Echo of Empires: Russia's Inheritance of Byzantine Security Culture

Abstract

While the Cold War is a memory, and Hillary Clinton and Sergei Lavrov have hit the ‘reset button’, recent spy scandals show that the United States and the West still do not have smooth relations with Russia. If we wish to understand Russia, we must understand its cultural origins, something we have failed to do so far. While Russia's behaviors often appear western, they do not share the same traditions of Rome and religious reformation. One can make more sense of Russian security and intelligence culture—as opposed to specific Communist or Post-Communist cultures—by tracing their common philosophical and historic roots back to their point of origin, between 500 and 1,000 years ago to the Byzantine Empire.