Betrayals and changes

16 years ago, the Russian issue suddenly worsened in Washington suddenly worsened in Washington. Vice President El Mountains, elected to the presidency, was responsible for the administration of Bill Clinton for relations with Russia. Together with Viktor Chernomyrdin, he was the co-chair of the American-Russian intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation. He, according to the Republicans, completely ruined this work, which caused enormous damage to America.

The commission by that time was inactive - after the famous Pirouet Primakov over the Atlantic in March 1999, she was never going to once. But the Republicans insisted that the train was going on the same rails to the same dead end.

The party instructed Congressman to investigate the anti -people Russian policy of the mountain Chris Coksu, who previously acquired laurels with his report on Chinese atomic espionage in American laboratories. The new party assignment Cokes fulfilled and presented the public with a well -published report "The Way of Russia to Corruption".

The chapter telling about the sincere friendship of two statesmen, mountain and Chernomyrdin, the authors illustrated them with photography against the backdrop of a portrait of Stalin - it turns out that in the summer of 1996 they met in the former Stalin cottage.

From Russia, Cox claimed, it was possible to do the same thing that the United States did after the Second World War from Germany and Japan, turning them from enemies into the nearest allies with a democratic structure. The Clinton administration turned a blind eye to all negative deviations from its script and thereby contributed to the turning of Russia into a corrupt authoritarian aggressive regime with a former KGB agent at the head.

“In the Russian foreign policy doctrine, which was published in 1993,” said Cox, “relations with the United States were characterized as a strategic partnership and a close union. There is no such situation in the concept of this year. And one of the reasons is no longer believed in the recommendations of the United States and does not respect the position of the United States.”

The congressman cited the depressing statistics of mindset in Russia: in 1992, more than 70 percent of its citizens belonged to the United States, and in 2000 their share was only 37 percent.

37 percent - and in Washington, they were alarming. What Cox would say about the current 25, which the Levada Center considers an improvement in relations!

It is guilty of this anti -Americanism, said Cox, Clinton’s administration: it was calling for Russia to “shock therapy”, associated itself with an unpopular Russian leadership and issued for market reforms the plunder of national wealth under the guise of privatization.

The performance of Congressman Kurt Weldon was accompanied by theatrical effects. He hoisted a huge photograph in a prominent place, depicting the manifestants in front of the American embassy in Moscow. Recall, he said, the 92nd year: the defeated communism, Yeltsin on the tank (this, however, was in the 91st), Russia chooses the Western path of development and calls America its friend, partner and ally ... And now? "Thousands of people gather at the American embassy in Moscow. They get stained with paint, shelling it, burn the American flag ..." This is not enough: "There was a moment when the embassy advised the Americans coming to Moscow, not to speak English on the street, because the inhabitants of Moscow are tuned against our country ..." (since then this ancient button accordion appears on the Internet with enviable regularity.)

“And the participation of Russia in the distribution of missile and nuclear technologies?” Continued the temperamental Weldon. “We knew about it. But we did nothing! Evidence?! Here they are, evidence!” And Weldon, angrily shouting with glasses, opened his case, pulled out from there and put on the table two deaf -tied metal cylinders the size of a glass. “Here is an accelerator, here is a gyroscope!” He pointed a finger at the cylinders. “They got one of our agencies, we won’t specify which one. We intercepted this product certified by Russian institutes on the way to Iraq. More than once intercepted, not two, but three. And this administration did not do anything!” Weldon removed the evidence back to the case and concluded with bitter irony: “Why are Russians not fools. They are very smart people. They look and see a foreign policy that looks like a sexual rag. They stopped respecting America. And to be honest, I would not respect American leaders!”

About the reader, as they wrote in ancient novels. Is this Philippic nothing reminds you? No speaker with a crimson face and a straw comb?

The Mountain team was sluggishly waved away from attacks. The press secretary of the mountain said that the report "does not stand the paper on which it is printed," and this paper, by the way, was "acquired for the money of taxpayers." The rhetorical question Who Lost Russia? became the duty dish of American political discourse. The question could be understood in two ways: "Who lost Russia?" Or "Who lost Russia?"

The theme of Russian kleptocracy was overgrown with all new details. Finally, on October 11, the Bush Government Chernomyrdin (with the connivance of the Clinton Administration) of the expiration of the IMF loan accused of television battles with Mount Bush. "I think we directed our help many times and said that now our conscience was pure, and the help was spent not on what it follows, and the egregious examples have recently appeared," he said. "One of them - Russia: we gave them a loan of the IMF, and the money settled in the pockets of people under power and did not help the country."

Chernomyrdin was going to sue with Bush, and never gathered, all the steam went into the sand.

Less than a month after George Bush entered the post, a grand expert scandal broke out: a long -standing Russian intelligence agent, a high -ranking FBI officer Robert Hanssen, was arrested in the United States, the parties exchanged diplomats expulsion. But in mid -June, the presidents met in Ljubljana, where Bush’s historical look in Putin’s soul took place. It turned out that Putin was no longer the head of the corrupt aggressive regime, but a "person direct and worthy of trust", who "is deeply devoted to his country and acts in its interests."

With all the republican critics of the Russian Clinton Gora course, a wonderful metamorphosis occurred in the blink of an eye. For example, Kurt Weldon turned into an energetic supporter of the development of relations with an aggressive regime. He organized and headed, together with the Russian co -chairman Konstantin Kosachev, the working group "Congress - Duma". But when in 2006 he came up to re -election, the thunder struck in the middle of the clear sky: the FBI agents on the same day conducted searches in six service and private premises of Waldon in Pennsylvania and Florida, including his daughter's house. It turned out that his enthusiasm was far from disinterested - Kurt Weldon lobbied the interests of the Russian military -industrial and oil and gas complexes and was engaged in this, of course, not free. He was never brought criminal charges, but he had to part with a place in Congress.

The current polemic of the Republicans and democrats around Russian hackers and Russian influence on the American elections is somewhat very reminiscent of a 16-year-old story with Mountain and Chernomyrdin. The main similarity is in the inimitable hypocrisy of critics of Trump, openly admiring Putin. In January 2008, US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton severely criticized Bush’s Russian policy, said that Putin as a former KGB agent “has no soul”, and pretended that she could not recall the name of Medvedev, whom she called Putin's puppet. Having become Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton made a “reboot” and after a meeting with Medvedev stated that the Putin puppet had a great impression on her.

Four years later, the Republican candidate Mitt Romnie denounced the spinelessness of the Obama administration in relations with Moscow. On television battles, the president reproached his opponent for calling Russia the main geopolitical threat to the United States, and he, reminding his opponent, Medvedev to show flexibility in the question of the about the proceeding, not noticing the microphone, threatened : “I see things as they are. And I am not going to wear pink glasses when it comes to Russia or about Russia or about Russia or about Russia or about Russia or about Russia or about Russia Mr. Putin, and I certainly do not intend to tell him that I will manifest more flexibility after the election.

It is clear that this time we will hear the same record: Trump will say that he will make himself, and Hillary - that she never seduced about Putin and his regime.

Given the special turn of the topic related to the hacker hack, I live how to somewhere in January next year, the deputy of the Duma Pushkov releases the report “The path of America to the abyss of liberalism and false values”, the publicists Korotchenko and Satanovsky fiercely argue in the Tok Show Soloviev about who lost (lost) America, and Alexei Navalny exposes the Kremlin In the misuse of budget funds that settled in Trump's pockets, and he took and lost the elections.

Everything is possible in the postmodern world. Or, as the hero of Oscar Wilde’s play “ Vera, or Nihilists ” said: “There is nothing impossible in Russia except reforms.”