Contrary to what Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Bush have taught, America’s freedom and prosperity do not depend on democracy taking root in foreign lands.

From the late 1940s to the end of the Cold War, U.S. presidents interceded everywhere in the world in an effort to contain or to defeat the USSR. No country was too small for the United States to believe its alignment with the Soviet Union would be pivotal to American safety, freedom, or prosperity. For the first time, America began to devise a foreign policy for every nation on earth, be it Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, or Fiji. And this attitude prevailed when no one would have dared an offensive war against the United States—at the height of its power, the Soviet Union flinched in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It’s been a long time since foreign leaders arrived on our shores saying that America is the future — so long, in fact, that when it does happen, we don’t know what to make of it. For me this was the most interesting subtext of Russian president Dmitri Medvedev’s visit to the States last month. He and Barack Obama had a familiar discussion of shared national interests, from arms control to ethnic peace in Kyrgyzstan. Their lunch outing to an Arlington burger joint reflected

In the small town where my dacha is located, the main street is called Soviet Army, and an iron statue of Lenin stands right in the middle of it. Although the children love to play around the statue, it is a terrible place for games. The children’s parents, however, have another opinion. «Let the kids play around Grandfather Lenin,» they say. «Who is he bothering? After all, he is a funny man.»

There is nothing funny about the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Lenin statues and memorial plaques with his profile still adorning Russia’s cities, towns and villages. As soon as my eye catches a Lenin image, I turn away in disgust. I flinch every time I am on the metro and hear the words over the loud speaker: «Next stop: The Lenin Library.» As a historian, I know all too well what crimes Lenin committed, how much blood was shed as a result of his direct orders, how many millions were killed or suffered from hunger and disease when Lenin and his comrades unleashed the Civil War and Red Terror.

Lenin’s hatred for all religions resulted in endless violence against the Russian Orthodox Church and other faiths. After receiving millions of Deutsche marks from Germany, which helped fund the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Lenin signed the shameful Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany on March 3, 1918. No leader has done as much harm to Russia as Lenin. If there were no Lenin, there would have been no Stalin, Beria, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov or Gorbachev. Nor would there have been a NKVD or KGB. Without Lenin, there would never have been a Soviet Union, and Russia would have had a completely different fate. Although Russia would probably not have become a paradise on earth, it definitely would not have denigrated into the gulag hell that it became.

There is nothing funny about Lenin. He is evil.

The Congress, by Joint Resolution, approved July 17, 1959 (73 Stat. 212), has authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation designating the third week of July of each year as «Captive Nations Week.» In accordance with this law President Obama did just that and called upon the people of the United States to reaffirm our deep commitment to freedom. He also added that «the journey towards worldwide freedom and democracy sought in 1959 remains unfinished.»

Of course, Obama is absolutely right but there is still some unfinished business with the text of this resolution itself, and the time to make some appropriate corrections is right now.

That Russian liberals resent the current authorities is only natural. The opposition would not merit the title if it did not criticize the government and seek to replace it. This kind of criticism is perfectly reasonable and even necessary, for no authorities can be infallible, and the Russian variety has faults enough and to spare. In fact, in America, too, Republicans and Democrats alike do not mince words lambasting one another. And believe me, occasionally their phraseology is even more scathing than what the Russian liberals come up with. Thus those most displeased with the incumbent President Obama say in so many words that he is a traitor to US national interests. In his domestic policies he is said to be all but guiding the country toward communism, and thus to the same kind of collapse that destroyed the USSR, while in his foreign policy he is ceding one position after another, including to Russia. President Bush, in his turn, had earned charges of war crimes because he had used false pretexts to invade Iraq, invited the financial crisis, allowed the national debt to soar calamitously, and so on. Criticizing is easy, no question about that. It is the proposed alternatives that prove to be the big problem.

Here is an old Russian joke about a man who went on trial for making illegal (or «unlawful», as it’s fashionable to say these days) alcohol.

For those unfamiliar with the subject, a short primer. Home-making of a strong spirit (samogon) is one of the favorite Russian pastimes. For this purpose, many households, especially in the countryside, possess distilling apparatuses commonly known as «devices» (pribor). Making samogon used to be (I’m not sure about now) illegal, so a person caught with having a «device» could formally be prosecuted — although in real life, this wasn’t enforced, except for the times of Mikhail Gorbachev’s famous «anti-alcoholic» campaign.

So the joke goes like that...

It would be naive to assume that with the end of the Cold War all intelligence activities might terminate. For one thing, there is still a deep mistrust on both sides of the East-West divide, a legacy of the past. For another, intelligence services all over the world have to somehow justify their impressive budgets. As a matter of fact, intelligence activities go on not only on the territories of potential adversaries but even on friendly ones. The effectiveness of these activities nowadays is pretty questionable since much of the information sought by the agents is available on the Internet. Nevertheless, whether we like it or not, the attempts by Russia or United States to plant the moles into each others government and other important structures will continue for any foreseeable future. Besides, huge monies are being allotted for the job, and it will go on ­ if only to justify the expense.

With all of the comparisons being drawn between the presidencies of Barack Obama and Franklin D. Roosevelt, it is surprising that one of FDR’s most famous programs has not emerged as a possible model for U.S. policy today: Lend-Lease.

That’s not to suggest that the United States should plunge the rest of the planet into world war as a strategy for domestic economic recovery. But consider the following:

First, global security challenges are on the rise. The dark side of globalization means that technologies and capabilities that previously were the prerogatives of states have increasingly filtered down to non-state actors such as rebels, insurgencies, organized crime and terrorist groups.

Given President Obama’s glaring domestic policy missteps, it is understandable that the public has largely been blinded to his foreign policy failings. In fact, these may have been even more damaging to America’s future. He fought to reinstate Honduras’s pro-Chávez president while stalling Colombia’s favored-trade status. He castigated Israel at the United Nations but was silent about Hamas having launched 7,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip. His policy of «engagement» with rogue nations has been met with North Korean nuclear tests, missile launches and the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, while Iran has accelerated its nuclear program, funded terrorists and armed Hezbollah with long-range missiles. He acceded to Russia’s No. 1 foreign policy objective, the abandonment of our Europe-based missile defense program, and obtained nothing whatsoever in return.

The first official visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Washington last week offers a convenient opportunity to assess the current Russian-U.S. relationship. Since assuming office, one of the priorities of U.S. President Barack Obama and his foreign policy team has been to improve ties with Russia and other foreign governments that had become alienated from the United States. Relations between Washington and Moscow became especially strained in 2007 and 2008 following the acute confrontations that arose over the planned U.S. missile defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia’s August 2008 War with Georgia, and other issues.