I gave a lecture in Moscow during the spring about western-Soviet relations over the last century. With the partial exception of World War II, it is a narrative of unrelenting hostility. After I had finished, a student asked, «why do they hate us so?» The answer is not complicated. You cannot cross «da man» in the United States, that is, the powerful, wealthy US «deep state», which sets the rules for everyone else and enforces its worldwide hegemony against disobedient states and leaders.
You could not get more disobedient than the Bolsheviks. In November 1917, or October according to Julian calendar, they seized power in Russia and declared their intention to make a world socialist revolution. You can imagine the indignation and anger of the western powers, all at war with Imperial Germany, looking over their shoulders to see that revolution had erupted in Russia. It’s a complicated story but not everyone in the west reacted blindly to the Bolshevik seizure of power; none other than the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George thought the Entente should back the Bolsheviks against the Germans. His idea was an early prototype of the eventual Grand Alliance.
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