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It sounds like something from the Cold War of the 1950’s, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told Western leaders that “we will bury you!” Some apologists have argued that this was a mistranslation of a Russian phrase. He really didn’t mean that, they claim.
However, I heard the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower speak about the time when she met Nikita Khrushchev at the White House. Khrushchev had come to Washington to confer with Eisenhower, but the talks went south. Khrushchev threatened to “bury” Eisenhower’s grandchildren, whereupon Ike stormed out of the meeting and confiscated the toys that Khrushchev gave to the children, including hers. So yes, “we will bury you!” is probably accurate.
Recently a Russian state TV host seemed to channel Khrushchev when he told his audience that the nation’s “historic mission” is to defeat the US, Europe, and the “collective West.” Appearing on Russia-1, the propagandist TV anchor Vladimir Solovyov told his audience that Russia was squaring off against NATO in a “big, difficult war.” Plus, it’s Russia’s “historic mission to again kick the butts of Europe, the collective West, and Americans who have joined their ranks, who think too highly of themselves.”
Meanwhile in Russia: top state TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov claims that Russia's historic mission is to kick the butts of Americans, Europeans and the collective West. https://t.co/vxzERTdIxv
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) March 4, 2023
Solovyov has also made other assertions such as the following:
This sounds like nonsense to our ears, but there has been a growing call for Russian hegemony since the fall of the Soviet Union. What’s worse is that Vladimir Putin seems to adhere to it.
Considering that Solovyov broadcasts on Russian state TV, it’s logical that Vladimir Putin knows what the propagandist is saying. He probably approves, too.
That’s because Solovyov is echoing the philosophy of Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian imperialist who has been called “Putin’s Brain.”
Born in 1962, Dugin went from being an anti-Communist party boy to a follower of the ultra-nationalist National Bolshevik Party to becoming an acolyte of the “Old Believers,” a theology that rejects the reforms of modern-day Russian Orthodoxy. To the beliefs of the Old Believers Dugin also added Slavic Paganism. Armed with this hybrid ideology, he founded the “Eurasian Party” in 2002, an ultranationalist offshoot of the Bolshevik Party.
Aleksandr Dugin. Wikimedia Commons/Mehdi Bolourian/CC BY 4.0.
Dugin also wants to defeat European liberalism and replace it with imperialistic Russian concepts. He wrote:
As the war (not with Ukraine, but with the West) is already underway, this is the time when we must oppose the West our structures of civilization: theories, ideas, paradigms, teachings, values, principles. And Western values must at least relative or be completely disqualified.
A break with the West is not a break with Europe. It’s a breakdown with death, degeneration and suicide. It’s the key to recovery. And Europe itself, the European peoples, should follow our example: topple the anti-national globalist council. And building a real European house, a European building, a European cathedral.
As for Putin? Journalist Branko Miletic, a historian and journalist who writes on Balkan politics, called Aleksandr Dugin a “Russian fascist who helped to convince Putin to invade.”
Tim Black, a writer for the British website Spiked, said in a long-read about Dugin:
Through his books, lectures and media appearances, he has told Russia’s leaders over and over again what Russia supposedly once was and what it should become again – not just a great power, but a spiritual power, a bulwark of tradition against the nihilistic, everything-goes liberalism of the West.
While Americans bicker as to the extent the US should support Ukraine, Eastern Europe nations know that if Ukraine falls, they may be next.
Serhii Plokhy, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard, says that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is Putin’s attempt to restore its pre-communist empire.
What is at stake is more than just Ukraine – it is about Russian control over the post-Soviet space.
He wants to turn the clock back to the times before 1917, before World War I, with the idea not just of reinstating Russian control over the post-imperial or post-Soviet space, but also reimagining the Russian nation, and Ukrainian nation in imperialist terms, with Russians and Ukrainians part of the same nation.
And Dalibor Rohac of the American Enterprise Institute agrees:
But Vladimir Putin, like Adolf Hitler, won’t be content with one nation — he wants to dominate Eurasia.
The Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania understand this. The three little countries had once been under the Soviet Union, and prior to World War I had been part of czarist Russia. Lithuania, moreover, borders Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian satellite. To the east is Belarus, an ally of Putin and essentially a puppet state. And Putin recently suggested that he might reconsider the sovereignty of the Baltic states.
Lithuanians worry that if Ukraine falls, they may be next, even though they’re members of NATO. So their army is conducting drills in the forests, not far from the Belorussian border. As the defense minister Vaidotas Urbelis told the UK Sun:
[Putin’s] order is one based on strength, military power, intimidation. These are the new dividing lines in Europe.
And it looks as if Putin’s order may be ready to create some new dividing lines. Last week Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and now Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council said that the only way to achieve peace in Ukraine is to push back the borders of hostile states:
That is why it is so important to achieve all the goals of the special military operation. To push back the borders that threaten our country as far as possible, even if they are the borders of Poland.
Republicans are split between continuing to support Ukraine with money and weapons. It seems as if the loudest voices belong to the isolationists who yell, no more!
Like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), who wants to cut off all support, and who also claimed Zelenskyy wants Americans to fight for him:
I’m still committed to no money to Ukraine. We need to find peace not war. Tell Zelenskyy to leave his hands off our sons and daughters. They are not dying for your war. I want to protect our kids from Zelensky because he wants our sons and daughters to fight and die in Ukraine.
No, he doesn’t. He may want money and arms, but not troops.
Or Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who tweeted:
Ukraine is not our friend, and Russia is not our enemy.
Tell that to Russian TV host Vladimir Solovyov, and his mentor Vladimir Putin.
On the other side is Mark Levin, TV host and former Chief of Staff for Ed Meese, Attorney General under Ronald Reagan. He vigorously defends sending arms to Ukraine.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that we should do whatever we can to support Ukraine:
Helping America means a sovereign nation that is prepared to defend itself from an invasion and an attack where civilians are being killed by Vladimir Putin is in America’s best interest for our economy, for our security.
While Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies wrote in the Washington Times that the war in Ukraine is not just about Ukraine.
The rulers of neoimperialist Russia, Communist China and Islamist Iran share a goal: the diminishment — if not death — of the United States.
I don’t know if Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, or any of the new soft-isolationists have ever heard of Aleksandr Dugin, whose ideas have infiltrated Putin’s brain. Or of Vladimir Solovyov, who promotes them on Russian state-run TV. Or if they even consider the consequences of leaving Ukraine to the Russian wolves.
No one wants another “endless war.” But serious Americans like former Secretary of State Pompeo understand that there’s so much more at stake than just scoring political points.
Featured image: Vladimir Solovyov with Vladimir Putin. Russia.ru/wikimedia commons/cropped/CC BY 4.o.
Kevin says: Propaganda on Russian TV? Kind of like Fox?
Taylor says: Too many people on the RIght are Putin Admirers.
Kevin – I bet you are a big Joy Reid fan.
America and the West are already destroying themselves; Russia does not want to forcibly dragged into the cesspool that the West is becoming. Nor does Russia want to be part of the Global American Empire.
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