Robert Radu HERVIAN

In September 1796 the first President of the United States decided against his participation as a candidate for the third term in the upcoming elections and addressed the nation on this subject. Contemplating and comparing today the George Washington farewell address to the newly created nation, 8 years old at the time, seems like a thrilling if not even scary mental exercise.

It is certainly a strange feeling for someone who is interested in conducting a parallel analysis between one of the determining factors enunciated by Washington in his speech 222 years ago and the recently created political situation regarding the Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential elections which took place in the United States.

As if living in our contemporary world, the First President explains that an exaggerated partisanship could facilitate ”for foreign influence and corruption to penetrate and have access to the government itself thru the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another”.

Scarred already? Don’t be. The resemblance of what Washington envisaged, with the successful interference of the current Russian Government into the 2016 American Presidential Election has became too obvious this week.

On February 16^th, 2018 the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced in a public statement by Special Counsel Robert Muller that a Grand Jury has charged 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities. The accusation refers to violations of the United States criminal laws. They are exactly what we may call a foreign interference with the American elections in 2016 as well as other political processes. The charges include conspiracy, wire and bank fraud and aggravated identity theft.

It just happens that among those indicted there is also a businessman who has close relationship with the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Why is Putin personally involved with a policy of de-stabilization in the Western World and especially in the West and the United States?

Well, perhaps one of the reasons can be found in his political philosophy including a renewed admiration for the most famous of his predecessors – Iosif Vissarionovici Stalin.

Unwilling to totally and definitely disassociate himself with the Russian perpetrator of 15 million to 30 million soviet citizen deaths thru famine, executions and labor camps, Putin is rather looking for ways to consolidate a rehabilitation process of the dictator.

Putin has told once to the American film maker Oliver Stone, that ”excessive demonization” of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ”is one modern way of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia.”

Putin is also accusing some Russia’s critics for using Stalin’s legacy ”to show that today’s Russia carries on itself some kind of birthmarks of Stalinism.”

Furthermore, in the past, Putin used a praising tone, calling Stalin an ”effective manager”.

How then not to draw some parallel between the two Russian leaders?

Adding to that, Stalin’s reputation in Russia has been growing steadily and what a coincidence! It happens just since Putin had come to power for the first time, in the year 2000.