Real War by Richard Nixon Page A

tradition in the Soviet Union of freedom internally or of nonaggression externally. Territorial expansion comes as naturally to Russia as hunting does to a lion or fishing to a bear.
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    If we take the trouble to study it, the past is a highly visible hand pointing the directions of history. It shows the courses along which nations are propelled by their particular combinations of interests, tradition, ambition, and opportunity. It shows the directions in which the momentum of past events continues to move us today.
    Seven centuries ago two great events took place that set the courses of two civilizations. These are the courses Alexis de Tocqueville described a century and a half ago.
    In England, in 1215, rebellious nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. From this document grew the concept of constitutional monarchy, and eventually the structure of individual liberties and democratic self-government that was transported to the New World, where it flourished in the birth and development of the United States.
    As this first step toward democracy was being taken in England, the grandsons of Genghis Khan were sweeping westward across the vast Eurasian plain, which stretches nearly halfway around the world from the eastern parts of Siberia to the shores of the English Channel. The Mongol hordes were stopped short of the heart of Europe, but they laid waste to Russia. They sacked its major towns and reduced Russian civilization to a barbarous level. For almost 250 years the Mongols imposed their rule and impressed their harsh brand upon the Russian soul, exacting a crippling tribute—the “Tartar yoke”—that kept the Russians impoverished and in bondage.
    These two events, the signing of the Magna Carta and the subjugation of Russia by the pillaging Mongols, marked the starting points of two drastically different chains of historical development. The Bill of Rights traces its lineage to the Magna Carta. The Soviet police state traces its lineage to the Tartaryoke. The contrast is aptly summed up by an ancient Russian saying: “Despotism tempered by assassination—there is our Magna Carta.”
    The Mongols ruled by ruthless terror, a complex bureaucracy, and adroit manipulation of local rivalries; they imposed a crushing tax as tribute. With what onenineteenth-century writer called the “Machiavellism of the usurping slave,” the native rulers of Moscow began to adopt the Mongol techniques, first by taking on the role of local tax collectors for the Mongols. Gradually they brought more and more lands under their own control, even while slavishly kowtowing to the Mongol Khans. Finally, after almost 250 years of bondage and humiliation, in 1480 Ivan the Great threw off the Tartar yoke and ended the Mongol rule. But its imprint remained. In the words of that same nineteenth-century writer:
    The bloody mire of Mongol slavery . . . forms the cradle of Muscovy, and modern Russia is but a metamorphosis of Muscovy. . . . It is in the terrible and abject school of Mongolian slavery that Muscovy was nursed and grew up. It gathered strength only by becoming a virtuoso in the craft of serfdom. Even when emancipated, Muscovy continued to perform its traditional part of the slave as master.
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    The author of those words was Karl Marx.
    Even after the Tartar yoke was thrown off, the Mongol terror continued. With the defensible frontier often not more than one hundred miles from Moscow, waves of Tartar cavalry swept in from the steppes every year, leaving devastation. They came to seize slaves. The word “Slav” is itself related to the word “slave.”
    To fight off the Tartar slavers, Russian men were called up every spring to take their battle places on the frontier, and were kept there until fall, when the steppes became impassable. This was repeated each year for a man’s entire lifetime.