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Brothers in apocalypse: the messianic tradition in Russian and American politics

For most of the 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union served as Yin and Yang, each nation opposing its righteousness to the other’s evil.

Even today, with the collapse of the Soviet Union almost twenty years behind us, multifarious hacks in the Anglo-American media remain wedded to a vision of America and her sinister doppelganger. They pine for a New Cold War.

This Russian-American “doubling” runs deeper than politics. Culturally too, Russia is frequently viewed as reflecting American forms in a shadowy, distorted way: Tarkovsky’s Solaris is the Russian answer to Kubrick’s 2001, and Boris Grebenschikov is Russia’s Bob Dylan. Perhaps this is just a crude marketing tool, but the ease with which it is done suggests something more substantial lurking beneath the surface. Would anybody care about the Belgian Bob Dylan? Nope.

How deep are the roots of this doppelganger effect? Both nations expanded at roughly the same time, gobbling up the territories of indigenous peoples as they did so. Both nations were also riddled with non-conformist sects. But for me, the most interesting parallels are the rival beliefs, widely held throughout history, that America and Russia each has a God-given destiny to save the world.

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Daniel Kalder is an author and journalist originally from Scotland, who currently resides in Texas after a ten year stint in the former USSR. Visit him online at www.danielkalder.com

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