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As I sat and watched the news on Russian television on the night of September 11th, Russian time, I received continued calls of from Russian friends, all calls of condolence worded in roughly the same manner and expressed in the same tone of voice, as if they had all practiced the phrase over and over again, in unity. For a few hours, that night and the day after, Moscow took a breath. Putin jumped on TV, pointedly sober (unlike his predecessor), and expressed his own sympathies and his support of Russian-American unity in the face of the crisis. My landlady stopped calling for a few hours to inquire about the current status of the repair of her bathroom sink. The American embassy was engulfed by tasteful floral arrangements and sobbing girls, both American and Russian. For a few hours, the cops stopped fishing for bribes from innocent passers-by and the honking and swearing on the street seized. Even the drunks seemed sober. For the first time in many many years, Russians really seemed to forget feeling sorry for themselves and, more than this, feel sorry for someone else. More so, there was an odd unity between the people and the government, and, even the most ardent skeptics and disillusioned intellectuals, seemed to take Putins earnestness to heart. Russians first and foremost sympathized. Although the terrorists here limited their destruction to housing complexes and subways, the sense of fear and panic was just as strong, if not even stronger. In America, the targets were symbolic monuments of capitalist and democratic power. In Russia, the targets were random, unpredictable, and directed at the people more than the government. When the Russians were attacked, the US did not take a breath; there was no great expression of sympathy. Thus, in the common tit-for-tat relationship between Russian and the West, it would only make sense that Russians scoff at the terror currently being felt by the citizens of the land of the free and home of the brave, who have never had to go about their daily business in such an atmosphere of uncertainty. The Russians, however, who have lived in this world of terror and uncertainty for so many years now that no one can quite remember when the country was half-way normal, seem to be taking the moment and opportunity to finally take a form moral stance that overshadows petty financial and political quarrels.
The multifold politiical reasons for Russias full out support of the USA are fairly clear and understood. The country has long been the victim of the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist threat. The first major expression of animosity between Islam and Russia, as a state, was the Russo-Turkish War, when multitudes of young Russian men were sent to die in the near east, leading to Pugachyevs rebellion and many years of hostility and warfare. Russia has always been faced with the most trying geopolitical conundrum, in that the Russian people are trapped between the democratic West, where the people look more or less like them and behave in a manner that they themselves attempt to achieve and the Islamic East, where the people are noticeably darker skinned and more traditionally dressed, and whose mode of behaviour is alien and uncomfortable to them. The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Russia have all tried various methods of co-opting and amalgamating the Muslims. However, history has proven that traditional methods of conquer and socialization are not applicable in the Muslim-dominated countries. Afghanistan, of course, has always been the most trying of land masses for the Russian people, who have launched war on the country four times, all to no avail. The terror that is Afghanistan still resonates on the streets of Moscow, where veterans of the last war in the country scatter the streets, sans legs and arms, faces drenched in filth, begging for assistance. It has continued to manifest itself within the borders of the Russian Federation and the former Soviet states, especially in Chechnya, where Russians have for years now been fighting and losing against a fundamentalist threat that is most likely supported by the very same terrorist organizations that brought the World Trade Center, epicenter of democracy and modernity, to rubble.
Russian support in the US counter-attack would allow the Russian Federation to exercise even greater power over the former Soviet satellites in the Caucauses and Central Asia, which house a vast array of natural resources and strategic access points to important Asian fronts. Russia would be allowed access to world organizations on its own terms and would be allowed to slow down the NATO expansion on its Western Front. Russian support would ensure additional added foreign aid assistance, possibly even the forgiveness of billions of dollars of loans that come due in 2003. A combined military action would give the Russians access to US military resources and possibly even NATO assistance in Chechnya. It would also help to strengthen and re-patriotize the pathetically financially and emotionally impoverished Russian army that most men in the country spend a great deal of valuable time and resources to avoid.
There are limitless reasons for why Russia would want to enter this war and limitless possibilities as to how the Russian economy could indeed be strengthened by such a catastrophe. However, the fact remains that Russia seems to be going above and beyond the call of duty, so much so that Bush and Putin appear to be a tag-team of sorts with the rest of the European Union cheering along the sidelines, albeit that the rest of the European Union has much less to fear than Russia, whose interior and borders are burgeoning with less than amiable Muslims. In the midst of this catastrophic tragedy, a new type of peace is being born. The extent of cooperation between the two countries, one the largest in the world, the other the most powerful, goes far beyond a game of political strategizing. Whereas the Soviet Union did its best to sliver out of participation in World War Two, siding with the Allies only when other variants were no longer feasible, Russia is acting in a pro-active, decisive manner and urging the countries over which it retains influence to do the same. Putin has made it clear that the time for tit-for-tatting and baby stepping into diplomatic compromises is done. The country is displaying both the strength of its government and the softer side of its people. Though they have been disenchanted, disenfranchised, and disillusioned time and again, they still retain the ability to forget, forgive, sympathize, and unite in the face of a global terror. Also, in a rare historical exception, they are acting as opposed to merely reacting. Thus, I sit here feeling a bond with my Russian colleagues that neither political or financial squabbling can break. Russia seems to be experiencing a sort of political and moral renassiance that only a tragedy of this size could truly incite. Thus, for the first time in a long time, I feel both safe under the protection of the Russian state and proud to be among its people.
