Russia’s 8,000 nuclear weapons make it the nation most capable of destroying us, and the poor state of Russian-American relations makes that risk larger than it needs to be. But how can we improve relations with a nation that forcibly annexed Crimea, leading many Americans to compare Putin to Hitler?
It might seem like a fool’s errand to suggest that we need to develop more compassion for Russia, but that is precisely what is needed to arrest a dangerous slide toward a new Cold War, with all the nuclear risks of the old one. It’s also what is needed if our nation is to live up to its claimed ideal of dealing fairly with all. Vladimir Putin is not Mr. Nice Guy, but neither is he the devil.
Having compassion for Russia does not mean overlooking its faults. Rather, it means understanding how that nation’s traumatic history has contributed to its behaving in ways that otherwise would mystify us. If we see Russia more clearly, our actions will be more effective in meeting our nation’s goals, while also reducing the risk of Russia acting like “a bear in a china shop.”
Russia has been repeatedly invaded, with horrendous consequences, making it extremely sensitive to turmoil or foreign troops near its borders. Today, when we expand NATO or speak of bringing Western values to Russia and its environs, we think in terms of expanding democracy and human rights. But Russians tend to see our actions as a renewed attempt at religious, cultural and political subjugation.
They also see democracy very differently from us. The Yeltsin era, which is celebrated in the West as the most democratic period in Russia, today is held in disdain by most Russians. Life savings were wiped out by hyperinflation and the country’s most valuable assets were stolen by oligarchs.
While other invasions hold an important place in the Russian worldview, World War II is the 800-pound gorilla pounding on Russia’s brain. That’s understandable, given that over fifty times as many Soviet citizens died in that war compared to America’s losses.
D-Day is another example of our nations’ differing perspectives. That June 6, 1944, Allied invasion of France, which opened the Western Front, is seen in the West as “the battle that won the war.”
But the Russian view is very different, since roughly 80 percent of the German “permanent losses” (dead, missing or disabled) occurred on the Eastern Front, at an even greater cost in Soviet lives. Russians are infuriated at the way the West overlooks these painful sacrifices in defeating Nazism, as if Russian lives don’t count.
Aside from the fact that Germany was on the way to defeat by D-Day, many Russians view our opening this second front as coming far too late. The website of the historian of the U.S. State Department explains:
Stalin’s troops struggled to hold the Eastern front against the Nazi forces, and the Soviets began pleading for a British invasion of France immediately after the Nazi invasion in 1941. In 1942, Roosevelt unwisely promised the Soviets that the Allies would open the second front that autumn. Although Stalin only grumbled when the invasion was postponed until 1943, he exploded the following year when the invasion was postponed again until May of 1944.
Putin’s account of his family’s World War II experiences also helps explain why that war plays such a large role in Russia’s worldview. His parents lived in Leningrad, where more civilians died during the war than all American military losses. Five of Putin’s six uncles were killed, his father was seriously wounded, and his older brother died of diphtheria. Such tragic personal losses must have made the West’s boycott of Russia’s 70th anniversary celebration of the Allies’ victory all the more painful. (We boycotted the event to protest Russia’s annexation of Crimea.)
Russia’s perspective is also influenced by the 1941 U.S. Senate debate on whether to extend Lend Lease to the Soviets, during which then Senator Harry Truman stated: “If we see that Germany’s winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many [of each other] as possible.”
Words like that help explain why many Russians believe that we repeatedly delayed D-Day in an effort to bleed them dry. That Russian belief fit with earlier fears generated right after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, when the United States, Britain and France sent troops into Russia. The Russians saw this as an invasion, while we saw it as aiding the anti-Bolshevik Russians in a civil war.
Russia’s fear of the West can be better understood in light of Churchill’s “Operation Unthinkable.” Developed as World War II was drawing to a close, “Unthinkable” proposed that, within months of Germany’s surrender, Britain and the United States should form a new alliance with Germany and together attack the Soviet Union. Fortunately, the British military had the good sense to point out the unworkability of Churchill’s unthinkable plan.
Jumping forward four decades, President Reagan’s first term was marked by extreme hostility toward the Soviets, with loose talk of fighting and winning a nuclear war creating a war scare within the Soviet Union. Reagan’s labeling it as “the evil empire” didn’t help matters.
Image: Hoover ArchivesFast-forwarding again, a 2013 article by the noted Russian international relations expert Fyodor Lukyanov gives an excellent view of the current Russian perspective.
From Russian leadership’s point of view, the Iraq War now looks like the beginning of the accelerated destruction of regional and global stability, undermining the last principles of sustainable world order. Everything that’s happened since—including flirting with Islamists during the Arab Spring, U.S. policies in Libya and its current policies in Syria—serves as evidence of strategic insanity that has taken over the last remaining superpower. . . . Moscow is certain that if continued crushing of secular authoritarian regimes is allowed because America and the West support “democracy,” it will lead to such destabilization that will overwhelm all, including Russia.
Lukyanov’s analysis was written a year before the February 2014 change of government in Ukraine, and it helps explain why that event is of such concern to Russia and Putin. The West sees that revolution as the replacement of a corrupt government by popular demand, while Russia sees it as a violent coup that empowered neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Each perspective has some validity, but each becomes a dangerous myth when it ignores the truths presented in the other.
Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine who fled to Russia in February 2014 out of fear for his life, was extremely corrupt and had become highly unpopular. But in 2010, he had won the presidency in an election that international observers called transparent and honest.
The protests that led to Yanukovych’s ouster started as peaceful demonstrations, but turned violent in February 2014, leading to approximately 100 deaths from sniper fire. The West blames Yanukovych’s forces for the deaths, while Russia claims they were a “false flag” operation by violent extremists within the protestors. Evidence has been presented to support both theories, and there may have been snipers on both sides. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to ever know what happened, since the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office bungled its investigation of the massacre.
The blame game only prolongs the horrendous suffering of Ukraine’s population. Every nation involved in the conflict, but especially Russia and the United States, needs to stop focusing on its adversaries’ mistakes, where it has no power to bring about positive change. Instead, each nation needs to take a hard look at itself, figure out what it’s been doing wrong, and focus on changing those behaviors. That’s where it has power to stop the violence. A first step would be to admit that the other side has some valid concerns.
Russia also sees our actions in Ukraine as a further attempt to encircle it with hostile NATO forces. Before Gorbachev allowed the peaceable breakup of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Moscow had a huge buffer separating it from NATO forces. That distance shrank in 1999 when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic became NATO members, and again in 2004 when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined. If Ukraine were to join NATO—something both it and the United States are on record as supporting—Moscow’s buffer would be reduced once again.
An article written in 2007 by Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser (Ret.), head of the policy and planning staff in the German Ministry of Defense from 1992 to 1998, helps explain the Russian perspective:
Prior to admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, NATO had indeed stated to Russia that there was no need, no plan, and no intention to undertake such stationing [of NATO troops in Eastern Europe]. The alliance has not held this promise. On the contrary, the U.S. has even secured rights in Romania to establish forward bases for its air force. Moscow also feels provoked by the behavior of a number of newer NATO member states in central and Eastern Europe. Poland and the Baltic states use every opportunity to make provocative digs at Russia; they feel themselves protected by NATO and backed by the U.S.
Having gone over a number of reasons we should have more compassion for Russia, there’s an important caveat. The evidence presented occasionally may make it look like the Russians are saner than we, but the same result could be produced in reverse by highlighting people like Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Zhirinovsky, a Russian ultranationalist, reportedly advocated using tactical nuclear weapons against Chechen rebels and setting off nuclear weapons in the Atlantic to flood Great Britain. His extremism is of particular concern because he was twice elected deputy speaker of the Duma and garnered almost 7 million votes in the 2008 presidential election—roughly 10 percent. The Russian population showed a bit more sense in the 2012 presidential election, giving him only 6 percent. But that support is still worrisome.
I’m not saying Russia is never wrong. What I am saying is that Russia is not always wrong, we’re not always right—and Putin is not the devil incarnate.
For civilization to survive in the nuclear age, greater maturity and a more holistic, more compassionate perspective is needed from all nations. As Americans, we are most effective when working to bring that about in our own country.
If we succeed in developing that more inclusive perspective, the world will become far less violent, whether or not Russia and other nations also grow up. Even one adult in a room full of unruly children is better than none. It is our hope that one nation acting maturely will set an example, spread and create a room full of adults.
Martin Hellman is an emeritus professor of electrical engineering. He and his wife, Dorothie, are co-authors of A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home and Peace on the Planet, from which this is excerpted.
