I have always admired Zbignew Brzezinski. He was the head! Unlike our dependent and independent scientists, he has played and won on different chess boards. He was the most successful enemy of the Imperial state of Russia in all its forms. Perfectly knew its political skeleton: not the skin, not the meat, namely the skeleton, which from time to time is replaced by meat and leather, but the essence remains the same.
Russia many times rushed to the poles screaming for Slavic love. In fact, she didn’t let go of the poles from myself not because I loved you, and because I wanted at their expense closer to the core of Europe with their special Imperial feelings. For the absorption of Poland into Russia was ready for anything, up to Katyn.
Hatred of Poland to Russia was selective — anti-Imperial. Russia responded with hatred to the hatred of poles: thread of lies, is up to the allegations that Poland unleashed the Second world war. The Soviet army liberated not the government of Poland once belonged to the Empire, the territory and strengthened here as the Creator and ruler of the artificial regime. This is the difference between the liberation of France by the allies.
Some part of the Polish intelligentsia believed Stalin in a very short time. Still some no Poland reappeared on the map. But soon it became clear: there was a political freak.
Brzezinski lived far from such a monster. He held for many years large positions in the American administration and various international commissions. Businesslike, no foam on the lips, it was determined the weakness of the Soviet regime and beat them with pinpoint precision. It was not an abstract battle. Brzezinski saw the opponent as an aggressive, often incompetent and stupid power, infused with the bureaucracy, corruption, cross fear, ignorance of international realities.
It was he who created the “third basket” of the Helsinki agreements 1975 basket of human rights, which has failed the Soviet regime, broke his neck in the struggle against dissent. He pushed the Soviet Union to a deadly war in Afghanistan, counterpart, in his opinion, the Vietnam war for America. He contributed to the development of the arms race, which could not withstand the Soviet Union lost the cold war.
He criticized Western countries, not having thought that the collapse of the USSR cause of revanchist sentiments, which will create a meme about the biggest disaster of the twentieth century: the death of the USSR. Here, however, no one listened, deciding that the story was over and totalitarianism finally destroyed. But, when the West realized it, he was instrumental in the expansion of NATO to the East, which effectively threw out Russia from Europe.
But here’s the paradox! Criticizing Soviet Russia, Brzezinski praised Marxism. He knew its deeper Soviet philosophers, who turned Marx into a dogma. Brzezinski actually believed the Marxist ideology of the future, accidentally fell in the hands of a political errand from the Communist utopia of Vladimir Lenin. In any case, he considered Marxism an instrument of economic and philosophical analysis. At the centre of political life of America was a true Marxist!
The history of relations of the poles to Russia is full of paradoxes. For example, the first security officer, a pole Dzerzhinsky. In Russia there are still many of his fans, especially among fellow law enforcers. Why not put a monument to Dzerzhinsky? But if you look at the activities of Dzerzhinsky, it will be the most radical destroyer of the foundations of Russia. The Bolshevik-internationalist, he despised Russian values. Compared to Dzerzhinsky, Zbigniew Brzezinski, just a passionate admirer of Russia!
Summarise the ideas of Brzezinski and you will see that they are likely to resonate with political dreams of Russian culture, rather than refute them. Russian culture in most cases sympathized with the revolt of the poles against Russia. I’ve had some misunderstandings, when Russia was seen (or must have been perceived?) as a country, not a source of totalitarian values (the case of Pushkin). But the vector is anti-Imperial critics were often total and uncompromising. It was all over, however, as always bad: the intelligentsia hated Imperial regime that went too far and gave rise to the Bolsheviks, turned into superenergy Stalinists.
The Polish idea, according to the position of Brzezinski, cuts Russia in half. She hates the regime that imposes it its value until the complete destruction of the Polish identity. But it feeds the creative revelations of Russian culture and enriched it to fight against the Russian Empire.
Brzezinski believed that the withdrawal of Russia from historical crisis is not possible without a rapprochement with the democratic systems of Europe. This does not mean the loss of independence of the Russian mentality. This meeting with its own, strong and dying and again reviving as an independent ideology of Russia, which was yet unable to manifest in long-term daily politics. And in opposition to this ideology torn to pieces in internal disputes and mutual accusations.
In short, Brzezinski believed in us, inhabitants of Russia, often more than we ourselves. And know us often better than we ourselves. Why? Yes, because analytical thinking from the very beginning of its activities was perfect. Pole, born in diplomatic family in Kharkov, not in Warsaw, educated in Canada and the United States, Brzezinski showed that Russia can be understood with the mind, but the confusion she did not understand.
He died waiting for the restoration of relations of Europe and Russia. Perhaps he was an unwanted optimist, and this recovery will never come. In the forms and boundaries that exist today. Enemy-optimist, this is a special Polish title.
Brzezinski, of course, was not single in his respect for Russian culture and hatred of the Empire. He belonged to the Polish galaxy of reasonable critics Eastern neighbor, which contributed to the defeat of Imperial values, and with them the political regime. Together with John Paul II and by the poet Czeslaw Milos, directed by Andrzej Wajda, the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski (the three artists I knew and loved), the other brilliant thinkers of the Brzezinski pulled Poland out of the grave of the Soviet pseudo-socialism.
Poland is gone forever to the West. And the Kremlin Russia withdrew into himself. And groaning in happiness. From this strange prison of happiness.
