Oh Those Russians

I'm really starting to miss the Cold War. We may have lived in a sickly partisan world where the existence of a genuine nemesis let the USA justify all manner of invasions and interference (of course, they've since discovered that it's just as easy to fabricate enemies, and much cheaper), and under imminent threat of being pulverised by both sides' deterrents, but...at least it kept the Russians in their gulag, and the EU didn't have to feign sympathy every time they ranted imperialist propaganda on the international stage. Such as now, over Estonia's rather reasonable decision to remove a memorial dedicated to people who invaded their country 67 years ago. The Russians even have the gall to demand that the UN interfere in Estonia's internal politics to stop this 'blasphemous' act. Apparently, they seem to think that they saved the world from the Nazis and should be revered for doing so. So deeply ingrained in the national psyche is the victory over Germany - understandably due to the magnitude of suffering endured to achieve it, and unhealthily as it still defines Russian identity and sense of worth to Russians - that the average Russian seems quite incapable of appreciating that invading small neighbours, terrorising their populations, and then re-invading them to chase out other invaders (and terrorising their populations some more for good measure) isn't exactly an altruistic act of liberation.
Of course, underlying their attitude, and at times like this hardly even veiled, is the fundamental belief particularly prevalent in imperialist-minded large countries (i.e. all large countries at some point in their history, at least when powerful enough to throw their weight around), that the territory of smaller neighbours intrinsically belongs to them. I have heard Western commentators declare in all seriousness that Chechnya may have been handled badly, but that we shouldn't be too critical as it is 'an internal Russian matter', the implication being that anything the strong steal from the weak becomes the rightful property of the strong, presumably by some misapplication of evolutionary principles to global politics. Coupled with this comes the notion that small countries should not really be there anyway; as in business with economies of scale, the small country is an inefficient anachronism and is best annexed for its own protection.
At least there's a light at the end of the tunnel: as Russia slides further back towards totalitarianism under Putin's direction, the prospect of an Iron Curtain arises once more and, just maybe, once the globe-trotting oligarchs have become dissolved in the populations that they've adopted as hosts, the only FOB Russians we're then likely to meet will be those soulful dissidents again. I was quite fond of them.