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Let’s Make a Deal? – Examining Russia’s National Character

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Let’s Make a Deal? – Examining Russia’s National Character

Jeff Groom

After President Trump’s America First campaigns against NATO and the United Kingdom’s Theresa May, shockwaves were sent through the political establishment following his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Across the political spectrum from never-Trumpers and neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, former intelligence “authorities” like Malcolm Nance, and of course the entire Democratic Party, the Washington establishment has warned the American people to be skeptical if not downright afraid of any deals or offers from Russia.

Is this skepticism warranted? Citing a litany of abuses ranging from election meddling to targeted assassinations, Russia’s conduct over the last several years has clearly not been up to par with Western standards of democracy, human rights, and open markets.

Diplomats, intelligence agencies, and pundits provide varying degrees of explanations for Russia’s conduct, some simple, some complex. But one dimension of causation is left almost entirely unexplored: national character.

Despite Winston Churchill’s framing of Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, examining Russia as a single actor on the world stage, possessing a unique personality akin to a singular human being, formed over many centuries, provides an intriguing and useful result and helps answer the question everyone should really be asking: What is the proper way to approach Russia in 2018 and is a better relationship possible?

On the surface national character seems straightforward and easily quantifiable. Each country’s culture is equated with a peculiar and unique form of dress, food, idiosyncrasies, and language. The average tourist can in just a few seconds conjure up visions of what it means to be German, Italian, or Spanish.

But not only does national character exist in the physical realm, the most important aspect is in the mental and psyche. Each country could be said to have an averaged, singular national consciousness formed by wars, religion, geography, and shared history.

Since the founding of the United States, America’s patriotic national character has been well documented. When Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s he discovered something peculiar about the American people. Across multiple cities and geographic regions, De Tocqueville found that as soon as he moved his conversations into the realm of the American experiment in democracy our citizens would hijack the dialogue to make it abundantly clear that the United States was the most indispensable nation, the light of the world. And for the modern American’s who aren’t intimate with our country’s exceptionalism, two words will likely jar the memory: Freedom Fries.

Has a similar measurement been taken in Russia? Fortunately, it has. American reporter Hedrick Smith spent four years in the Soviet Union in the 1970s at the height of Soviet Communism. Totally immersing himself behind the Iron Curtain, he discovered something peculiar about the Russian people who Solzhenitsyn claimed were “living in Communist captivity.” Cataloging his findings in his book, The Russians, Smith cited the “Soviet obsession with overcoming historic Russian backwardness in relation to the West. Like the czars before them, Soviet leaders are driven by a burning sense of inferiority.” Smith claims “it is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of this as a clue to Soviet relations with the West.” The Russians don’t want to be second best, they want “to be seen as the equals of their chief rivals.” (Smith’s italics)

How has this inferiority complex formed? In many ways it is due to war, pain retains. Focusing on the modern era alone highlights several examples. Following successfully absorbing Napoleon’s Grande Armee, the Russians were slow to change and on the eve of the Crimean War in 1853, her military was a poorly led and equipped peasant conscript army. As detailed in Orlando Figes’ excellent work, The Crimean War, the “ethos of the army was dominated by 18th century parade-ground culture of the tsarist court.” Following her thrashing by the modernized British and French militaries at a cost of 450,000 dead (for comparison the United States lost a similar number in World War 2), Russia again lost in 1905 to Imperial Japan, and finally her inflexible system came crashing down with another defeat in World War I, ushering in the Revolution.

With the collapse of the USSR a new era opened for engagement with Russia. The administration of President George H.W. Bush wisely chose to give the bear its space. In exchange for German membership in NATO, promises were made to not move NATO’s eastern border “one inch closer” to Russia. This promise did not last long. In 1999 Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were added. And then in 2004 seven more countries, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Bulgaria were added. These decisions shifted the eastern border of NATO to 100 miles from St. Petersburg. During the Cold War it was 1,000 miles. Were these choices prudent given Russia’s inferiority complex? Her neighbors soon found out.

Despite vehement Russian and Western European objections, in 2008 Georgia and Ukraine were considered for NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP). The supercharged neoconservative Bush administration, eager to push the Freedom Agenda right up to the bear’s den, could not take no for an answer. Thinking the Americans had their backs, the Georgians under now imprisoned Saakashvili went up to the bear’s den and started poking. The Russian bear had enough and swiped back, both in Georgia and then in Ukraine and Crimea in 2014. How would the United States feel if the President of Mexico invited Russian troops to drill in the Baja peninsula a few dozen miles from the Naval Base of San Diego?

Filtered through the Russian inferiority complex, recent Russian actions are more “clear”. In TAC recommended The Limits of Partnership, Angela Stent examines post-Cold War US-Russian relations. In 2012 the Obama administration passed the Sergei Magnitsky Accountability and Rule of Law Act to address the questionable death of Mr. Magnitsky, a lawyer investigating embezzlement attributed to Russian law and tax enforcement officials. The bill created a visa ban list for individuals connected to his death and left open the possibility of adding more names of those deemed guilty of human rights abuses.

The Russian reaction reportedly “surprised American officials.” The Duma passed the Dima Yakovlev Law, banning future adoptions of Russian children by Americans. Additionally, the “Kremlin announced that it had its own blacklist of U.S. officials guilty of violating human rights who could not enter Russia.” Was this list legitimate? Likely not, but through the prism of inferiority their retaliation doesn’t seem out of bounds. The Russians felt compelled to meet an eye for an eye, to be “seen as equal.”

This complex became abundantly clear in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis. Crimea had been culturally Russian since 1783 after Catherine the Great annexed the territory following a war with the Ottoman Turks. Only in 1954 did Nikita Khrushchev return the peninsula in an act of goodwill. Sevastopol remained on lease for the Russian Navy, being only one of two warm water ports (the other being Tartus in Syria), a clearly vital strategic interest. Following the election of Russian leaning Viktor Yanukovych in 2010, the lease on the port was extended from 2017 through 2042. However after Yanukovych fled in the February 2014 revolution, the rights to Sevastopol were in jeopardy and Russia had no other strategic option than to act. Launching a hybrid war of “little green men”, the Crimea was seized and a separatist conflict in Eastern Ukraine erupted. Following the downing of MH17, the United States enacted sanctions that “sharply restricted access for Russian state banks to Western capital markets, their biggest source of foreign lending.”

The Russian response to sanctions? They had to shoot back, even if it was into their own foot. They “banned food imports from all the countries that had joined the U.S.-EU sanctions.” As stores and restaurants became barren and dysfunctional ordinary Russians sarcastically decided their new gourmet dish would be “oysters from Belarus.”

Running as an outsider, President Trump saw Russia as a possible ally and as he attempts to negotiate this complex should be duly considered. Russia will strike back over every US attempt at encroachment or sanction. It is simply in their nature and cannot be wished away through intimidation or sanction. It is who they are.

A better US position would be to demonstrate goodwill and move first with de-escalation of tensions in Ukraine and Syria and discuss concrete steps to find common ground in possible future security or economic cooperation. Give Russia something great to live up to and let them rise to meet it.

Because as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz have said, “isolating Russia is not a sustainable long-range policy.”

But then again, without a return to great power competition that includes Russia, what good is our national security strategy?

Categories: Russia

About the Author(s)



Groom seeks to explore Russia’s “national character”, and yet his examples tend to focus on the psychology of the Russian elite and the Kremlin, rather than the Russian people themselves.  Arguably, elite Russian opinions are the only ones that matter, which is very different from the situation in the United States.  Can closed authoritarian societies be compared to open democratic ones?  Does political representation affect “national character” or is it produced by it?


Was Churchill correct regarding Russia?  Not necessarily.  Russia was a very diverse, creative, and dynamic society until Lenin’s bloody Revolution, the Civil War that ensued, and Stalin’s mass-enslavement and mass-murder.  One can draw a parallel between Lenin’s and Stalin’s attempts to impose conformity on the Russian people, with those of the Wilhelms and Hitler, respectively.   Historically, Russia has always been an empire rather than a nation-state, and this has meant that its population, territory, and relative power are always expanding or contracting at any point in time. 


A lack of intelligence on Soviet capabilities and intentions does not make the Russian people particularly mysterious; moreover, Soviet ambitions were on full display during the Russian Civil War (a defeated thrust through Poland to Germany), the Spanish Civil War (only the Soviet Union and the Fascist powers directly intervened), and during World War II (1939-1941, and 1944-1945).  By the time of Kennan’s “Long Telegram”, it was already too late for liberal democracy in East-Central Europe or for the survival of the Republic of China on the Mainland.


As for the inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West of the Russian Empire and especially Soviet Union: is this unique?  Hitler was envious of American industrial power, living standards, and self-sufficiency; so too was Japan.  Before World War I, it was Great Britain that Germany, Japan, and Russia envied for its vast empire and naval supremacy.  Although France tended to inspire imitation and jealousy, this was more in the area of culture, Napoleon notwithstanding.


Groom would have the United States, “demonstrate goodwill and move first with de-escalation of tensions”, and then “discuss concrete steps to find common ground in possible future security or economic cooperation”.  Groom refers to Trump identifying Russia as a “possible ally” (on what basis exactly?), and yet his recommendation of goodwill, de-escalation, and dialogue with a view toward partnership was exactly the approach that the Obama Administration took in 2009.  Obama could well have continued NATO BMD in Central Europe rather than the EPAA, used money and materiel to pressure the Russian enclaves in Moldova and Georgia, and punished the Russian invasion of Ukraine by supplying advanced weaponry, barring Russia from SWIFT, etc.  Note that neither Bush nor Obama “struck back” over Russia’s invasion of Georgia (admittedly a counteroffensive), annexation of both separatist territories (not just South Ossetia), ethnic cleansing of Georgians, and further encroachment into prewar Georgian territory. 


How exactly is the United States to reduce tensions in Ukraine and Syria?  By recognizing the “separatist” republics in Donbas?  By supporting Assad’s reconquest of Syria?  Russia has thousands of soldiers deployed to each country to support separatist rebels in the former, and a minority-rule dictator in another; it is not American soldiers that the Russians, their allies, and auxiliaries are confronting, so what tensions are there to be reduced?  Given that the US government is expressing its preferences through sanctions and diplomacy rather than war, I would say that it is Russia’s responsibility to ‘come to Jesus’.  I will not infantilize the Kremlin by treating it as a grouchy pet or frustrated child.