In Soviet Times, Russians Accepted Isolation from Outside World as Natural – and will Do So Again, Panyushkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 25 – Many find it impossible to imagine that Russians will accept the kind of isolation from the outside world that the Putin regime is now insisting on, Valery Panyushkin says; but they forget that for decades of Soviet power, they accepted that isolation and even considered it entirely natural.

            That was and is the case, the Russian journalist says, even when they did enjoy the brief period after 1991 when Russia opened up to the world and they could both experience other cultures and even visit other countries (moscowtimes.ru/2024/07/24/vi-priviknete-samoizolyatsiya-rossii-skoro-perestanet-shokirovat-a137622).

            For decades, the Russians as a Soviet people “lived in isolation and that seemed normal. They lived as if besides themselves there was not one else in the world, only faceless enemies. They seriously believed that the steam engine was invented by Polzunov not Watt, that radio was invented by Popov not Marconi and that Bloomberg’s symptom was discovered by Shchetkin.”

            Such people were even cut off from the Russians who left their country because “they had not need for them.” After all, “literary critics it turned out could live without Nabokov.” And consequently, “when the final isolation does arrive, [Russians] won’t notice it, just as the North Koreans don’t notice it now.”