There's a quote that speaks perfectly to this Russian worldview — and how Americans misunderstand it — in the most recent issue of
Russia in Global Affairs, a Russian foreign policy journal that is widely considered to reflect the views of Russia's foreign policy establishment. The quote is from
a Q&A with Vladimir Lukin, a prominent Russian diplomat and liberal politician who previously served as ambassador to the US:
Interviewer: In his 1994 book "Diplomacy," Henry Kissinger writes that "integrating Russia into the international system is a key task" for the United States. But as he was saying this, the Americans were actually pushing Moscow away with their policy. Why?
Vladimir Lukin: It is in the genes. America has a simple ideology – that there is only one truth in the world, that truth is held by God, and God created the United States to be an embodiment of that truth. So the Americans strive to bring this truth to the rest of the world and to make it happy. Only after that will everything be well. This ideology has a strong influence on their policy. A wise traditionalist and a geopolitical expert, Kissinger had good reason to call such politicians "Trotskyites" for advocating a world revolution, albeit in their own way, but always in the front and in shining armor. This is a tempting ideology and has been professed by different countries at different times, not only the United States.
Lukin is hardly seen as an anti-American hard-liner in Russia — rather, he's considered to be an objective expert on the United States and a highly professional diplomat. He is a founding member of the liberal opposition party Yabloko. That he would get the United States so obviously wrong — what Americans would call defending democracy and human rights, he sees as a far more radical and explicitly religious agenda of "advocating a world revolution" — is troubling. But his view is a common one, and that tells you a great deal.
