Many years ago, when I first came to work in Moscow, a political pundit close to the Kremlin told me that the problem between Russia and the West is that Russians are white.
“We look like you. We look like Europeans and so the West expects us to think and act like you. As a result, when we don’t you get all upset. Why can’t they be like us, you fret. But you don’t say that about the Chinese, for instance. You don’t expect them to think and act like you. Well, we are white but we are different.”
That is an interesting comment. Insightful Western Europeans have long held that Russians are really Asiatic people, not European, whatever their appearance may imply.
