"Foes of America in Russia Crave Rupture in Ties"-New York Times.
Man, what a superb article here by Ellen Berry. There was a change in Putin, and these are the reasons. God knows, I feel in my soul this Russian desire to withdraw: I feel it personally, and for America, to be free from the "entangling alliances" that Woodrow Wilson warned against and which divorce laws make possible in individual lives. I hate the NSA-State that America has become. We meddle too much. The expansion of NATO was a mistake...and I will never marry again. That is my personal "gift" to mankind...womankind, mankind. I'm just not a people-person, I am just not a good person. I can be a better person for others by withdrawing myself. So, I can understand the Russian wish to withdraw, even the antagonism toward America, a product of the "meddling" that they see, that I see as less ominous, because I'm American. None of the foregoing, nor what follows in Ms. Berry's article is justification for aggression, none of it justifies the Russian invasion and takeover of Ukraine. I just understand it now. I would withdraw from the world, Russia would invade and conquer a free people. I am not a good person ( "good" for "food; not a food person either). Vladimir Putin and Alexandr A. Prokhanov are worse than me, worse than "not good" persons. Putin and Prokhanov are pigs. It is good to have enemies.
MOSCOW — As Russia and the United States drift toward a rupture over Crimea, the Stalinist writer Aleksandr A. Prokhanov feels that his moment has finally arrived.
“I am afraid that I am interested in a cold war with the West,” said Mr. Prokhanov, 76, in a lull between interviews on state-controlled television and radio. “I was very patient. I waited for 20 years. I did everything I could so that this war would begin. I worked day and night.”
...
But it became clear last week, as the United States threatened to cut off Russian corporations from the Western financial system, that influential members of the president’s inner circle view isolation from the West as a good thing for Russia, the strain of thought advanced by Mr. Prokhanov and his fellow travelers. Some in Mr. Putin’s camp see the confrontation as an opportunity to make the diplomatic turn toward China that they have long advocated, said Sergei A. Karaganov, a dean of the faculty of international relations at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
“This whole episode is going to change the rules of the game,” Mr. Karaganov said of Crimea, which is holding a referendum on secession on Sunday. “Confrontation with the West is welcomed by all too many here, to cleanse the elite, to organize the nation.”
...
His views have been more or less consistent for years: that the Soviet Union should be restored, by force if necessary; that America “consumes country after country” and must be prevented from devouring Russia...Mr. Putin’s recent return to the presidency, he said, has been accompanied by “a strong ideological mutation.”
...
“I am afraid that I am interested in a cold war with the West,” said Mr. Prokhanov, 76, in a lull between interviews on state-controlled television and radio. “I was very patient. I waited for 20 years. I did everything I could so that this war would begin. I worked day and night.”
...
But it became clear last week, as the United States threatened to cut off Russian corporations from the Western financial system, that influential members of the president’s inner circle view isolation from the West as a good thing for Russia, the strain of thought advanced by Mr. Prokhanov and his fellow travelers. Some in Mr. Putin’s camp see the confrontation as an opportunity to make the diplomatic turn toward China that they have long advocated, said Sergei A. Karaganov, a dean of the faculty of international relations at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
“This whole episode is going to change the rules of the game,” Mr. Karaganov said of Crimea, which is holding a referendum on secession on Sunday. “Confrontation with the West is welcomed by all too many here, to cleanse the elite, to organize the nation.”
...
His views have been more or less consistent for years: that the Soviet Union should be restored, by force if necessary; that America “consumes country after country” and must be prevented from devouring Russia...Mr. Putin’s recent return to the presidency, he said, has been accompanied by “a strong ideological mutation.”
...
If Mr. Putin himself decided to make an ideological change, Mr. Prokhanov said, it was in December
2011, when tens of thousands of urban liberals, angry over ballot-stuffing and falsification in parliamentary elections, massed on a city square, Bolotnaya, chanting, “Putin is a thief!” and “Russia Without Putin.”
...
“During the time of Bolotnaya, he experienced fear,” Mr. Prokhanov said. “He felt that the whole class which he had created had betrayed him, cheated him, and he had a desire to replace one class with another. From the moment you got back from that march, we started a change of the Russian elite.”
...
Another person who has been swept into the mainstream is one of Mr. Prokhanov’s former protégés, Aleksandr G. Dugin, who, in the late 1990s, called for “the blinding dawn of a new Russian Revolution, fascism — borderless as our lands, and red as our blood.”
Virulently anti-American, Mr. Dugin has urged a “conservative revolution” that combines left-wing economics and right-wing cultural traditionalism. In a 1997 book, he introduced the idea of building a Eurasian empire “constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy,” which he identified as Atlanticism, liberal values, and geopolitical control by the United States.
...
Building a Eurasian economic bloc, including Ukraine, became a central goal for Mr. Putin upon his return to the presidency. His point man on the project was the economist Sergei Glazyev, an associate of Mr. Prokhanov’s and Mr. Dugin’s.
...
In an interview, Mr. Dugin was evasive when asked about his personal contact with Mr. Putin, saying
only that he had been “in close contact with the Kremlin, and with those in the Kremlin who make decisions,” for the last 15 years. But he said the president, whom he described as a Henry Kissinger-style “pragmatist,” had embraced a version of his ideology because it served his interests domestically.
“It is popular, it is populist, it helps to explain all the processes which are going on in the country, and gradually — just by the logic of things, pragmatically, he becomes closer and closer to this ideology, just by the logic of events,” he said. He also offered a more human reason: that Mr. Putin had been stung by Western leaders’ apparent preference for his predecessor, Dmitri A. Medvedev, and then by the antigovernment protests that he believed were backed by the West.
...
“Anti-Americanism has become the main ideology, the main worldview among Russians,” he said.
“Now, after Crimea, we have passed the point of no return. There will not be another Medvedev. There will never be another ‘reset,’ ever.”
...
Ideological mouthpieces have been used to send signals since the Soviet days — as a warning to
adversaries or domestic dissenters — and it would be foolish to assume that Mr. Putin subscribes to their views. But there are important stakeholders who, faced with the threat of sanctions last week, have advocated that Russia cut itself off from the West. The most obvious among them is Vladimir I. Yakunin, president of Russian Railways and one of Mr. Putin’s trusted friends, who in a recent interview with The Financial Times described the struggle against a “global financial oligarchy” and the “global domination that is being carried out by the U.S.” On Tuesday, Mr. Yakunin presented plans for a Soviet-style megaproject to develop transportation and infrastructure in Siberia, a move toward “an economics of a spiritual type,” he said, that would insulate Russia from the West’s alien values.
...
Virulently anti-American, Mr. Dugin has urged a “conservative revolution” that combines left-wing economics and right-wing cultural traditionalism. In a 1997 book, he introduced the idea of building a Eurasian empire “constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy,” which he identified as Atlanticism, liberal values, and geopolitical control by the United States.
...
Building a Eurasian economic bloc, including Ukraine, became a central goal for Mr. Putin upon his return to the presidency. His point man on the project was the economist Sergei Glazyev, an associate of Mr. Prokhanov’s and Mr. Dugin’s.
...
In an interview, Mr. Dugin was evasive when asked about his personal contact with Mr. Putin, saying
only that he had been “in close contact with the Kremlin, and with those in the Kremlin who make decisions,” for the last 15 years. But he said the president, whom he described as a Henry Kissinger-style “pragmatist,” had embraced a version of his ideology because it served his interests domestically.
“It is popular, it is populist, it helps to explain all the processes which are going on in the country, and gradually — just by the logic of things, pragmatically, he becomes closer and closer to this ideology, just by the logic of events,” he said. He also offered a more human reason: that Mr. Putin had been stung by Western leaders’ apparent preference for his predecessor, Dmitri A. Medvedev, and then by the antigovernment protests that he believed were backed by the West.
...
“Anti-Americanism has become the main ideology, the main worldview among Russians,” he said.
“Now, after Crimea, we have passed the point of no return. There will not be another Medvedev. There will never be another ‘reset,’ ever.”
...
Ideological mouthpieces have been used to send signals since the Soviet days — as a warning to
adversaries or domestic dissenters — and it would be foolish to assume that Mr. Putin subscribes to their views. But there are important stakeholders who, faced with the threat of sanctions last week, have advocated that Russia cut itself off from the West. The most obvious among them is Vladimir I. Yakunin, president of Russian Railways and one of Mr. Putin’s trusted friends, who in a recent interview with The Financial Times described the struggle against a “global financial oligarchy” and the “global domination that is being carried out by the U.S.” On Tuesday, Mr. Yakunin presented plans for a Soviet-style megaproject to develop transportation and infrastructure in Siberia, a move toward “an economics of a spiritual type,” he said, that would insulate Russia from the West’s alien values.
...
