December 26 marks the 20-year anniversary of the collapse heard around the world. Since I was born about 5 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, my memories of the Soviet Union are not consumed with images of imminent nuclear annihilation. Growing up in the 70s, the anxiety over a possible nuclear war had greatly subsided thanks to a diabolical little formula dubbed ‘mutually assured destruction.’ MAD basically guaranteed that neither the Americans nor the Russians would risk initiating a suicidal nuclear first strike due to the zero-sum gains of a massive nuclear counterattack. Thus, the communists and the capitalists went about their ideological business with peace of mind. Well, sort of.

I do have vague memories of alarm bells ringing, sending me and my friends scurrying for cover under rickety school desks while little old nuns walked around the classroom, reminding us to recite a few last-minute prayers before we were all vaporized. Why they did not shepherd us to the sturdy stone church across the road, where we could have at least said our last confessions, I have no idea.

Many years later, upon trading Cold War notes with my Russian friends, I was rather surprised when I learned that Soviet students at the time, instead of cowering under desks, were actually learning to assemble AK-47s in blindfolds, and learning to use a compass in case they ever found themselves blown to Kansas or thereabouts, I guess. Fortunately, however, we never needed to find out what works better in battlefield conditions: rosary beads or bullets.

The thing that really dominates my memory of the Cold War period was the Olympic Games, that slightly humbling experience when athletes from the ‘Big Red Machine’ with impossible names went back home beyond the Iron Curtain with the greatest haul of gold medals. This always struck me as strange and not a little unfair since it was the West, we were told, that enjoyed all the material joys of a consumer lifestyle, yet it was the gritty athletes of the CCCP who regularly defeated the “soft bourgeois” on the field of dreams. Indeed, since 1968 (save 1984 when they provided just two of the top four, and despite an almost total communist boycott of the Los Angeles Games) Communist republics consistently ranked two of the top three nations in the Summer Olympics – and in the Winter Games since 1972.

So imagine the hysteria that erupted across American living rooms when a young American hockey team, made up of mostly collegiate players, managed to defeat the invincible Soviet team in the 1980 Winter Olympics. Before that unforgettable game, the Soviet hockey team had grabbed gold every year since 1964, outscoring their opposition by a margin of 175-44. In match-ups against the US, the cumulative score over that period was 28-7, while the Soviet team crushed the US team 10-3 in an exhibition match just weeks before the historic upset. Three members of the Soviet team – Vladislav Tretiak, Valeri Kharmalov and Vlacheslav Fetisov – would eventually be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The day before the big match, columnist Dave Anderson summed up the damp expectations in the New York Times: "Unless the ice melts, or unless the United States team or another team performs a miracle, as did the American squad in 1960, the Russians are expected to easily win the Olympic gold medal for the sixth time in the last seven tournaments." American TV networks didn’t even bother to go through the embarrassment of televising the spectacle. Somehow, however, the plucky Americans went on to win 4-3, in a game that is still remembered today as ‘The Miracle on Ice.’

Given these somewhat predictable highs and lows of the Cold War relationship, I would guess that many Americans and Russians look back on that period with a strange sense of nostalgia. Indeed, compared to our modern obsession with hunting bogeymen behind every funhouse mirror, life on either side of the Iron Curtain provided a comfortable sense of predictability. Yes, there always lurked the possibility of a nuclear disaster, possibly triggered by a simple computer glitch, but for the most part there were not too many ugly surprises. We lived without the fear of senseless acts of terrorism; the ‘War on Terror’ was not yet the fashion.

Over the years, America’s (and Russia’s) enemy has radically changed. But something even worse happened: our enemy changed us to the point where not even the US constitution is recognizable. Although the specter of a military showdown against the Soviet Union terrified many people, we did not allow that fear to destroy what we held most dear – our liberty and freedom. Even when we believed that Soviet agents were infiltrating American society during the paranoid years of McCarthyism, we did not surrender our basic liberties. Indeed, we clung on to them tighter.

The times they have certainly changed, and for many it seems to be spinning out of control. Some would even go so far as to say that the United States, the self-proclaimed victor of the Cold War, looks to be on a drunken joyride around the planet, with absolutely no other plan in mind besides kicking up dust and reaping chaos, while treating their own citizens as if they were the terrorists (there is a bill sitting right now on President Obama’s desk (S-1867), which, if signed into law, will essentially turn the United States into a military-police state). Psychologists would describe this as behavior symptomatic of individuals who gain ultimate power only to lose their minds; the history of Roman emperors had many known such cases. But then again, the ancient Romans did not have nuclear missiles, nor the hyper firepower to make the Second Amendment essentially redundant.

Perhaps the one thing we can learn from post-Soviet Russia is that our former enemies have lessons to teach. Moreover, they are not so different from us as we would imagine. My first trip to Russia over a decade ago provided me with a bracing wake-up slap that I really believe every American needs to experience. Perhaps there is no way to escape the Cold War hangover, which for the most part, I believe, the Russian people have left behind. Since my arrival here, I have been forced to come to grips with the idea, admittedly hard to swallow at first, that Russia has many lessons to teach (as do the American people). Some of these lessons are inherently “Russian,” while some are a mixture of the Russian-Soviet experience (I will probably never understand the difference).

Briefly, Russia could teach their former Cold War foes a number of things, some of them left over from the Soviet days, like how to organize state-run orphanages and childcare facilities; how to pick mushrooms in the forest without dying a quick and painful death (especially important when the stores are low on food); how to avoid urban sprawl by building high-rise apartments in the city centers and back-to-nature dachas in the countryside; how to bring women into academia and the workforce without forcing them to become radicalized feminists; how to make a long and heartfelt toast; how to live with grandma and grandpa without sending them off to a nursing facility; how to switch off the television and enjoy classical literature; how to cook a decent soup that does not come out of an aluminum can; how to run an affordable healthcare system, without having to run across the border for affordable medication.

And the list goes on. While not all of these things are ‘Russian’ or ‘Soviet’ per se (and my apologies to the many Americans who still know how to cook a good soup – Hi, Mom!), they can only be discovered when we stop stereotyping the world around us and are willing to listen and learn.

Of course Americans also have many things to teach Russia, but the first step is to get rid of the obsolete Cold War blinkers in order to understand the reality of the situation. Then we will be able to say that both sides emerged victorious in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and turn the page. Only by understanding the other side will we ever hope to avoid the specter of another Cold War, which some in the United States seem to be encouraging by their actions, which include the construction of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe – without Russia’s participation. Such projects are based on simple primitive fears that can only be cured by coming to the realization that Russia has become an entirely new place.

­Robert Bridge, RT

­The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.