This long but informative article explores the historical roots of the US animus towards Russia. From Michael Jabara Carley at strategic-culture.org:
I gave a lecture in Moscow during the spring about western-Soviet relations over the last century. With the partial exception of World War II, it is a narrative of unrelenting hostility. After I had finished, a student asked, «why do they hate us so?» The answer is not complicated. You cannot cross «da man» in the United States, that is, the powerful, wealthy US «deep state», which sets the rules for everyone else and enforces its worldwide hegemony against disobedient states and leaders.
You could not get more disobedient than the Bolsheviks. In November 1917, or October according to Julian calendar, they seized power in Russia and declared their intention to make a world socialist revolution. You can imagine the indignation and anger of the western powers, all at war with Imperial Germany, looking over their shoulders to see that revolution had erupted in Russia. It’s a complicated story but not everyone in the west reacted blindly to the Bolshevik seizure of power; none other than the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George thought the Entente should back the Bolsheviks against the Germans. His idea was an early prototype of the eventual Grand Alliance.
In 1918 there were few takers for that eccentric idea especially when the Bolsheviks annulled the tsarist state debt and nationalised banks and industries in which foreigners held billions in investments. In the west these actions struck at the heart of the capitalist world order, and for the next three years, the Entente sent money, arms and troops to overthrow the Soviet government.
The Bolsheviks acted as defenders of the revolution but also as defenders of Russia. It was an easy transition since the so-called Allies, had they succeeded in reversing Soviet power, would have established a Russian semi-colony, much as they sought to do in the 1990s. The Poles too were mobilised against Soviet Russia, launching an offensive in April 1920, with tacit French support, to re-establish their 18th century eastern frontiers, including the city of Kiev. The Polish plan did not work out as intended, the Bolsheviks fought back, portraying themselves as defenders of the traditional Russian state. Admittedly it was an incongruous role for world revolutionaries, but if you scratched the skin of most Bolsheviks, you would find defenders of Russian national security interests.
During the interwar years Soviet-western relations were almost always bad. The former Entente powers punished Soviet Russia for its refusal to pay the tsarist debts and compensate foreigners for nationalised property and equities. They applied economic sanctions to break the Soviet state where military force had not succeeded. The red scare, anti-Soviet electoral politics, and containment characterised US, British and French conduct during the 1920s. Those policies did not work. The Soviet government relied on its own resources to modernise its economy. Joseph Stalin’s policies were brutal and ruthless, but they led to the building of a powerful, industrialised state by the end of the interwar period.
To continue reading: «Why Do They Hate Us So?»: One Western Scholar’s Reply to a Russian Student
