Putin’s defiant foreign policy is a response – mediated by an authoritarian political tradition, the reactionary tenets of Orthodox Christianity, and pride in Russia’s vast geography and natural wealth – to the humiliating loss of an empire. Seeing in Russia’s Cold War defeat the need to extol the non-Western roots of Russian history and tradition, Putin has fallen back on the same conservative values that emerged in response to the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, frustrating Peter the Great’s modernization efforts.
普京的挑衅性外交政策是对帝国耻辱性损失的反应&mdash;&mdash;中间的媒介则是极权政治传统、东正教反动原则以及对俄罗斯广袤领土和充裕自然财富的骄傲。普京将俄罗斯在冷战中的战败视为颂扬俄罗斯历史和传统中的非西方根基的需要，他实际上是在倒向1812年挫败了彼得大帝现代化大计的拿破仑入侵所引起的保守价值。