Robert Bowie, PhD, is an independent consultant, specializing in Russian mentalities. His website is www.russianmindsetsconsultancies.com

[PART ONE OF THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN JRL 2008, #135]

Face-Saving Fakery, Play Acting and Make Believe in Russian History and Culture.

(2) Modern Russia’s Insecurity

The play’s the thing,. . .
Shakespeare, Hamlet

SHAME AND HUMILIATION, POSTURING, IN MODERN-DAY RUSSIA

People have good reasons for so facilely and rapidly distorting the history of their country. For one thing, humiliation can break the spirit of the individual or the nation state. The individual frequently attempts to wipe the stain off his psyche by avenging the insult, by drinking to excess, or playing the buffoon. A nation state may seek vengeance through warfare; when that is impossible, other means are used to mitigate the contagion of shame and humiliation.

Russia has a long, long history of political and military debacles that have left the country shamed. The most salient example is the Tatar Yoke (1240-1480). Here are a few other examples from more recent times: (1) The loss of the Crimean War in 1856, when Russia was forced to stop maintaining its fleet in the Black Sea and to remove all naval institutions along its coast. Especially galling was the alliance of fellow Christian countries (France and Britain) with the Muslims (Ottoman Turks) against Orthodox Christian Russia (2) The loss of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, which included a devastating defeat of the Russian army at Mukden (Manchuria) in 1904 and the almost total destruction of the Russian Baltic fleet, which had sailed all around the world, only to be decimated at the Battle of Tsushima in May, 1905 (3) The gross underestimation of tiny Finland’s determination to resist in the war of 1939-1940, in which the Soviet Union suffered heavy losses against a country with a population of only four million.

The low opinion of Russia in the West is not something that began recently. Western attitudes of mistrust mixed with condescension have perpetuated themselves for centuries. In her detailed history of the times of Ivan the Terrible, for example, Isabel de Madariaga makes it clear that the European powers of the sixteen century regarded Russia as an uncivilized and barbarous realm.[1] Three centuries later Russians journeying to the West (such as the hypersensitive Fyodor Dostoevsky) often were greeted with patronizing scorn, to which they reacted, of course, with denigration of Western institutions and peoples, and defense of their own.[2] After countless years of such humiliations and national debacles, Russia remains hampered by its longstanding inferiority complex.

Russians, furthermore, often have a low opinion of themselves; listen carefully to the way ordinary Russians often talk about their people and their nation. A common phrase bandied about by the man on the street is “civilized country,” used with the constant implication that Russia is not one. “Any civilized country would have solved that problem long ago.” “If Russia ever becomes a civilized country.” Etc. It is no secret to anyone who has lived in the country that Russians also take enormous pleasure in humiliating one another. The level of rudeness and bad behavior on the streets is shocking to those who have come to live in Russia from Western (“civilized”) countries. It’s as if you’re in an enormous barnyard, in which all the chickens are intent on establishing the pecking order. Trouble is, it never gets established definitively, since there will always be a new young rooster, ambling around with head held high, crowing.

Of course, many Russians react to the inferiority complex by cultivating a superiority complex. We end up, consequently, with a typical Russian situation, a mix of immiscibles: people act inferior and superior simultaneously. Bravura is compatible with self-destructive behavior, and Russians (especially Russian males) revel in the bravura of self destruction.

The most glorious holiday celebrated in Russia, understandably, is Victory Day, May 9, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany. It represents not only a stupendous victory over a powerful foe, giving Russians something that, psychologically, they have a desperate need for: national pride. It also marks a time when all classes of Russians came together in a common cause, rather than the more usual Russian situation: classes and individuals deceiving and battling each other in an attempt to win out, or at least survive in the barnyard, where it is every man for himself. Russia today is in desperate need of some new national idea that can bind the people of the country, but no one has proposed a viable idea. As it now operates, Russian Orthodoxy, the nominal state religion, has failed to become that binding force.

Many of Vladimir Putin’s actions and statements in recent years have their origin in this same national sense of humiliation. Enraged by the way the West (especially the U.S.) has taken his country for granted since the collapse of the Soviet Union, chagrined by the way Western economists encouraged the “free enterprise” that led to widespread theft of the national resources of Russia in the 1990s, Putin, has spit huge globs of rhetorical venom westward in recent years. He has encouraged, successfully to some extent, a new spirit of patriotism and new hopes for the future of the country. School textbooks have been revised, and their authors relate to reality much as did the ancient chroniclers, with an “ideology of silence.” These books, for example, gloss over the depredations of the Stalinist years, while playing up the accomplishments of this madman-despot, giving Stalin, for example, credit for the victory in the Great Patriotic War. All of this, of course, is understandable. Now that Russia is back on its feet economically, now that its economic prospects are highly promising, it is only natural that its politicians should start strutting around and puffing out their abdomens, like honeypot ants engaged in ritual aggression.[3]

Of course, much of Putin’s rhetoric has been in the spirit of play acting and make believe. It is no secret that the Russian military is in a state of near collapse, but buzzing ships of the U.S. Navy with outdated Russian aircraft makes everybody smile at the brazenness of the game players. Furthermore, this kind of posturing, like the grand military parade staged on Red Square this past May 9, with outdated warplanes overflying the proceedings, makes Russians feel better about themselves.

In Part II of her book about, primarily, American ideology and foreign policy, Veronika Krasheninnikova does an excellent job of describing how human perceptions are, basically, hardwired in the human psyche. Once a certain way of perceiving things becomes the norm, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to change that hardwired perception, even if it is patently erroneous. Krasheninnikova makes reference, primarily, to the way U.S. foreign policy is determined by game playing: “group think” and a priori deductions. She stresses the enormous difficulty of interjecting new ideas into governmental institutions (intelligence agencies, the executive branch, congressional committees, etc.) where old, untenable ideas stubbornly persist.[4] She makes little attempt in her book to relate the thesis of hardwired human perception to the Russian psyche, but the thesis is undoubtedly applicable to Russia, where cultural perceptions from centuries long gone are passed on perpetually from generation to generation. Many of these mores are extremely detrimental to the country. They include, for example, the inferiority-superiority complex mentioned above, a tendency to accept corruption as the norm on all levels of society, a broad spirit of pessimism that is almost impossible to dislodge from the Russia psyche, self-fulfilling prophecies of doom. Just the way that Russians drive, at high speeds on bad roads, is an indication of the self-destructive spirit that many Russians exult in. They drink to excess (this is an understatement). They have the highest smoking statistics in the world. Why are they so eager to destroy themselves? Obviously, because they feel badly about themselves. Here is a typical Russian, speaking to a foreigner: “You don’t smoke? Great, you’ll die a healthy man. Me now, I don’t give a damn if I die tomorrow or twenty years from now. So why should I quit smoking?” President Medvedev’s most daunting task is finding a way to eradicate the ancient (and beloved) Russian spirit of “pofigism” (untranslatable word from “Mne po figu”­“I don’t give a damn”).

These hardwired perceptions,[5] which the Russian people have come to depend on, have even often embraced with great enthusiasm, place enormous barriers in the way of progress and hope for the future. It is so much easier to play the old games, rather than invent entirely new ones. Of course, Russian polls show that of late people sense more hope for the future, but, most Russians are extremely wary about the potential for real change. In a recent poll taken within the so-called “upper middle class” (no middle class in the Western sense yet exists in Russia), respondents revealed an enormous sense of insecurity about their future prospects in Russia. Half of those surveyed expressed a desire to emigrate, temporarily or permanently. Of course this survey was highly selective, pertaining only to those aged 24-35, with a per capita income of 1500 euros/month in Moscow, 1000 euros in St. Petersburg, and 800 euros in other cities. For ordinary Russians (the 40-50% who live at the poverty line or near it) such incomes are exorbitant, and the man in the street would explain the fears of elite Russians of the “upper middle class” as follows: “these kozly (bastards) have come by their positions of wealth through devious means. The double-dealing young crooks have good reason to fear repercussions in the future.”[6]

Of course, if one of these “crooks” is your friend or neighbor, you make an exception for him. He can, for example, help you come up with the money to pay off the university officials whom you need to bribe, in order to get your son admitted to a university, and later the money you need to pay off the professors so that your son can pass his exams. So, to you, he’s not a crook at all. This kind of double standard is the rule, rather than the exception in Russia. Of course, you still may envy your friend or neighbor (envy is THE big emotion in Russia, past and present), because he has enough money not only to bribe the officials, but even to BUY his daughter a diplom (university degree), thereby circumventing the whole charade.

A BRIEF LOOK AT SHAME AND HUMILIATION IN U.S. HISTORY

Since we live in a much younger country, it is sometimes difficult for Americans to understand the importance of historical events in countries with histories going back a thousand years or longer. The American response to Arab resentments arising from events of five hundred or more years ago is to say, “Why can’t they forget that? It’s history now.” We have not, furthermore, accumulated national humiliations on the scale of Russia or certain countries of the Middle East. We have, however, experienced quite a few humiliations in the U.S., both on a personal and on a national level. On the personal level the greatest shame burns on the cheeks of Native Americans and former black slaves. Both of these groups have made progress, but they have a long way to go before they can hope to wipe the psychological stain away. African-Americans, for example, often still express their anger and humiliation, plus feelings of inferiority, through anti-social and self-destructive behavior. As is typical of so many males in the underclass of Russian society, many young black males hate not only the world of their successful compatriots­they also frequently hate themselves. Americans, including the American government, have attempted to make amends, but the difficulty of rectifying old ills perpetrated upon people is exemplified by the slow (true, steady, but still slow) progress that African-Americans have made since the Civil Rights Laws of the sixties. Even successful and highly articulate African Americans, such as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, are still seething with rage over that stain that burns on their cheeks.

As for national humiliation, the U.S. has simply not experienced much of this in its history, at least not in comparison to a country such as Russia. Consider the shame consequent upon losing wars and you find only one pertinent American example: the humiliation of Southerners after they lost what they still term The War Between the States. It is a common misconception that those who flaunt the Confederate battle flag in the South are expressing feelings of racism. While racist feelings may certainly be relevant, it is much more likely that people flying that flag are expressing Southern patriotism and, in particular, their reaction to being conquered and subjugated.

As for the Vietnam War, the only major defeat suffered by the United States as a whole throughout the entire period of its history, the American reaction to it has been, primarily, that of the ancient Russian scribes to the Tatar Yoke: the “ideology of silence.” After we evacuated Vietnam, flying out our last helicopters from the roof of the American embassy (people dangling from the struts) in a city that would soon be named after Ho Chi Minh, Americans collectively decided to just forget that little country that had defeated us. The newspapers and mass media had been overwhelmed with stories on Vietnam before we left. Then, suddenly, practically no one had anything to say about post-war Vietnam. Since we weren’t there anymore, in effect, Vietnam did not exist any more. This is one more instance of how Homo ludens plays its relentless game of make believe. Presidential candidate McCain was recently quoted (in reference to our Iraq War­July 22, 2008) as saying, “When you win wars, troops come home.” He has conveniently forgotten how our troops came home from the very war in which he participated.

THE FAILURE OF U.S. POLICY MAKERS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE IMPORTANCE OF RUSSIAN SHAME, HUMILIATION, INSECURITY

When the administration of George W. Bush was preparing its long and strenuous public relations campaign leading up to our invasion of Iraq in 2003, there must have been some reports from intelligence agencies referring to the Arab mentality. There must have been someone in the government bureaucracy declaring the rather obvious fact that we were getting ourselves into a situation in which certain peoples (Sunnis, Kurds, Shiites) had been inveterate adversaries for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, where old blood feuds were bound to resurface. In other words, there must have been somebody suggesting that we were attaching ourselves to a tar baby, and that getting unglued would be a long, grievous, and expensive business. Certainly those reports were written, but apparently nobody in the U.S. executive branch or in the higher echelons of the military bothered to read them. If this were not enough to prove the utter incompetence of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policies on Iraq, let us consider the most bizarre myth of all: as soon as the U.S. forces arrived, the Iraqis, rejoicing in their liberation from the yoke of Saddam Hussein, would (1) throw flowers at the feet of the invading Americans (2) proceed immediately to set about loving one another and setting up a democratic government American style.

Then again, you need not be an expert on Arab mindsets to understand the broad issue of mortification. When you invade a country, no matter what the state of that country, even if that country is living in what may be metaphorically termed a huge field of muck and ordure, the people of that country are humiliated. Foreigners have come to take them over, and they (especially the young males) will do everything in their power to wipe the stain off their cheeks. They will murder the invaders, kill their own innocent people, even themselves­anything to remove that stain. So despite the constant buzzwords of the American administration, abetted by its press (“insurgents” instead of “guerillas,” “Al Qaeda forces” aided by Iran, instead of native born “freedom fighters,” “surge” instead of U.S. reinforcements) the basic facts remain. Nothing can be resolved permanently in the mess that Iraq has now become until we, the invading forces, depart. Such a simple truth vitiates the statements of Presidential candidate McCain, who speaks of “victory” and embarrasses himself by incessantly repeating an absurdity: “We are winning the war.” As for Democratic candidate Obama, he has not yet figured out what he should say, so he makes a variety of (sometimes contradictory) statements, hoping to please as many American voters as possible.

Getting back to Russia, one wonders if most U.S. diplomats and politicians are even aware of the country’s long history of mortification, of its constant insecurity, its fear that enemies from all different directions are plotting to seize its land. As one old spook friend of mine used to joke, “All people are crazy, but Russians set the highest world standards for insanity.” The U.S. Presidential candidates in 2008 are kept busy answering such monumental questions as these: Why does Obama have to wear an American flag pin on his lapel? Why doesn’t McCain smile enough on television, and when he smiles, why does he remind us of Nixon? Why doesn’t Obama admit that he’s a secret Muslim and a “Manchurian candidate”? Why does McCain limp slightly on his left leg whenever he skips down the ramp after an airplane landing? Won’t that hitch in his stride cost him votes? Is his mother on some special steroid supplement that has allowed her to live and function into her nineties? Etc., etc.

Does any American politician or anyone in the Eastern Establishment press consider the terror that engulfs the Russian people and their leaders when they face the prospect of Russia’s utter deliquescence? I speak here not of global warming and the melting of the ice on the Russian tundra; I mean the complete melting away and evaporation of the Russian nation state. The U.S. seems determined to keep adding former members of the Soviet Union to NATO. Everybody but Russia. The U.S. presses ever closer to the borders of a country weakened by a severe demographic crisis and a multitude of other social problems, a country reliant on military forces that are no match for the military machine of the U.S. Of course, our problems in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the possibilities for more military adventures remote. We have the best military technology in the world, but we are reluctant to take the losses in human lives necessary to realize our military objectives. This, however, is not the way the Russians see the situation. Reagan’s prospective “Star Wars” scared the pants off the Soviets. George W. Bush’s “Son of Star Wars” (U.S. anti-missile technology in Eastern Europe) is equally terrifying.

What is our Russian policy and what is it intended to accomplish? What do we have to gain by bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO? Could we not have more to lose than to gain, considering the inchoate state of those two countries and Russia’s almost hysterical opposition to such moves? How long can we go on pretending that we can do as we wish with impunity, expanding NATO and setting up anti-missile systems ever closer to the Russian borders?

Probably ninety-five percent of Americans have no idea of the Russian viewpoint on the expansion of NATO or the Russian view of U.S. efforts to set up anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe. One sometimes wonders if even prominent U.S. politicians have any conception of the Russian viewpoint. They should spend a few days reading the Russian press, and then they should ask themselves still more serious questions. For example, is it in the national interest of the U.S. to weaken Russia further, especially in light of China’s increasing power? Does the U.S. seriously want a situation in which Russia becomes fragmented, i.e., ceases to exist as a nation state? If such possibilities seem remote, they certainly do not seem so to Russians in all walks of life. Read, for example, two recent, not especially hysterical, but rather well reasoned Russian points of view: on American attempts to achieve missile supremacy and on the possibilities for a fragmented Russia in the near future.

ON PROSPECTIVE U.S. NUCLEAR PRIMACY

The Russian newspaper “Komsomol’skaja Pravda” (No. 93, June 26-July 3, 2008) ran a sobering interview[7] with Colonel Mikhail Polezhayev, an expert on missile technology and on Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles. Polezhaev mentions an article that appeared in the influential American journal Foreign Affairs (March/April, 2006): Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy.” Although the article seems not to have produced much of a reaction in the U.S. media, it certainly presents dire implications for Russia (and China), in that the major premise of its authors is that the U.S. is on the verge of achieving a first-strike capability and nuclear primacy. This means, in effect, that there are military strategists in the U.S. who believe America may soon be capable of, as Polezhaev says, developing “the capacity to destroy Russian and Chinese long-range nuclear arsenals with a first­and only­strike.” To emphasize this point Polezhaev recalls what former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger used to say, “that an effective missile defense system will render Soviet weapons obsolete and return us to 1945, when we were the only country in the world possessing nuclear weapons.”[8]

Polezhaev explains (as have Lieber and Press in Foreign Affairs) that the possibility of achieving nuclear primacy depends not only on the supremacy of U.S. long-range missiles, but also on having anti-missile sites in optimum locations. “Precision of American guided missiles and guided bomb units is close to a meter or two nowadays,” while the Russian ballistic missile defense system is full of holes, “holes large enough to swallow a country like France” (both citations are from Polezhaev). If, say, ninety percent of Russian ICBMs could be destroyed in their silos, along with Topols, long-range aircraft and nuclear submarines, Russia would be left with a good many warheads for retaliation, but if the Americans had anti-missile systems close enough to Russia (Polezhaev mentions four prospective sites: Alaska, California, the Czech Republic, and Poland), they would be in excellent position to intercept most of the Russian remaining strike missiles very soon after they were launched.

While the U.S. mass media echoes almost universally the statements of Secretary of State Rice about the reasons why the U.S. wants anti-missile systems installed in Eastern Europe (the ostensible Iranian threat), the interview with Polezhaev presents perfectly believable reasons why Russia should fear such installations, plus a good argument why their rationale has much less to do with Iran than it does with Russia. Of course, even in the wildest dreams of Vice President Dick Cheney the actual possibility that the U.S. would launch a preemptive nuclear strike on China and Russia is remote. This is a kind of “Dr. Strangelove” scenario, and the bizarre satire of that film is echoed even in Polezhaev’s statement that the U.S. Secretary of Defense (like the batty Air Force general played by George C. Scott in the movie) has declared that damage to the U.S. will be unacceptable only if it exceeds elimination of twenty American cities with populations of about half a million.

Just because the U.S. is hardly likely to do it, that doesn’t mean that the U.S. military is not attempting to get to the point where it may be possible to do. And just because, as the saying goes, somebody (Russia in this case) is behaving like a paranoiac, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Interviews with experts such as Polezhaev and articles by other high-ranking military men (often with steam issuing from their ears) are commonplace in the Russian press these days. Once again we have here, on the part of the Bush Administration, a kind of game playing, which amounts to psychological warfare. As with the honeypot ants, “the desired result is the communication of fighting ability.” In other words, “You Russkies better behave for a change. Lookee here at what we’ve got set up on your borders and what we can do to you any time we want to.” While persistently informing the Russians that they are our “friends” and that the anti-missile systems we propose to install in Eastern Europe have nothing to do with them, Cheney and his cohorts are openly winking. Caught up in this game last October were Secretary of State Rice and Defense Minister Gates, whose diplomatic mission to Moscow eerily echoed Shakespeare’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, especially as they are presented in Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Gates and Rice had to travel to Russia, in order to present, straight-faced and with smiles, the Bush Administration’s message of the innocuous American anti-missile system. They had to explain, once again, how no offense to Russian “friends” was intended. It was all, they were to say (sincerely, looking deeply into Russian eyes), smiling,[9] a big mistake to assume that the new missile systems had anything to do with Russia. R. and G. had to act out this scenario for President Vladimir Putin, who had rehearsed a particularly dire new scowl in preparation for their arrival. Meanwhile, the gullible American public was swallowing the cover story, which our mass media blindly perpetuated, and still perpetuates to the present time.[10]

Playing games can be dangerous. In recent days this one has become rather alarming, as Russia retaliates with some psychological warfare of its own: the threat to use Cuban bases for Russian warplanes armed with nuclear weapons. Shades of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 lour over us!

ON THE PROSPECTIVE FRAGMENTATION OF RUSSIA IN THE NEAR FUTURE

Meanwhile, NATO advances ever closer to the Russian borders, swallowing up countries that were quite recently a part of the Soviet Union, and it is difficult to find any American at a high level in the executive or legislative branch who does not think that this is a good idea. In a program monitored by the BBC on Russian television (June 22, 2008) a case is made for the very real possibility that Russia will soon be deprived of its territorial integrity.[11] The “main contenders for Russia’s territory and resources are China, the USA, and Europe.” Furthermore (according to this program) Lithuania and Washington have recently been engaged in secret talks, and there is a possibility that “Lithuania could become the first former Soviet republic on which the U.S. deploys elements of its new missile defense system.” In Russia there is “an increasingly clear sense of being under threat, of feeling that we are being surrounded.”

On this same program the correspondent in charge mulls over a huge map, showing the world as it may possibly be constituted in 2030. “The Far East [he declares] has been divided between Japan and China; Siberia, Chukotka and Kamchatka have gone to the U.S.A.” Georgij Malinetskij, who is presented as “deputy director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics,” brings up a topic much discussed in contemporary Russia­that there are those who believe that Siberia is an asset belonging to the whole world; it is somehow unfair that Russia has gained possession of it. Malinetskij “browses through American newspapers” and discovers that a very popular subject is the purchase of Eastern Siberia. “Russians sold Alaska; why shouldn’t they sell Eastern Siberia?” I must not be browsing the same American newspapers, because I hadn’t come across this idea. Nor had I read the opinion (supposedly cited in the New York Times, January, 2008, no specifics given) that officials of the EU say “in private conversations” that annexation of Russia is only a matter of time. Russia has two choices: to become the “property of Europe” or an “oil vassal of China.”

The interview with Col. Polezhaev and the program monitored on Russian television give us a fair representation of the alarmist tone of opinions now widespread in Russia. A major question facing the new American President will be this: do we wish to continue policies that exacerbate what is already an almost hysterical hostility toward the U.S. in Russia, or do we wish to find ways to ameliorate the Russian rhetoric and reassure our Russian “friends”? At a time when we are bogged down in two foreign wars, when our military is stretched to its limits, the idea that the U.S. could contemplate taking over huge swaths of land from Russian Siberia and maintaining control of them is absurd. Equally fantastical is the possibility that we, under no threat of war or no immediate imposition upon our national security, would launch a first strike on Russia and China. But to people in Russia, ruled by a mindset hardened over centuries of insecurity, such ideas appear entirely in the realm of possibility. Meanwhile, according to Polezhaev, “The impression is that the Americans do not even listen any more.”

The lame duck Bush/Cheney administration is, of course, totally bankrupt now, but we can only hope that whoever takes over the government of the U.S. in January, 2009, will be ready to start doing a little listening.

[1] Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (Yale University Press, 2005).

[2] For one of scads of examples that we could cite of his disdain for Westerners, see the irascible Dostoevsky’s remark in a letter to his wife Anna from the German spa of Bad Ems (1874): “The Germans on Sunday were all out on the streets and in holiday clothing, a coarse, uncouth people.” Cited in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881 (Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 123.

[3] On the ritual combat of the honeypot ants, see Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson, Journey to the Ants (Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 69-70.

[4] V. Krasheninnikova, Amerika-Rossija: Kholodnaja vojna kul’tur: kak amerikanskie tsennosti prelomljajut videnie Rossii [America-Russia: Cold War of Cultures (How Americans View Russia through the Prism of their Own Values)] (Moscow: Evropa Publishers, 2007), p. 185-244.

[5] Western observers and scholars treat Russian perceptions of reality extensively in the many books devoted to “the Russian way.” See, for example, Ronald Hingley, The Russian Mind (London: The Bodley Head, 1977), Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, The Slave Soul of Russia (New York University Press, 1995). Russians themselves (cultural observers, historians, fiction writers, etc.) also provide volumes of interesting material about how Russians act. Two good examples: (1) Leonid Andreyev’s take on the Russian tendency to tell inspired lies (“Vserossijskoe vran’je”) (2) Ivan Bunin’s look at the fakery so often underlying Russian holy foolery (in his short story “Slava,” [“Glory”]).

[6] This survey appears in JRL-2008, #123, Item No. 3.

[7] Translated in JRL-2008, #122, Item No. 30. More of Col. Polezhaev’s strong opinions appear in another interview with “Komsomol’skaja Pravda” on July 3, 2008 (translated in JRL-2008, #126, Item No. 36).

[8] This is Polezhaev citing Weinberger; I have not checked the source.

[9] “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” (Hamlet). This is a quotation especially appropriate in Russia, where smiling is always suspect.

[10] One of the memorable lines in Stoppard’s play is this: R: --Why are we here? G: –Because we were sent for. In the case of the modern-day courtiers of W. Bush, it would read slightly differently: --Because we were sent.

[11] BBC Monitoring: “TV Looks at External Threats to Russia’s Territorial Integrity.” June 22, 2008. JRL-2008, #121, Item No. 38.