“Russia is our next-door neighbor, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.” Sarah Palin, to Charles Gibson, ABC News.

 

It is a sure bet that everyone on this planet has heard of at least two of these names: Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Yuri Gagarin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Peter the Great, Anna Kournikova, Gorky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn….  And of course, everyone has read at least part of War and Peace or of The Gulag Archipelago.

Therefore, unless one lives on Venus and was educated on Saturn, everyone knows about Russia.

The issue is: Is what you hear of Russia hype, perception, or objective reality? Are Russian men the heaviest drinkers in the world?  Are Russian women incredibly attractive?

 

Is the Moscow subway more appropriate than your living room to stage a state dinner? Did Yuri Gagarin see God, while he was in orbit?    The best way to solve these riddles is to come to Russia, see the country and interact with the Russians without the cushion of a newscast or the bulwark of a political harangue.

 

…………….

 

Once upon a time, there was no country in the world.  There were city-states, imperial territories, and the outland. Around the turn of the last millennium, the first countries (such as Italy), with multiple cities and a central government, came to existence. This is also when Russia came to existence.

 

At the beginning, Russia was an undefinable territory controlled by the Mongols and the Tatars. It was inhabited by Vikings who called the area Rus. It took several centuries to the future Russians, mostly of Slavic origin, to get rid of their tormentors. It happened in 1380. During the transition period, Vladimir the Great made Orthodox Christianity the state religion and used it as an identifier and a uniting institution for all Russians.

 

Ivan III, the Great, consolidated the territories of the new country.  Ivan IV, the Terrible, was the first to take the title of Czar (after Caesar, Roman emperor), in 1547. Via new conquests, he extended Russia from the North Pacific to the Baltic Sea.

 

In 1613, Michael I became the first Czar of the Romanov House, an initiates a dynasty that will reign over Russia for the 300 years, until the Bolchevick revolution, in 1917. The Bolsheviks ended the monarchy, instituted collectivization and communism, executed the last Czar, Nicholas II, and his entire family.

They killed anywhere between 2 and 20 million people; no one knows for sure. They also vanquished Nazism and Fascism during WWII, engaged into a nuclear Cold War with the US, for world dominance. They returned to a market-oriented economy, along with disbandment of the 15-republic Soviet Union, in 1991.

Since 2000, Russia has been run by an autocrat, Vladimir Putin, who has the nostalgia of a much respected and powerful USSR. The war in Syria and the current FIFA World Cup are two different ways, among many, for Putin to project the image of a global power from the vast land that is commonly conceived as the Legendary Russian Federation.

 

From the Palmira Business Club, this is the Traveller, reporting from Moscow, capital of the former Soviet Union…

 

(Odler Robert Jeanlouie, Friday June 22, 2018)

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