Vin Rușii!

The Russians are coming! Five perspectives on a dangerous neighborhood. The fear of the Russians long ago replaced the fear of the Turks or the Tartars in the Romanian mind. Each time, the invasion or occupation was called a protectorate or alliance. Unlike the earlier invaders, the Russians came intending to stay. Beyond territorial losses, plunder and murder, the Russian occupation had another result--and this is what is most important: it brought out into the light and to the forefront what was most unhealthy and venal in society. To all its weaker neighbors the great Eurasian empire applied the same treatment. For three decades, our world has aspired to the values of Western civilization--liberal democracy, human rights and individual freedom. Russia now proposes the alternative: the closed society, in which the state, not the individual, is the ultimate goal, the directed, iliberal "democracy", the symbiosis between political power and religion, the post-truth, i.e., lying maintained without scruple, militarism, xenophobia, protectionism, and authoritarianism of a power ruling over people's lives. It its endeavor, Russia relies on the voices of resentment and hatred, which it encourages wherever they are found. The five perspectives in this book inform us of the past and the present, so that the future does not surprise us.