War and Peace

[pscot]

Staunton, VA, October 24, 2016 - Aleksey Levinson, a sociologist at the Levada Center, says that surveys show that Russians have partially lost the sense they had in Soviet times that a nuclear war would be the end of everything and now view talk about it as a kind of game between Moscow, which they view as the innocent, and the West, which they see as the aggressor.

....

As in the past but even more in recent months, Russians blame the West either directly or as the sponsor of Russia’s opponents and view their own government as peaceful and unthreatening, Levinson says. They do not view the events in Ukraine as a war or blame the Russian government for them.

...

Russians believe that the main driver of what Russia is doing is “the attempt of the West to denigrate Russia or even destroy it.” That notion “is very widely disseminated,” as is the view that Russia “has the right either of defense or of making a just demand for respect and equality.” Everything else is of lesser importance, the sociologist says.

The annexation of Crimea, in the minds of Russians, marked their return as a world power. That is because this action “was a gesture by Russia which testified” to that since “for the first time, Russia violated treaties, rules, laws, and most important the will of those who are customarily referred to as ‘our partners.’”

....

Russians know that their situation at home is not good, but they are “prepared to tolerate that” in the name of becoming again “’a great power.’” In the absence of any other unifying idea like the one that existed in Soviet times, this is “especially the case of those who consider themselves to be ethnic Russians.”

http://www.interpretermag.com/october-24-2016/

[pangaia]

1. Sounds like republicans to me.