In your briefing on Russian-American relations you mention that one of the problems encountered in improving these relations is Russia’s “deeply rooted inferiority complex” (“In Search of Détente, Once Again,” July 4, 2009).  How very true.  In the next paragraph you probe the complex’s depth: “The sense of defeat and humiliation which the Kremlin attributes to the early 1990s surfaced several years after the Soviet collapse.”  Well, the Russian complex goes back an entire millennium at least.  Last to arrive in Europe, which has never really accepted them, all Slavs suffer from it in some measure, albeit for ostensibly different reasons, for there have been defeats and humiliations galore. Thus the Czech, Croatian, or Bulgarian complex, too.  Tadeusz Konwicki even wrote a book entitled The Polish Complex (1977).  To add insult to injury, most Russians have never really arrived in Europe, either.  Which is why they forever vacillate on whether or not they are Europeans at all.  To wit, it is good to abandon all attempts at accommodating the Russians for their deeply rooted complex.  It is ineradicable.