Russia Must De-Liberalize or Face Destruction, Zaderey and Falichev Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 25 – “After the special military operation in Ukraine,” Valery Zaderey and Oleg Falichev say, Russia must seriously address the more important task of “de-liberalizing” itself. If it fails to do that, it will disintegrate just as the Soviet Union did, which lost the Cold War not so much on the military battlefield as in the war of ideas.

            “The USSR suffered defeat not in the theater of military action,” the two Moscow security analysts say; “and therefor its revenge must be achieved not on the field of battle, or more precisely, not just on the field of battle because war today is multi-faceted (zvezdaweekly.ru/news/20225201221-kQh3o.html).

            In the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia has become “a victim of liberalism” because Russia has resources the West wants, it has military power that limits what the West can do, and is “the spiritual antipode of the West to the extent it operates on completely opposite moral values.” The West wants to destroy it, and liberalism is its best weapon.

            It is time to recognize the reality that “against Russia and the Russian people is being conducted a total war in all directions, including the proxy war in Ukraine.” The West would be doing even more militarily were it not for the Russian nuclear arsenal, but its use of liberalism has hurt Russia and so liberalism must be extirpated.

            Given that sanctions are intended to hurt the standard of living of the population, the Russian leadership must ensure that Russians do not live less well than they did. “Liberalism was the main instrument for the destruction of the Soviet Union,” Zaderey and Falichev argue. To ensure Russia doesn’t follow the same path, the country must be de-liberalized.

            The Beloveshcha accords must be denounced, the economy must be put on a military footing, Moscow must insist on the convening of an international tribunal to bring to justice those who launched the covid pandemic. And it must close the Yeltsin Center and all other mouthpieces of liberalism in Russia.

            According to the two Moscow commentators, “the special military operation in Ukraine is objectively the first decisive attempt to oppose the West which has unleashed against Russia a total war of destruction. An adequate response will require the same totality if not indeed a greater one.”