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Russophobia / Rusofobiya

From a Russian perspective, it seemed to some that long before the emergence of the USSR, Europe had prepared a propaganda dish called the "evil empire," which had been offered to the European public ever since. The term "Russophobia” is a synonym for “fear of Russians” (Russenfurcht). In the Academic Dictionary of Literary Language (Dictionary of Modern Russian Literary Language, 1961), "Russophobia" is "the way of thinking and acting of a Russophobe." "Russophobe" is defined as "a person who hates Russians and all things Russian".

Russophobia refers to prejudice, hostility, or fear directed at Russia, Russians, or things associated with Russian culture, history, or politics. It is a term often used in both academic and political contexts, but its meaning depends heavily on who is using it and in what setting. The word comes from Russ (Russia/Russians) + phobia (fear, aversion).

The phenomenon of Russophobia, analytically speaking, differs little from other social phenomena. Russophobia, like other manifestations of xenophobia, exists on two levels: public fears and state political lines, the boundaries between which are often relative, fluid, and changeable. Russophobia is also becoming a peculiar manifestation of everyday/existential fear of Russia, which is recovering from its "lethargic slumber"—as it has been called in the West, "Moscow's revisionist foreign policy."

There are said to be peoples, states, governments, church centers, secret organizations, and individuals in the world who are hostile to Russia, especially Orthodox Russia, and even more so to imperial and undivided Russia. Just as there are "Anglophobes," "Germanophobes," and "Japanophobes," so too the world abounds with "Russophobes," enemies of national Russia who promise themselves every possible success from its collapse, humiliation, and weakening ("Against Russia," 1948)

As Austrian historian Hannes Hofbauer notes, the image of "Russia as genetically hostile to the West" has a long history—"a history of demonization that has burdened relations between Western Europe and Russia for centuries. Of course... Russophobic perceptions were not common to all members of Western European societies. For many intellectuals and artists around the world, Russian culture and spiritual traditions were considered unique, worthy of recognition and admiration. But despite all this, the image of the 'Russian enemy' has endured for centuries, fueled by the corresponding geopolitical and economic interests of Western elites. "

Some claim the roots of Russophobia lie not in the Cold War or the 19th century rivalry between empires, but in the late 15th century. By 1480, the Mongol yoke had fallen in Russia, and European fears of a hypothetical "Russian expansion" westward immediately arose. Poland, which itself harbored plans of conquest and dreamed of becoming an empire and hegemon in Eastern and Central Europe, was seriously wary of the Russian giant and therefore attempted to captivate its European neighbors in the West with anti-Russian fervor.

Historians trace its emergence to the cowardice of the Baltic barons and the opportunism of German knights in Livonia and Prussia. In the 1480s, Poland’s kings considered sending these knights south to fight the expanding Ottoman Empire. The plan terrified them. For centuries, they had lived comfortably in the Baltics, bullying local populations and skirmishing with Russian militias at little risk. Facing the Turks was another matter. The memory of Nicopolis – where Ottoman forces executed nearly all captured knights – was still fresh.

Unwilling to face a real war, the Livonian and Prussian knights launched a propaganda campaign. Their aim was to convince the rest of Europe that Russia was as dangerous as, or even more dangerous than, the Turks. If successful, they could keep their privileges at home, avoid Ottoman swords, and secure papal approval to treat their border clashes with Russians as a holy war.

The strategy worked. Rome granted indulgences and support, ensuring the knights could stay put while still enjoying the prestige of crusaders. As historian Marina Bessudnova notes, the 1508 Livonian chronicle ‘The Wonderful Story of the Struggle of the Livonian Landgraves against the Russians and Tatars’ provided the finishing touches to this propaganda. Tellingly, the Baltic barons’ private letters contain no mention of a Russian threat. The danger was never real on the ground – only in the stories they sold to Europe.

The 16th century marked a qualitatively new stage in relations between Russia and the West. It was a time, as Soviet historians noted in the preface to George Horsey's notes, "when the countries of Northern and Western Europe, having embarked on the path of capitalist development, needed new sources of enrichment and markets and increasingly turned to the Eastern European states, which were less involved in trade with them... including Russia." Their close attention to Russia was dictated, in particular, by their fears of the geopolitical activity of the Ottoman Empire in Central Europe, whose army had reached Budapest, and a search for new allies began. Reform movements such as Protestantism, with its ideology of "God-pleasing enrichment," played a role, broadening the ideological horizons of Europeans.

Thus, a myth was born: a fusion of fear, convenience, and profit. Over time, Western Europe, particularly France and England, absorbed it into a broader Russophobia – equal parts contempt and anxiety over a vast empire they could neither conquer nor ignore.

Euro-writers portrayed the Russian people as "white barbarians," "slaves in spirit," and "aggressors." It is not surprising that such frenzied, irrational Russophobia flourished in the salons of the Old World, particularly after the defeat of Napoleon's European invasion of Russia. Europe watched with horror as Russia stood firm, utterly defeated the armies of Euro-interventionists led by Bonaparte himself, and as a result became the continent's largest military force.

English radicals wrote of "Russophobia" in early 1836; they used this term to describe a phantom or exaggerated fear of a threat to British interests from Russia. The word soon appeared in the German and French press (die Russophobie, la Russophobie). The "Mixture" section of the February 1838 issue of "The Library for Reading" reported that the well-known Russophobe1 Mr. Urquhart reported to the London Geographical Society the results of his observations on the routes of plague spread in Turkey (Places of Origin..., 1838: 117). The diplomat and publicist David Urquhart (1805-1877) earned the nickname "Russophobe" (Russophobist, later also Russophobe) in the English press: this was a reference to his fierce criticism of Russian foreign policy and his promotion of the thesis of the Russian threat.

It was during this period that the Frenchman Marquis de Custine published his work, "Russia in 1839," which became a powerful move in Europe's propaganda war against our country. This Russophobic pamphlet defined the attitude of the defeated Europeans toward Russians: "The entire Russian people, from the smallest to the greatest, are united by their slavery to the point of losing consciousness... Anyone who had the misfortune of being born in this country is left to seek consolation in proud dreams and hopes for world domination [but these are the typically European dreams of Napoleon and Hitler]... Russia lives and thinks like a soldier in an army of conquerors. And a true soldier of any country is not a citizen, but a lifelong prisoner, doomed to guard his comrades in misfortune—the same prisoners as he. "

The word "Russophobia" outside the context of interstate relations, in the meaning of "hostile, biased attitude towards Russia and Russians", is found in the note by P. A. Vyazemsky "A Few More Words about Mr. Custine's Work "Russia in 1839" in Relation to the Article in "Le Journal des Debats" of January 4, 1844" (published in 1967). Vyazemsky likens Custine "suffering from [...] Russophobia" (atteint [...] de Russophobie) to the innkeeper from Lübeck, mentioned in Chapter 4 of Custine's book, who, having never been to Russia, believes that Russia is a "bad country" (Vyazemsky, 1967: 267).

Vyazemsky accused the Slavophiles of hatred of the West; one could say of "Western phobia." "Just as the Prussians hate us because we helped them and rescued them from trouble, so our Easterners hate the West" (diary, entry for August 15, 1847) (Vyazemsky, 1963: 299). Finance Minister E. F. Kankrin also mentions "Russophobia" in connection with Anglo-Russian relations: "The Russophobia of the newspapers is reaching the point of madness. The English claim that Russia wants Constantinople [...]" (diary entry for 27 July/8 August 1840 in Bad Gastein, Austria; original in German) (Kankrin, 1865: 69 (2nd pag.)).

Most of the other known mentions of the word “Russophobia” by Russian authors up to and including the 1870s are found in texts in French and German. At the height of the Eastern Crisis of the 1870s, a lengthy pamphlet entitled "Russophobia in the Eastern Question" was published in Berlin in German, signed "Eugen Vasiliev" (probably a pseudonym). A number of German newspapers were accused of "Turkomania and Slavophobia, the culmination of which is Russophobia" (Vasiliev, 1877: 126).

The concept of "internal Russophobia," was formulated in the mid-19th century by F.F. Vigel and F.I. Tyutchev. For Tyutchev, the most immediate target was I.S. Turgenev , an iconic figure of Western liberalism. The image of a "highly worthy" Russian man, who hates his homeland "out of instinct," as depicted by Tyutchev (with the active participation of Dostoevsky), reveals upon closer examination to be a phantom created for polemical purposes.

In the Soviet press, "Russophobia" and related terms were long primarily associated with the historical past, and from the second half of the 1930s to the mid-1970s, they virtually disappeared from the language of journalism. References to "Russophobia" and anti-Semitism in a general context have become common since the 1970s, first in the émigré and samizdat press, and then in the Soviet press. A sharp surge of interest in the concept of "Russophobia" dates to the late 1980s, although it was precisely during this period that the image of the USSR and Russia in Western public opinion noticeably improved.

The most notable role in popularizing the concept of “Russophobia” was played by Igor Shafarevich’s pamphlet of the same name (samizdat, 1982; dating in book publications: 1978-1983). The immediate targets of the polemics were tamizdat and samizdat publicists: G. Pomerants, A. Amalrik, B. Shragin, A. Yanov, A. Sinyavsky, and others, and among Western authors, Richard Pipes. According to Shafarevich, these authors are characterized by deriving Russian history from the peculiarities of the Russian national character, as well as condemning Russian messianism as the precursor of Soviet communism (Shafarevich, 2005: 3; further citation is from the same publication). Russians are depicted as "a people of slaves, always bowing before cruelty and groveling before strong power, hating everything foreign and hostile to culture," and Russia is depicted as "an eternal hotbed of despotism and totalitarianism, dangerous for the rest of the world" (ibid.: 10). "This trend has already subjugated public opinion in the West" (ibid.: 4).

A Russophobic complex also manifested itself in respectable Western historical works. One of the colorful figures of this cohort of historians was the authoritative American author, Polish-born Richard Pipes (1923-2018), who once worked in the administration of US President Ronald Reagan. Curiously, in an English review of Pipes's monograph "Russia Under the Old Regime" (1974), the author was chided for the reader's noticeable "recurring theme of the work"—"the treachery of Russian peasants." And the classic of Russian historical scholarship, Mikhail Antonovich Alpatov (1903-1980), who had the opportunity to debate with Pipes, figuratively and succinctly assessed his work: "For this American author, history turns out to be politics, overturned into the past. "

Swiss publicist and publisher Guy Mettan brought his book, translated into Russian, "West - Russia: The Thousand-Year War. The History of Russophobia from Charlemagne to the Ukrainian Crisis," to Russia for a presentation. Mettan believes that one of the characteristic features of such relationships isn't even that Russians differed from the "unwashed" and "grimy" Europeans of the Middle Ages by their love of the banya (a fact). Russophobia, the Swiss author argued, is a historical mentality—"it must be worse somewhere else"—rooted in the days when European royalty and their numerous retainers literally hunted for fleas in their clothes. This is why they bought Chinese silk in Paris, where insects had no chance of catching a bite. The irony of history: this situation has a chance of repeating itself, as cheap Russian gas suddenly became expensive in "enlightened" Europe. And so it turns out that the "super-civilization" is, before our very eyes, experiencing a retrograde descent into the "Dark Ages," where "a warm bath = an unattainable luxury."