Prayers for Putin? America’s endless reimaginings of Russia are nothing new and have never been safe

On this 4th of July, a time when people gather with family and celebrate the many privileges of life in the United States, I want Americans to pause and consider what it might be like to live a country which despite having over 140 million people has a GDP smaller than Italy’s and an export market utterly dependent on Fossil fuels, diamonds, and timber. Roughly one percent of its population has HIV and for a number of years, the life expectancy of males was down in the 50s. Its government has had a brutal string of domestic military conflicts involving its Muslim population (between five and ten percent of the population is Muslim) and the country’s total diaspora community numbers in the tens of millions. You would be forgiven for thinking just from these statistics that I am describing somewhere in central Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, I’m describing the modern day Russian Federation. The way Russia is most commonly experienced in the American psyche tends to paint a very different picture. Other than the fact that it has a large land area, nuclear weapons and leaders with a reputation for gaudy, hyper-masculine peacocking, most Americans know close to ...