Ever Hear of the Trianon Treaty?

Of course you haven't.  Nobody in the current White House has, either.

Dreher brings it up in a commentary about the Russo-Ukrainian thing.

...we would be fools not to factor in the West’s blunders, beginning at the end of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union prostrate. For example, Americans have no idea at all how deep the Trianon Treaty of 1919 traumatized the Hungarian psyche, by dismantling Greater Hungary, removing two-thirds of its historic territories. The Slovaks, the Romanians, and others who benefited from Trianon (they lived in parts of Hungary where their own ethnic group was larger than ethnic Hungarians, prior to World War I) saw it as a victory for national determinism. The Hungarians saw it as a savage wound — and now, a century later, they still regard it as a monumental tragedy....

So what?

 ...The Hungarians today are profoundly — profoundly — afraid of foreign domination, mostly because of Trianon. Whether you or I think that Trianon was a good treaty, a bad treaty, or somewhere in the middle, doesn’t matter. What matters is that most Hungarians are so grieved by it, even today, that the emotional and psychological power of that event cannot be overstated....

Compare Russia.  And the South (!!)

...Though he was a KGB man, I don’t think Putin is a nostalgist for Bolshevism. He’s a nostalgist for Greater Russia — a Russia that was bigger, more powerful, and prouder on the world stage. If I had not come to Hungary last year and learned about Trianon, I am sure I would not have been able to grasp what this means to people whose countries have been dismantled or disempowered by war and historical fate.Similarly, it has helped me to understand why so many Southerners feel so bitter about the Civil War and its latest iteration — the demonization of Confederate monuments and Southern culture. It’s not because anybody misses slavery. It’s because defeat and humiliation hurts like hell....

Maybe Putin is a sentimental old fart; there's no reason to doubt that.  He's a Slav.  

But he's also a calculating politician who is hoping that the proletatiat Russkies feel just as he does and will reward him with undying loyalty.  And don't tell me that he's a Totalitarian lout.  So is Justin Trudeau.  So is Klaus Schwab.  So is Bill Gates.  The only difference is that Putin has a very good army and he uses it.

That's the difference so far.  After all, we have the CIA and the FBI, and Nancy's personal armed-intervention force, the Capitol Police.

Think about that.