Why Russia Remains a Major Force

Part four of “Changes in the World Ahead”

Russia hadn’t been in the news much, until their army moved into Georgia (the one north of Iran, not the one north of Florida). Nevertheless, Russia is still the 900-pound grizzly bear in the field of global politics. So what is it that makes Russia so important?

Russia ranks #1 in size: it takes up one-eighth of all the dry land on earth. The country has eleven time zones and stretches across two continents. Russia has the largest reserves of minerals and energy of any country. They also have the largest forests and one quarter of all the fresh water on earth. The people, 144 million strong, are the 8th largest population. Their economy also ranks #8 but is among the fastest growing (and that’s a good thing). Russia holds a “permanent” seat on the UN Security Council (and that’s been a bad thing). Their annual military budget ranks #8 in the world, but their army is still huge.

Russia has the #1 (largest) stockpile of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. And they have the capability to fire ICBM missiles and hit any target anywhere on planet earth. No one, not even the US military, has any real defense against these missiles, should they all be launched. (Our missile defense system, the GMD system, is only in the testing phase.) That alone would make Russia a 900-pound bear. But wait, there’s more:

When you think of “big oil producing countries,” what comes to mind? Saudi Arabia? Iran?
The Saudis produce 9.4 million barrels of oil every day, but the Russians are right there behind them, in the number-two spot with 9.0 million barrels. Iran? Number 4, at a measly 3.9million.
For years Russia didn’t export that much, but now they are selling it as fast as they can –
again, right behind Saudi Arabia, the Russians are #2 in oil exports (which means, number two in money imports).

Although we faced off against the Russians during the “Cold War,” more often than not in history, we have been allies with the Russians. And the people are a delight – I have met many Russians, and I have never met one that I didn’t like! They are usually extroverts, optimists, very friendly to Americans, and hard-workers. (Caveat: I’ve never actually been to Russia. All the Russians I’ve ever met were either somewhere in Europe or here in the USA.)

Any understanding of 21st century Russia must be based on their experience in “the Great Patriotic War.” Which war, you say? We know it as World War Two, the big one, but in Russia, it’s the “Great Patriotic War.” It impacted every family, every generation, everywhere.

Imagine if WW2 had been fought on our land – say, enemy troops had landed on the Atlantic shore and marched westward to about St. Louis. Imagine the havoc wrecked upon the land. American casualties in WW2 were a hundred times more than in the current Iraq war, around 400,000. The British lost about the same; Japan lost three million people, the Germans lost seven million, but the Russians….. they lost TWENTY million – a stunning 13% of their population. No wonder they were a bit fearful of other nations after WW2. No Russian ever wondered what it might be like to be invaded by western Europeans – they had already seen it!

A hundred years before the big war, Karl Marx had written “The Communist Manifesto,” suggesting that history’s inevitable outcome would be “communism and socialism replacing capitalism and liberty.” By 1917, Vladimir Lenin had put Marx’s ideas into practice, through the Bolshevik revolution, which overthrew the last of the Czars, and established the “Soviet Union.’

After Lenin, soon came Stalin. Marx had said, “there is no god.” Lenin said, “Marx was god.” Stalin lived as if he believed that, “Stalin himself is god.” He was in charge during WW2.

The successful defense of the Nazi invasion and subsequent occupation of all of Eastern Europe, caused the Soviet Union to become a super-power. I remember as a kid watching on black-and-white TV, in 1960, as Nikita Khrushchev addressed the UN, using his shoe as a gavel, pounding and shouting “We will bury you. Your grandchildren will become communists.” Meanwhile, his people were building nuclear missiles and putting satellites into space. Twenty years later, Ronald Reagan became the US President, and upped the military-spending ante until the Russians went broke, while Pope John Paul II helped Eastern Europe to “believe the unbelievable: that their countries could leave the Soviet Union. After the Russians endured “glasnost” (opening) and “perestroika” (re-structuring), their Union reeled. The Berlin Wall came down, and the East Germans poured through the gaping holes. The wall was covered with graffiti. The best one: VINI, VIDI, VISA (“They came, they saw, they did a little shopping.” )

The Baltic nations said to the Russians, “we quit your union” in 1991, and within two years, I was able to fly into Riga, the capital of Latvia, to plan evangelistic partnerships. It was a cold, grey, twilight in February. Russian soldiers still guarded this airport, and Russian fighter jets (the kind that I had trained to shoot down) were still parked there. But when I returned two years later, the Russians and their planes were gone. Four years after that, Latvia joined the European Union, and then NATO. Today, US and British military planes land at Riga airport – now, that’s what I call, Change!

Meanwhile, Russia itself, post-empire, is free from financially supporting all those satellite states (like Cuba). Russia is growing strong again, and their leaders long to re-gain super-power status. But they look around and see potential rivals everywhere. To the south is China, with a population almost TEN times their size. To the west, the robust European Union (26 nations, 400 million people) looks to them like a vaguely familiar enemy. They see the US military troops staging through former Soviet client states on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan. That has got to look weird, from their viewpoint. It’s easy to see how they would be anxious.

Their domestic challenges are heavy: transitioning from the old, Soviet-style state-centered economy, to the new global roller-coaster, free-wheeling, credit-centered economy. Only 80% of their people are actually Russian ethnically. A full twenty percent come from 100+ different ethnic groups. The communists had promoted atheism, but the Eastern (Russian) Orthodox Church not only endured, but emerged to take firm control of the church scene.

The giddy 1990’s brought incredible religious freedoms, but Russian Evangelical Christians now report that it was only a temporary respite. Social issues like alcoholism, suicide, abortion, gangs, and organized crime, weigh heavily on the people. An aging population, mostly folks living on government pensions granted in Soviet times, struggles to make it through every winter. It would be confusing, morally, politically, and economically, to be a Russian today.

So how do we respond to the changes in Russian today? First, our next President will have to become acquainted with their brand new President, Dmitry Medvedev. (Don’t ask me how to pronounce it – it’s really hard for English speakers.)

Medvedev was born in 1965 -- he’s younger than Barack Obama! His parents were university professors, and he was a brilliant student. As a teenager, he loved the English rock bands “Black Sabbath” and “Deep Purple.” In 1987 he took a law degree from Leningrad State University (something like our Harvard). After he received his PhD in law, he taught as a docent at St Petersburg University (something like our University of Chicago?). Most of his career he was worked in political positions, in city government, (like, maybe, a community organizer?) and later at the national level, as Deputy Prime Minister (something like a US Senator). He is married to the lovely Svetlana, whom he met in school, and they have one young son. Medvedev likes to jog, and swim, and he’s authored some textbooks on law.

How’d he get to be President? His predecessor, the wily Vladimir Putin, couldn’t run for a third term. So he endorsed Medvedev, and after the election, the new President appointed Putin as Prime Minister. Thus, Putin, a former head of the KGB, is very close to the center of power. And it is a power for the United States to reckon with, in the changing world ahead.