Russia: Coming to Terms With Reality

Russians want to believe that their country is great.  But the trouble is that it is not, writes Strategy Page.  Even in the days of the Soviet Union its greatness was an illusion.

In the early 1990s, when economists and accountants got the first good look at the Russian economy since the early 20th century, it was found that the Russian GDP was about four percent of the U.S. GDP.

But what an illusion!  The Soviet Union flexed its muscles and paraded weapons in Red Square, and we all believed.  The trouble is that the ordinary Russians believed too.

The really bad news is, most Russians are still not aware of how screwed up their Soviet era military was.

They thought that the brutality and incompetence of the Soviet era military was normal and inevitable.  And they remember how the Red Army beat the Germans in WWII.

Unfortunately the Germans probably beat themselves in WWII—and Stalin was not afraid to throw an entire generation into the meat grinder in order to win.  And it didn’t hurt that the US motorized the entire Red Army with Lend Lease.

Now we are back to the old, old game.  The rest of the world wants to contain Russia, but “to many Russians, the West is still out to destroy them.”

That’s an illusion too.  The ugly truth is that the West doesn’t give a damn about Russia.  It just wants to contain it.