Yeltsin cries "You're Fired!" in a Crowded Kremlin

» afronord - December in Moscow

Jeff, I left Moscow in 1980 and came back for two years in 1992-94 as a Fulbright professor. In my view the biggest problem is not the politics or economics, but a simple fact that the Russians (or should I say Soviets) and we do not want to come to realization that USSR lost the biggest war in human history. It was very real war and with the consequences we are not familiar because the world was never engaged into a nuclear war. They even do not know that this war is still on in Russia. All those years of the Soviet power were noting but a continuation of the great civil war. Reforms, market, democracy -- it's all peacetime features. Russia is a bigger trouble today than before, because it is in trouble. We are stuck with them no less than they are with their nukes and lack of experience of living without state of war. Even Marx didn't forget to mention "subjective" forces of history, but we behave as if 50 years of the Cold War weren't wartime. It was a new kind of war and Russia lost it.
I watched them in 1992, when they thought that it's just a matter of new laws and money. Try to find a discussion during Perestroyka or after about the coast of the Soviet years to the world. It's always about Russia and Russians, never about the price they had to pay. It's easier for them to feel doomed than guilty. Germany went through 70.000 sentences after 12 years of Nazism. It was occupied and still paying (in real money too) for its crimes. Do you think the magnitude of Russian/Soviet impact on the world in this century ever crosses Yeltsin's mind? He is a Soviet man...
But the time is lost. Not so much by the Russians, they are in agony and can do little. By the West, by US which didn't know what to do after the World War III and their victory. We even afraid to say it... Now we will wait and see for Russia to become "our" problem.
I hope that nobody believes that somebody like Primakov could solve problems he even doesn't understand.
I'm new to Suite101 and appreciate your forum. I have my Russian Page: Exile at "http://members.spree.com/anatoly48" but I still didn't find time to put my Russian Diaries on the web. Thanks,
Anatoly Antohin

-- posted by afronord

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» Jeff_Deutsch - Russia's Legacy

Anatoly,

I just wanted to say that I very much appreciate your insights. I myself believe that much more specific knowledge is necessary to understand the particular plight that Russia is in, but Russia's past is relevant indeed.

I have long been a student of Russian history - in secondary school I read every biography of Joseph Stalin I could get my hands on, plus Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. Indeed, for the school's Halloween party when I was 17, I dressed up as Stalin; unfortunately no one even recognized the character. (However, someone took a picture of me and it got into the yearbook, so it has been recorded for posterity...). Then, a few days later on November 7, I wore a black armband to school. Again, no one knew why.

Thanks for being a regular reader. Your comments are most welcome!

-- posted by Jeff_Deutsch

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