Dividing Russia

By Mark Ames, The eXile. Posted June 29, 2005.

A lake disappeared in a Russian town east of Moscow this past May. And if the Reuters account of the vanishing lake is to be believed, some local residents blamed the disappearance on the evil Americans. The Western press loves stories like these -- it proves that even God has it in for the Russians. And with good reason: they're anti-American, and they're stubbornly backwards, so therefore, bad things naturally happen to them.

It didn't take long for the smug American sneer-machine to respond. One blogger compiled a list of humorous accounts called, "Memo to Self: Don't Waterski in Bolotnikovo." An article by Matt McClurg on the cleverly named e-zine "Spoof.com," titled, "U.S. Steals Lake-Mocks Russian Village," opens with this ham-fisted side-slapper:

The Russian village of Bolotnikovo, where Stalinist Brainwashing remains the religion of choice, is renowned as a peaceful place... But, the greatest pride of tiny Bolotnikovo, the beaming joy of its happy and well-educated serfs turned scientists, was its lake -- its splendor slightly greater than a mud hole, but not as extravagant as an oil slick rainbow on wet tarmac. Briefly: it was a place that the Americans were monstrously envious of.

The joke, you see, is that America is so wealthy and advanced that it would have no need for a wretched lake in a dying stretch of Middle Russia. Americans find it funny -- the same way that rich bullies get off on sneering at poor, doomed losers. You can almost hear the cheerleader sneer at the unpopular loser girl: "Yeah right, I'm like, soooo jealous that I don't have oily skin and that I don't live in a shack like your family. Gawd, it's like, I'd do anything to trade in my family's five-bedroom home for yours!... Not!"

The real story here should be exactly what McClurg mocks: that in fact, Bolotnikovo, like so many villages in this, the largest country on earth, is literally dying, a depressing, slow extinction that normally goes unnoticed, unless an unbelievably grotesque tragedy strikes it -- in which case the people with the SUVs and speedboats can cite it as witty material to celebrate their own health, wealth and progress.

Why would a cruel act of nature visited upon a poor remote village inspire a seemingly absurd anti-American outburst from its inhabitants, and triumphant bully-humor in response?

The answer, incredibly enough, is because the Americans really did steal that lake.

Although I've been living in Russia for most of the last 10 years, I remember my fellow Americans well enough to know that their reaction to this statement is: the "Oh come on, please!" sneer they give you, which is an argument killer that works every time. But the fact is that America has, by any objective standard, been at war with Russia for nearly two decades, a grossly one-sided war in which the U.S. is quietly conquering more and more territory with the kind of tireless efficiency and success not seen since the days of the Golden Horde.

As crazy as this may sound, the fact is that official Russian media reports on this undeclared war almost every day, and off-screen, American analysts have been gloating about it for quite some time. As the intelligence newsletter Stratfor -- which Time magazine ranked as the nation's top intelligence site in 2003, and which Barron's described as "a private quasi-CIA" -- pointed out a few months ago, with Ukraine now firmly in the West's orbit, America, with NATO and the EU, has managed to succeed exactly where Hitler and Napoleon failed: it has dismantled the Russian empire, leaving the rump state exposed, weakened and essentially at the West's mercy.

Indeed right after last December's successful US-funded revolution in Kiev, Stratfor observed, "Without Ukraine, Russia's political, economic and military survivability are called into question...To say that Russia is at a turning point is a gross understatement. Without Ukraine, Russia is doomed to a painful slide into geopolitical obsolescence and ultimately, perhaps even non-existence."

While most Americans are fed stories about a menacing, resurgent Russia behaving like a mini-version of its evil old Soviet self, the real looming threat according to others is that the Russian state might actually disintegrate. Dmitry Medveev, the Kremlin's chief of staff and the man often mentioned as Putin's potential successor, warned exactly of this danger immediately after the so-called "Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan.

In a rare interview with the Russian business magazine Expert, Medvedev, a 39-year-old former lawyer, said, "If we don't manage to consolidate elites, Russia may disappear as one state. The disintegration of the Soviet Union would look like a kindergarten party compared to the collapse of the modern Russian state."

He warned that the Russian elites, who have become increasingly divided lately, should unite behind the idea of "preserving an effective state system within the existing boundaries."

It is interesting that Medvedev emphasized preserving Russia's "existing boundaries," since this shows that Russia's biggest worry now is not so much losing its former vast sphere of influence -- that's already pretty much gone -- but rather, it may lose whole chunks of its own territory. Much as Serbia, its one lone ally in Europe, did after it opposed the West.

Mark Ames is editor of the Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile.

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