The Russian Radio – Food for Thought

By Arkady Factorovich

Not very long ago, I stumbled on the program of a Russian Radio station, “Echo of Moscow.” What caught my attention was the title of the show, “Are we Russians dumb as a door knob?” The radio station conducted a public opinion poll and one of the main questions was, “Who do you think is needed today as a Russian leader?” I was stunned to learn the following: 70% of the people questioned answered that Russia today needs a Stalin as a leader. 10% said that Stalin has no place in Russian history because he murdered 40 million of its citizens. 17% said that he definitely has a place in Russian history. 3% did not have an opinion.

It shows that Russia is turning 180° back to a Stalinist type of dictatorship. So, why are Russians so eager to go back to modern slavery? Back in history, which we will explore, in order to comprehend what happened and why Russia’s thought process is so different from the Western way of thinking.

It started with the Mongol Invasion of 1223 by Batu Khan. The Mongol army was able to spread all the way to Eastern Europe. The Mongol/Tatar occupation lasted for approximately 257 years and created a ‘200 year gap’ between a European and Asian thought process. That changed the political and economic development of the region for centuries to come by slowing down trade development, agriculture and art. One can observe that influence even today by many Mongol and Tatar words in Slavic languages. Mongols were nomads who ruled with a great deal of cruelty. That is why Russian psyche is quite different, even today.

The return of European influence to Russia started with Peter the Great, who ruled Russia from 1682 until his death in 1725. Before that time, Russia was an agrarian backward nation.

The Czar who also pushed Russia further toward reform was Alexander II, who was called the Liberator. He abolished serfdom in 1861, attempted to give his country a Constitution and was assassinated 48 hours before signing the document in 1881. Nobody can tell where Russia would be today if he had lived three days longer.

His successor to the throne was his son, Alexander III, who started clamping down his father’s reforms and took the country backward. He was dreaming of a homogenous population and instituted State sponsored anti-Semitism. He and his son, Nicholas II, the last Czar of Russia, set forth long term deeds with unintended consequences that brought the country to its fall and defeat during World War I and the Revolution of 1917.

The story of the Russian Revolution and its financing was shrouded in secrecy until 2008, when the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs declassified many documents pertaining to that period and showed the involvement of Germany in the destruction of the Russian Government from within. It started with the arrival of a man, Alexander Parvus, who came to Berlin from Constantinople in February, 1915. He had a letter of recommendation from the German Ambassador in Turkey, Hans Freiherr von Wandenheim. The meeting took place between German diplomats and Parvus in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building. Parvus was Russian-born, educated in Switzerland with a Doctorate degree in economics and was extremely knowledgeable about Russia’s strong and weak points. At that time, Germany had been in World War I for six months and was desperately seeking a separate peace agreement with Russia in order to remove Russia from the eastern front and concentrate its forces in battling England and France.

The Russian government refused to sign the peace treaty. Parvus, according to the words of German diplomats, was a “gift from heaven.” He brought with him a detailed plan on how to remove Russia from the war through revolution. Germans agreed and started to fund Parvus’s subversive activities. He made an incredible fortune in Turkey by contraband of weapons, narcotics and other goods before World War I living in Turkey. He organized Russian liberal democrats and convinced Vladimir Lenin to be the head of the conspiracy for money and power. Trotsky and other criminals joined in. German money started to flow as a river into Parvus’s coffers. Germany gave Parvus one million German marks in gold. Many millions were to follow to support unions in Russia, organize strikes and shootings on the streets. Many newspapers started to print articles, branding war as evil and the Russian soldiers as tools of evil. Also, German money bought Russian politicians and academia in universities. Russian society never before experienced such an onslaught on its military and government institutions in its history.

The anarchy prevailed; then the unbuttoned mob followed the Bolsheviks and forced Nicholas II to abdicate the throne. The interim government was formed with Alexander Kerensky as a Prime Minister. His family and the family of Ulyanov Lenin were friends. Kerensky’s father was a headmaster of the school in Symbirsk, where Lenin was a student. Kerensky graduated from St. Petersburg Law School and was politically a socialist. On November 7, 1917, the loyal unit of sailors from Krondshtadt Naval Base followed the Bolsheviks and took over the Winter Palace and arrested the Interim Government in St. Petersburg. Kerensky fled, dressed as a woman, and ended up in the U.S.A., teaching at the Hoover Institute. Lenin and Trotsky became leaders of Russia.

Russian Revolution was a twin sister of the French Revolution, where the gray mob brought anarchy that slid into dictatorial, murderous regime and eventually, to Stalin’s rule, which is synonymous with Ivan the Terrible.

The question is: Did the country have a chance to obtain freedom of the individual and the right to property? The answer is a definite NO. Stalin is a quintessential centralized power in Russia (very similar to Napoleon in France.) Stalin is a portrait made out of dirt, guts and blood. Let us think what Russia gave to the world. It gave the cruelest idea in the history – radical socialism/Bolshevism that took half of the globe like a plague. Who is the champion of putting its boots on the throat of humanity, perverted spirit and souls of the people? It is Russia. Russians are victims and slaves and, often, participants in the evil dance of total control. If one wants to understand Russia and get rid of the illusion of Stalin’s death, take a look at the Gulag. This is the truth: Russia without a mask. This is not Russia from Kiev, St. Petersburg or Vladivostok; this is Tatar/Mongol Russia.

Russia, as a society, is a historic anomaly, born of Tatar/Mongol destruction of Russian identity. There is nothing stable or permanent; it’s a brew of bureaucratic despotism and anarchy as an alternative to despotism. The Russians have a mixture between Asian and European heritage, which is giving birth to eternal duality of government, thought and soul. This is not Asia and not Europe. In the Russian character, one can find many positives. On the other hand, one can find binges of cruelty and wickedness. It is hard to understand how all of it can live in one individual. This created animosity and envy towards neighbors, especially those who are doing well. That is why, during World War II, Russian forces not only engaged in looting of property, but in most cases, they destroyed the property and life. That is why Russians are going back and are waiting for the Messiah, Stalin, which will unite them in misery and blood and guarantee stagnation of industry and extreme poverty. Russians are very unlucky because the “200 years gap” took away their being, destroyed respect for private property and freedom of the individual. It is my firm belief that Russia cannot be changed, even by revolution, war or other means. Russia can only change by getting rid of a slave mentality that is always cradled by fear. It might take a century or more. Moses was walking with his people in the desert for 40 years to get rid of the mental baggage that slavery provides. It took more than 200 years from the Mayflower voyage to the Declaration of Independence. The descendants of pilgrims, after 200 years, had a different fabric of their being and that, in my humble opinion, was the foundation of the free men and women in this country. It is very easy to get used to “security” that only slavery can provide. Russia is the largest land mass in the world that spreads twelve time zones from west to east, with a population of 150 million. Yet, it has a gross domestic product today at the level of 50 percent of a tiny country called Portugal.

Some people in Russian academia today express an opinion that the evil comes to Russia from the outside (those evil corporations and cultures.) I strongly disagree. There was a reason that my favorite president, Ronald Reagan, called her an evil empire. In my opinion, she still is. It is of great concern to me that our American citizenry is sliding into apathy, complacency and decadence. We are paying too much attention to frivolities and not paying attention at all to what is happening to our freedom and rights. It must change because if we, God forbid, lose our freedom, we will never get it back.

I hope and pray that every American will remember the words of one of our Founders: “If a man does not have a burning desire in his heart to be free, there is no law that can protect him from being enslaved.”

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Arkady Faktorovich is a public speaker on "Life Behind the Iron Curtain," "The Russian October Revolution," and "Federal Reserve System - History and Consequences." Born and raised in the Ukraine (former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), Arkady has an engineering degree from Kiev State University. He is a veteran of the Soviet Army who departed from the Soviet Union in 1978. He arrived in the United States in 1979, and now owns his own business, is a U.S. Citizen, and is married with three children and six grandchildren. Arkady can be contacted at arfaco1 at gmail dot com.