Russia "European" Geographically, Not Culturally

Headed by a photo of Putin posing alongside a leader of the Night Wolves criminal motorcycle gang,  an article by Andrew Kornbluth for RealClearDefense argues that the West is mistaken to view Putin's Russia as a culturally "European" nation. It's not.

In a globalized age, where the speed and volume of information create an illusion of intimacy with far-away people and places, the trend has been to downplay differences. Moreover, the reigning paradigm of universal human rights has made the acknowledgment of cultural distance between countries sensitive to the point of taboo. In the case of Russia, the tendency to minimize differences is further reinforced by the whiteness of much of its leadership.

Only a few European states can still comprehend the strange combination of revanchism and nostalgia that animates modern Russia. The Russian ruling class—and a large part of the population—is determined to restore a sense of self-worth that was lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They view the Western concepts of democracy and human rights with horror, associating them with both the decline of the USSR and the catastrophic plunge in living standards during Boris Yeltsin’s corrupt interregnum.

In a country where each milestone of statehood was reached only with the compulsory mobilization of millions—from the reforms of Peter the Great to the industrialization of the 1930s to the Second World War—the sacrifice of individuals, whether they be Russian orphans, Malaysian Airlines passengers, or the children of Aleppo, hardly merits attention. Like the country he governs, Putin in his complexity has no parallel among his Western counterparts: he is a proud secret policeman who traffics in religiosity, a veteran embezzler who is the national symbol of probity, and a nationalist who presides over a multiethnic empire.

As Kornbluth writes, the Russians respond to actions, words without actions have essentially no meaning to them. Though he doesn't mention it, this has been true at least since the days of V. Molotov as Soviet Foreign Minister.