Oxford, England — Russian school textbooks praise Peter the Great as an industrializer and cultural visionary who turned his country into a European power. Russia became feared but also respected by its neighbors, and Peter is the official czar-hero of Russian history.
Vladimir V. Putin himself is much more like another czar, Nicholas I, who stumbled into military conflict with the British and French and rejected calls for the basic reforms needed to enable Russia to compete with the world powers of the day. Nicholas had a cramped perspective and arrogant personality. Always attentive to the armed forces and the secret services, he overlooked the broader necessity to modernize Russia’s economy and society. His country paid dearly for this when his army was humbled in the Crimean War of 1853-56.
Russian foreign policy under Mr. Putin displays an equally gross lack of foresight. On Ukraine, he made much of the threat to ethnic Russians from West Ukrainian “fascists” who were influencing political developments in Kiev. It is true that Ukraine’s right-wing coalition known as the Right Sector includes some decidedly insalubrious extremists. But not every partisan who waged the war of independence against the Soviet Army in the 1950s was a fascist; and by seizing the Crimean peninsula, Mr. Putin has set up a classic temptation for Russian patriots to extend to the whole of Ukraine.
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