Why was philosophy treated so poorly in the Soviet Union, why is genuine philosophical thought still much absent in Russia, and why did and do Ivy League's schools and Catholic colleges take philosophy, the supposed nemesis of religion, take still (despite everything) more seriously? Or,to put it differently, why has the US been able to accumulate and maintain its edge in high technology, which is essentially an exercise in smart and highly concentrated thinking?

The Devil is a bug of God and the system whose principal reason is to help us fix a mistake and right a wrong. That's why he/she was created, planted or let to be. And as with other bugs, the heart of the solution is just to identify it. Bugs are testing our ignorance holes and our ignorance's possibilities and limits. And bugs and just like ignorance are errors in thinking.

Similarly, the ultimate or most fundamental reason why the Soviet Union fell and why Putinist Russia keeps moving down the slope is that they made many more errors in thinking than their opponent--too many bugs not identified and not fixed, thus falling further away from the awakening and enlightenment.

And better and sharper minds get to face and solve ever better and sharper bugs or mistakes.

In this respect, the traditional devil also more or less corresponded to the overall cultural level achieved by the West at a time.

Similarly, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin are also just those kinds of mistakes, bugs and devils which a given society "earned" and produced by its corresponding level of degradation and capitulation in the Cold War--planted to turn the nation and the self into a colony of bugs or "historical mistakes."