First: Russia is not a country, it is an empire. Exactly 300 years ago, Russian forces first took Latvia and Estonia and called them their own. Seven years later, Peter the Great officially proclaimed Russia an empire and himself its emperor. Today, the Russian Federation contains 83 federated states, 23 of which are nominally autonomous constitutional republics. Historically, countries were kingdoms, and kings were appointed by God. And emperors told kings what to do. Even when constitutionally prevented from being Russia’s prime minister from 2008 to 2012, Vladimir Putin still directed Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s actions. Putin is, in his mind, Russia’s emperor. Second: Russia has a love-hate relationship with Europe. It considers itself European, but hates that Europe doesn’t see it that way. Geographically, Europe is indistinct from Asia. It is a single landmass whose only boundary is a cultural one that exists along an amorphous line drawn somewhere between the Vistula River and the Ural Mountains. Just last month, you saw evidence of this continental divide during the Olympics: Russia considers the Caucasus, the mountain chain that played host to the Winter Games, to contain Europe’s highest peak, Mount Elbrus. Yet most Western Europeans consider Mont Blanc, on the French-Italian border, to be Europe’s tallest mountain, even though it is nearly three-thousand feet shorter than its Russian cousin.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 23:45:51 +0000
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