Christmas Card for Americans from a Russian Philosopher

Do not spit in the well,

one day you will need it to drink water!

Old Russian proverb

“History is not a teacher of life but serves as a warden,

it does not teach anything, but only punishes for ignorance to the lessons.”

1. Klyuchevsky.

Galima Galiullina for VT

In these December days, I remember how 11 years ago I flew to Washington with a beautiful white suitcase, in which, along with a wedding dress, the script for the documentary film “Roadmap for Reset” lay.   I wrote this script together with my students in Russia in our shared hope that relations between our countries were about to reach more civilized status,  I dreamed of making a film that would tell about the great opportunities for both countries that would open up as a result of the reset. But very soon I heard from President Obama that “Russia is a small country with an economy torn to shreds,” and one international policy expert advised me to abandon plans because the reset was canceled. For 11 years, the cold snap between our countries reached the ice age. America was fractured then, and today is remains even more morally devastated. Politicians blame Russia for everything.

The manipulation of mass consciousness in America has become a formidable and very effective weapon for turning the country, which for almost 2 centuries has been a stronghold of freedom for the peoples of the world, into a camp where people frightened to death, have long lost the idea of ​​what is true life and happiness for a person. The pornography of fear penetrates the souls and erodes everything that allows the people to preserve their human dignity, relationships, and aspirations.

Fear does not make it possible to comprehend the streams of lies spewed from screens and news sites, memory is washed out of people’s consciousness, fear turns people into an obedient herd, meekly led into a “new wonder world.” Personal freedom will be reduced to zero, and all the circus will be under command of a faceless global troglodyte still not sated with human blood of the wars and epidemics unleashed by him in the twentieth and a new century.

Where is that America that attracted millions of disadvantaged people from all over the world with the Statue of Liberty? Where is the freedom that created this country by the forces of those who believed in the American dream and put their talents, strengths and lives on the altar of national prosperity?

Why have Russians saved America three times in the past 265 years? The answer is simple: Russians have always helped those who strove for freedom, considering freedom a natural and necessary condition for human happiness. But who in modern America remembers this and is filled with gratitude to those Russians to whom they owe the legacy of freedom for their country? Who would even believe this, if everyday journalists and politicians in fierce hatred paint a portrait of an aggressive, totalitarian Russia with its slavishly submissive people?

Certainly not grateful people witnessing the diplomatic, legal, material and armed force contributions Russia provided throughout America’s past.  But the lessons of history are instructive. It all started back in the 18th century. While the main global players in Europe – France, Spain, Austria-Hungary and Britain fought for world leadership in the Seven Years War (1756-1763).  America, where the war was known as the French and Indian War, quietly gained strength and gradually turned into a dangerous competitor in industrial and agricultural spheres. From Europe to America came not only workers, but many technical intelligentsias, artisans, farmers, yearning for peace and freedom for their families.

So, using the example of his ancestors who came from Saxony just after the Seven Years War, my husband Jim Glass, in writing a book about the history of his family, saw how the Seven Years’ War in Europe became the reason for his ancestors’ emigration to America.  That war interrupted decades long German emigration through England to America but after the war entire families rushed into an unknown future seeking relief from endless years of European conflict over religious, economic, and political issues.

When America turned to become independent from Britain, Catherine II decided to support the young republic with diplomatic efforts.  She refused to send 20,000 Russian soldiers to Canada, as requested by King George to counter French encroachment into the Ohio River Valley.  After France was expelled from North America, Catherine II sent proposals for a lasting settlement to the European countries involved in the conflict.  Sending her Ambassador to France, Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, to an international meeting in Vienna, where Golitsyn submitted peace proposals, among which was a long-term truce and a demand to continue negotiations. Although Catherine’s efforts to establish peace were unsuccessful, they were an attempt to aid young American diplomacy.

The Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865, attracted the attention of two major European players, Britain and France, who were awaiting the collapse of America in order to once more divide America taking each a share. Large armies from Europe were concentrated in Canada and Mexico to invade the crumbling country. The invasion did not take place due to a Russian signal of support for America as powerful military squadrons were sent to New York and San Francisco.

The entire operation was carried out in the strictest secrecy. On September 24, 1863, the Russian squadron of Admiral Lesovsky anchored off the harbor of New York, and on September 27, the second squadron under the command of Admiral Popov anchored off the port of San Francisco. Everyone knows the love of Russians for balls, and this time the presence of the ships of the Russian navy was marked by celebrations and lavish ceremonies, culminating in numerous balls. From a letter from the Russian envoy to the United States, Stekl to Gorchakov (October 1863):

“Our naval officers continue to be the subject of universal attention. In general, all segments of the population compete in their desire to be accepted by our sailors.”

“Your Excellency, of course, already knows from the newspapers with what sympathy we are received here. On the 5th, the city of San Francisco gave a ball as a sign of general affection for the Emperor and Russia, which in the annals of San Francisco, of course, will remain as the most magnificent on the shores of the Pacific Ocean,” wrote Rear Admiral Popov in November 1863 to the Russian Minister of Marine Krabbe.

The young midshipman N. Rimsky-Korsakov, the future composer, in a letter to his homeland observed, “Our squadron was received here friendly, even to the extreme. In a military dress, you can’t even appear unnoticed ashore.  Even ladies expressing their respect for the Russians and their pleasure that we are in New York.” The Russian squadrons were in America for almost 9 months. At the end of July 1864, the squadron commanders were ordered to leave American waters and return home.

The great Russian diplomat Gorchakov wrote:

“Russia’s policy towards the United States is determined and will not change depending on the course of any other state. Above all, we wish the American Union to be preserved as an undivided nation … Russia has been made proposals to join the intervention [French and British] plans. Russia will reject any proposals of this kind.”

Russia, which had just abolished serfdom, sided with the Northern States from the very beginning of the American Civil War in support of the abolition of slavery. From speeches at the farewell banquet in honor of the Russian squadron in Boston on June 7, 1864: “The Russian squadron did not bring with them any weapons or military shells to suppress any uprising, we do not need them, but it brought with it more than this: a sense of international brotherhood, its moral assistance.”

“Russia had shown itself to be a wise, constant and reliable friend in relation to us.”

At the decisive stage of the Civil War, Russian squadrons played for Washington the role of a guarantor of security against foreign interference. The silent cannons on the Russian ships eloquently urged America’s enemies to cool down and leave.

But how did the United States thank Russia later? Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, Wall Street bankers smelled the great fortune that promised a secret operation under the guise of a revolution led by Trotsky (Bronstein). After spending only three months in New York, having received an American passport from the hands of president Woodrow Wilson and gold for an armed seizure of power, Trotsky went to Russia along with 250 revolutionaries. Goal: to turn Russia into a desert inhabited by white slaves. To distribute the countless wealth of the empire to Western capitalists on predatory terms, brutally suppress any uprisings against the new government, plunder museums and take their treasures to the West, corrupt the youth with the help of a sexual revolution, and prepare the country for surrender to Hitler in the first months of an attack.

Only Joseph Stalin managed to save the USSR from an internal enemy, the US Ambassador to the USSR Joseph Davis wrote remarkably truthfully about this.

Hitler attacked the USSR not only because he was paranoid and insane, but also by working off the debts that were created by the support of Western bankers of the huge military-industrial complex of Germany. He did not have the slightest chance of abandoning the suicidal attack on the USSR.

Everyone knows that the Grand Alliance won World War II. But few people remember that the second front was opened only after Churchill and Roosevelt’s meeting with Stalin in Tehran, where Stalin bluntly stated that the Red Army would feel itself very lonely if the second front was not opened immediately. This meant: We will cope with Hitler ourselves, but Europe can be grateful only to us. The Allies entered the war on the second front only on June 6, 1944, when the ridge of the German Wehrmacht was already broken.

And what after the USSR, having lost 31 million of its people, defeated Hitler’s fascism? And it saved the world from fascism, as it was written in the main mouthpiece of the American political establishment in the Washington Post on May 9, 2015. Here are two quotes from the article “Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler”: “The Western Alliance was incredibly lucky that it was the Soviet soldiers, not them, who almost completely covered the       “cannon fodder bill” in (the fight against Nazi Germany), taking over 95% of the total war losses of the three main members of the Grand Alliance,” writes Hastings, a British journalist in his book Apocalypse World at War. 1939-1945.

In his memoirs, Eisenhower notes how shocked he was at the scale of the carnage: “When we arrived in Russia in 1945, I did not see a single whole house between the western borders of the country and the Moscow region. So many women, children and old people have been killed within these territories that the Russian government will never be able to calculate their numbers accurately.”

But already in April 1945, Churchill and Truman were discussing the “Unthinkable” plan, according to which the former allies – the USA and Great Britain – were going to attack the USSR together with the remnants of the fascist army. At that moment, Truman refuses to support Churchill, intending to end the Japanese army in the Pacific. It was only after Japan’s surrender in September 1945 that the Americans seriously thought about developing their plan for the Unthinkable. And already on March 2, 1946, the US Joint Defense Planning Committee developed such a project. It got the name “Pinscher”. The project included the use of atomic weapons against the USSR. I will not touch on Truman’s plans for atomic bombing of Soviet cities, in the lists of these cities I found my native city Chelyabinsk. But at school we never hid under desks from the fake sirens of the American bombers raid alarm. We were not afraid of America.

In 1991, having completely surrendered to the collective West, and above all to American “friends” all the international merits of the USSR, and with them the USSR itself, Gorbachev went into political oblivion.  Cursed by the millions thrown out by the explosion of the disintegrated country and millions of those, lost their freedom and fell under the power of the puppets. And 9 years later, Yeltsin, the first president of “free” Russia, under whose rule the country confidently went to the bottom, losing its inhabitants a million or more every year, left, but “new Russians” appeared with appetites of crocodiles. We remember the uncontrollably laughing Clinton standing next to Yeltsin. “We are at the deathbed of Russia” – such was the exultant scream of the American press in those years.

And only in 2007 the mood of our American “partners” changed dramatically. Dying Russia  began not only to show signs of life, but suddenly became frighteningly independent. And from that time on, this movement towards liberation only grew.

In 2020, when the covid-19 virus in America plunged the entire healthcare system into a severe crisis, Russia was the first to send help with ventilators and drugs. But neither the politicians nor the media experienced the slightest gratitude, on the contrary, Russophobia began to intensify even more. All 4 years, endless speculations about the insidious Russians have been pouring into the ears of American citizens like a dirty stream. But Russians still do not hate Americans, simply because they know that there are no bad nations, there are vile politicians and corrupt journalists. We still love America with its jazz, with the films of great directors, with the great novels of Theodore Dreiser. Salinger, Mark Twain, for the invention of jeans, and we keep the hope that ordinary Americans, like Russians, believe in God, celebrate the birth of Christ and hope that the new year will bring change for the better and take the worries of 2020 into the past.

For VT

Galima Galiullina, Ph. D.

Washington, DC