Solzhenitsyn's legendary/notorious 1978 Harvard address. While I don't quite see Russia as he does (the land of the spiritual, purified by suffering - the burned Georgian villages aren't exactly testament to this nobility), his criticisms of the West are spot-on.
"Relations with the former colonial world now have turned into their opposite and the Western world often goes to extremes of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West, and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns will be sufficient for the West to foot the bill."
Way back in 1978 they muxt have wondered what he was on about.
"But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. "
Which is why we're mouthing platitudes about Afghan democracy when in our own countries democracy is hollowing out. Read the whole thing.
Churchill's book The River War - the story of the reconquest of the Sudan and overthrow of the slave regime - is available at Project Gutenberg.
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