MOSCOW — Barack Obama’s last visit to Russia, as a senator in 2005, did not end so well. He was detained by the security services at an airport near Siberia for three hours, locked in a lounge, his passport confiscated, like a scene from a John le Carré novel.
The Russians later called it a “misunderstanding.”
Those tend to happen a lot around here.
Now Mr. Obama is coming back, due in Moscow on Monday for his first Russian-American summit, taking his place in a long line of Americans who have tried to figure Russia out.
The United States and Russia (or its Soviet predecessor) have circled each other warily for decades. And often enough at these meetings, the Americans have been frustrated, mumbling “I don’t get these people” all the way home.
The issues that Mr. Obama is tackling with the Kremlin’s tandem — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin and President Dmitri A. Medvedev — range from arms control to Iran’s nuclear ambitions to Russian assistance for NATO troops in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama’s success will depend in part on his grasp of the mentality of today’s Russia. Here are how things look on this side:
NOT LOVE, RESPECT
The airport incident was a classic bureaucratic brouhaha — the Russians tried to search his official plane, the Americans protested, the Russians relented — but it hinted at a larger theme. The Russians want respect, and resent when they are perceived as has-beens who can be pushed around, especially by Americans.
Whether or not they puff out their chests too often, it is hard not to comprehend the roots of this impulse. The Soviet Union once dominated the world. Russians were imbued with a sense that their nation was rivaled only by the United States.
Most Russians do not miss Communism. They love cars and cellphones and all the rest as much as anyone else, not to mention today’s personal freedoms.
But the loss of empire still aches. That is why Russia’s enormous nuclear arsenal is a pillar of its identity — not to be belittled — and why cutting the arsenal is a sensitive topic.
“A country that dictated its will to the world finds itself playing secondary roles, and it’s very painful to national pride,” said Vladimir R. Medinsky, whose best-selling books seek to debunk negative stereotypes about Russia.
“Materially and economically, citizens of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire before that were deprived of many things,” he said. “But they had compensations. They felt they were residents of a great country.”
ONLY WE CAN SAY THAT
One consequence of this history is that Russians are highly sensitive to slights from abroad. One of the most popular news Web sites in Russia is inosmi.ru, which translates into Russian articles in the Western press about Russia.
The site’s success underscores how Russia cares more about what the United States thinks of Russia than the reverse. Even so, the Kremlin often reacts to perceived snubs by lashing back and withdrawing.
Yelizaveta Likhacheva, a museum curator in Moscow, described views toward outsiders by citing an old Russian saying: “Russia for me is like a wife. I can scold her as much as I find necessary, but if somebody else does it, I will smash his face.”
Ms. Likhacheva wrote her comment on a Russian-language blog run by The New York Times, responding to a request for thoughts on what Americans do not understand about Russia. The blog was swamped with comments.
A NORMAL LIFE
Ask Timothy Post to describe the Russian mentality these days, and he reaches for an unexpected analogy. Think America, circa the 1950s.
Mr. Post, an American entrepreneur and public relations executive, lives in southern Russia with his Russian wife and child. He said that he had noticed a turning inward among Russians after the traumas of recent decades.
“The values of Russian society and what people want for themselves are much more focused on immediate family and friends,” he said. “Their concerns are like in the 1950s in the United States — improving their lives, going to work, getting a good job.”
This inclination helps explain why most Russians are comfortable with how the Kremlin wields power. They crave stability.
“The hopes and aspirations of the average Russian are very different from the hopes and aspirations that the average Russia-watcher has for the average Russian,” Mr. Post said.
TIME OF TROUBLES
Americans typically consider the 1990s to be a glorious time when Russians tasted freedom after freeing themselves from Communism.
Russians cringe at that. For them, it was a decade of despair, of economic collapse and political bedlam.
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