Enemy at the Gates

THE KREMLIN’S DRIVE FOR HEGEMONY

German philosopher Karl Marx, in his book The Secret Diplomatic History of the 18th Century, aptly noted: „Russia’s policy remains unchanged. The methods and tactics of Russia may and will change, but the main goal of Russian policy—to conquer the world and rule it—remains the same.” Today, these words are even more relevant than they were in 1899. The Yalta-Potsdam order, established by the anti-Hitler coalition allies, was viewed by Russian imperialists merely as another step in the process of world domination. Immediately after World War II, the Kremlin was already crafting plans to seize all of Europe. Stalin’s followers hoped that soon they would wash their boots in the waters of the Atlantic. However, NATO, led by the USA, thwarted Moscow’s ambitions to dominate defenseless post-war Europe.

The defeat in the Cold War halted Russia’s westward expansion. This is why former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin considers the collapse of the Soviet Union to be „the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” For the past 25 years, the KGB’s heirs in Russia have been preparing to avenge their hated foes—the United States.

EUROPE IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Russian revanchists do not even hide their plans. In 2003, while announcing a new military doctrine, Putin said: „In the last decade, Russia has lost so much that we will give nothing more away. We will take back what is ours.”

In 2015, the Russian president openly declared on camera for Russia Today that Russia would never agree with the current world order and the international system established after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His friend, Secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, in an interview with Russian Gazette on January 2, 2016, said that Russia is prepared for military conflict with NATO countries and could quickly and effortlessly conquer the Baltic states.

Earlier, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, declared on Rossiya 24 that President Putin had already made the decision to start World War III. „This is the most important decision. I am convinced it has already been made,” he said. He added that the fate of the Baltic states and Poland is sealed. They will be wiped out. Later, from the Russian parliament’s podium, Zhirinovsky announced that Russia should burn Paris and bomb Germany.

A NEW RIBBENTROP-MOLOTOV PACT

The dreams of the Kremlin-Lubyanka elites are not limited to Central and Eastern Europe. The threat of a creeping hybrid war hangs over the entire continent. Russian geostrategists aim to sow discord among European nations and undermine NATO and EU unity. This is openly advocated by the man whose strategy Vladimir Putin has been meticulously implementing for the past 15 years.

Aleksandr Dugin, the man in question, in his article Saving Western Europe from Eastern Europe, suggests exploiting the divisions between EU countries and advises Russian diplomats to persuade Western European nations, particularly Germany and France, to free themselves from American dominance and to „deal” with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. „We need to destroy the 'sanitary cordon’! There are many ways to do it. The Bolsheviks, to dismantle it, signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. We lost a lot back then, but a Russian-German border was established. Then came the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which had the same goal. A magnificent pact! Had things turned out differently, we would have defeated the Anglo-Saxons together with Germany. […] In the great clash between Atlantic civilization and Eurasian culture, everything in between—Poland, Ukraine, Central Europe—must disappear, must be absorbed,” proclaims the ideologue of Russian imperialism and Eurasianism.

„Bring Russia into Europe,” Dugin urges. „Then Europe will be a Russian Europe. Then Russia will end these 'friends’ (Central Eastern European countries – ed.) once and for all. This is some misunderstanding; why should we tolerate it? Then Russia will come and say: Aha! You’ve been caught! We will say to them: You tried to run from us, didn’t you?”

RUSSIAN EUROPE

Dugin does not hold back from outlining the prospects awaiting Europe if Western countries fail to maintain solidarity and unity in the face of Russian aggression. „The Russians will mobilize for a great cause. And that great cause is the annexation of Europe. […] Do you like European technologies? Let’s take them. […] It’s simple; we conquer Europe, and we instantly have all the advanced technologies! […] Conquer Europe! A Russian tsar or president for the entire Europe. […] That is the essence of the entire empire, which we will simply restore to its rightful place—the European, Roman, Greek, Byzantine Empire with a Russian tsar at the helm.”

„We don’t plan on boosting GDP,” Dugin continues. „Because we don’t care about it. […] We are building an empire. They are building the European Union, also a kind of empire. But its foundations are too fragile. If the economy fails, they will fall apart. We, on the other hand, will say: regardless of the state of the economy, whatever the Russian (Eurasian, European, imperial, Roman) tsar (our Russian Roman tsar) says—that will be the law! And where will you go? The economy is good, but it doesn’t matter. After all, man does not live by bread alone… the tsar will remind us.”

These words of Dugin perfectly illustrate the fate Europe could have expected after World War II had the U.S., Canada, and Western European countries not established NATO—a political-military alliance. It is also a warning of what may happen to Europe if this alliance collapses.

HAPPINESS WITHOUT FREEDOM

The civilization model that Russia proposes for Europe was well described by Russian academic, historian, and Doctor of Political Science, Yuri Pivovarov, in a program on TV Russia Kultura: „We are the successors of the Golden Horde. […] The Mongol type of power was based on the idea that one man is everything, and the rest are nothing. Mongol power completely rejects any agreement, convention, cooperation, or consent between two parties. Mongol power is purely the power of violence, and the Russians have adopted this. Russian tsars, Russian grand princes gradually adopted this culture of power, or rather this kind of power, these political relations. And it became stronger even later, in our times. In those civilized and beautiful times, Emperor Paul I, the son of Catherine, once said to the French ambassador during a conversation: 'In Russia, only the one I am speaking to matters, and only as long as I am speaking to him.’ And that is a very precise definition of Russian power.”

Karl Marx also accurately exposed the essence of Russian imperialism: „In the bloody swamp of Moscow slavery, but not in the hard glory of the Norman age, lies the cradle of Russia. […] Russia arose and was raised in the vile and humiliating school of Mongol slavery. It became stronger only because it was unsurpassed in the art of slavery. Even after gaining independence, Russia remained a land of slaves. Peter I combined the political cunning of the Mongol slave with the majesty of the Mongol ruler, to whom Genghis Khan commanded to conquer the world.”

The ideal of Russian-Eurasian civilization is the complete enslavement of people and nations. This model of societal control was vividly depicted by Russian political satirist, critic, and writer Yevgeny Zamyatin in his dystopian novel We, which became the inspiration for 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. „A slave who only follows orders will not commit a crime. We, Russians, chose happiness without freedom, so we will win. Non-Russians chose freedom without happiness, and so they will be defeated,” we read in it.

Incidentally, Zamyatin’s disciple Orwell wrote in 1984: „He who controls the past controls the future.” Amazingly, this very principle was embraced by Kremlin shamans shaping the mass consciousness of Russians. It is in this spirit that the Kremlin educates younger generations. Moscow no longer cares for the role of the Third Rome; it prefers to be the First and the Second. Through textbooks, mass media, pseudo-scientific popular films, and articles, Russian youth are persuaded that Russians were at the cradle of European, and even global, civilization. As a result, a new generation of Russians is growing up convinced that their ancestors founded… Rome and Jerusalem. And this is no joke.

OUR ROME

After the annexation of Crimea, Putin said that Crimea has sacred significance for Russia. This kind of argumentation could also be applied by Russian myth-makers regarding the cradle of European culture and civilization—Rome. After all, Moscow has a positive experience of stealing the history and glory of others. All of Europe remembers how Tsar Peter I brazenly stole the name and fame of Kyiv: he renamed Muscovy to Russia. On this basis, Moscow justified historical and territorial claims to the lands of the former Rus’: Ukraine and Belarus.

Similar linguistic manipulations are used by the Kremlin to justify claims to the culture and heritage of Rome. The most absurd Russian historical claims concern the highly developed and enlightened civilization of the Etruscans, who ruled the Italian Peninsula long before the Romans. It is believed that the Etruscans taught the Romans how to build roads and cities adorned with sculptures and beautiful architecture, equipped with water supply and sewage systems. The Romans borrowed numerals and the tradition of gladiator fights from the Etruscans. Without the Etruscans, there would be no Rome.

The point is that the word „Etruscan” in Russian sounds like „et’ ruski” [in Polish, „to ruski”], which reads as „this is a Russian.” This similarity in sound has attracted the attention of Russian imperialists since the times of Nicholas II, inspiring the creation of pseudo-scientific theories to justify territorial claims. In this way, science was harnessed to build myths and propaganda.

Broadcasts on central television, films, books, and pseudo-scientific studies devoted to the Russian origin of the Etruscans flood Russia’s information space. Readers and viewers are deliberately led to the conclusion that the Romans stole the Etruscan heritage from the Russians. And these fairy tales are propagated through all media channels.

The younger generation of Russians is growing up convinced that the Russians founded the highly developed Roman civilization. Existing scientific evidence makes no impression on this youth. It craves justification for Russia’s „imperial majesty” and its claims to the historical and cultural heritage of all European civilization.

The mass consciousness of Russians is being prepared to accept more far-reaching declarations from Russian politicians. It’s no longer about our Crimea but about the sacred „Russian” Rome—the cradle of European civilization. Russian imperialists are capable of justifying any aggression against sovereign nations. It is worth recalling in this context how the director of the Russian Center for the Study of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Countries, Semyon Bagdasarov, explained the involvement of the Russian army in the Syrian conflict: „This is our land! Civilization came to us from here! Maybe someone forgot? After all, the first monks came to us from Antioch. The clergy in Rus’ were Syrians. They were not Greeks by origin but Syrians. And during the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, the entire liturgy was conducted not by the Russian Orthodox Church but by the Antiochian Orthodox Church. If it weren’t for Syria, if it weren’t for Antioch, there wouldn’t be Orthodoxy, and there wouldn’t be Rus’! This is our land! These are our holy places!”—the Russian court scholar hysterically cried in front of cameras in a television studio.

Armed with such knowledge, it is easy for Russians to absorb the apocalyptic visions narrated by Alexander Dugin: „Where we are, there is the center of hell. And we really don’t need to think about whether the end of the world will come; we need to think about how to make it happen.” Given that Russian troops are already a hundred kilometers from Megiddo, where according to the biblical prophecy the final war of humanity—Armageddon—will take place, Russians are fervently pursuing the scenario outlined in chapters 38 and 39 of Ezekiel’s prophecy.

All of this leads to the conclusion that the very existence of the imperial worldview and the ideology of Kremlin revanchism poses a threat to global security.

Włodzimierz Iszczuk
16/05/2016