In 1946 a young U.S. diplomat named John Fischer wrote
an earnest little book called Why They Behave like Russians.
Fischer, who’d served with the United Nations in postwar Kiev
and Moscow, was attempting to explain to a bewildered U.S.
[5] public why their wartime ally Joseph Stalin, recipient of billions
of dollars in American Lend-Lease aid, had suddenly turned on
Washington, declaring it a deadly enemy, and seemed hellbent
on starting a Third World War.
The book is still a fascinating reading – not least because
[10] so many of its conclusions continue to ring true today. Fischer
calls Russia’s leaders “ the scared men in the Kremlin,” deeply
insecure behind their aggressive bluster and suspicious of any
internal political threat to their power. Russia is traumatized by
catastrophic historical upheavals and far weaker than it likes to
[15] pretend. The nation, he warns, “may blunder into war as it
strives to build up a protective belt of satellite states outside
its vulnerable borders.” Today, with tensions rising again over
two Georgian breakaway regions effectively annexed by
Russia last summer, that line rings as true as it did at the dawn
[20] of the Cold War.
(from The World According to Russia, in NEWSWEEK, September 7, 2009)
In the passage, the phrase at the dawn (line 19) may be replaced without any loss of meaning by
