The American election results were received with enthusiasm in Moscow. President Vladimir Putin, offering his congratulations, seemed genuinely pleased. But it’s not because Donald Trump is seen as a pro-Russian politician or even one of their own — those illusions faded long ago. Nor is it the prospect of an advantageous peace deal in Ukraine, ruthlessly brokered by Mr. Trump. The first reported call between the two leaders, which the Kremlin denies took place, suggests that the incoming administration will be no pushover.

美国的大选结果在莫斯科引发了热烈反响。普京总统在表示祝贺时似乎由衷地感到高兴。但这并非因为特朗普被视为亲俄政客，甚至是“自己人”——这些幻想早就消失了。也不是因为乌克兰问题有望——在特朗普的无情斡旋下——达成有利于自己的和平协议。据报道，两位领导人之间的首次通话（克里姆林宫对此予以否认）表明，即将上任的政府也不会任他们摆布。

Instead, the excitement comes from something else. It’s that to many in the Kremlin, a Trump presidency might bring about the collapse of the American state.

相反，兴奋感来自其他东西。对克里姆林宫的许多人来说，特朗普当选总统可能会带来美国的崩溃。

The idea that the United States is entering the final stage of its history has been kicking around Russia for some time. For years, it was confined to fringe voices. But since around 2020, figures from the Kremlin have been making the argument, too. Leading the charge was Nikolai Patrushev, a former director of the Federal Security Service and one of Mr. Putin’s key advisers. Widely regarded as Russia’s leading hard-liner, he was among the first to claim that America was on an inexorable path to implosion.

美国正在进入其历史最后阶段的观点已经在俄罗斯流传了一段时间。多年来，它一直局限于边缘声音。但自2020年左右以来，克里姆林宫人士也开始提出这样的观点。带头的是前联邦安全局局长、普京的核心顾问之一尼古拉·帕特鲁舍夫。他被广泛视为是俄罗斯的强硬派领袖，是最早宣称美国正走在崩溃不归路上的人之一。

In a 2023 interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official publication of the Russian government, Mr. Patrushev detailed what that would look like. The United States would split into North and South, with the South moving “toward Mexico, whose lands were seized by Americans in 1848,” he said. “Make no mistake, sooner or later, the southern neighbors of the United States will reclaim the territories taken from them.”

2023年接受官方媒体《俄罗斯报》采访时，帕特鲁舍夫对此做出了详细描述。他表示，美国将分裂为南北两个部分，南方将“转向墨西哥，它的大片土地于1848年被美国人夺走”。他说：“毫无疑问，总有一天，美国的南方邻国将收回被夺走的领土。”

By then, Mr. Putin himself had laid out a similar view of territorial disintegration. “As a former citizen of the former Soviet Union, I’ll tell you the problem with empires: They believe they are so powerful that they can afford minor mistakes,” he said in 2021. “But the problems accumulate, and a moment comes when they are no longer manageable. The United States is confidently, firmly marching down the same path as the Soviet Union.” This still seems to represent Mr. Putin’s fundamental assessment of the country. He is convinced that America is nearing its end.

在那个时间前后，普京本人也提出了类似的美国领土分裂的观点。“作为前苏联的公民，我来告诉你，帝国的问题在于：他们认为自己太强大了，犯点小错也不碍事，”他在2021年曾经说道。“但随着问题的累积，总有一天会不再可控。美国正自信地、坚定地沿着苏联的老路前进。”这似乎仍然代表着普京今天对美国的基本评估。他坚信美国正在接近终日。

For proof, advisers and officials have turned to Hollywood. This year, high-ranking Russian officials eagerly watched the American film “Civil War,” starring Kirsten Dunst. (Curiously, it was released in Russia under the title “The Fall of the Empire,” though the film contains no such imperial theme.) From the Russian elite’s perspective, the movie — which depicts California and Texas seceding, with bloodshed erupting across the nation — reflects how Americans see their near future.

为了证明这一点，他的顾问和俄罗斯的官员把目光投向了好莱坞。今年，俄罗斯的政府高层热情地观看了克尔斯滕·邓斯特主演的电影《美国内战》(Civil War)。（有趣的是，该片在俄罗斯上映时的片名叫《帝国的崩溃》，尽管这部电影并没有这样的帝国主题。）从俄罗斯精英的角度来看，这部描绘加州和得州脱离联邦、全国各地爆发流血事件的电影反映了美国人对不久的将来的看法。

The film generated immense excitement in Russia’s ruling circles. “The disintegration of the country amid deepening tensions between the federal center and states like Texas, Florida and Alabama seems frightening,” Maria Zakharova, the official spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, wrote on Telegram. “But it’s no longer such an impossible prophecy.” Dmitri Medvedev, the former president and now deputy chairman of the security council, took it as proof that civil war in the United States is inevitable. “Hollywood,” he remarked on his Telegram channel, “doesn’t make films about it for no reason.”

这部电影在俄罗斯的统治阶层中引起了极大的轰动。“在联邦中央与得克萨斯、佛罗里达和阿拉巴马等州之间的紧张关系日益加深之际，这个国家的解体看上去很可怕，”俄罗斯外交部发言人玛丽亚·扎哈罗娃在社交媒体平台Telegram上写道。“但这不再是一个不可能实现的预言。”俄罗斯前总统、现任俄罗斯安全会议副主席德米特里·梅德韦杰夫将其视为美国内战不可避免的证据。他在自己的Telegram频道上说，“好莱坞不会无缘无故地把它拍成电影。”

How would such conflict come about? The answer, for the Kremlin, is simple: culture war. Again, Mr. Patrushev has given the clearest expression of the theory. “Projects like Black Lives Matter and the rampant promotion of transgender theories are aimed at the spiritual degradation of a population already in a state of apathy,” he said in the same 2023 interview. “Ordinary citizens won’t lift a finger to preserve America’s unity, knowing they mean nothing to their own government. The U.S. authorities, without understanding the consequences, are destroying themselves step by step.”

这样的冲突将如何发生？对克里姆林宫来说，答案很简单：文化战争。帕特鲁舍夫再次对这一理论给予了最清晰的说明。“像是‘黑人的命也是命’这样的项目和对跨性别理论的大肆鼓吹，都是为了让已经处于冷漠状态的民众在精神上更加堕落，”他在2023年的那一次采访中说。“普通民众不会为维护美国的团结付出任何努力，因为他们知道自己对政府毫无意义。不理解这样做的后果的美国当局正在一步步地毁灭自己。”

Russia has been trying to help. As part of a broad assault on so-called woke culture and its supposed threat to traditional family and religious values — which at home has seen the banning of gender transition, the labeling of L.G.B.T.Q. groups as extremist organizations and the restricting of books that mention same-sex love — an army of Russian bots and propagandists promote conspiracy theories, vaccine skepticism, anti-feminism, anti-L.G.B.T. sentiment and anti-immigrant rhetoric on social media. The aim is to deepen the polarization of American society and, eventually, break it apart.

俄罗斯一直在推波助澜。该国试图打击所谓的“觉醒文化”，认为它对传统家庭和宗教价值观构成了威胁——在国内，他们禁止变性手术，将LGBTQ群体标记为极端组织，禁止提及同性爱的书籍——而作为这种广泛攻击的一部分，俄罗斯的机器人程序和宣传大军在社交媒体上宣扬阴谋论、疫苗怀疑论、反女权主义、反LGBT情绪和反移民言论。这么做的目的，是加深美国社会的两极分化，最终使其分裂。

In this worldview, liberal ideology in the United States — encompassing not just progressive values but also the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad — has become like communist ideology in the late Soviet Union. Fewer and fewer people believe in it, more and more find it absurd, and many increasingly lean toward a much more cynical perspective. To the Kremlin, the Democratic Party has become excessively dogmatic, resembling the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its final decade: an arrogant steward of a bankrupt belief system, stumbling toward a fall.

在这种世界观下，美国的自由主义意识形态——不仅包括进步的价值观，还包括在国外推广民主和人权——已变得像苏联晚期的共产主义意识形态。相信它的人越来越少，认为它荒谬的人越来越多，许多人越来越倾向于挖苦嘲讽的观点。对克里姆林宫而言，民主党已经变得过于教条，类似于苏联共产党的最后十年：一个已经破产的傲慢信仰体系的管理者，跌跌撞撞地走向崩溃。

Into this combustible setting comes Mr. Trump, whose victory appears to vindicate Russia’s assessment of America. To Moscow, he looks like a figure who could dismantle the ideology of liberalism at home and abroad, unraveling the country in the process. In this respect, he resembles — perhaps counterintuitively — Mikhail Gorbachev. Just as Mr. Gorbachev fatally undermined communist ideology, so too may Mr. Trump do the same for liberal ideology. (Indeed, in recent days the term “American Gorbachev” has gained traction in Moscow.)

接着，特朗普进入了这个一触即发的场景，他的胜利似乎证明了俄罗斯对美国的评估是正确的。对莫斯科来说，他看起来像是一个可以在国内外瓦解自由主义意识形态的人物，并在此过程中瓦解这个国家。在这方面，他很像戈尔巴乔夫——或许这有违直觉。正如戈尔巴乔夫对共产主义意识形态造成了致命的破坏一样，特朗普也可能对自由主义意识形态做同样的事情。（事实上，最近几天，“美国戈尔巴乔夫”这个词在莫斯科越来越受欢迎。）

To officials in the Kremlin, mostly former K.G.B. members for whom the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of modern times, Mr. Gorbachev was a self-absorbed narcissist who loved to talk — a man without a plan, a strategy or any clear understanding of his goals, a politician who undermined core institutions that supported the state and left only chaos in his wake. They much prefer Mr. Trump, naturally. But they see him playing a similar role.

对于克里姆林宫的官员来说（他们主要是一些前克格勃成员，认为苏联的解体是现代史上最大的灾难），戈尔巴乔夫是一个自我陶醉的自恋者，喜欢夸夸其谈，是一个没有计划、没有策略，对其目标缺乏明确了解的人，他削弱了支撑国家的核心机构，留下的只有混乱。他们自然更喜欢特朗普。但同时他们也看到他在扮演类似的角色。

Of course, much of this is wishful thinking. Predictions of America’s imminent collapse have no basis in reality. The Soviet Union fell because it bankrupted itself under the weight of excessive military spending and imperial ambitions. Its economy proved to be unsustainable and ethnic tensions emerged, with some Soviet republics pushing for independence. Mr. Gorbachev, for his part, was a reformer within the ruling party who aimed to refine rather than overthrow the system. The differences with the United States and Mr. Trump should be obvious.

当然，这在很大程度上是一厢情愿的想法。美国即将崩溃的预测没有现实依据。苏联垮台是因为它在过度的军费开支和帝国野心的重压下破产了。事实证明，它的经济是不可持续的，而且出现了民族矛盾问题，一些加盟共和国开始寻求独立。就戈尔巴乔夫而言，他是执政党内部的改革者，目标是完善而非推翻这个制度。这与美国和特朗普的差异应该是显而易见的。

But that won’t stop the Kremlin from seeing what it wants to see: an America hurtling toward disaster, with Mr. Trump at the wheel.

但这并不能阻止克里姆林宫看到它想看到的景象：在特朗普的掌舵下，美国正冲向灾难。