Meddling’The two governments have repeatedly interfered in each other’s domestic politics during the past 100 years—and it’s not all bad. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Russian foreign policy in historical and current context’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

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Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? President Donald Trump and the Kremlin have poisoned American politics for nearly three years. US meddling during those years took various forms, but the most relevant in terms of the role of social media in Russiagate were nearly around-the-clock Russian-language short-wave radio broadcasts. When I lived in Moscow off and on from 1976 to 1982, every Russian I knew had a short-wave radio as well as a nearby place where reception was good. Here too I can provide first-hand testimony.

By 1980, my companion Katrina vanden Heuvel—now my wife and publisher and editor of The Nation—joined me on regular stays in Moscow. Most of our social life was among Moscow’s community of survivors of Stalin’s Gulag and the even larger community of active dissidents. In mid-1982, both of us were suddenly denied Soviet visas. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, he is the author, most recently, of War With Russia?