Winston Churchill was almost right when he said : 'I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.' Oct 1939

Nobody has gotten closer to understanding Russia in 200 years than Churchill did. It is not really a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an engma but he was not too far off so we have to give him some credit.

Russia is actually two separate and interdependent lies. Understanding the second deception is dependent on understanding the first deception. Understand the first lie and it becomes possible to understand the second.

The first lie gave Russia the unity it needed by bringing together about 40-70 different main ethnic groups and then kept them together.

The first lie was this. There is always an enemy that plans to destroy Russia and kill all the Russians. This is what united Russia and kept it together. This deception was made into a common saying that diplomats used until about 1830. It was: 'Russia is a table with three legs. The table has to be propped up on an enemy to prevent it from falling over.' If at any time in Russian history they had been without an enemy or potential enemy for more than about ten years the country would have fallen apart due to ethnic differences. This lie worked well and kept the country united until about 300 years later. Then things changed. The Chinese got too powerful and numerous.

So the second lie was created. 'Make sure that you chose an enemy that is different than the real one.

Starting about the 1500's the Mongol's from the East were the perfect enemy. For the first 100 or so years they did exactly what the Russians needed them to do. They sometimes invaded as they normally did and thereby were a real continuous threat. That drove the various Russian groups together and they united because of fear.

The Mongols became less of a problem after 100 years so another enemy had to be found or created. Soon the Russians had to make enemies and that became difficult as time went on. Anyone who invaded Russia were all killed so their neighbors stopped after a while.

Russia had to begin to go out of their way to find and to then make enemies starting about the 1600's. Typically they did and still do anything they can to be perceived of as the victim of others and that in turn justifies their hatred of others. This alone explains much of Russia's often insane and unfounded charges of violations by other countries. Excellent examples are that the blocking of Russian ships to keep them from putting missiles in Cuba was not a defensive action but a direct attack against Russia and that the Kursk was sunk by a NATO sub, etc.*

If even once in the 500+ years of Russian history as a nation the threat of an invader had ever disappeared completely then the fears of Russians would have disappeared as well. Then those 70 ethnic cultures would have separated into almost as many groups. Then fighting would have started among them. Other countries would have then taken them over one at a time.

For over 500 years they have always relied on the threat of an invader to keep them stable.

The permanent enemy is the first lie that the Russian leaders placed on their people. It worked fine for them for almost 300 years.

Click for bigger

Then China's population exploded during the reign of Catherine the Great and in about 35 years increased over 50% from 200 to 300 million a s you can see on the graph China's population. China's population increased at a faster rate than it ever had in history. Since there was no great degree of modernization in agriculture techniques, the pressure of the Chinese Generals (or I guess what are now called the warlords) to expand was great.

The Chinese Generals wanted to expand into the very sparsely populated Eastern parts of Russia. The Emperor was temperate and quite frankly afraid of the traditional retribution tendency of the Russians so he did everything he could to prevent war and keep the Generals in check.

Catherine's spies warned her of the situation. They knew the Chinese methods would be to send their untrained masses of peasants across the borders into Russia and then back them up when Russia was able to raise an army. Untrained peasants could get a strong foothold in the Russian steeps before the Russian's could raise, equip, train and send an army to the east.

So to play it safe Russia needed to maintain a mobilized army that could move at the first threat of invasion. How to do it was a huge problem. If Catherine raised an army the Chinese would claim it was to invade China and their Generals would declare war with the support of all of China. That had to be avoided at all cost.

Catherine had to figure out a way to build an army without the Chinese being able to say it was a threat. What she did was make a 'proxy' enemy. She declared war against the Ottoman Empire and used them as an excuse to raise the army which she needed to protect Russia from China.

The corollary of lie two is: 'Make sure that you chose an enemy other than your real one then you won't have to fight your real enemy.'

By 1800 Russia was kept bound together by these two lies. That table's fourth leg was any country other than the one that was a threat and the one it really needed to be on.

The madness that both of these lies create is what we in the west have been dealing with for a very long time now.

The reason that nobody has ever figured out Russia before is very simple. The two deceptions cannot be understood by looking at them one at a time. They are interdependent so you must understand both of these at the same time in order to understand Russia. That increases the complexity by several orders of magnitude (a lot).

No I am not that good. We diplomats learned the first lie 200 years ago and one lie is easy to understand. It is having to understand both lies at once which has made it hard for everyone after us to understand Russia.

Then while we were alive 200 years ago we actually watched the second lie become instrumented near the end of the 18th century. Understanding the second lie once we understood the first lie was not that big of a deal.

I specifically recall actually learning about the second lie directly from the Russian Ambassador to France..

I (Thomas Jefferson) was the ambassador to France and it was at a party. I yelled** out to the Russian ambassador as he was ducking out the door, 'What in hell are you doing to those Turks?' He stopped and explained it to me in great detail.*** He explained for a half an hour how the Chinese thought process works. I remember that I was most surprised that he took so much time since he had just 'scored' the woman who was the hit of the ball and their leaving early was because they were hot to trot.

Catherine assigned her lovers to be generals but she made certain that the best officers were around to take charge if they were ever truely needed.

Her lovers would get to ride south, invade Turkey, cruise around looking cool in their snazzy uniforms, shoot a few Turks, then when their thin blood boiled, call it a campaign, give the campaign a name, then go home and make love with Catherine.

[I looked at the pictures of some of her lovers and I don't know what to make of them. She certainly had her choice of men. For some reason I was expecting someone like Tom Cruise or the muscular body builder type. I'm certain the horse story about her death holds no merit at all. Judging by their boyish looks they add a whole new dimension to the concept of 'mother Russia'.

Every time the Chinese population grew by 20 or so million their leaders would look west. They would see the well equipped Russian army which could turn east at a moments notice and go back to smoking their English supplied Opium.

For a hundred years Turkey remained the 'enemy' and it kept China completely at bay. It was as irrational as Catherine was but it worked. It was another hundred years before Russia had to fight a real war in the east and then it was with Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904.

And that my friend are the two 'big lies' which were promulgated then and continue even until this day. These are what made Russia a lie within a lie.

When the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 they did not learn about the secret pair of lies (as well as many others). Those two lies stayed on with the leaders and they fell right into using them but not knowing what they were about they just became a huge self deception. They were controlled by those two lies rather than controlling them. The leaders after the Revolution didn't know what the truth was. So the leaders turned it mainly inward on the honest Russian people and made them the enemy in lieu of a real or pretended external enemy.****

The strangest part (and I am still a bit in awe of it) is how the Communist and even Russia's present leaders still continue on this twisted path.

One thing has not changed. It is that the rulers have no interest at all in the well being of those they rule. They think the same of them as they always have. The masses are nothing at all to the rulers of Russia.

Summary: Russia has always had a dismal record of adhering to treaties. They probably have violated over 90% of the treaties they have signed in the last 400 years. It's a game for them and treaties are never taken seriously. They gain points in their system if they get away with violating a treaty. Even if there is only a slight margin to gain or just a potential for gain in the far off future they will violate a treaty if they think they can get away with it. Honor and truth are for others and treaties are to get other countries to sign.

This is because Russia is a country which is based on lies. Now that the KGB/FSB is in charge the lies are just made less detectable but they are much better at hiding the truth than the old guard. They are a clan that has become Russias new aristocrats and they are not much different than the old Czarist government. They are much more secretive and use far better techniques though. They are known the world over for ruthlessly destroying their enemies without being detected. They could be the downfall of not only Russia but the world.

To get to power in Russia a person has to be one of the best liars in the world. It's not an option in the process of gaining power and authority in Russia, it's a requirement. One should never believe those in power in Russia. If they can possibly gain anything by lying to you they most likely will.

Deception of others creates self deception. It's an unavoidable and an inevitable part of the process of lying. Lies do come back to haunt people with a vengeance. Some can live with it, I cannot. Most Russians can't either but those that can rise to the top.

The lies and deception which held together Russia for 550 years are probably not needed anymore to keep the various ethnic groups together. The communist system broke down most of the separation of those various ethnic groups. Now the mass media is doing the rest by blurring the separation between those groups that make up the population of Russia. The very concept of 'us and them' within their borders is dissolving and so should the Russian system of lies.

*The first, what the US calls the Cuban missile crisis created a completely defiant position for the Soviet Union that their leaders could not back down from. Later it nearly destroyed the world in a nuclear holocaust in the 1980's. Finally it caused the near collapse of Russia itself.

**It sounds very undiplomatic that I yelled to the Russian Ambassador to France at the Kings ball and even interrupted the orchestra but I thought it all out about two seconds before I yelled. Queen Catherine always placed her lovers in the highest positions and loyalty to Russia meant loyalty to her. Calling out to the ambassador when he was sneaking out with that aristocrat French Tart immediately placed him on trial before the entire world. I immediately became the prosecuting attorney, King Louis was the judge and those at the ball were a worldwide jury. The Russian Ambassador had to answer the question I asked about Turkey to my satisfaction or face Catherine the executioner and spend the rest of his life in Siberia.

***It may take me awhile to recall all the different ways that the Queen used to bait Turkey into attacking Russia so that Russia could justify starting wars with them. One of them was her decision to push for partioning of the Ottoman empire while it was still intact.

A general partition of the Ottoman Empire was contemplated in the treaty of alliance (1781) between Catherine II and Emperor Joseph II; the fate of the Ottoman Empire thus became a major concern of the Western powers and created the explosive Eastern Question. This is from Info please

One way to get a country very upset is to propose breaking it up into little pieces and Catherine used this treaty to propose it. At every opportunity Russia messed with Turkey. I was told that Catherine had even hired scholars to figure out specific methods to trigger the Ottoman Empire into attacking Russia.

****Russia’s focus is always blurred as to who the real enemy is.

W.W.I and W.W.II showed that this self deception still existed then even after 500 years had passed. Russia's entry into W.W.I was due to a low level treaty with Serbia. They had no reason to fully mobilize against Austria since half of Russian aristocracy were of at least partial Austrian ancestry. They made war with their own family and for what? To let communism take over? Russia could have gotten away with making some war noises at Austria and shooting a few bullets at trees but they had to pull out all the stops and really made a mess of everything, didn't they?

The second World War was far worse of a self deception. Stalin thought the world of Hitler and decided his own people were the enemy. He was well on his way to happily destroying his own country before he even realized that Germany was the real enemy but it still took a full invasion by the Nazi's before he woke up to it**

In point of fact Stalin's substitution of Russia for Germany was not a coincidence. The purging in Russia paralleled the Nazi build up of Germany perfectly..

..

In 1934 Hitler’s political rivals were eliminated (June 30th The "Night of Long Knives.", July 25th Nazis murder Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss, August 2nd German President Hindenberg dies., August 19th Adolf Hitler became the Fuehrer of Germany ) and his personal power increased dramatically.

Rapidly Stalin changed at about that same time and purged his political rivals. Starting In December 1934 Sergey Kirov was assassinated (probably by Stalin) and then he purged thousands of members of the Leningrad party.

Next, Germany itself became more powerful and began to expand (March 16th 1935 Hitler violates Treaty of Versailles and rearmed, February 10th 1936, The German Gestapo is placed above the Law, March 7th 1936, German troops occupied the Rhineland.)

Stalin saw and perhaps felt this happening and felt helpless to prevent it so he expanded his purges across Russia killing anyone with power starting in 1936.

Next, in April 1937, in Spain, the German Condor Legion unleashed Nazi ruthlessness for the first time on a large scale when it's bombs totally destroyed the neutral town of Guernica.

And Stalin responded by purging Russia's military leaders starting in June 1937 with the execution of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskiy and other military leaders. It ended with the death of half of Russia’s Generals and the army itself in complete disarray.

The purges were how Stalin dealt with the subconscious feeling that something was terribly wrong.

Stalin refused to see the real problem until the German Army had invaded and driven hundreds of miles into the heartland of Russia.

Previous Page

All rights reserved. © J Pinil, Inc. 2005