THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T!!!" | 2001-12-01

I always used to hear from professional dealers with the USSR that Russia's "leaders" desired acceptance by the West. I have a seasoned distrust of any theory establishment experts come up with.

But then Pat Buchanan and some of my old buddies from DC went to the USSR in the 1970s, and he and my buddies told me exactly the same thing. These are not experts the establishment trusts, and these were not State Department flacks.

The previous article pointed out that the real attitudes of non-white leaders on race are, deep down, exactly the same as that of white leaders. They are all in the same intellectual climate.

When I realized that the Soviets really did want our respect, I saw that their attitude toward themselves was, deep down, much the same as that of Western leaders. They realized that their regime was a bunch of silly nonsense cooked up and pushed by Leftist Intellectuals that could never work. Everybody kept a straight face and obeyed because they had a bunch of gangsters forcing them to.

I got the word "gangsters" from Solzhenitsyn, who lived under the rule of these Leftist Intellectuals in the Peace-Loving People's Republics. And all Communist countries build walls to keep their people in because they knew their system didn't work.

You can sell this bilge on an American campus where a bunch of kids are exposed to Mommy Professor who tells them that college professors should rule the world. But, as Solzhenitsyn pointed out, nobody who was actually there took this nonsense seriously.

Hence the walls.

This included the Soviet rulers. They ached to be seen as something other than what they knew very well that they were -- fifth rate bureaucrats who toed the line.

Today Putin is getting that ever-wish-for Western recognition because he deserves it. He is not a Venezuelan or a Middle Eastern potentate getting rich for the time being before his country loses the oil advantage and slides back into poverty.

We deal with the Venezuelans and oil-rich Arabs. But we despise them and they know it.

But Russians seem to know that Putin is earning them a place in the mainstream of first world society, and his popularity is out of sight.