The Kremlin's Manichaean delusion
How Moscow came to embrace fringe anti-Western conspiracy theories Photo: Richard Lautens / Toronto Star via Getty Images What do the First World War, sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have in common? Both unfolded in August, and, according to Sergey Naryshkin, the Russian Duma's speaker, both were "provocations" by Western politicians.