April 2, 1999
If you grew up in the American Midwest in the 1950s, you probably grew up hating Russia.
You hated Sputnik because it meant the Russians got to outer space first.
You hated Nikita Krushchev because he told the U.S. of A., "We will bury you!"
And you hated the Eastern Bloc athletes who whipped ours in the Olympics.
My dread of the Soviet Union was an iron-gray cloud that cast a pall over the first half of my life.
Then the members of the Soviet empire fell like dominoes.
These memories returned last week as I read an alarming speech about Russia written by University of Kansas professor Maria Carlson.
I had no idea that things in Russia were so desperate. I've got no excuses for this ignorance; all I can say is that I'm just another card-carrying navel-gazer, one of the hordes of internationally ignorant Americans.
But now I'm worried.
It worries me that the Moscow Times, in an editorial at the beginning of this year, hoped that Russia would lose its seat on the U.N. Security Council.
The editorial said, "This would be a blow to national pride but it might give Russia, which has the gross domestic product of Belgium, a clearer idea of its importance and power in the world."
Carlson, director of the KU Center for Russian & East European studies, provides a long list of unhappy statistics about our old foe.
Russia has a crime crisis -- 18,000 government officials arrested last year for corruption and more than 50 percent of the economy controlled by organized crime.
It has social crises -- more than 75 percent of the population living on less than 75 bucks a month.
It has an elderly crisis -- the average monthly pension has declined from about $45 a year ago to $19 now.
It has a health crisis -- more people die from tuberculosis in one year in the former Soviet Union than become infected in North America and Europe combined.
Carlson writes, "The potential exists for nuclear sales by desperate people, given an underpaid, unpaid and demoralized military with access to weaponry."
Meanwhile, the Moscow Times editorial sarcastically wished for a Persian Gulf war that would drive up the price of oil and save the Russian economy.
The writer also said that a sharp rise in anti-Semitism in the Russian Communist Party might be unpleasant for Russia's Jewish population, but it could "have the virtuous side effect of causing a split in the party."
I find no delight in Russia's current weakness. The way things have gone between the United States and Russia in my lifetime reminds me of the odd role flip that occurs between parents and children as a family ages.
When the parents' powers diminish, an adult child must reexamine everything. Where did that frailty come from? Was it always there? If it's new, what caused it? When will my turn come to be frail?
Watching Russia struggle, I scratch my head about the strength of our own nation, and I almost wish I had the bad old Cold War Russians to kick around again.
Column by Roger Martin