The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russians did not stop looking into the American mirror. What they saw now was humiliating: the United States was giving Russians handouts, sending them “Legs of Bush” and other food that Americans themselves did not want to eat. America was not just wealthier than Russia—so were many other countries, and some of them, like Switzerland or Saudi Arabia, were wealthier than the United States itself. But unlike an old European country, America did not apportion its wealth according to an entrenched class structure: it was a country of achievement and possibility for all—or so it claimed, and Russians believed this part. Nor was it a tiny oil dictatorship like the Saudis. America was the very definition of modernity; it was the country that Russia had failed to become. Here was a sterling example of Soviet-style doublethink: America was attractive and threatening at the same time, worth emulating and eminently hateable. Hatred for the United States had become a Soviet political and social tradition. And now Russia’s search for its own traditions infused this hatred with new potency. “I hate, therefore I am,” Gudkov wrote, trying to describe the driving force behind this new anti-Americanism. September 11 fueled the hatred because it engendered anxiety. Surveys were showing that Russians feared that a third world war would result from the attacks, though there was no consensus as to who the parties in this war might be. It was nonetheless—or all ...