Masha Gessen Quotes
Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century, basically because of the arms race, because the Soviet Union realized... World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.
Gessen, Masha. Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
He was right. Before WWII Russia was not considered a very important country in the world, but having emerged from WWII, Russia was stronger than ever and counties like Germany and Italy were in ruins.
Chamberlain’s military assessment of Russia’s military ability was yet another example of his faulty judgment. He was not alone however in that many British military experts and American as well, thought that Stalin and Russia could not hold out against Hitler and any military aid given to Russia would just fall into German hands. It was FDR assistant Harry Hopkins who went to Russia, toured the front, met with Stalin and other Russian leaders and observed the Russian people and then recommended to FDR that we send arms to Russia. It was a critical judgment. In the end, the Germans suffered more casualties on their Russian front than any other part of the war and it was the Russians who took Berlin though they suffered large casualties themselves.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. He was a strong advocate for disarmament and that was being debated at the United Nations. He was critical of Bernard Baruch’s tactics but it soon was clear to almost all that the Russians were not interested in a serious UN supervised disarmament. Oppenheimer was profoundly disappointed when it was clear that disarmament was being blocked by the Russians and their veto. After that he didn’t trust the Russians, and concentrated on trying have US policies that would not goad the Russians into an arms race. This quotation is particularly important because in an effort to discredit his views on nuclear policy some politicians accused him of being a security risk with the innuendo that he was a communist and even a Russian agent.
Bush wanted to expand NATO to include Poland and Hungary. However the German and American governments had previously (before the collapse of the Soviet Union) given promises to the Russians that NATO would never be expanded Eastward from East Germany. See {32678}. Bush went ahead and violated those promises anyway using the excuse that the agreement had not been part of a treaty. That decision had implications for Russian attitudes towards the United States and Western Europe. The Russians repudiated their agreements in 2014 and invaded the Crimea and took it from Ukraine. The Russians however had broken promises many time whereas the United States reversals of promises, like this were few. Bush’s logic however was not in keeping with traditional American standards. We made a deal with Russia when they were a strong superpower who could easily damage many of our national interests. However, when they were weak, we no longer have to do anything we agreed to when they were strong. The great irony was that reacting against Westernization of Ukraine, Premier Putin, by seizing the Crimea and successfully supporting ethnic Russian separatists in Ukraine put Russia back on the map as a major power in the world who could act with impunity against the interests of the West, Europe, the United States and the NATO countries. Most Russians rejoiced that Russia was again an empire that could not be dictated to.
During the Cold War and afterwards many Americans attributed the problems we were having with the Soviet Union emenated from the fact that they were Communists, and our focus was anti-communism. Kennen, however argued that it was not Communism that was the cause of the Aggression of the Soviet Union. It was an extension of the Russian Culture. After the Soviet Union collapsed, and Communism was rejected by the Russians, we still had a great deal of Russian aggression and Foreign Policy problems with Russia. Kennan was right. It was the Russian culture, history, values and traditions that were the primary cause of most of the problems with Russia.
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator and activist who has been an outspoken critic of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the former President of the United States, Donald Trump.
