort to disprove the German connection by claiming that Kobyla was a perfectly Russian name, meaning horse, and therefore, it could not possibly be German. This is, however, a lame argument, as it was quite possible to change an original German name into a similarly sounding Russian name or to make up a Russian nickname, which would then become the person’s proper name. (When in Russia, sound like a Russian!-- or something like that.)

There is little point, however, in pursuing this “national origin” argument. Heavily Germanized, to the point that it is often difficult to trace any Russian blood in it, the Romanov dynasty was still a legitimate Russian family, although only a few of their lot were destined to exhibit a decent level of personal greatness. Ironically, the two Romanov Greats, Peter and Catherine (who became a Romanov by marriage) were conspicuous for opening Russia's doors to foreigners.  Well, Catherine the Great was, of course, a complete and undeniable foreigner,--- with no blood ties of any sort to anybody or anything Russian. (Curiously, all Russian monarchs after her have been (at least officially!)  descendants of the 100% German Catherine and her husband Peter III, who was none other than Karl Peter Ulrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, a grandson of Peter the Great on his mother’s side, but with the other three-fourths of blood connections all complete foreigners to Russia.

The issue of Peter III and Catherine the Great, Emperor Paul I, was married to a German Princess, and so were all the subsequent Romanovs, reducing the chance of Emperor Nicholas II having any Russian blood in his genetic composition to a virtual zero.

But, perhaps, enough of Russia's German-blooded Emperors and Empresses, who are not exactly at issue here. Going through the litany of foreigners who came to Russia with greatness, we see a steady flow of skill and talent, which became a deluge in the 18th century, under Peter and Catherine, but had started well before them. For instance, there is nothing more Russian in general perception than the great Kremlin of Moscow, yet it, too, was originally built and decorated mostly by invited foreigners. The beautiful city of St. Petersburg too, had opened the gate to Western creative influence to a magnificent effect.

As I said before, there is nothing demeaning or humiliating in Russia’s fondness for great foreigners, as the Russian nation has never suffered from an inferiority complex. Russian nobility spoke French and German like their own native tongues, often at the expense of the Russian language, and saw nothing wrong with it. Russian nationalism has never been petty, but, rather, represents the epitome of an eclectic great-nation chauvinism. The Third Rome mentality has turned Russia, in her mind and in reality, into the ultimate repository of the treasures of Western Civilization, and thus, everything great, such as the best of world literature, philosophy and art, is being internalized and accepted as her own.

Most great foreigners who came to Russia, stayed and died in Russia, like, say, the eventually Russified Rastrelli family, of Italian origin. There were others, however, like the earlier mentioned Étienne Maurice Falconet (1716-1791), the French sculptor of genius, who came to Russia just for a few years, to work on a project, after which he went back to France, never to return. In the process of his Russian visit he, however, immortalized himself as a perennial Russian treasure through his extraordinary masterpiece, the Bronze Horseman monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg, commissioned by Empress Catherine the Great. So what if these two  foreigners, Catherine and Falconet, were thus involved in constructing this unforgettable and absolutely unique 45-foot-tall equestrian statue, perfectly balanced  on the horse's two hind hoofs and a cleverly trampled serpent, upon a 1500-ton single piece of rock, the largest ever moved by man, which has become a national legend and a breathtaking  symbol of Russian greatness? There is nothing in this fact that could in any way diminish the monument's endless projection--- to the Russian people and to the rest of the world--- of Russia’s national pride and glory.