Pipes et al. just can't stand that not everybody in the whole world wants be like an American, and that Russia's rejection of the "liberal" model has given the lie to the post-Soviet-collapse triumphalism of the End of History. (They are even more peeved that Russia's current success is to a great part derived in kissing people like them and what they stand for goodbye. Do svidaniya, svolochy!)
In the forward to the 1992 of his his Russia Under the Old Regime, which is actually a damn good book, Pipes writes something to the effect that now that his book is being translated into Russian, Russian historians will have a great new resource with which to reexamine the history of their own country. What nerve.
Simon Huxtable <jetfromgladiators at yahoo.com> wrote:Richard Pipes has an article in the new Foreign Affairs. It's a startlingly wrong-headed affair that does the usual conservative hand-wringing dance about how Russia is descending into authoritarianism. ("Western commentators watch with dismay as Putin slowly and deliberately transforms Russia into a one-party state.") I'm commenting on it because, although Pipes advised the Reagan administation, he appears to share the assumptions of many liberals.
I've managed to find a version of it hiding at this site:
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