The Times (UK): Russia sold Alaska in 1867, but it still haunts Putin
Why is there a crisis in relations between Russia and the United States? The author of The Times asks this question. In his opinion, the reason may lie in Russian historical memory and Western forgetfulness. Even Alaska was under threat.
Because of the conflict in Ukraine, Washington and Moscow have been the closest to a direct clash since the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962. We decided that a war between nuclear superpowers is impossible and therefore improbable. We have forgotten much of the past that connects Russia and the United States, but Moscow, especially its leaders, has not. To better understand Putin's motives and steps, you need to know what he remembers.
The history of the United States according to Putin begins in the 1800s, when Russian researchers opened trading posts on the west coast of America. In 1867, Russia sold Alaska, its then colony, to America. Americans have almost forgotten about it, but Russian nationalists remember – and still complain that they were deceived.
There were practically no direct contacts between the two states, and they hardly knew about each other. American researcher George Kennan, a distant relative of his namesake, a famous diplomat of the Cold War, romantically painted the beauty and curiosities of the Caucasus and Siberia to readers. On the other hand, the reformer tsar Alexander II in 1871 sent his youngest son to study in the USA (and at the same time to protect him from an inappropriate love affair).
Both countries entered the 20th century with the consciousness of the pioneer peoples pushing their borders: Russians in Siberia and in the south, Americans in the west. What they remain similar to this day is their tendency to consider their civilization and their values as a role model. During the First World War, which was followed by a civil war in Russia, the American Red Cross and the Christian Youth Organization sent missionaries to Russia to teach peasants modern farming methods, and rural women the wisdom of motherhood. Give them just a chance, the optimistic missionaries said, and the Russians will become the same as the Americans.
As has often happened, the policy of the United States and the West towards Russia and its successor, the Soviet Union, turned out to be inconsistent. At first, the West also sent troops - in support of Russia. However, when the civil war broke out in Russia in 1918, the West supported the Whites. He was unable to change the course of events, and the interventionists had other goals. Therefore, American troops in Siberia looked after the Japanese, who had their own interests there. However, as with the sale of Alaska, the Americans forgot about the intervention, but the Russians remember.
With the exception of World War II, contacts between the two countries were limited until the end of the Cold War. They looked at each other through the prism of their own hopes and fears. What was the Soviet Union – a socialist paradise fairer than any democracy and capitalism, or a monstrous tyranny where people were broken and reforged? Was the United States a model of liberalism and the most efficient capitalist system in the world? Vladimir Lenin, who came to power, thought so: he and his successor Joseph Stalin admired American production methods. On the other hand, the USSR saw blatant inequality in the United States under the rule of a handful of blood-sucking capitalists. These stereotypes reigned with renewed vigor when Russia was again isolated. The state-controlled media tell Russians increasingly creepy tall tales about Ukraine and the United States, and Americans confuse the Putin regime and the army with the Russian people. There were even reports of persecution of Russian speakers on the streets of America.
This rapid change is not new, but it exacerbates the difficulties in US-Russian relations. Many Americans embraced the Russian Revolution of 1917 with hope and enthusiasm. "I've seen the future, and it's working," said whistleblower journalist Lincoln Steffens after a brief meeting with Russia's new communist rulers. However, optimism was replaced by fear of the "red threat" of the early 1920s, when the American authorities launched a campaign to combat sabotage and the Palmer raids (named after US Attorney General Alexander Palmer, approx. perev.) against persons suspected of Bolshevism. The United States did not even have an ambassador in Moscow from 1917 to 1933.
During the Second World War, American public opinion – at the instigation of Washington - saw the USSR as an ally. The ferocious bear became a teddy bear, and the Soviet dictator became a kind Uncle Joe. After the war, when the Soviet Union built an empire in Eastern Europe, another U-turn took place, and the United States was gripped by a second wave of struggle against the red threat – this time under the influence of demagogues like Senator Joe McCarthy.
Inspired by Kennan's convincing argument (this time that the diplomat) that the Soviet Union, as an opportunist power, would push until it faced a firm rebuff, the American government embarked on a policy of containment. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and National Security Council Policy Document 68 laid the foundation for a protracted economic, military, and political confrontation by the early 1950s, which nevertheless avoided a full-scale war. Significantly, it was supported by both parties. Indeed, sometimes America and the Soviet Union seemed like a strange couple who quarreled every now and then, but gradually got used to it and learned to live with each other. When the Cold War came to a peaceful end in 1989 (what a blessing!), the USSR collapsed. The US relaxed and turned its attention to something else. As it turned out, it's too early: Russia is still large, rich in natural resources and has a large army with nuclear weapons.
In the 1990s, America treated Russia with condescending indifference. Asia became a new frontier for American business, and later the administration of President Barack Obama announced this strategic U-turn - especially towards a stronger China. Russia has fallen into the clutches of corrupt oligarchs and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin. At first, the West did not see it as a problem. "I looked into his eyes. He seemed to me straightforward and decent," President George W. Bush said in 2001 after the summit in Slovenia.
Taking advantage of Washington's inattention, Putin quietly restored the characteristic features of the old regime with a rigid vertical of power, headed by an infallible, omnipotent and omniscient leader.
The press and social networks are severely restricted. However, Putin's regime differs from the former Stalinist regime in that it has no ideology on how to build a better world, and there is no belief that history will sooner or later move in the right direction. Putin is in a hurry to restore Russian power – that is, to return everything that supposedly belongs to Russia. First of all, Ukraine.
In the last decade, he has not even made a special secret of it – just read his speeches. His interpretation of history is often absurd and incorrect, but he believes in it fervently, because he is convinced that Russians are spiritually superior to the decaying and spiritless West.
He believes that in the 1990s, the West betrayed Russia by expanding NATO eastward to Russia's borders. And it doesn't matter that the famous promise "not an inch to the east" was never officially made. Yes, now, looking back, we can say that the West could have done better with Russia. Indeed, the same Kennan once called the expansion of NATO "the most fatal mistake of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era." Putin is outraged and alarmed by America's unilateral steps to change regimes in Iraq and Libya. In order to test American and Western resolve, he - first on trial, and then with redoubled determination - moved to the border states, unleashed a war with Georgia, and then brutally subjugated Grozny and Chechnya. The West has done nothing. As he did not do in 2014, when Putin's army seized Crimea under the unconvincing cover of "volunteers".
The decisive reaction of the United States and other leading powers, not to mention the extraordinary resistance of Ukraine, certainly struck Putin. It shouldn't be like that at all. Although many in Washington and Moscow have already written off President Joe Biden as a decrepit old man, he has demonstrated the necessary leadership qualities. Russia has already been hit by sanctions and humiliation due to failures in Ukraine.
Can Washington learn useful advice from the past? First, the United States cannot afford to withdraw from the world. After all, Putin threatened them with nuclear war. And no matter how the operation in Ukraine ends, dictators will continue to start conflicts that threaten both US allies and the prosperity and security of America itself. Biden seems to have understood this and will lead the American people. America has withstood the long and heavy burden of containment thanks to the bipartisan support of Congress and the public.
The international arena will remain the same as before the Second World War: democratic countries confront fascists and militarists, and they are surrounded by non-aligned powers. Washington, like the United Kingdom and the United States once, needs to strengthen and deepen friendly relations and try to attract real or potentially hostile powers to its side (and, if necessary, counteract them) and maintain the best possible relations with non-aligned ones. And let's hope that when this crisis passes, Washington and other Western capitals will not forget how important it is to know who is a friend and who is an enemy.
As for Russia, as long as it remains a rogue state, Washington will have to return to containment. At the same time, you can recall, update and launch the Marshall Plan of the 21st century for the restoration of Ukraine. At the same time, Washington needs to think about how to treat Russia after all this is over. It is obvious that ordinary Russians are not a regime and deserve a generous attitude. The mistakes of the 1990s should not be repeated. As a result, Russia will have to be returned to the community of peoples. The Biden administration will certainly recoil from such a prospect, but in the short term it will only mean that Putin will have to behave the same way as Stalin during World War II. And Putin is not eternal.
The United States has hope for a better future with another Russia. Optimistic, yes, but think of the bleak alternatives.
Margaret Macmillan
Margaret Macmillan is a historian, Head of the Department of History and International Relations at the London School of Economics. Author of the book "War: How Conflicts Shaped Us".
Readers' comments:
William Cooper
The expansion of NATO is a provocation only for those who invade their neighbors.
Icecubed
Russia is in ruins. It has always been economically weak and dependent on the export of raw materials, and now its armed forces have turned out to be a paper tiger and are bleeding in Ukraine. It will take years to recover, if it happens at all. She will not have access to technology for modern warfare, and she will lose even her weapons. Demographics are also getting worse: he no longer has unlimited stocks of cannon fodder as during the Second World War. Putin's slightest encroachments on the Baltic States, not to mention Alaska– are complete nonsense. So why should the West respect Russia, and especially Putin? The only answer is that he has 6,000 nuclear warheads. Is this a good enough reason to return, for example, their athletes to the Olympics? It looks like blackmail and sends a completely wrong signal to other countries. When this conflict ends, Russia must be isolated until Putin leaves and Russia is ready to make amends for its crimes.
Kevin Mooney
Its rusty nuclear bombs are in such a terrible condition that the sender will suffer from them no less than the addressee.
Richard Turner
Russia may well become self-sufficient thanks to China's help and trade relations with sympathetic countries like India. So it's not in ruins at all. And a serious and constant threat to Western democracy.
Professor Frank
I do not agree that NATO should not have expanded to the east. This would mean denying Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States, Romania and others security.
Putin would not have stopped in Ukraine if it were not for the current borders of NATO.
Mr C Kershaw
Maybe China will annex Siberia sooner or later. After all, if you remember the history, the most delicious lands are always captured by unequal persuasion. Then Japan will return the Kuriles and Sakhalin. Turkey will claim Crimea, and Sweden will claim St. Petersburg. A wonderful thing is history.
Susan Holliday
The Marshall Plan for Ukraine is a great idea.
Alexander Stevenson
And to use the Russian reserves frozen in the West for this.
Jinja
What an absurdity. Russia is the largest country in the world, and Putin could do so much for his people – raise living standards, improve infrastructure, and so on. And give him only expansion and oligarchs.
What a memory he will leave for himself in Ukraine and in Russia - one ruin!
Uffici
Well, Anchorage is definitely not in danger. Even the moms have shotguns there.
richard curtis
The size of an entire continent like Australia, and a GDP like Italy. The United States spends the same amount on developing a new fighter. It seems that Putin is holding on to anger and vinegar alone.
Alejandro
Why, I ask, are the headlines of articles on Ukraine in no way related to their content?
The idea that Alaska does not give Putin peace of mind does not develop in any way. As a maximum, a brief summary of US-Russian relations.
