February 10, 2023

In 2015 in China, an American friend “Showman” (my nickname for him, similar to his real name), a self-styled expert on Russia, was always telling us fellow expats about how Putin had done so much for Russia. He loved Russia and Putin. He spoke broken Russian and almost no Chinese (after 20+ years in Russia and China). At that time I spoke fluent Russian and good Chinese. But he was the acknowledged Russia and China expert by expat friends and foreign visitors.

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The only time I ever remember Showman losing composure was when a Finnish engineer, commenting on the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine, recounted how his grandfather, a combat veteran of the Russian invasion of Finland, summed up how to deal with Russia. His grandpa’s words sum up perfectly the real Russia and how the West should deal with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

His grandpa killed many Russians in WW II (who were badly armed and forced at gunpoint to charge enemy lines just like now in Ukraine). He suffered greatly from what he did. Yet he told his grandson quite simply how to deal with Russians: “If they ever come again, kill them”.

The Real Russia

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I first arrived in Russia in 1994. I was shocked at the filth, poverty, and violence. I immediately understood that Soviet Russia had been waging war on itself (and its neighbors) since the Revolution, while playing the victimhood card for generations, claiming their military buildup was out of fear of NATO. When the Soviet “Union” collapsed (1989) their only fear was of each other. They needed NATO and their former Eastern European slave states to save them from themselves.

Soviet Russia was a terrible place created by murderers and criminals. The resulting poverty has always attracted western lackeys looking for attention. Bernie Sanders was in Soviet Russia in 1988, six years before I arrived, babbling about how breadlines were a good thing (the peasants will, WEF-style, have nothing to eat and be happy). Years later a Russian woman whom I dearly loved told me how in 1991 (just three years after Comrade Breadlines’ 1988 Russia tour), when she was 18, she passed out because of malnourishment. It was not easy in 1994 to buy edible food, but in 1991 there was nothing at all to eat. Nothing could be imported from Europe, not because of NATO, but because of a vastly corrupt Russian customs and border system. I survived my first winter in 1994 thanks to Polish food imports (bought in kiosks on the street). Food products made in Russia were disgusting garbage.

Post-Glasnost Russians with authority (such as the militia) always terrorized and robbed those lower in the hierarchy. I was driving to the St. Petersburg airport (Vnukova) in 2000 when we were stopped by three thugs in uniform with machine guns within sight of the airport terminal main entrance. After 10 minutes of intimidation, realizing that I was not afraid of missing a flight and wasn’t going to pay a bribe, they let us go. Just another day in poor victimized Russia.

Many Russians (perhaps 30%) in the early 90s idolized America as their last hope, but they slowly realized that Clinton America was not going to help free them from themselves. They chose the only path they knew, violence and aggression, when they chose Putin. They approved of the KGB goon thinking that corruption and cheating, when institutionalized, would somehow make life better. And whenever Putin’s ratings dropped too low (70% before the 2022 invasion), all he had to do was to start killing and plundering Russia’s neighbors. That guaranteed a return to the normal 80-85% approval rating.

Putin also allowed those Russian families with blood on their hands to whitewash their past. In 2002, not far from where we used to go cross-country skiing near St. Petersburg, the Memorial Society discovered an NKVD killing field (Putin’s father was NKVD) with 30,000 victims (Memorial was forced to close in 2021, just before the 2022 invasion). After the discovery, a few elderly locals who lived nearby were brave enough to finally talk about the nighttime shooting in the woods they had heard regularly from 1937-1939.

It’s pathetic how Russians are always viewed as victims, considering that those that did the shooting survived (and had children), and those who were shot did not.  Seventy years of mass murder dramatically changed the makeup of Russia.  But that doesn’t stop armchair Russian experts from using the distant history of Russia, 300 years ago, to explain why the poor little Russians of today are so afraid of the big bad (Western) world out there (where Russian elites store all their wealth). That somehow they have to invade and kill others to protect themselves.