Last night, Angela Stent came to speak at Dickinson. The discussion encompassed a range of post-Soviet Union politics in relation to the United States. One of the points she made that I found most interesting was (in her words) that “Russia does not really have any allies.” Our class has covered an enormous amount of historical material on Russia at this point, but we have yet to discuss the last two decades in any kind of detail. As this is the first time I have learned about Russia in an academic context, I was surprised to hear Stent make that statement. However, it is certainly not shocking. We have noted in class that in many different contexts, Russia spent a lot of time focusing on itself and believing in it’s own potential without the help of outside countries. Not only is this mentality true for politics, but it’s true for artistic movements as well.

Since the turn of the 20^th century, Russia has been internalizing its methods and negating foreign relations (unless we consider taking new territory to be proper foreign policy). Stent also pointed out that Russia does not believe in meddling with other countries politics as the United States so frequently does. Is it truly necessary for Russia to become more social? I would argue that it is, but the issue of self-improvement is still Russia’s largest problem in many ways. Can self-improvement exist without more friendly global politics? This seems to me to be another idealized notion of Russian culture that will hold the country back until new policies are taken.