Edward Tesler - Russia Before Putin

One ship drives East

And another drives West

With the selfsame winds to blow.

Tis the set of sails

And not the gales

Which tell us the way to go.

(Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

Dont be afraid to do what you are not trained to.

The Ark was driven by a dilettante,

and the Titanic, by a professional.

(Anonymous)

Shortly after we came to the United States, a government agency asked me to deliver several lectures on Soviet planned economy. On the wall in their office I spotted a poster with the famous lines by Russian poet Tyutchev:

You cant grasp Russia with your mind.

A yardstick cannot be applied.

Her nature is of special kind.

Belief in Russia is required

Below, an anonymous poet added:

Its time already. Do it right:

Grasp Russia with your fucking mind!

Presented below is an attempt to help the curious minds in grasping the most intriguing and misunderstood phenomenon in human history. The obvious question is: what for? The Soviet empire is history. We are facing more than enough real problems in our present. The answer can be found in a phrase (coined, if I am not wrong, by Stalin): Ideas become a material force when they take control over the masses. Of course, this can only happen when the masses are desperate and ill-informed, and the demagogues who use these ideas to take control are unscrupulous. That was exactly what shaped the last century; and it is exactly what is developing now right before our eyes. The similarity is striking; the only difference is in the incomparable strength of available weapons. This is the reason for my attempt. We cannot change history but we can understand it and apply its lessons to our present.

My biography, naturally, is of no interest to anyone except my family; but some details might be of use, for they do illustrate the nature of Stalins regime and the way his successors changed it. For that, I was in good position: not a grunt limited in his vision to his trenches; and not a general, either; but rather a lieutenant, whose duties and training placed him in good position for gathering, and subsequent logical analysis, of insider information.

The readers (assuming there will be any) should not expect entertaining or literary marksmanship; what they should expect and will get is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

All translations of verses, here and later, are mine, and I take full responsibility for their clumsiness.

I was born in the right place.

Today, Russia is a formidable industrial and military power. But as recently as two centuries ago, it was hardly anything more than a neglected back yard: an endless sea of illiterate peasantry. And boyars, the Russian nobility, were not overly enlightened, either. They ruled cruelly in their votchinas (family estates) and quarreled among themselves about everything with one exception. Being frightened to death by Ivan the Terrible and his oprichniks (then-version of KGB, except it was manned by monks), they resolved to never again allow a strong monarchy. From the lower echelons of their own, a Romanov family was chosen to hold the throne but, naturally, not the power. Peter the Great changed everything

Peter inherited the throne when he was just a kid. That was especially convenient for the powerful boyars. They sent him away into a village of Preobrazhensky, where he played with peasant children. Under the guidance of French military engineer Lefort, he enlisted them into a fun regiment. The up-to-date European military art, however, he studied there in earnest, not for fun. He began as a bombardier (a private in artillery) and only allowed him to be promoted for real achievements. Shortly, he became the colonel. From that time on, every emperor of Russia got, among others, the title of Colonel of Preobrazhensky Regiment. When the future emperor came of age, he led his regiment on Moscow and easily overtook it. Russian regular troops, or streltsy (riflemen), who were half soldiers and half peasants. They lived in villages, grew vegetables, raised cattle and in the time of war only did they dust off and use their obsolete weapons. Of course they had no chance against Peters regiment.

Peter is justly credited with elevating Russia to the ranks of leading European powers, and building Western-style army, navy, Academy of Sciences and, of course, governing bureaucracy. All of it he studied hands-on, by visiting Western countries, where he, in most non-imperial way, worked as a carpenter and as a shipbuilder. Boyars power was broken forever; their heirs were forcibly sent to the West for learning; and Moscow, their stronghold, lost its prestige. Peters brainchild, St. Petersburg, was one of two cities built expressly for the purpose to become the seat of power; the other one, of course, is Washington, DC.

But, possibly, the greatest Peters talent was in judging people not by title or origin but by their real capabilities. For example, his closest friend and adviser, Alexander Menshikov, was just a pancake peddler (there was even a legend that their friendship began with a street fistfight; to this, of course, I cannot vouch). Another his trophy was a very bright black kid, whom he named Hannibal after ancient military genius, taught the military art, and gave him later the rank of a general. It is worth to notice that the greatest Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was Hannibals great-grandson. Racial slur thrown at a black tap danced in the White Nights movie was clearly atypical. Russia never nurtured any bigotry against blacks; for that, it has Jews). So, when Peter needed a lot of iron parts for shipbuilding, he found a capable blacksmith and merchant Nikita Demidov in the city of Tula, near Moscow. For any local needs, Demidov fared well. But the vast quantity of supplies needed by Peter required a lot of iron ore, and also a lot of wood to melt iron out of it. Tula region had neither. So Peter simply entrusted to Demidov the entire Ural Mountains region, which had plenty of both.

Ural, an island of industry in the sea of peasantry, was my birthplace. Its inhabitants were extremely proud of that exclusivity and of being in fact Peter the Greats partners. His spirit is alive and well there. From the early childhood, I was immersed into a mix of facts and legends about the glorious past. My parents were fairly well educated, too. Father was a mining specialist; mother, an accountant. One of fathers assignments was in a mining settlement called San Donato; naturally, I was curious where this, clearly non-Russian, name could come from, and was told that Demidov named it so to thank Peter, a great admirer of foreign words, for giving (donating) Ural to him.

Demidov kept his part of bargain. Russian military, and especially the navy, got sufficient supply of iron parts. His descendants continued to be the most reliable suppliers of Russian armed forces and became unbelievably rich. Later, a title of princes was bestowed on them. But that did not diminish their greed. When gold was found in their lands, the noble princes began minting counterfeit gold coins called