Homo Sovieticus.

Roger Cohen laments:

I found that Homo sovieticus, far from dying out, has lived on in modified form, along with habits of subservience. So with the aid of relentless propaganda on state television, the old Putin playbook — money, mythmaking and menace of murder — has just about held.

I really do not care about human waste such as Cohen, but here he touches upon critical issue not understanding that what he perceives as Homo Sovieticus is, in fact, Russia's main weapon which is unbeatable. Sovieticus, Sovok and other contemptuous monikers given to average Russians by "advanced" liberal types from large urban centers of Russia are descriptions of people whose "backwardness" and alleged Sovieticusism is about being tied to their land, recognizing and following traditions and having a very pragmatic view of the world--precise values which allowed Russia to survive for millennium. 

Now, when Russia not just survives but prospers under the conditions which would implode any other peoples and wins the war against combined West, Cohen's lamentations are understandable--his social circle is that of mentally and morally deranged self-aggrandizing shysters who still cannot recognize the difference between tactical and operational, and machine-building and PR. And Cohen's BS is rebuffed by Spectator:

Americans are so consumed with ‘equity’ that our answer to plummeting educational attainment in public schools is to make sure no children can read, write or do maths, and we address these incidental shortcomings of perfectly equal students by no longer administering standardised tests: problem solved. We don’t defend our borders – out of helplessness, or carelessness, or paralysing niceness, or cynical short-termism – so we let more or less anyone into our countries who breaks our laws, which from a step back conveys a glaring lack of self-respect. Putin is right, too, that we renounce ‘the ideals of patriotism’, as any ardour for our own homelands is not merely dismissed as naff but condemned as malign. We teach our children to be ashamed of their heritage and cleanse our curricula of our culture’s classics; do you think Putin is removing Tolstoy from the syllabus of Moscow State University?

I guess those Americans who share same values with average Russians are also Homo Sovieticus, right? It is too late for the West, especially Europe. And, yes, Tolstoy is a part of Soviet/Russian public school syllabus, not of university, especially War and Peace and Anna Karenina. As are Pushkin, Dostoevsky and others. Tolstoy, of course, was also Homo Sovieticus since War and Peace is the first truly "nationalist" prose written in Western literature. Ah, those damn Soviets. Lomonosov then was, most likely, a closet communist--those Soviet ideas have been in the air circa 1750. 

Looking and experiencing St.Petersburg or Moscow's grandeur one gets the idea that the reality begins to hit hard even among West's "intellectual" class. One will see at Army 2023 exhibition all those NATO vaunted weapons on display for everyone to see and those are Leopards, Bradleys and other expensive military toys which met the same fate in Russia as did Teutons, Napoleon and Hitler's armies. I am not sure that I will be able to get there--but if I will, I will report. But my schedule is tight--I didn't see my friends, classmates and others in person since 2018.   

P.S. Another Russian secret weapon are 100% cotton socks. Try to buy 100% cotton socks of normal causal and even dressy type in the West--good luck with that. Here, you got it--I am not risking and am buying dozens of them, LOL.