Therefore, Americans were shocked by the news last spring that a majority of Afghans had elected those who agreed with their electorate that if an Afghan Moslem wants to become a Christian, he will be sentenced to death. Why be shocked? Surely the majority of a nation elects those who have the same political psychology as the majority, no matter how abhorrent this psychology is to the majority of the American people.

The monarchy in Russia at the close of the 19th century and up to early 1917 was semi-constitutional; in contrast to the constitutional monarchy of Britain, the Russian Parliament's decisions could be overruled by the monarch. For centuries most Russians had been living in "rural communes." Hence most members of the Russian Parliament, such as Socialist Revolutionaries, would have turned Russia into a country of rural communes had not the monarch overruled them.

By the end of 1917, the Soviet dictatorship was in absolute power. The worship of Lenin and Stalin resembled not the prior semi-constitutional monarchy but instead the Russian medieval absolutism of Ivan the Terrible and Peter, whom the Russian worshippers of this tyrant, possibly the worst in Russian history, named "Peter the Great."

That ingredient of the Russian political mass psychology – the acceptance of absolute power – was at work for more than 70 years, up to 1991. Nor did this replica of Russian absolutism have anything to do with Marx, who hated Russian absolutism and propounded "the dictatorship of the working class," of the poor, to defeat "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," of the rich.

But Lenin permitted private enterprise, which went on to exist after his death in 1924 up to the early 1930s and ran contrary to the spirit and letter of the teaching of Marx and Engels. Shortly before Stalin's death in 1953, Stalin attacked Engels for his criticism of Russian absolutism, and he referred respectfully to Ivan the Terrible and Peter "the Great."

The year of 1991 witnessed the fall of the "Soviet" dictatorship (which was no more "Soviet" than any other dictatorship or than Russian medieval absolutism). Yet the number of Russians who wanted the absolutism of Lenin and Stalin plus the number of Russians who wanted absolutism without Lenin and Stalin, but with vicious Russian anti-Semitism, was so large that Yeltsin could not cope with the situation. He retired and nominated Putin, a "strongman," a no-nonsense former KGB officer, as his successor.

Putin was not just a former KGB officer; in an interview at the beginning of his first term, he said that the KGB is necessary in every civilized society since "it connects the government and the people."

And this strong believer in the KGB was elected by the Russian people.

Every nation is heterogeneous. Thus, there are Russians who are no more influenced by national Russian mass psychology than are some Americans. But important in today's democratic elections are not, for example, political thinkers or writers of genius or cultural elites, but a majority of the voters – and the majority of Russia elected an undisguised admirer of the KGB as the president of the country.

At the time of Putin's interview in which he expressed his admiration for the KGB, I was writing my weekly column for Moscow Pravda (not to be confused with Pravda). So I wrote my column as an open letter to Putin, in which I reminded him of what the KGB (or Gestapo) had been.

The newspaper was afraid to publish my column, to inform me of that fact, to continue publishing my column in general, and to inform me that it had stopped publishing me. Thus I kept sending my column every week, and the newspaper pretended that it was publishing it.

The fear instilled by the powers that be occupies a larger terrain in the political psychology of a majority in Russia than it does in that of the United States. There was no need for Putin to shut down major TV stations – most of the media would conform without any threat of physical coercion.

On April 25, 2005, in a nationally televised annual address to the Russian Parliament, Putin said: "I will recall once more Russia's most recent history. Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the major geopolitical disaster of the century."

So, the major geopolitical disaster of the century was not the emergence of the dictatorship in Russia, which can well be compared to the dictatorship in Germany except that it lasted six times as long and except that the dictatorship in Germany would not have originated if not for the fear of Stalin's invasion of Germany, virtually defenseless under the Treaty of Versailles. No! The major geopolitical disaster of the century is, on the contrary, the end of the dictatorship in Russia.

Putin continued: "As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama." Take the independence of non-Russian areas. "Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russia territory."

Then Putin devoted a whole paragraph to Russia's misery following the end of the Soviet Union and before the beginning of Putin's rule, that is, during Yeltsin's presidency, which Putin roundly condemned by way of gratitude for Yeltsin's nomination of him:

Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideas [Russian-nationalist? Communist?] destroyed. Many institutions [such as the KGB?] were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorism intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation [in ethnically non-Russian Dagestan] that followed damaged the country's integrity. Oligarchic groups – possessing absolute control over information channels – served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere. Then Putin described how the misery of Yeltsin's presidency changed for the glory of his, Putin's, rule: Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy [Yeltsin's presidency] was not a continuation of Russian statehood [the Soviet Union and Russian medieval absolutism?], but its ultimate collapse, the prolonged agony of the Soviet system.

But they were mistaken.

That was precisely the period when the significant developments [toward Putin's rule] took place in Russia. Our society was generating not only the energy of self-preservation, but also the will for a new and free life [three cheers for Putin].

Putin did not use the word "democracy," but only "the energy of self-preservation" and "the will for a new and free life," that is, the same definition he could apply to the Soviet Union, whose fall he bemoaned as "the major geostrategic disaster of the century." He referred to "a continuation of Russian statehood," which Yeltsin's period was not, but Putin's rule is.

Thus, Putin publicly bemoaned as "the major geostrategic disaster of the century" the fall of the Soviet Union, the same Soviet Union that, apart from Stalin's domestic slaughter – no less heinous than Hitler's – enslaved Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries, while the Soviet Union's demise actually freed non-Russian territories. All these countries heard what Putin said publicly, and surely they could reasonably fear that Putin will turn the wheel of history back to those good old times of Stalin, about whom Putin did not utter a single critical word.

Putin cannot fail to understand that the democratic West, with its NATO, will be all the more inimical the more oppressive and threatening his dictatorship becomes to Eastern Europe.

It was natural for Putin to begin to ally with China way back in 2001 (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), for the dictatorship of China will never condemn his dictatorship in Russia qua dictatorship. Indeed, the dictatorship of China has been patterned after that of post-1917 Russia.

The alliance with the dictatorship of China reinforces Putin against Western and Russian-dissident criticism of his dictatorship, that is, his return to the Soviet Union. According to the Moscow TV station "Ekho Moskvy," 74 percent of its viewers support the alliance of Russia and China against the United States.

What can Putin give the dictatorship of China?

In 1941, Pravda and Isvestia, the major Russian dailies, reported how Pyotr Kapitsa, the world-famous nuclear physicist, had described the nuclear bomb at a scientific conference. But it was only after Hitler had been defeated that its development could begin in Russia, and it was tested in 1949. China tested its first nuclear bomb in 1964, so Russia had a lead of 15 years.

Also, Russia was leading the world in the key means of global delivery of nuclear warheads – intercontinental ballistic missiles, which became clear when the world's first satellite was launched in Russia in 1957 (ahead of the United States) and became known by the Russian word "sputnik" for "satellite."

China proceeded to the development of post-nuclear superweapons in 1986, 36 years behind Russia, which began developing them in 1950.

Lt. Col. (Retired) Tom Bearden has been describing in his books and articles the new vast, uncanny world of superweapons. I cannot go into it in this column. Let me simply say that Russia is foremost in his eerie descriptions. Khrushchev, who succeeded Stalin after his death in 1953, said to the Western members of the United Nations: "We will bury you!" That was considered to be a standard Leninist slogan that capitalism was doomed. But according to Bearden, Khrushchev was alluding to the new Russian post-nuclear superweapons.

In 1992, Yeltsin opened to international inspection the biological section of the pre-1991 Russian development of post-nuclear superweapons. That was not a mere book or article, but a vast material exhibit.

In short, Russia has an enormous secret global lead in the development of post-nuclear superweapons, which Putin can either transfer to China or let China acquire the deadly knowledge by employing the relevant Russian scientists. The size of China's population plus Russia's secret scientific-technological brain, which has been developing post-nuclear superweapons for over half a century, will make the Sino-Russian alliance more powerful than the post-Roman West became, after the Industrial Revolution, more powerful than the Arab world and China, both of which once excelled in science and technology when the West was still in the Dark Ages.

Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.