"The Americans are far away and generally ignore that fact the closer you are to Russia the more bad experiences you have had with Russia, the more sympathetic you are to the Ukrainian situation and their need for whatever weapons they believe will do them the most good." Chester Wilmot, "The Struggle For Europe", page 655: The remaining negotiations [in Moscow, early 1945] were to prove the truth of the warning which had been sent to Washington two months earlier by the Head of the American Military Mission in Moscow (General Deane), an astute and not unsympathetic observer of the Soviet scene. In a letter to [General George] Marshall in December Deane had written, "We never make a request or proposal to the Soviets that is not viewed with suspicion. They simply cannot understand giving without taking, and as a result even our giving is viewed with suspicion. Gratitude cannot be banked in the Soviet Union. Each transaction is complete in itself without regard to past favors." And here we are, 80 years later, everything from the past forgotten, including Yalta and a half century of the Russians turning Eastern Europe into a gigantic prison. How pathetic.

@Frank Natoli. You have to remember that Leftist ideology was quite popular in the US before WWII. The NYT's correspondent in Moscow, Walter Durante, lived high on the hog at Stalin's expense, and his pro-Soviet articles were published in the US for years. The "paper of record" was considered unchallengeable, and its lies permeated the educational system since then. Even after the USSR published internally the revelations of Stalin's atrocities, there was no re-evaluation of the Soviet system in the USA. The lack of realistic evaluation of Russia is, in large part, a result of the Leftist brainwashing combined with the American focus on economics rather than on culture and tradition. The material benefit is not a main driving factor in many places. But that is a different topic.

@Frank Natoli. You have to remember that Leftist ideology was quite popular in the US before WWII. The NYT's correspondent in Moscow, Walter Durante, lived high on the hog at Stalin's expense, and his pro-Soviet articles were published in the US for years. The "paper of record" was considered unchallengeable, and its lies permeated the educational system since then. Even after the USSR published internally the revelations of Stalin's atrocities, there was no re-evaluation of the Soviet system in the USA. The lack of realistic evaluation of Russia is, in large part, a result of the Leftist brainwashing combined with the American focus on economics rather than on culture and tradition. The material benefit is not a main driving factor in many places. But that is a different topic.

@Frank Natoli. You have to remember that Leftist ideology was quite popular in the US before WWII. The NYT's correspondent in Moscow, Walter Durante, lived high on the hog at Stalin's expense, and his pro-Soviet articles were published in the US for years. The "paper of record" was considered unchallengeable, and its lies permeated the educational system since then. Even after the USSR published internally the revelations of Stalin's atrocities, there was no re-evaluation of the Soviet system in the USA. The lack of realistic evaluation of Russia is, in large part, a result of the Leftist brainwashing combined with the American focus on economics rather than on culture and tradition. The material benefit is not a main driving factor in many places. But that is a different topic.

i am sorry, I don't know how we ended up with several copies of my comment. this comment section is a piece of garbage.

@voland I too have accidentally posted duplicate comments. You are correct, general understanding of the Soviets had nothing to do with reality...80 years ago. But, we are talking the present, and there's no excuse for repeating the same mistakes. Unless one wants to be yet another Santayana "for example".