paranoid-style-russian-foreign-policy-zachery-tyson-brown

Outstanding read on the Russians in a way that provides much more than many different articles on this subject!!!!
"Russia’s appropriation of other cultures and ideas is the norm because Russia is a land of make-believe. Russia has always been more of an idea than a country, because on the vast Eurasian plain, ideas lasted longer than governments. Because national myth-making is the only recourse when there is no naturally circumscribed nation to speak of, myth-making has been a distinct feature of Russian history. Russian civilization, such as it exists, is chronically pastiche; a magpie’s nest of pieces woven together whether they fit or not.[9] As such, it is a gestalt, built by borrowing, appropriating, and yes, stealing.

In addition to the appropriation of outside forms, Russians have always held themselves as simultaneously inferior and superior to a fetishized external force—first the Byzantines, then the Mongols, followed by Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, Germany, France, Germany, France, Germany, and finally moving to the United States during the decades of the Cold War and beyond. Russia, it might be said, is nothing without an external threat to keep its unruly melting pot of peoples united in lies.

No wonder it is paranoid."