This
delightfully subtle title plays on the title of Nancy Graham’s erstwhile
political magazine Surviving Together (with which I used to have a
rather strange, although always friendly, relationship, described in the Mirror
section), devoted to American-Soviet relations. The “Red Peril” in the title is
self-explanatory, while the Yellow Devil comes from Maxim Gorky’s
classic caricature of America. (Incidentally, the former title of this entry, The
American-Soviet Conspiracy Of Convenience, conveys its content with a
commendable straightforwardness, although at the expense of subtleness.)
So
far, we have been discussing the question whether Russia is really important as
a world leader within the new post-Soviet global power structure. Realizing
that indeed she is, and yet we have to prove it again, and again, and again, as
if this fact immediately turns into some nonsensical fiction at the very moment
that we are done proving it, the next question that arises, is: why is this
so?
Justice
in a court of law is only possible when there are two sides in direct
opposition to each other. Where there is no conflict, there is no justice.
Provided of course that the conflict is real, and not a sham. There are
situations, however, when both the prosecution and the defense may find
themselves in bogus opposition to each other, while in reality working on the
same side, in cahoots, in order to guarantee a mutually acceptable
verdict, something like when the defendant is in no hurry to prove his
innocence, but on the contrary is bent on flaunting his alleged guilt, well knowing
that he can get away with it anyway but with an extra clout as a result. In
such cases, there can be no justice in the court, and the truth is always the
victim.
This
is not a contrived scenario, but the actuality behind the former Soviet
phenomenon. The Russians were anxious to convince the world that their
strategic goal was, indeed, world domination, even though they had
neither the desire, nor such power to control the world, and their real goal
was a much more modest projection of the Russian antithesis to the
Western Capitalist (later American) thesis. But the West was quick to
buy into the idea of Soviet world domination. In fact, the West not only
loved, but very much needed the idea of the Red Peril, the
Russian Internationalist threat, because the leaders of the Western world were
smart men who understood the value of the strong enemy to society, just like
the leaders of the Church had from the very beginning realized the immense
value of Satan for keeping their flocks under control. And so the West was
anxious to perpetuate the Red world domination Scare, and the Russians
loved it back, because, as far as they were concerned, it carried the realistic
promise of a much greater power than they could ever dream of, or even ever
cared to possess.
This
conspiracy of convenience had become the mainstay of the world order in the
twentieth century during the early years of 1917-1937(?) and the later period
of the Cold War (1946-1991), interrupted by the rise of Nazi Germany in
between. The lie at the bottom of it did not upset the applecart too much
because the main parameters were unaffected: America did have an enemy and so
did Russia, and everybody was happy with the big picture. It was only when the
Soviet Union unexpectedly fell apart, the snake shed her skin (see my
explanatory entry Allegory Of The Snake, posted
on August 26, 2011), and only because the lie had been so inextricably fused
with the old skin, that America could not help falling into the lie’s hidden
trap, having to accept Russia’s new skin as some new and positive quality,
whereas it was all so wonderful only from the standpoint of the invigorated
snake.
But
returning to the empty substance of the Red Peril, which was the
cornerstone of American propaganda throughout the Soviet era of history, the
Russians had, in fact, been the first in launching their own type of
anti-American propaganda, shaped in the Karl Marx tradition, aiming at exposing
the evils of capitalism, of which the United States had been the embodiment.
Russian anti-capitalism was cleverly encapsulated in the image of the Yellow
Devil, conjured up by the great Russian writer Maxim Gorky back in the
early 1930’s. The great irony of this, however, was that, in their mutual
perceptions, American propaganda (aimed at the American public) about Soviet Russia:
The Red Peril, was a lie, accepted as the truth, while Soviet propaganda
(aimed at the Soviet public) about Capitalist America: The Yellow Devil, was
the truth, dismissed as a lie…
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