Why does Russia wage wars it cannot win? Why does the Kremlin fear a free Ukraine more than NATO?
Why do Western analysts keep getting Russia wrong - measuring it with categories it was never built for? Why does Russia wage wars it cannot win? Oleh Cheslavskyi deconstructs 800 years of Muscovite history: the comprador system, Horde despotism, and why Ukraine is the mirror Russia cannot face. The Russian Myth by Oleh Cheslavskyi answers these questions the way no Western textbook does - through 800 years of Muscovite history, stripped of imperial mythology and ideological noise. The central argument is radical in its clarity: Russia has never been a state. It is a comprador system - a parasitic intermediary between its colonies and successive global hegemons. The Horde. Venice. Britain. The United States. The form of the master changed every few centuries; Moscow's function never did. It extracted, redistributed rent, and sacralized power to prevent anyone from questioning the arrangement. Courts, parliaments, elections were constructed as decorations - a...