The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia & U.S.-Russia Relations

by Natylie Baldwin

Overview

Russia is the world's other nuclear superpower – the only country that has the ability to wipe the United States off the map within 30 minutes. With Russia and the U.S. currently having 1,700 nuclear weapons pointed at each other on hair trigger alert, our relationship with Russia is one of the most critical, requiring a rational policy. In order to conduct a rational foreign policy, we must understand the other country's point of view. That doesn't mean one must agree with it, but we must know how Russia perceives its own interests so we can determine what they may be willing to risk or sacrifice on behalf of those perceived interests. It's also essential to determine areas of common cause and cooperation. Understanding the Russian viewpoint means understanding Russia's history, geography and culture. The western corporate media – and even some of our alternative media – has a very poor track record in providing this crucial service with respect to many of the nations with whom we've already gone to war. The so-called experts they consult often have conflicts of interest, nefarious agendas, and lack an objective understanding of the nation they are speaking about. This has certainly been the case when it comes to reporting on Russia, a country with which the stakes are potentially much higher for the entire world. This book fills the void left by much of our media in understanding the Russian point of view, which can help us formulate a reasoned policy toward the world's other nuclear superpower.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781098307622
Publisher:	BookBaby
Publication date:	04/01/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Natylie Baldwin is co-author of "Ukraine: Zbig's Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated." She has traveled throughout western Russia since 2015 and has written several articles based on her conversations and interviews with a cross-section of Russians. She blogs at natyliesbaldwin.com.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Tsarist Russia 5

The Princes of Kiev Rus and the Introduction of Orthodox Christianity 5

The Mongols 8

Ivan the Terrible 10

Peter the Great 14

Catherine the Great: Trying to Square the Circle 20

Alexander I The Leader Who Humbled Napoleon 24

Alexander II No Good Deed Goes Unpunished 30

Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution 34

Chapter 2 1917 Revolution 45

Overview of Revolutionary Thought Leading up to 1917 45

World War I Tips Russia into Revolution 56

The Assassination 64

World War I Begins 66

The Abdication of Nicholas II 67

The Provisional Government 72

The October Coup 74

Counterrevolution Develops 80

Execution of the Royal Family at Ipatiev House 81

The Bolshevik Red Terror and the Civil War 83

Lenin's Post-Civil War Rule until His Death 85

What Contemporary Russians Think of the Russian Revolution 87

Chapter 3 The Stalin Era and World War II 89

Lenin's Death and the Last Testament/Letters to the Congress 89

Stalin's Early Years 91

Stalin's Rise to Power 94

Stalin's "Revolution from Above" 95

Stalin's Terror and the Gulags 98

The Famine: Genocide or Bad Policy? 99

The Molotov-Ribbentrop No n-Aggression Pact 103

Operation Barbarossa: The Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union 105

The Cold War Begins 115

What Contemporary Russians Think of Stalin 117

Chapter 4 The Post-Stalin Soviet Era 118

The Death of Stalin and the Rise of Khrushchev 118

Khrushchev's Background 120

Khrushchev Attempts Reforms 122

The Cuban Missile Crisis and Its Aftermath 125

The Coup against Khrushchev 134

What Russians Think of Khrushchev 135

The Brezhnev Era: Domestic Conditions 135

Brezhnevs Foreign Policy: Czechoslovakia, the Border War with China, and Detente 138

Mikhail Gorbachev 142

Chapter 5 The End of the Cold War 148

Reagan and Gorbachev Rise to the Occasion 150

The Peace Dividend That Wasn't 152

Chapter 6 Washington's Post-Cold War Ideology 155

Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard 155

The Neoconservatives 172

The Philosophy 172

Military Strategy 177

The Wolfowitz Doctrine 178

A Clean Break 179

Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland 181

Responsibility to Protect (aka R2P, or Liberal Intervention) 185

Origins of R2P 188

Libya: An Abuse of R2P 190

Chapter 7 NATO Expansion and American Empire 196

NATO: From Cold War Defense to Global Power Projection 205

NATO in the 1990s: Laying the Groundwork for Expansion 206

1996: The Turning Point 210

NATO in the 2000s 214

The EU-NATO Dance 218

Chapter 8 Russia in the 1990s 224

Gorbachev's Economic Vision 226

Yeltsin: The Russian Pinochet 227

Chapter 9 The Putin and Medvedev Era in Russia 234

Economic Reforms of the Putin and Medvedev Era 234

Financial Crisis of 2008 239

Economy Still a Work in Progress 239

Democracy and the Rule of Law in Russia 252

Western Criticisms of Putins Policies 259

Rebuffed by the West: Putins Attempts at Negotiation and Reciprocity 267

The Ukraine Crisis 269

Crimea 283

Ukraine Today: Still Corrupt, Still Poor, and Still a Potential Flash Point 285

U.S.-Russia Relations in the Trump Era 289

Chapter 10 The U.S. Media Problem 291

Edward Bernays and the Manipulation of the Public Mind 292

The Mass Media: Whose Platform? 300

The Mass Media: Mechanisms of Control 301

Government Elites 303

Americans' Growing Distrust of the Mass Media 306

Media Coverage of Russiagate: False and Exaggerated Claims. Rinse and Repeat 307

Afterword 317

Appendix 1 Text of John F. Kennedy's American University Speech, June 10, 1963 323

Appendix 2 Transcript of Telephone Conversation between Assistant Secretary of European & Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt 333

Appendix 3 Transcript of Telephone Conversation between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU High Commissioner Catherine Ashton 335

Appendix 4 Full Text of Minsk 2.0 Agreement 341

Bibliography 345