RUSSIAN WORLD The passion of Russians for the United States

In Moscow, it is very common for people to ask “are you with Biden or Trump?” Not so much for ideological or geopolitical reasons, but out of a mysterious fascination with the things they have in common and at the same time because of the repulsion they feel for the great enemy, which in many ways they perceive as Big Brother.

One of the issues that most excites Russians these days, beyond war events or the ups and downs of the economy, is the elections in the United States. Also of interest, albeit in a different way, are those in France and Great Britain, or the negotiations to form the new European Commission; but in reality these are issues that are dealt with by propaganda and the “hybrid war” of institutions, interested in tilting the political balance in favor of Russia’s interests in all latitudes. On the other hand, it is very common for people to ask “are you with Biden or with Trump?” Not so much for ideological or geopolitical reasons, but for a mysterious fascination with what they have in common and at the same time for the repulsion they feel for the great enemy, which in many ways they perceive as Big Brother.

Russia has chosen to oppose the Western-dominated West. Anglo-Saxonsa term that defines the opposing camp, although in many ways it is a mirror of the “Russian world”, which, in its swings between East and West, is unable to separate its destiny from that of the United States. Indeed, Asia and China, and Europe itself, cannot represent a real alternative, considering that Russian territory extends over more than a third of the Eurasian continent and, in one way or another, always considers itself the dominant part of both sides. The United States is the only real alternative, separated by two oceans and bordering on the edge of the globe, to the point that it is difficult to define the latitude of Alaska – a territory that once belonged to the Russian empire – in relation to Chukotka or the immense expanses of the Arctic, which are being fought over in pursuit of a future with no divisions other than the compass.

The Anglo-Saxon and Russian empires were born together at the dawn of the modern world, in the harmony between Ivan the Terrible and Elizabeth of England, the “virgin queen” to whom the first American state, Virginia, was dedicated. Both proclaimed their definitive separation from the Church of Rome, in the name of a moral and spiritual superiority that rose above the schisms and compromises of faith with the politics of the European kingdoms. The Anglican Church and the Russian Orthodox Church are not properly Catholic or Protestant, or even Orthodox, in the sense of dependence on another center like Rome or Byzantium, but represent forms of union between religion and politics that are absolutely different and exclusive, both in past centuries and today, obviously in very different conditions. The fact is that the King of England remains the head of the Church, and in the American regime of absolute separation, the most committed religious movements can condition politics more than all the plots of European popes or cardinals; Not to mention the reissue of the Russian Symphony between the Tsar and the Patriarch, which defies any dictate of the Byzantine Communion, already officially rejected by the Russians.

The American Wild West of the cowboys It was preceded by the Far East of the Cossacks, with minor Asiatic peoples instead of Indian tribes and in both cases with arrows instead of guns, as depicted in Russian paintings and Hollywood films. The Russians and the Americans constitute the same solution of multi-ethnic empires with a dominant people at the cultural, linguistic, economic and religious level. The versions are obviously very different: the American Union leaves many competences to individual states, while the Russian Federation does not allow any independent initiative from the Moscow centre; and if the Americans now show regret for the colonial past, Russia claims it as the great task of civilisation for its immense territory and for the whole world, where on the other hand the Americans have dominated for a century.

The consonances of history and geography are now accompanied by great differences in political systems. Russia has never known democratic competition under the Tsars and the Soviets, and views the confrontation between the parties in the United States with a mixture of mockery and envy. Russians have followed American elections with great interest since the 19th century, when the great writer Leo Tolstoy devoted articles and suggestions to events overseas and received American politicians and candidates at his Yasnaya Polyana estate; and in the 20th century the same occurred with the confrontations between Stalin and Roosevelt or between Kennedy and Khrushchev. One confrontation that received special attention was that between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale in 1984, at the end of the Soviet empire. The Russians supported the Democrat Walter, whose victory was predicted by all Soviet television programmes in the hope of a “progressive dialogue” that would exalt American workers and against “Reganian hedonism” that advocated a degraded and immoral lifestyle. A topic that has become topical again in Putin’s Russia, which defends “traditional values” and which today should be the responsibility of the blond Donald rather than the decrepit Joe, although there is no lack of doubts and uncertainties in this regard.

The only American elections that did not arouse any particular passion in Russians were those of Bill Clinton in 1992 and for the second term in 1996, when post-Soviet Russia was immersed in an uncontrollable maelstrom of democracy that it had never experienced before. In fact, during Boris Yeltsin’s first presidency there were no significant clashes with opponents of other tendencies, except for the tensions in parliament at the end of 1993, when the president of democratic Russia resolved the issue by bombing the White House on the banks of the Moskva. The only real political clash took place in 1996, when Yeltsin faced the communist Gennady Zjuganov, secretary of the Party resurrected after post-Soviet penance and openly supported by the Orthodox Church. It was perhaps the only time that two different worlds were put on the table in Russia, finally concretizing the confrontation between the “Slavophile” communists and the “Western” democrats so much discussed in the salons of the 19th century intelligentsia. It is no coincidence that the Americans did everything possible to support the already decadent Yeltsin, who was unable to follow up his victory and ended up handing the country over to Vladimir Putin, putting an end forever to the brief adventure of democratic Russia.

However, Russians still have a certain nostalgia for the 1990s, which are intertwined with the Soviet era. While from Stalin to Brezhnev, American political events were viewed in accordance with Cold War strategies and Americans were considered to be like big children, always undecided between one side and the other (the sarcastic term was used amerikosy), people now remember the heated challenges on Russian television during the “democratic” years, when there was no absolute control of power and fights and insults broke out without any limits. Today people are forced to pretend that they are voting for the eternal re-consecration of the Tsar, whereas back then there were “intrigues” that the Russian people cannot handle for long, but which make everything much more interesting and unpredictable. Deep down, Russians miss the thrill of an equal confrontation, the results of which will not be too manipulated, and they are forced to act as outside spectators of both the various elections around the world and the sporting events from which they are excluded, being able to cheer at most for Georgia or Slovakia in the European Championship, although in the end they end up with only Turkey.

Another factor that simultaneously attracts and irritates Russians is envy of the superpower status of the United States, whose electoral contests are of interest to the whole world, while those of the Eurasian empires have no appeal elsewhere. There is no comparison even with the fragile European democracies, where the confrontation between Starmer and Sunak, or between Macron and Le Pen, is not very exciting, although the latter’s Rassemblement National is the political party most packed with Putinist “foreign agents” in the world. Russians detest these American prerogatives, they only hope that the United States will disintegrate and the dollar will collapse on world markets, and they consider them the main culprits of all the evils that are spreading across the planet, and for this reason they cannot remain indifferent to their affairs and the personality of their leaders. There is much debate about what the next president’s attitude towards Russia will be, and people try to support the most odious one in order to justify their irresistible resentment, and inevitably end up highlighting the one who seems more favorable.

It was truly grotesque when Donald Trump’s victory was announced in the Moscow Duma in November 2016, and all the deputies joined in frenziedly in a huge applause. The most euphoric propagandists walked through the streets of Moscow unfurling the American flag, and in January 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the Russians ideally joined them, making one of the most recurrent dreams in the fantasies of world politics come true. When the Americans withdrew from Afghanistan in August of that same year, the Russians decided that the time had come to take control of the global stage, right up to the invasion of Ukraine. Today all those feelings return, with the added bonus that the two candidates for the US presidency are 160 years older than each other, making Tsar Putin, 71, seem like the true face of the world’s future.

Indeed, Putin was quick to declare that “we Russians take seriously the fact that Trump, as a candidate, declares that he is ready to stop the war in Ukraine, and I have no doubt that he means it.” This choice of sides will not necessarily convince all Russians to support Trump, even if there are very few supporters of Biden; the important thing is to convince everyone that victory will in any case be favorable to Russia, and will also encompass the United States in the “Russian world.”

“RUSSIAN WORLD” IS ASIANEWS’ NEWSLETTER DEDICATED TO RUSSIA. DO YOU WANT TO RECEIVE IT EVERY SATURDAY IN YOUR EMAIL? SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER AT THIS LINK