An ambition, inordinate and immense, one of those ambitions which
could only possibly spring in the bosoms of the oppressed, and could
only find nourishment in the miseries of a whole nation, ferments in
the heart of the Russian people. That nation, essentially aggressive,
greedy under the influence of privation, expiates beforehand, by a
debasing submission, the design of exercising a tyranny over other
nations: the glory, the riches which it hopes for, consoles it for
the disgrace to which it submits. To purify himself from the foul and
impious sacrifice of all public and personal liberty, the slave, upon
his knees, dreams of the conquest of the world.
--The Marquis de Custine, Russia in 1839
During the Cold War, Americans by and large forgot Custine, perhaps
the grumpiest tourist and most scathing vilifier of Russia who ever
wrote. Locked in conflict with a totalitarian state, we thought that
the main reason the Soviet Union made trouble for us, and for the
world at large, was that it was not a democracy. Take away Bolshevik
ideology, the command economy, and the power of the Politburo, and
you'd be a long way toward normalcy. Dissolve the Warsaw Pact, slash
military spending, give the non-Russian republics their independence,
and it would be hard to see what we might fight about. Adopt a
constitution, end censorship, respect religious freedom, hold
elections, then hold more elections: Could a country that did all
these things really be a threat?
