I have been. I've read Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, and Roger Cohen in the New York Times. I've listened to people summoned by Gwen Ifill. Still in the dark.
This morning I lamented about this on Facebook (also would like to know more re e-cigarettes. Any help out there?). And my friend Rockie, dorm-mate at UCSB about a hundred years ago who started out as a Russian Area Studies major, responded with a pithy, irreverent explanation that did the trick. I may listen no more to Brooks, et al.
"A couple of themes have gone through Russian history since the days of the tsars: First, a fascination and envy of all things Western, and a desire to be as prosperous and advanced as the West, alternates with the phobic idea that everything Western pollutes the Slavic soul of Holy Russia.
Second, a feeling that they are surrounded by enemies, because they often are (cf. the Mongols, Napoleon, the Japanese, the Chinese and Hitler). The paranoia runs high lately because of their humiliation at the end of the Cold War, for which they of course blame the West. These concerns exacerbated by geographic problems--all their rivers run north into the Arctic, and the only way they could trade at all was to conquer areas with sea access, which explains P's obsession with Sebastopol.
And third, they really do believe that what they need isn't so much corrupt Western representative government as a Good Man to lead them. If they were a person, we'd probably be trying to get them some help. Seriously, this exact scenario could have played out any time in the past 200 years. Unfortunately, it also sounds like Hitler in the 1930's, seeking to cure the German humiliation by taking over the Sudetenland."
I found this very helpful. And much more illuminating than an impolite NYU professor on The NewsHour sighing over the collective stupidity of the world in failing to grasp Putin's thinking.
Gwen, call Rockie.
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