Losers or Winners?

In the USSR, scholars had to find proof that all scientific discoveries had been made by Russians. Gravity, electricity, the telephone. The idea was that the evil West had stolen and appropriated all of these Russian discoveries.

We all knew it was stupid but not in our wildest dreams could we imagine that this idea of evil West victimizing poor Russia would become accepted as The Truth in the West. “Russia invaded Ukraine because of the NATO expansion” is the equivalent of the Soviet-era “Alexander Graham Bell stole the idea of the telephone from a Russian Okhriutka Milkhriutka because that’s how the evil West always keeps Russia down.” Few things are as constant in the Russian narrative of its history as the idea that the West keeps Russia down on purpose because it wouldn’t win an honest competition.

Winning the Cold War has somehow brought us an uncritical adoption of every Soviet ideological invention. We now have people proudly calling themselves Socialists and winning elections on the strength of that identification. The left and the right are competing in who out-rubbishes the West. Postcolonial theory invented in the USSR is embraced by the left and the right. It’s hard to figure out what exactly was won in the Cold War and by whom.