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May 09, 2005

Most Muscovites Say US Ally, Not Adversary

But a familiar theme In leftist circles gains rhetorical ground in Russia

 

 

 

According to an unscientific poll of Russian radio listeners who tuned in to yesterday's interview of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Echo Moskvy, 46% of respondents said they believed the US was an adversary of Russia while 54% said they considered America an ally.

 

But this came from the same Russia Journal article sporting a dramatic photo of Adolf Hitler and which compared United States Russia policy to the war-era Nazi Außenpolitik bzw. Rußland, suggesting that the policies of the US have caused more damage than had those of Hitler:

 

 

Today, the conventional wisdom is that it wasn't just Hitler, but his ideas that were defeated sixty years ago on May 9. And you are sure to be called a dangerous crackpot if you dare say that what has been happening to Russia for the past decade might be as bad or worse, ideologically speaking, than Hitler’s war or Stalin's persecution.

 

  

(No word in this article on whether the Journal also thinks the US has caused more damage to Russia than Stalin, but I think we might be able to safely offer a guess).

 

While comparing the US to the Third Reich might be a thing at which some argue the en temps du temps left-leaning History Channel almost seems to hint, comparing Hitler's Germany favorably to the US in regards to it's relationship with Russia seems tenuous and by any real observation intellectually overwrought at best.

 

But who is more surely slipping into a state of fascism? Surely Hitler killed his millions and Stalin killed his tens of millions - and Stalin is growing more popular in certain modern Russian circles each day. The Free World simply wants Russia to respect the lives and basic rights of its own citizens. If this is what the Journal dubs fascism, then a discussion of Russia’s education system might also be timely for her people. Of course we know many Russians hold a different view than many at the Journal and within Putin's government and so forth, it’s just that President Putin and his goose-stepping state of late have made them too afraid to speak of it.

 

Posted by Martin at May 9, 2005 07:24 PM

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