Russian Paranoia?

[stumbler]

If we have no hostile intent toward Russia, then why the military buildup on their borders and the interference with the political processes of their neighbours?

You never answered how it would make you feel if America was similarly surrounded by Russian troops, fleets, and bases.

I don't think Russia is as xenophobic as you claim. How did we Russians manage to settle and "colonize" if you will so many surrounding areas, with different religions and languages and cultures, if we are afraid of anything foreign?

Did we kick Cyrill and Methody out because they came from Greece?

This xenophobic and paranoid talk is straight out of the talking points of American Russian-bashers, and reeks of things like the "Harvard Study" of Russians from the 40's, which was full of such racist nuggets as its finding that "Russians are emotionally colourful."

Why are Americans the measure by which all emotions ought to be measured? What if the Soviets made a study saying that "Americans are cold fish?"

You are really looking at this issue from a single side, and, I am sorry to say, with quite a bit of prejudice.

As an American, I would be extremely concerned if Russia put bases in Canada and Mexico and tried to manipulate their politics.

Why should the Russians feel any different?

[Pravoslavnik]

If we have no hostile intent toward Russia, then why the military buildup on their borders and the interference with the political processes of their neighbours? You never answered how it would make you feel if America was similarly surrounded by Russian troops, fleets, and bases.

Stumbler,

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  I did answer your first question above.  My honest opinion is that the military installations on the periphery of the former Soviet Union--in Europe, Alaska, etc.--are defensive in nature, and are there to prevent Russian invasions and military/police occupation of other nations, as  happened, repeatedly, during the Soviet era.  The U.S. has also had a longstanding committment to supporting the development of democracy and free markets--and of preventing the spread of totalitarian, communist (atheistic) police states and state-run economies similar to those of North Korea and Cuba, for example, two of Russia's closest allies in the past century.  Unfortunately, the American government and CIA have also been involved in many evil activities during the past century, which I believe are inconsistent with our most cherished American values.  Some of these, in my opinion, have been heavily influenced by corporate greed and the abuse of American power by wealthy elitists, including Cheney and the Bush-Walker clan.  I do understand why Russians might not trust such men, but even they have wanted to see Russia prosper as a free society.

    To answer your second question, I would certainly feel threatened if America were surrounded by Russian military installations, for several reasons.  First of all, Russia has been politically unstable in recent years, and has a very short history of government by constitutional democracy--which is even now disappearing.  Secondly, Russia has a long history of totalitarianism and rule by a dictatorial police state.  They have also expressed openly hostile, aggressive intentions toward America during the Soviet era--e.g., Kruschev announcing that Russia "will bury" America.  In contrast, after World War II, America fostered free democratic societies in conquered nations like West Germany and Japan through the Marshall Plan, maintaining a military presence only sufficient to protect Western Europe from a Soviet invasion.  We did the same thing in South Korea.

     In summary, we have good, historical reasons to mistrust Russia--at least since 1917, when the Godless Bolsheviks destroyed Holy Russia.  What good reasons do Mr. Putin and the current Russian Federation have for so mistrusting America and the West today?  Are their fears really based in reality, or are they truly [i]paranoid[/i], as a projection of their own hostility, and acceptance of many years of distorted, anti-Western propaganda in the Soviet era?  I sense that you, and other Russians I have known in the ROCOR, are still in a state of denial about the sins and misperceptions of Soviet society and government.

[stumbler]

We have been doing most of the invading lately, not the Russians. As to the stability of the government, do you remember that Bush was installed by the Supreme Court (by a single, solitary vote of an appointee of his father) after vote tampering in Florida, a state controlled by his brother? Does that sound stable? Russia's economy runs with a surplus every year, while we run huge deficits. Which is a sign of stability? Putin has huge approval of those he governs, while Bush's approval ratings hover in the low 30 to high 20% range. Which is more stable?

People say Putin has been "clamping down," including on the media. Well what is the Patriot Act, various signing statements, media consolidation under a Republican appointed FCC, etc? Both sides are using the same tactics.

I am shocked at the kind of things I have been seeing in America lately, because they are the kinds of things we used to decry when they happened in the Soviet Union, and they are the kinds of things people came here to escape. People are tortured, people are disappeared, people are denied the right to counsel. Our police engage in wholesale slaughter in the name of "self defense" and we have more people in prison per capita than even the so-called "oppressive" Russian government. Our rate is roughly 50% higher than the Russian rate, and 7 times higher than most of Western Europe and Canada. Who runs the gulags? Russia or America?

Recently, the district attorney in a nearby major city gave a child an award for telling the police that his parents had some contraband in the house. Have you ever heard of "Pavlik Morozov?" The parents were whisked away to jail, the child was put into state custody, and a televised awards ceremony hailed the child as a hero of the state. I was horrified.

(If you haven't heard of Pavlik Morozov, here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov )

I can see that you just can't imagine that America might be threatening and surrounding other countries. You believe that whenever American troops are there, they are "defensive" and that America needs to protect the rest of the world from big, bad Russia. You might ask an Iraqi how they feel about the over 600,000 civilian casualties they have suffered as a result of "defensive" America. It was certainly not their fault that Rumsfeld armed Saddam and used him as a proxy under Reagan.

We weren't concerned that Saddam didn't run a "democracy" when we supported him.

We also armed and funded fundamental islamists both in Afghanistan, as a proxy war against the USSR, and in Kosovo with the KLA. Apparently, America has a policy of arming and funding anyone who wants to kill a Slav. Do you remeber that we purposely began our bombing campaign against the Slavs in Yogoslavia on Orthodox Easter Sunday? Do you remember that some of the military people wrote "Happy Easter" in chalk on the bombs?

America wants a weak Russia. We are not "defensive" toward Russia.

"Democracy" and "free market economy" are code words - they mean that we have the opportunity to interfere and purchase elections, and that our corporations can come in and exploit markets at a huge advantage due to their size and economic might. We keep troops around the world to "protect American interests." "American interests" are defined as opportunities for our corporations to exploit business opportunities.

I don't find your opinions and naivete concerning America's "intentions" and how they are perceived to be so much fact based, as based on the propaganda you have been subjected to.

I used to tell people during the Cold War that it was very interesting to be Russian American, because we are the group at whom ALL the guns are pointed - by the Soviets because we are Americans, and by the Americans because we are Russians.

Maybe that has given me a different outlook and the ability to see both sides for what they are.

I don't think further discussion or my adding facts here will change your opinion, which as I stated appears to me to come from a place of prejudice and lack of understanding, so we will have to simply agree to disagree.

You might like to read a book by the MIT linguist Noam Chomsky called "Manufacturing Consent." It is a bit dated, but at least it tries to explain the framework we so take for granted here in America.

My personal feeling is that the world is in quite a sorry state and that there is evil everywhere, so we must trust in God and redouble our efforts to try to be worthy of His protection. True protection does not come from the barrel of a gun, whether it is an Ak-47 or an M-16. The government will not protect you - whichever government you happen to live under.

I am sorry we have had such a strong disagreement on this issue, as I think we have usually tended to be in agreement, but I am sure we can agree that God is better than government, even American government.

By the way, I am an American, as I have to keep pointing out to you. Born and raised.

[stumbler]

I just want to provide for you the source of my assertions concerning Yugoslavia. My source is Abp Anthony of San Francisco:

"Much-suffering Serbia was the homeland of our saint's remote ancestors. Serbia is a country of great long-suffering, which has encountered the hatred of the so-called West and of NATO. It was during the season of Pascha last year that they began the violent bombardment of Serbia and its province of Kosovo , which is covered with ancient holy places. And missiles were launched mockingly, with the blasphemous slogan painted on them: "Happy Easter."

http://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/syn ... ntoni.html

That is the only political thing I ever heard him utter, and I knew him all my life.

The battle over Kosovo continues, and for whatever reason, we want to give it, and all the churches in it, to fundamentalist Muslims linked to Al-Qaeda.

Why?

Does that make sense? That we support the Muslim extremists, and then war against them, and while still warring against them, support them some more and send Condi Rice to tell Putin that Kosovo must be independent.

Wouldn't that scare you, if you really thought about it?

We have a lot of pretty insane policies. If I were not American and was a citizen somewhere else, I would be gathering strength and arming myself against that kind of unpredictable insanity.

[Pravoslavnik]

Stumbler,

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   Just a few points.  I have been outraged by almost every major policy decision made by the Bush administration--especially the invasion of Iraq.  I never voted for a Bush, and neither did half of the voters in America.  Bush and the Republicans also stole the election in 2000, with disgraceful assistance from several Supreme Court Justices (Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas) who will go down as among the worst in history (along with Bush, himself.) It is a good thing that so few Americans now support Bush, but, unfortunately, half of the electorate was bamboozled by Bush in the last two elections, including several Americans I know in the ROCOR.

    I have also been extremely upset by the American and NATO bombing of Serbia--a part of the world that I know something about, since half of my family comes from that part of the world.  The American media has never covered Yugoslavia accurately, and I can still remember when a local charity was collecting [b]Christmas[/b] presents for the Kosovo refugees several years ago--not even realizing that the Kosovo Albanians are Moslems...

  However, that said, the fact that Putin is popular now does not imply that he is the head of a "stable" government, or of a democracy, and he has certainly eliminated a free press and cracked down on any meaningful opposition parties in Russia.  Hitler was extremely popular in Germany in the 1930's and used similar tactics.  I am a student of history, and I see many signs of facism in modern Russia, similar in some ways to what happened in Germany in the 1930's.  This was the main point I was raising on this thread with regard to paranoia and "circling the wagons," (or troikas) in Russia and in the ROCOR today.

    With regard to Kosovo, recall that Milosevic could have sat down at the table with the U.N. to prevent the bombing of Serbia, but stubbornly refused to do so.  He also initiated the invasion of Slovenia in 1990, and the subsequent outbreak of hostilities with Croatia--including the bombing of Dubrovnik.  Not to say that I support what the U.S. and NATO have done in Kosovo and Serbia, but surely Milosevic and Karadzic bear [i]some[/i] responsibility for what has happened to Serbia...

[stumbler]

Although you did not address the issue squarely, I find it hard to believe that you can see fascism in Russia without also seeing it in America.

There is no "opposition party" in America either. Putin has been accused of making and supporting fake opposition parties in Russia - and this seems correct. People who don't believe that the goal of both Republicans and Democrats in America is to support the corporate interests, and that on that point they oppose, are mistaken. Republicans are simply less elegant and subtle about it.

Republicans and Democrats split only on red-herring "culture war" issues, and furthermore, neither party follows an internally consistent rational ideology, thus encouraging a random distribution of "one issue" voters going to each. (The example I like to use is "pro life." Pro life includes pro war and pro death penalty.)

The whole game, as Chomsky points out so well, is in defining the poles of debate and making illegitimate any idea which falls outside them. Just like Putin and his fake opposition parties.

There are good reasons to fear America. I was born here, I live here, and I myself fear America.

I went to school with the children of someone near the top of the line in presidential succession here and I fear America.

I also fear Putin and his Russia.

The difference is that Bush doesn't run a huge worldwide church.

[Pravoslavnik]

Well said. Consider that, by raising the question of whether Russia is paranoid, I never claimed that America does not have similar issues. America has certainly had a capacity for paranoia--as in the "Red Scare" of the McCarthy era--and also for a type of facism. Lately, American "facist" tendencies can be see in the right-wing, militant Protestant Evangelicals who played a critical role in electing George W. Bush in the last two elections. I have been, frankly, astonished at the way so many Americans--including some of my friends in the ROCOR--have turned a blind eye to Bush and Cheney's criminal activities in the geopolitical sphere; the illegal pre-emptive war inIraq, the use of torture and extra-national extraditions of terrorism suspects, etc. However, I do believe that there are significant differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, and that most of the "international" crimes of Bush and Cheney would not have occurred in a Democratic presidential administration. On the flip side is the old joke about the Democratic Party--"I don't belong to any organized political party; I'm a Democrat."

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     America does have a viable democracy, but the democratic process here has been increasingly undermined by televised political advertising, often financed by corporations and the wealthiest elites--something that the Republican Supreme Court has recently voted to enable, by striking down some provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform legislation.  The Republicans have this media manipulation of "Joe six pack" down to a science; usually barraging the airwaves with sleazy ad hominem attacks just before the elections--e.g., the "Swift Boat Veterans" fraud that probably cost John Kerry the last election (along with the "broken" voting machines in Ohio's inner city neighborhoods.)

       Despite all of these potentially serious problems, I still don't view the U.S. or the West as being hostile or truly threatening to Russia.  Most of the current tension between Russia and the West seems to result from the U.S. and NATO's efforts to [i]prevent [/i]military or secret police aggression by Russia against its neighbors, or its own people (e.g., Litvenenko.)  Some of the tension has also resulted from America's illegal military operations in Iraq, (which are a result of a secret policy initiative developed by Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and a think tank called the "Vulcans" prior to the election of George W. Bush in 2000.)  As for the American support for Bin Laden and the Taliban in the Soviet-Afghan War--my impression is that it was part of the general, global struggle of the West against the atheistic, Soviet Comintern--as in Korea, Vietnam, etc..  The U.S., to be accurate, has not been anti-Slav, but anti-communist.  Recall that Milosevic, like Putin, was a member of the communist party, and was criticized for many years by the Serbian Orthodox Church, long before the outbreak of the Yugoslavian civil wars.