As Trump and Putin meet in Anchorage to carve up the Ukraine, I can’t help remembering the KGB myth involving Alaska.
As a career KGB officer of a certain age, Putin certainly remembers it, as I’m sure he remembers many others. His parent organisation was known for indulging in that genre on a vast scale.
One of the few words Russian contributed to English is ‘disinformation’. The components of the word are Latin in origin, but the concept is Russian, something to make that nation proud.
Much of KGB disinformation was meant for internal consumption, not just to dupe the West. I was a little boy when I was exposed to a KGB myth I still remember.
Soviet troops invaded Hungary in 1956 to drown the anti-Communist revolution in blood. As our schoolteachers, all of them willing conduits for KGB lies, explained to us, that action was in fact a pre-emptive strike. West German and American troops had been poised at the Hungarian border, ready to pounce on our fraternal regime, and only prompt action by our heroic army saved the day.
I don’t recall whether I believed that lie at my mature age of nine, but I probably did. I definitely believed some of the others.
They were assiduously spread to reassure the people that their abject poverty wasn’t as bad as all that. The West might have had a higher standard of living on average, but that level was made up of contrasts between a few fat cats and many paupers.
And anyway, some, if not quite all, Soviet products were superior to any Western equivalents. For example, every Soviet citizen of my generation knew for sure, and was happy to repeat to all and sundry, that Soviet ice cream was the best in the world.
The KGB created that myth secure in the knowledge that no one would be able to disprove it by a comparison test.
Most Soviet citizens weren’t allowed to travel abroad. Those few who were deemed sufficiently trustworthy to be granted that privilege weren’t going to abuse it by contradicting the KGB. They knew which side their bread was buttered.
When I grew up, I no longer believed anything the authorities said on any important subject. But the unsurpassed excellence of Soviet ice cream was such a trivial point that I never bothered to question it. Then, in 1973, I found myself in Rome, and the first taste of gelato shattered that myth to smithereens.
Another one involved Armenian brandy, which, according to another myth, was superior to any alcoholic beverage available in the West. Supposedly, both Winston Churchill and the Queen wouldn’t even consider drinking anything else. They had to have crates of that rather revolting treacly beverage shipped to London, for otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to slake their thirst.
Again, that was a free hit for the KGB – drinks like French cognac and Scotch whisky were unavailable to common folk. The same went for Soviet sparkling wine, which they larcenously called ‘champagne’ (just as they called their brandy ‘cognac’).
Even when marked ‘dry’, it was nauseatingly sweet and had bubbles the size of peas. Typically, every sip would get stuck in one’s gullet and create an unpleasant reflux – at best.
Some 30 years ago, a friend gave me a bottle of Sovetskoye shampanskoye he had brought from Russia. Ever since, I’ve been using it as a meat mallet, trying not to pound too hard lest it explode in my face.
Yet another myth involved the Russian language, supposedly by far the richest in the world. Actually, the English vocabulary has roughly three times more words than Russian, but that fact wasn’t widely advertised. Something else was, and that myth actually had a kernel of truth to it.
It concerned swearwords, and there I can testify to the relative paucity of English. A Russian speaker can express most ideas, including some rather involved ones, using nothing but four-letter words in different combinations and with variable affixation.
You may think that isn’t much to be proud of, but every little bit helps. That’s why the KGB insisted on spreading the news about the superlative quality and variety of Russian obscenities.
That part of it was actually true, but they also said that Anglophone capitalists, frustrated by their own puny language, routinely swore in Russian. Having now lived in English-speaking countries for 52 years, I know that claim was false, as I actually knew it when I still lived in Moscow. But many of my former countrymen insisted on repeating that nonsense, and some still do.
The myth relevant to current events involved Alaska. The government of Alexander II sold it to the US in 1867, for today’s equivalent of $130 million. Nicholas II, Alexander’s grandson, lived to regret that transaction.
In 1896, local miners discovered gold in the Klondike, which started a major gold rush. The sum those Yankees paid for the largest peninsular in the Western Hemisphere began to feel like a slap in the Russian face. And the slap became a punch when vast deposits of oil were found in Alaska in the 1960s.
But not to worry, went another KGB myth, which everyone believed. Russia didn’t actually sell Alaska to the US. That risible sum paid not for a purchase but only for a 100-year lease. The lease was to run out in 1967, and as a child I often wondered whether the Soviet Union would reclaim Alaska when I turned 20.
Long before that age, I knew that Alaska gained statehood in 1959, which made it unlikely that the US government would honour the conditions of that lease. It was only closer to the supposed deadline that I found out that the mythical lease was indeed a sale.
I wonder if Putin will test Trump’s knowledge of such arcana by suggesting that Alaska rightfully belongs to Russia. He is certain to make that claim about the Ukraine, and – call me a pessimist – I doubt Trump will reject that myth outright.
P.S. Actually, Trump did say in his press conference that he was going to Russia to meet Putin. Was it a slip or a reflection of an agreement on the table?