OMNI
SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA ANTHOLOGY #9
July 28, 2026
Compiled by Dick Bennett
What’s at Stake: In his
Preface to J. W. Fulbright’s book, The Arrogance of Power, Francis Wilcox
describes Fulbright’s concept of “two Americas”: “One is the America of Abraham
Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson, the other is the America of Theodore Roosevelt and
the modern superpatriots…a dominant strand of democratic humanism and a lesser
but durable strand of intolerant puritanism.”
Our ask is to make sure the dominant strand prevails, but the current
trend is toward “a more strident and aggressive American policy.” This warning was written in 1966.
CONTENTS
Part
I: SovRussophobia
Part II: Peacemaking
Part I: SovRussophobia
Peter Kaufman. Biased Teaching about
Marx in US public schools.
Dan
Zak. Almighty. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Nuclear
Bombs Race.
Bartov. “The Judeo-Bolshevist Target” (of
the Nazis).
James
Carden. “Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
Policy.”
Crowley. NATO Arming v. Russia.
US
Anti-Communism:
Risen. Red Scare.
Puryear. American Inquisition.
Paulson. The Pathology in the Democratic Party.
PART II. PEACEMAKING
J.
William Fulbright. The Price of
Empire (is war).
Stephen
Cohen. Sovieticus.
Scott
Ritter.
“Russian Znanie Society.”
“Citizen Diplomacy.”
“Report from Russia.”
TEXTS
Part I: Sov/Russophobia,
the Great US Pathology
Part II. Seeing the
World as Others See It, Peacemaking
PART I. As with men and
pigs at the conclusion of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, when it
comes to the neocon, Soviet/Russophobic Republican and Democratic elites and
their minions, it is now impossible to say which is which.
Bigoted Sov-Russo Education in US
“You might be a Marxist.”
Part I.
Editor. mronline.org (9-11-25).
You
may find this to be both surprising and troubling given what is usually taught
about Marx in most high school social studies classes.
Originally published: Everyday Sociology Blog on July 2011 by Peter
Kaufman
(more by Everyday Sociology Blog) (Posted Sep
10, 2025).
Culture, Ideology, Marxism, PhilosophyGlobalNewswire
If you have taken an
introductory sociology class, and certainly if you have taken a sociological
theory class, you have probably heard that Karl Marx is one of the founding figures of
sociology.
You may find this to
be both surprising and troubling given what is usually taught about Marx in
most high school social studies classes. When I teach about Karl Marx I
often begin by asking students what they know about him. Overwhelmingly, the
responses are negative. . . .
US
Two Nuclear Arms Projects Linked by Hostility
Dan
Zak. Almighty: Courage, Resistance,
and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age.
Blue Rider P, 2016.
[I
am scanning my library for references to the disastrous pathology of US hatred
of USSR/Russia, searching especially for references in books not directly about
Sov/Russophobia and therefore not appearing in the standard
bibliographies. –Dick]
On
pp. 118-120, Zak makes a distinction fundamental to understanding the nuclear
arms race. The US constructed two
bomb projects, which the fearful Soviets tried to match. The first “race for the bomb”[1939-1945]
“began in a basement in Manhattan [in 1939], accelerated in Oak Ridge, and ended a few thousand feet over
Japan.” “The second one started [in
1951]…16 miles northwest of Denver” for the development of plutonium
pits for nuclear bombs. Both
reflected US enmity toward the USSR. For
the first, a motive for dropping the Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to
warn the Soviets to stay away from the lands the US aimed to occupy (Pacific and E. Asia). The second less widely familiar Big Bomb
project arose sardonically from the fact that “there were more Soviet
targets to destroy than atomic bombs in the U.S. arsenal, so production had to accelerate….” The two projects are linked in other
ways. Both were encased in secrecy,
censorship, national security, and the second added lies (the missile gap),
fear-mongering, and Pentagon inter-service rivalry over possession of the Bomb
(each service gained the triad of nuclear weaponry). And both were rationalized by “the increased
spending that helped the economy and could stave off recessions.” With such powerful adhesives, no wonder even
our best peacemakers have not been able to pry them apart.
Omer Bartov. “The
Judeo-Bolshevist Target.” ACURA (July 10,
2026).
Popular memory tends to separate the
Holocaust and the German war against the Soviet Union, but for the Nazi
regime they were two faces of the same undertaking.
Read
in browser »
Bartov reviews World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of
the Jews by Jochen Hellbeck. Hellbeck also
reminds us that Germany “took aim at millions of non-Jewish Soviet citizens,”
typically referred to as “Bolsheviks,” leading to the death of 15 million
civilians (of whom 2.6 million were Jews). Plans for the postwar
colonization of the Soviet Union, he notes, “foresaw the extinction” of
additional “tens of millions of Soviet citizens,” in large part by starvation.
In this respect the genocide of the Jews, the mass slaughter of other Soviet
civilians, and the murder of over three million Red Army prisoners of war were
all a consequence of the same genocidal worldview.
The
Autocracy v. Democracy World
“Biden’s
Closed Circle on Russia Policy: An Excerpt from The Great Betrayal by
James W. Carden.” ACURA (June 15, 2026).
The Great Betrayal:
How The Democrats Became The Party of War, hailed by Professor Richard Sakwa as “a brilliant, timely,
and important achievement,” is available now from OR x Nation Books.
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately
come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little
interest in entertaining arguments […]
Read in browser » available now from OR x Nation Books.
Joe
Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here
was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might
have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there
were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have
attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who
had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had
longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited
into the fold.[2]
The message BidenWorld sent early on was that heterodox voices,
even tepid ones, were not welcome. Consider the case of a
respected expert on Russian affairs, Dr. Matthew Rojansky, who was then
serving as the director of the Kennan Institute at the Congressionally-funded
Woodrow Wilson Center. Rojansky had been denied a position on the Biden NSC
because he was viewed as “soft” on Russia. Administration officials feared that
appointing Rojansky would, as a contemporaneous report by Politico put it,
“signal a conciliatory U.S. policy toward Moscow.”[3] The
incident had echoes of the 2009 Freeman affair, when a foreign lobby (Israel’s)
mobilized its allies in the media and on Capitol Hill to block an appointment
it deemed threatening to its agenda. This time around, another foreign lobby
(Ukraine’s) slammed the door on Rojansky. From the start, Biden’s
White House was a closed circle—new names, new faces, and new thinking were
not welcome.
The
parallel one reaches for to best describe the inner workings of the Biden White
House is that of the Reagan White House. Back then, a chief executive of
questionable sentience relied on a tight circle of political operatives to run
the day-to-day operations of the White House. . . .
More
thoughtful men than Biden saw things rather differently. George Kennan,
for one, felt that there was nothing “more egocentric than the embattled
democracy.” The problem, as Kennan correctly foresaw, was that an embattled
democracy will tend “to attach to its own cause an absolute value which
distorts its own vision to everything else. Its enemy becomes the
embodiment of all evil. Its own side is the center of all value.”[4] While
Kennan wrote those words in 1961, it would be hard to find a better description
of the politics of the New Cold War. The main deliverable of Biden’s
“democracy” conference was the creation of a Presidential Initiative for
Democratic Renewal, which, at a cost of nearly half-a-billion dollars to
US taxpayers, would seek to promote “democracy, fight corruption, and defend
human rights worldwide.”[5]
As with
so many of the ideas and programs championed by the Democratic establishment
since the end of the Cold War, the “autocracy vs. democracy” paradigm
borrowed liberally from the neocon playbook. Biden’s old friend, the late
Senator John McCain, had long called for the creation of a global “League
of Democracies.” Speaking at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in 2007,
McCain said the new league would, “form the core of an international order of
peace based on freedom.” It would be able to “bring concerted pressure to bear
on tyrants in Burma or Zimbabwe, with or without Moscow’s and Beijing’s
approval.[6] McCain’s
proposal might just as easily have come from the pen of Samantha Power. As
with the men and pigs at the conclusion of George Orwell’s Animal Farm,
when it comes to the neocons and the Democratic elite, it is now impossible
to say which is which. . . .
This
anthology investigates the relationship between the US and Russia. The following article is about NATO. I have a separate anthology on NATO, the main
subject of which is the Soviet Union and now Russia. But the US created NATO and has been its
chief financier and arms supplier, so I have included this one article as a
reminder. –Dick
Stephen Crowley.
“On the Eve of the NATO Summit, Is Europe Rearming Against a Phantom
Russia?” ACURA (July 6, 2026).
On the eve of the NATO
summit in Istanbul, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine now in its
fifth year, and the Trump administration pulling back its support for the
military alliance, European leaders are raising the alarm about the Russian
threat. Despite “surging European military spending” prompted by Russia’s war,
UK Prime Minister Keir […] Read in browser »
NOTES:[1] For
example, no dissent on matters relating to Israel was welcome; see: https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-silencing-dissent-gaza. For
reporting on his tyrannical streak, see, for example, https://thebrunswicknews.com/president-biden-has-notorious-temper-yells-curses-frequently-in-private-report/article_107fcc8f-b3f8-5dad-a447-083dbde1eaa1.html [2] Including
The Brookings Institution, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The
German Marshall Fund, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, The
Center for American Progress, The Center for a New American Security, and The
Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. [3] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/19/biden-russia-expert-483000 [4] For
Kennan, see: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/12/17/hang-up-the-magical-thinking-and-try-strategic-empathy-on-for-size/ [5] On the
Democracy Summit and Biden’s remarks, see: https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/23/summit-for-democracy-summary-of-proceedings/ [6] For
McCain’s remarks, see:
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/inline/docs/McCain_05-01-07.pdf
Recent
Studies of THE PATHOLOGY
Clay Risen. Red
Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America. Scribner, 2025. 
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New
Yorker, Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe,
and Kirkus Reviews From an
award-winning historian and New York Times reporter comes the
timely story about McCarthyism that both “lays out the many mechanisms of
repression that made the Red Scare possible…[and] describes how something that
once seemed so terrifying and interminable did, in fact, come to an end” (The
New Yorker)—based in part on newly declassified sources.
Now, for the first time in a generation, Clay Risen delivers a narrative
history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade
following World War II. This period, known as the Red Scare, was an
outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal
progressives, and the terrifying onset of the Cold War. Marked by an
unprecedented degree of political hysteria, this was a defining moment in
American history, completely unlike any that preceded it. Drawing upon newly
declassified documents and with “scenes are so vivid that you can almost feel
yourself sweating along with the witnesses” (The New York Times Book Review),
journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with
the help of an extended network of other government officials and
organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded
pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.
Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in
1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, courage, and delirium
of those years. Red Scare takes us beyond the familiar story
of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists and toward a fuller understanding
of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived
threat from the Left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a
result.
“Thorough, impassioned...detailed, [and] tension-packed” (Los Angeles Times), Red
Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal
conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks
directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.
Clay Risen, a reporter and editor at The New York Times,
is the author of The Crowded Hour, a New York Times Notable
Book of 2019 and a finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Prize in Military History. A
member of the Society of American Historians, he is also the author of two
other acclaimed books on American history, A Nation on Fire and The
Bill of the Century.
Raves
and Reviews
"As Clay Risen’s meaty and powerfully relevant new
book, Red Scare, makes clear, our own times are ringing with echoes
of the clamorous battles of mid-20th-century McCarthyism…Risen tells his story
with a punch and an economy that are at times almost Hemingwayesque… Some of
Risen’s scenes are so vivid that you can almost feel yourself sweating along
with the witnesses in the poorly air-conditioned committee room… Red
Scare resonates because it speaks so directly to our current
quandary." —The New York Times Book Review
"[A] thorough, impassioned but even-handed study of Cold War hysteria in
the U.S… Detailed, tension-packed…chronicles how national hysteria can take on
a life of its own, like a deadly fever dream that overtakes the public
consciousness." —The LA Times
"Scarily relevant...transports readers back to the witch hunts of the
early 1950s...vividly recalls an era that may feel all-too-familiar." —The
Boston Globe
"Risen’s fluent narrative…goes beyond the familiar Hollywood blacklists to
reveal how conspiracy stories touched educators and people in various civil
rights movements and led to the 'canceling' of individuals in business,
government, and any sphere influential to the prevailing culture.” —Foreign
Affairs
"Though many stories have been told about the Hollywood blacklist and Sen.
Joseph McCarthy’s fearmongering, the broader subject for decades was too
divisive to generate levelheaded analysis. Clay Risen of The New York
Times aims to fill the gap...His 400-page survey of mid-century
America touches on so many of today’s burning issues, including book bans,
anti-immigrant racism, white supremacy, and anti-elitism." —The
Week
"In his meticulous and mesmerizing history Red Scare: Blacklists,
McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, Clay Risen
traces the cultural, political, and social forces that gave rise to McCarthy in
1950 and to his fall in 1954 … By deftly toggling between the personal and
national, Risen gives us a riveting and disquieting portrayal of our nation’s
recent past and, perhaps, its immediate future." —Forward
“A sweeping history of the campaign to suppress liberal dissent
via blacklisting and harassment…An exemplary work of political and cultural
history that invites a gimlet-eyed look at our own time.” —Kirkus
Reviews (starred review)
"Risen’s feverish prose perfectly captures the chaos of McCarthyism, from
the book bans to the power grabs to the lives forever altered in the
scuffle...In examining this turbulent era from the vantage of our own charged
moment, Risen goes beyond the spectacle to arrive at the gritty center.
Frightening yet thoroughly affecting, Red Scare is propulsive
history at its most striking." —Booklist (starred review)
"The central drama of the Red Scare played, writes Clay
Risen, like 'a tragedy, a thriller, a Christian morality play, even a dark
comedy.' In his hands those months also read like a fast-paced detective story,
of the most chilling variety. A riveting, resonant account of how cultural and
political anxieties combined to power a sort of ritual cleansing, as a group of
hardened conservatives lost their heads and a country lost its way."
“American
Inquisition: What McCarthyism Really Destroyed”
by Eugene Puryear. Liberation News. Popular Resistance.org
(7-13-25). Taking down the “Soviet Menace” in
America, was, as we saw in part 11, not a response to any real “national
security threat,” but a very real threat to corporate profits and
neocolonial domination by the U.S. ruling class. It was a shield to hide its
real, and much less popular, mission to take down those bold enough to
challenge racism, advocate aggressively for workers, for peace, rather than
world war, or cold war, and a post-war world that would also be free of
colonialism. Even decades later this was so successful most of those
who were extirpated from public life remain forgotten. -more-
Sov/Russophobia in the
Democratic Party
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Hi DIck,
I can’t believe my eyes. A monetary
donation to Adam Schiff?
Here’s my favorite Adam Schiff quote:
“”The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia
over there and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”
Now where have I heard this line of reasoning
before? Hmmm …. Oh yeah, back during the now-absolved Bush-Cheney
administration, Republicans never tired of explaining that we were’
fighting the terrorists “over there” (Afghanistan & Iraq) so that we
wouldn’t be fighting them over here. Yeah, nothing like using
Ukrainian boys as bullet stoppers in a proxy war against a nuclear-armed power
that the Collective West has invaded time and time again.
Here’s another quote for you that relates to
Adam Schiff. The subject in question is the supposed Russian “hack” of
the DNC emails way back in 2016. The speaker is Shawn Henry. He is
testifying under oath on Capitol Hill. Adam Schiff was the chair of the
committee Henry was testifying to under oath. Shawn Henry is the head of
a group called Crowd Strike. They are the outfit selected by the DNC to
examine the DNC servers to determine the source of the … “hack." Yeah, not
the FBI. Ain’t that amazing? And when asked, under oath, about
evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC servers here’s what Shawn Henry said
under oath:
e don’t have concrete evidence.”
“There’s circumstantial evidence, but no
evidence that they [the emails] were actually exfiltrated.”
As a native English speaker, I have absolutely
no difficulty interpreting what Shawn Henry meant.
And then what did Adam Schiff, the chair of
the committee that received this evidence given under oath, do? Adam
Schiff, who, as chairman of the committee, had the power to release this sworn
testimony. He sat on it for several years until forced to release it.
I understand that the Russiagate nonsense—everything
from the pee pee tape to the super duper secret server--is essential part of
the belief system of every real True Blue Democrat, and it does help rile up
the base. On the other hand, it did help poison the atmosphere and make
it politically impossible for any diplomacy with Russia to take place.
How’s that working out, by the way?
I could go into Schiff’s stand on
Israel-Palestine and Gaza, but why bother?
Schiff is a warmonger whose major funders
include all the big arms contractors. On the other hand, he hates Trump,
and, as we all know, Trump trumps everything, from genocide to war with a
nuclear-armed power.
Peace, George
PART
II: PEACEMAKING,
Humanism. Knowledge.
Education. Reason. Imagination. Cooperation.
Seeing the world as others see it. United Nations. Citizen exchanges and diplomacy.
J.
William Fulbright with Seth Tillman. The
Price of Empire (1989).
In
his Foreword, Fulbright describes the downsides of the USA that have sometimes left
him feeling he was “plowing the sea.” But there are upsides for hope, “a
dimension of our human nature, however fragile, that fosters reason and
compassion” and enables “new ways of thinking” and has produced “goals worth
striving for.” “Perhaps most promising
of all is the fact of intelligent, innovative new leadership in Russia as well
as China, opening what may well be unprecedented possibilities for cooperation to
reduce the mutually destructive animosity between the superpowers.” It’s a succinct, realistic summary of the large
obstacles to peace in existing empires of arrogant power, and of the small,
fragile hope in “creative leadership and liberal education” to foster
“leadership, learning, and empathy between cultures” and a world ”more
civilized, rational, and humane than the empty system of power of the past.” --Dick
Stephen
F. Cohen. Sovieticus: American
Perceptions and Soviet Realities.
(From Stalin to Gorbachaev.)
Norton, 1986.
Cohen
was prof. of Soviet history at Princeton; his books include Bukharin and the
Bolshevik Revolution and Rethinking the Soviet Experience.
Sovieticus
received widespread praise: “A model of scholarly journalism, sound and
wonderfully readable. Publishers
Weekly.
AI
Overview
"Sovieticus"
was a regular column in The Nation magazine by the late
American scholar and historian Stephen F. Cohen, focusing on Soviet affairs.
History
of the Column
- Origin: Cohen
wrote the "Sovieticus" column from 1982 to 1987.
- Focus: He
used the column to offer a critical look at how the American mainstream
media reported on the Soviet Union. He argued against rigid Cold War stereotypes. He also
explored daily Soviet life and how the country might reform.
- Awards: His
accessible and deeply informed writing in this column won the Newspaper Guild's 1985 Page One
Award.
The
Book
- Release: In
1985, Cohen compiled his first 24 essays from the column into a Book, Sovieticus:
American Perceptions and Soviet Realities. Kirkus Reviews
- Themes: The
book tracked major events of the time. This included the succession of
Soviet leaders after Leonid Brezhnev, the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, and
the lives of Soviet dissidents.
About
the Author
- Background: Cohen
was a charismatic professor of politics and Russian studies at both
Princeton University and New York University.
- Legacy: He
is remembered for writing a groundbreaking biography on the Bolshevik
leader Nikolai Bukharin. He later wrote
several books examining the relationship between the US and Russia, such
as War With Russia?.
SCOTT
RITTER (look for more of Ritter’s Citizen Diplomacy in future anthologies)
Russian
Znanie Society: Hearing Russian Perceptions
Real Scott Ritter <scottritter@substack.com> “The Russian Society ‘Znanie’" [Knowledge]. Scott Ritter. July 9, 2026.
In May 2023 I visited
Ekaterinburg, during which time I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of
Russian college students from the Znanie Society. It was a very
enlightening meeting—they asked many thoughtful questions, and we engaged in a
fruitful and open discussion about the state of US-Russia relations.
Over the course of the following years I have had the privilege of continuing
this relationship, and have come to recognize the Znanie Society as a leading
voice in countering the Russophobia that exists globally by encouraging
informed dialogue between Russians and foreigners. Every year the Znanie Society selects a
foreigner who has contributed to the cause of promoting a better understanding
of Russia abroad.
Applications from foreign citizens for the main enlightenment prize
Znanie.Award — 2026 are now accepted. The
Russian Znanie Society invites foreign citizens to compete for the title of
“Foreign Enlightener Of The Year.”
The award is meant for foreign citizens involved in the activities as follows:
- being involved in various enlightenment activities, including being a
teacher, professor, scientist, journalist, blogger/vlogger, translator, coach,
political scientist, etc.;
- contributing to continuous development and strengthening of Russia's
international relations;
- unbiased coverage of the facts of the Russian history;
- promoting new projects and developments aimed at strengthening Russia’s
position on the international arena in various fields.
Applications can be submitted on: https://clck.ru/3UbFse There
are many Americans who are actively engaged in work which would qualify them
for consideration of this honor. If you
know an eligible candidate for this award, feel free to follow the link to
nominate this person yourself. Real Scott Ritter is a reader-supported
publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free
or paid subscriber. Donate ©
2026 Scott Ritter
45 Dover Drive, Delmar, New York, 12054
Scott Ritter. “Citizen Diplomacy.” Aug 22, 2025.
Russophobia is a
disease of the mind. Citizens Diplomacy is the cure.
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Pavel Balobanov and I shake hands in Moscow,
August 2025
We, the People of the United States of
America, are the custodians of our Constitutional Republic. Through our free
and democratic processes, we elect officials to represent us in government, and
through these very same processes, backed by the rule of law, we hold these
same officials accountable for what they do in our name. The processes of good
citizenship, however, are not defined by passivity, limited simply to
participation in elections, but rather dynamic actions that promote constant
engagement across the full spectrum of issues that define our collective daily
existence. Good citizenship sets the standards through which we hold elected
officials accountable, and good citizens lead by example. This applies to both
the domestic and foreign policies being implemented in our name.
The issue of
Russophobia in America today should be a concern for us all. Russophobia is
designed to exploit the ignorance of the American people by promulgating
falsehoods about the reality of Russia that are designed to generate fear, fear
which is then exploited by those whom we elect to support policies which
postulate Russia as the eternal bogeyman. This mage is then used to justify
defense spending and national security postures that have put the United States
on a highway to hell that can only end with a nuclear Armageddon. In short,
Russophobia represents an existential threat to the security of the United
States and the entire world. It is one of the most dangerous threats facing the
American people today, and yet it is fostered by mainstream media, academia and
the permanent bureaucracy of government, all of which are deeply infected with
the intellectual poison produced by Russophobia.
The antidote to this
poison is knowledge and information that can only be garnered through direct
contact between the American and Russian people.
This is where citizen
diplomacy comes in.
I have been actively engaged in citizen
diplomacy with Russia since April 2023, when I first travelled to Russia to
promote the cause of peace through nuclear disarmament. At that time, I engaged
in the practice of repairing trust between the American and Russian people “one
handshake at a time.”
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The Challenge Coin I brought with me to Russia
in May 2023
I shook many hands during this trip.
I returned to Russia in December 2023 to bring
in the New Year, promoting the concept of “Waging Peace” by learning more about
the Russian reality, and bringing that reality back with me to the United
States, where I sought to share it with anyone and everyone willing to listen
and learn.
The poison of Russophobia, however,
runs deep in the blood of the United States, and my efforts at conducting
citizens diplomacy were deemed a threat by the administration of President
Joe Biden, which sought to criminalize my efforts, dispatching the FBI
to my home under the false pretext that I was acting as an agent of the Russian
government. The Biden State Department revoked my passport, deliberately
preventing me from travelling to Russia in the summer of 2024, where I planned
on engaging in citizens diplomacy on a scope and scale greater than previously
practiced.
I refused to be intimidated by this obvious
lawfare being waged against me and the cause of peace I promoted. While I
fought to get my passport returned, I continued to engage with the Russian
people, attending several functions at the Russian Embassy (including a piano
recital, and both Russia Day and Victory Day celebrations).
Shaking hands with Russian Ambassador to the
United States Alexander Darchiev
I shook many hands during these visits.
I also worked with a Russian counterpart, Pavel
Balobanov, to resurrect the landmark 1985 “Spacebridge” organized by the
late American journalist, Phil Donahue, and his Soviet counterpart, Vladimir
Pozner. On June 18, 2025, Pavel and I conducted a three hour “Citizens
Summit” bringing together an American audience in Kingston, New York with a
Russian audience in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The reaction of all involved was
overwhelmingly positive.
On July 15, 2025 (my birthday) my passport was
finally restored to me. Shortly thereafter, the FBI began returning property
they had seized in the raid on my home. Elections matter, and the results of
the November 2024 Presidential election saw the Russophobia of the Biden
administration replaced by the policies of peace promoted by Donald Trump. These
policies were founded in the notion that America was best served by learning to
live in peace with Russia. Free speech was once again a concept protected by
the government, even when the concepts promoted—such as good relations between
Russia and the US—ran afoul of the Russophobic narratives promoted by
mainstream media, academia, and the permanent government bureaucracy.
My week in Russia (August 9-18) was one of the
most productive examples of citizen diplomacy I have ever been engaged in—and
keep in mind I travelled to Iraq in September 2002, where I was the first and
only foreigner to address the Iraqi parliament in a valiant but ultimately
failed effort to prevent a war by getting the Iraqis to allow UN weapons
inspectors to return to work. The timing of this visit was serendipitous—I
landed as the Alaska Summit between President Trump and President Putin was
announced, and as such I was perfectly located to take the pulse of Russian
public reaction, both to the potential of the summit, and its results.
One of the messages I received repeatedly from
the scores of interviews I conducted with Russians from every walk of life was
how important it was to the Russian people that President Trump
understood that, when it came to the issue of peace between Russia and the US,
the Russian people were fully supportive of his efforts. I promised that I
would do my best to relay this message to President Trump, and today I am
making good on this promise.
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The Poughkeepsie Peace Initiative’s Letter to
President Trump
As part of my Project 38 initiative, I
have brought together a team of like-minded people, all experts in their
respective fields, for the purpose of helping craft a vision for arms control
with Russia, built on the premise that the last remaining treaty between the US
and Russia which limits the size of our respective nuclear arsenals—the New
START treaty—should be extended (it expires on February 4, 2026), and that
the need for limits on intermediate range nuclear forces which were lifted with
the demise of the INF treaty (President Trump withdrew from this treaty in
August 2019) are essential for European and global security and stability.
Together with this team—former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, former CIA
analyst Ray McGovern, and MIT Professor Ted Postol—I have written a letter
praising President Trump for his courage in agreeing to meet with President
Putin, appraising the President of the results of my recent trip to Russia, and
informing the President that this team—which we call the Poughkeepsie Peace
Initiative—stands ready to support his peace efforts with Russia by
engaging in citizens diplomacy for the betterment of relations between the US
and Russia.
This is Citizens Diplomacy in action.
If you support the
cause of waging peace and the work of citizens diplomacy, please consider
donating to the cause. Our work is solely funded by your contributions. Thank
you!
Scott Ritter. “ Report from Russia.” August 19, 2025.
Eight Days that Defeated Russophobia. Thanks
to the National Unity Club and Alexandra Madornaya. But most
importantly, thanks to the generous contributions from this audience.
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The Author on Red
Square
I have just returned from Russia, where I
spent eight days engaged in some of the most intensive citizens diplomacy I
have ever undertaken. According to my hosts at the National Unity Club, our
work set off an “information atomic bomb” in Russia, with the videos of the
some 30-plus interviews I conducted getting millions of views and generating
positive feedback from all those who watched them.
The visit coincided with President Trump’s
historic Alaska Summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I had planned
my visit well before President Trump dispatched his special envoy, Steve
Wickoff, to Moscow, and thus it was pure serendipity which found me ensconced
in the Russian capital for the week leading up to the meeting between the US
and Russia leaders.
The success of this trip was a vindication of
not only the critical importance of citizen-to-citizen diplomacy in breaking
through the wall of mistrust that has been constructed through the Russophobic
policies that have defined US-Russian relations over the years, but also the
tools I have chosen to employ in my ongoing effort at providing an antidote to
the intellectual poison of Russophobia, and in particular the podcast The
Russia House with Scott Ritter that I have been publishing on a
Telegram channel dedicated to the project, and on my Substack page. 
The National Unity
Club and Team Ritter outside the Genatsvali Restaurant in Moscow
The Russia House with
Scott Ritter is a
collaborative effort between me and Alexandra Madornaya, my Moscow-based
partner/producer. The objective of The Russia House was to provide a forum
where I interview leading Russian thinkers to present the Russian reality to a
western audience. Early on in my discussions with the National Unity Club about
the nature of our joint work during my visit to Russia, I proposed that we
use The Russia House as the theme for the interviews they were
proposing, and they agreed.
The Russia House played host to the interviews organized
by the National Unity Club and was critical in opening a window into the
fascinating complexity of modern Russia. The interviews were streamed live to a
Russian audience using Russia’s YouTube and Facebook analogs (RuTube and
VKontact, respectively), as well as my X channel. The recordings are currently
being prepared for an English-speaking audience and will be released on my
SubStack over the course of the coming days. 
The author interviews
Lieutenant General Apti Aloudinov
The involvement of both the National Unity
Club and Alexandra were essential to the success of this trip. But the reality
is that this trip could not have taken place without the support of those who
contributed so generously to the Waging Peace and Project 38 projects. This
trip to Moscow was a continuation of the Waging Peace effort that first began
back in 2023, when I first travelled to Russia. Although put on hold when my
passport was seized and the FBI raided my home last year, the change in policy
priorities that occurred when Donald Trump won the November 2024 Presidential
election created the conditions where I was able to obtain a new passport and
travel to Russia without fear of governmental intervention. The costs
associated with the visit I just made are considerable, and as such well beyond
my independent capacity to underwrite. The donations made by those people who
support the goals and objectives of both the Waging Peace and Project 38
efforts, enabling The Russia House to capture so many
distinctive Russian voices and make them available to a broader American
audience, and by making citizens diplomacy resonate with the Russian
leadership, opening up doors that could very lead to future actions that
support the arms control objectives of Project 38.
I have been invited back to Russia in November
of this year [2025], where I anticipate a similar level of activity as occurred
this past week, only at a higher level of participation—in short, transitioning
from the advisory level of policy making into that of the principal decision
makers. I have also been asked by the National Unity Club to help them unite
with American podcasters who have embraced the notion of the “family of
podcasts” which has allowed my ideas and those of others to resonate with
audiences that rival and/or surpass those of the mainstream media.
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Author addressing the
Festival of New Media outside Moscow
Journalistic integrity and independence are
greatly enhanced when one can demonstrate financial independence. This is what
the generous donations of supporters has enabled with this recent trip. I am
hopeful that this generosity will continue so that the planned trip to Russia
in November becomes reality, furthering both the Waging Peace and Project 38
efforts.
We are turning the corner on Russophobia, and
as such creating the potential for a future where Americans can live their
lives free from the fear of their demise at the hand of nuclear weapons. Tune
into The Russia House with Scott Ritter on Telegram and X and
empower yourself with knowledge about the reality of Russia today. And continue
supporting the furtherance of this mission of peace through your kind
donations.
Thank you. We are making a difference. Donate
#7 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/09/omni-sovietrussophobia-anthology-7.html
#8: https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/12/omni-sovietrussophobia-anti-communism.html
END SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA ANTHOLOGY #9
