Russophobia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(" Puck ", 1903)

Russophobia or hostility towards Russia (also anti-Russianism ) is a negative attitude towards Russia , the Russians or the Russian culture. It is a manifestation of xenophobia and the opposite of russophilia .

"Russophob" has been used by the Russian side since the beginning of the Putin era by government agencies as well as in Kremlin-controlled propaganda as a label for people who did not agree with the behavior of the Russian President, be it in Russia or abroad.

Contemporary history

Middle Ages and early modern times

The first negative portrayals of the Russians date from the 13th century in connection with the fight of the Teutonic Order against the " schismatics " in the east. For example, in the Livonian Rhyming Chronicle , the Russians are referred to as infidels who plunder the lands of Christians. At this time, however, one cannot speak of systematic Russophobia.

At the turn of the 16th century, the Russian-Lithuanian wars between the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania over the legacy of the Kievan Rus intensified . The claim of the Rurikid princes of Moscow to be rulers of the whole of Russia met with opposition in the personal union of Poland and Lithuania . At that time, Polish scholars and authors in particular developed anti-Russian journalism, which they spread throughout Europe. In order to prevent Russian alliances in Europe, King Sigismund I wrote to European rulers and the Pope that the " Muscovites " were enemies of Christianity and that they had conspired with Turks and Tatars to destroy Christianity.

In connection with the Livonian War , European travelers to Russia reported of the tyranny of the Russian tsar Ivan "the terrible" (correct translation: the terrifying ), which spread the image of extremely repressive Russian rule. The latest research shows that around five thousand people were executed during the 37-year rule of Ivan IV. The repression, which was initially directed against competing princely families, was extended to ever new target groups.

New time until the 19th century

Anti-Russian views arose in France in the 19th century . While the European Enlightenment generally had a positive relationship with Russia, Napoléon Bonaparte viewed the Russians as backward barbarians who stood in the way of his liberal and revolutionary ideas. Some authors take the disrespect of French soldiers during the Russian campaign in 1812 towards the Russian civilian population and culture as evidence of a particular hostility towards Russia . The French troops also plundered monasteries and churches in other conquered areas and used them as horse stables or military camps. Before his departure from Moscow , Napoleon tried to have the towers of the Moscow Kremlin blown up. After the French defeat, there was continued negative attitude towards the Russians. Astolphe de Custine toured the Russian Empire in the 1830s and left a travelogue that harshly criticized autocracy and life in contemporary Russia.

In François Guizot history of European civilization (1828) Russia does not happen and Jules Michelet joined Russia from the "real" story. The suppression of the Polish struggle for freedom in 1830 triggered a wave of solidarity in Europe with the Poles revolting against the tsarist regime , which was able to rely on "pre-formed images of Russophobic journalism". In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book On Democracy in America , contrasted the USA and Russia as world powers that opposed democratization and freedom on the one hand and centralization and servitude on the other. A year later, was philosophical letter from Pyotr Chaadayev printed, in which the conservative Slavophiles reform-minded Westerners are compared. Jutta Scherrer said, "the Slavophiles created in the dichotomy Russia / Europe first self and other images of 'we' and 'they' ( my i oni ), from 'Bathroom Private' and 'strangers.'" Published in 1843 the book Russia in 1839 by Astolphe de Custine , which was translated into English and German that same year and has seen numerous new editions. Custine, who traveled to Russia with sympathy, left a lasting impression on the image of the despotic form of government there and an enslaved, submissive population. In contrast, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu and Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé described a Russia that is completely opposite to that of Custine. Even Jules Verne's novel Michel Strogoff (1876) (and its 1880 first performed in Paris stage adaptation) contributed to a turnaround in the French image of Russia. The same can be said for the image of Russia conveyed in Germany through Nietzsche , Rilke , and Thomas Mann .

While European conservatives in the first half of the 19th century saw Russia after the Napoleonic wars more as the “savior of Europe”, as a refuge of a legitimate monarchy and protector of Christian beliefs (see: Holy Alliance ), liberal and left-wing revolutionary circles saw Russia as "Hoard of reaction" picked up and disseminated, including by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ; the latter hoped that Russia would be pushed back.

The fear of the "Russian bear" stems from Russia's leading role in the reactionary Holy Alliance. Above all, the suppression of national aspirations for independence in Russian-ruled Poland was denounced. Already during the times of the Holy Roman Empire there was fear that Russia would gain too much power at the expense of the Ottoman Empire . For the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy, however, Christian Russia was an important partner in the centuries-long Turkish wars . Britain was concerned about its overseas trade. Efforts were made to prevent Russian penetration across the Bosporus into the Mediterranean , as well as Russian expansion into Persia and Central Asia - and possibly even India . This British-Russian conflict of interests, which even sparked a Russian scare in New Zealand , became known as the Great Game and led to the Crimean War , in which France also took part.

First half of the 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, France and Great Britain came closer to Russia politically, whereas Germany and Austria-Hungary's traditionally very good relations with Russia over the centuries already cooled off considerably in the final phase of the Bismarck era . Both wanted to stem a Russian expansion of power in the power vacuum that was to be expected in the Balkans after the possible collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Likewise Pan-Slavism , which in Germany and Austria-Hungary was strongly intertwined with Slavophobia and nationalism , which was also directed against other nations. In 1914, large sections of the left in Germany were able to identify with the fight against tsarism , which was perceived as hostile to progress . This made it easier to enter the First World War and benefited the so-called Burgfriedenspolitik . During the war, Austria-Hungary had numerous Russophile Ruthenians deported to concentration camps such as Thalerhof or Theresienstadt , where thousands of them died.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks transferred the term “ prison of nations ” originally coined for the Habsburg Monarchy , a negative interpretation of the multi-ethnic state , to the Tsarist Empire . The hopes aroused for independence in the peripheral areas of Russia inhabited by other nationalities, however, were not fulfilled. Later the term “prison of nations” was also applied to the Soviet Union.

The October Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war with its atrocities on both sides ended in the early 1920s with the victory of the Bolsheviks , which the other great powers had tried in vain to prevent through military intervention. This resulted in an international rise in Russophobia (see e.g. Red Scare in the USA) after the communist movement was soon dominated by Moscow and Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union threatened the capitalist powers with a world revolution . A brutal internal repression, especially since the beginning of Stalinism at the end of the 1920s, as well as the closure and diplomatic isolation of the Soviet Union, also favored anti-Russian tendencies in the interwar period .

Soviet prisoners of war in Mauthausen concentration camp.

A racially based Russophobia as a combination of anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism , the so-called Jewish Bolshevism to be combated, was predominant in Germany during the time of National Socialism . In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler described the Russians as subhumans who were incapable of self-organization and who had only been able to build an empire thanks to the “Germanic upper class”. The National Socialists saw the Soviet Union as a living space in the east for the German master race . After the final victory , the General Plan East envisaged a decimation, enslavement and large-scale deportation of the population, with cities like Leningrad and Moscow being razed to the ground. Even if these plans were never implemented, over a million people were starved to death in the German-Soviet war during the Leningrad blockade , and the National Socialist ideology and planning (see also the Hunger Plan ) caused the widespread destruction of human life and cultural property in the Soviet Union. Despite these plans, the Germans - inevitably since the turn of the Second World War in 1942/43 - partly cooperated with Russians. For example, the Russian Liberation Army was formed under the former General of the Red Army Vlasov , which fought on the German side towards the end of the war.

After the Second World War

During the Cold War , distrust arose from the political and ideological struggle between the Western world and the communist- ruled Eastern Bloc . Fear of the communists and of the nuclear threat has shaped consciousness in Europe and the USA since the early 1950s. President Vladimir Putin said that the Russophobia of the West and the Eastern European states was due to the interventions of the Soviet Union in the GDR , Hungary and Czechoslovakia .

Especially in the Ronald Reagan era , Hollywood productions took up stereotypical images of Russians. After the political change and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, former Sovietologists and dissidents from Central Eastern Europe and Russia in particular warned against an overly optimistic image of Russia. There was a strong interaction with US policy on Eastern Europe. Many new states such as the Baltic states or the Ukraine also built their national identity out of a comparison with Russia. Another factor in Russophobia was fear of the spreading Russian mafia , which shaped the image of criminal and kleptocratic Russia in the 1990s . On the other hand, the West supported the course of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and largely avoided criticism of his policies.

Criticism of one-sided current reporting on Russia in Germany today

Mikhail Gorbachev criticized that reporting on Russia in Germany was partly or predominantly characterized by a negative attitude and a lack of differentiation. Difficulties and misunderstandings in the correspondent work are added. According to some commentators, the focus on Vladimir Putin and Russia's political crises in the Western media paints a skewed picture of the real situation in Russia.

The controversially discussed historian Wolfgang Wippermann puts forward the thesis that all Western media coverage is influenced by ideas that "fundamentally" contradict Russian self-perception.

Regarding the relevant period of the starting point of his book, the year 2006, Andrei Tsygankov wrote in 2009: In contrast to the objective criticism of Russia, Russophobia in the circles of politicians in the USA is characterized by an intentional "otherworldly disproportion" ("beyond any sense of proportion") and pursue the goal of undermining the country's political reputation.

Russian suppression of the November Uprising (1830). Contemporary allegorical representation of Poland as the victim of an Asian nomad

Critical objections to allegations of Russophobia

After research by u. a. Anna Politkowskaja on the activities of state services on the Internet had already been described in 2003 by Russian Internet brigades ; One of the distinctive features of the organized teams was to accuse everyone of Russophobia who disagreed with Russian politics ( Accusation of Russophobia against everyone who disagrees with them ).

According to the publicist Lucian Kim , in the Putin era “russophobic” became a label for people who disagreed with the aggressive behavior of the Russian president, whether in Russia or abroad. According to Hannes Adomeit , the term traitor is also used within Russia , where Russophobia is accused abroad.

For Artemi Troitsky in the Russian Novaya Gazeta , the term Russophobia is a "magic word" that the phrase some call, which did not exist, and Dmitri Bykov pointed to the statement by the publisher Marja Rosanowa that said: "Russians like it, evil to his ”and the lack of solidarity among Russians. For this to be improved, the word Russophobia would have to be banned.

Karl Schlögel called the word a component of Russian propaganda : "The propaganda reads: Anyone who criticizes Putin or one of his friends is Russophobic." ( Karl Schlögel :)

According to Andreas Umland , a researcher on Eastern Europe , Russian nationalist circles are spreading the claim that the West’s attitude towards Russia is shaped by centuries-old and systematic hostility towards Russia. Russophobia is the "murderous argument of the so-called" Putin understanders "".

Some authors see the arguments against Russophobia in Russia being widespread in politically right-wing circles , they would also be used against efforts at democratic reform and serve to construct myths about the fall of the Soviet Union. The concept of Russophobia became an integral part of the mythology of Russian nationalists.

The history of Russia's ties with Western Europe and the successful integration of Russians who emigrated to Western Europe, the USA and Israel suggest that there is no general hostility towards Russia.

It was also asked, “Whether our image of Russia is not usually also based on how Russia assesses itself ... Both types of images - external and self-images - have influenced each other in the course of the history of our mutual perceptions and relationships. They are in a kind of symbiosis insofar as one picture provokes another ... The prejudices that are sometimes hidden in these pictures and what they can be used for has sometimes had terrible consequences. " Journalist Boris Reitschuster takes the same point of view when he says, Putin “is Russophobic, which is what he accuses others of: He has a low opinion of the people in Russia because he considers them immature and treats them like children. Children who have to be led strongly and who sometimes want to be beaten. "

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Russophobia  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Russophobia  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Heinz Gollwitzer: From the Age of Discovery to the Beginning of Imperialism . V&R, 1972, p. 372.
  2. ↑ Jolanta Darczewska, Piotr Zochowski: Russophobia in the Kremlin's Strategy , Center for Eastern Studies , October 2015
  3. ↑ a b Poe, Marshall T. (2001). People Born to Slavery: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1478–1748. Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-3798-9 , p. 21.
  4. ↑ Cf. the German translation expanded by the author: Ruslan Grigrojewitsch Skrynnikow Ivan the Terrible and His Time. With an afterword by Hans-Joachim Torke. Munich 1992. See also the obituary for Skrynnikow by Alexandr Lavrov dokumente.ios-regensburg.de .
  5. ↑ Leibniz , who met Tsar Peter I several times, praised Russia as a tabula rasa , where one could avoid countless mistakes in Western Europe. Montesquieu, on the other hand, described the tsar, who implemented his reforms with tyrannical methods, as "the greatest barbarians of humanity". Voltaire in turn praised the same in his "History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great". Herder saw Russia as a future bearer of European culture. “The Europeanization of the Russian court and the upbringing of the Russian nobility, who adopted the French language and French customs, were welcomed in the 18th century. But attentive visitors to Russia, whose number has increased steadily since the 18th century, noticed the enormous chasm between the illiterate peasant mass and the educated minority, who had nothing comparable in Europe. ”(Jutta Scherrer: Images of Russia in Europe - Voices from France, Germany and Poland . Conference in Genshagen / Brandenburg December 1-2 , 2006 bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de (PDF), unpag. P. 5)
  6. ^ A b McNally, Raymond. The origins of Russophobia in France 1812-1830. In: The American Slavic and East European Review 17 (1958), pp. 173-189.
  7. ↑ See Martin Malia: Russia Under Western Eyes. Cambridge / Mass. 1999, p. 102.
  8. ^ Dieter Groh: Russia and the self-image of Europe. Neuwied 1961, p. 189.
  9. ↑ Jutta Scherrer: Images of Russia in Europe - Voices from France, Germany and Poland . Conference in Genshagen / Brandenburg 1.-2. December 2006 bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de (PDF), unpag. (P. 10)
  10. ↑ Abridged edition: Russian shadow
  11. ↑ L'Empire des tsars et les Russes . 3 vols., 1881–2 and 1889.
  12. ↑ Le Roman russe . 1886.
  13. ^ History of Russophobia. World Enemy in the East - On the spiritual prehistory of the “Neocons” , FAZ , August 26, 2008
  14. ^ John Howes Gleason, The genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain: a study of the interaction of policy and opinion. Octagon Books, 1972.
  15. ↑ See also German-Russian relations
  16. ^ John M. Haar: The Russian Menace: Baltic German Publicists and Russophobia in World War I Germany. University Microfilms, 1986.
  17. ^ Matthias Theodor Vogt u. a. (Ed.): Periphery in the middle of Europe . Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 126. See also Andreas Kappeler: Russia as a multi-ethnic empire: emergence - history - decay. 2nd edition Munich 2008
  18. ↑ See Helmut Altrichter: Soviet Union: The Russian Civil War and the Founding of the Soviet Union In: Universal-Lexikon universal_lexikon.deacademic.com
  19. ↑ z. B. Christian Esch: USSR. The mourning for the prison of nations . In: fr-online from December 25, 2001 fr-online.de ( Memento from October 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ Homepage of the Kremlin: Interview with Vladimir Putin in 2000 (Russian) ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ a b Andrei Tsygankov. Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy. Palgrave, 2009, ISBN 9780230620957 , in the foreword
  22. ↑ Open letter from Michail Gorbatschow to the German media petersburger-dialog.de ; Wenke Crudopf: Russia stereotypes in German media coverage . Working papers of the Eastern European Institute of the Free University of Berlin. 29/2000 oei.fu-berlin.de (PDF).
  23. ↑ See z. B. Juliane Inozemtsev: Part of the intoxication. Self-criticism from German Eastern Europe correspondents about the “Orange Revolution” . In: Eurasisches Magazin from July 31, 2008 eurasischesmagazin.de
  24. ↑ Guest commentary on derstandard.at, accessed on August 11, 2014.
  25. ^ Nobody can doubt the brutality of Putin's Russia. But the way the Ukraine conflict is covered in the west should raise some questions , www.theguardian.com, accessed August 11, 2014.
  26. ↑ Reality booed , Spiegel, June 29, 1998
  27. ^ Stephan Waitz: Wolfgang Wippermann: Stalin's husband in Berlin . In: ef-magazin.de from October 16, 2007 ef-magazin.de
  28. ↑ Two kinds of comparison : National Socialist, Stalinist and Real Socialist Dominance Practice , FAZ, December 21, 2009
  29. ↑ Russophobia Reloaded? , Wolfgang Wippermann in Neues Deutschland, accessed on August 22, 2014.
  30. ↑ CNN: Internet brigades in Russia - "Web Brigade's" , March 21, 2009 ( Memento of March 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  31. ↑ Do you suffer from Russophobia? The Kremlin thinks you might. Reuters, March 17, 2016
  32. ↑ Hannes Adomeit : 'Russophobia' is a label to deflect criticism from the Kremlin on raamoprusland.nl
  33. ↑ New Old Word , Novaya Gazeta, August 30, 2017
  34. ↑ Dmitry Bykov: Even space has not brought us solidarity , Echo Moscow, July 13, 2018; "I hope this word will be banned at the right time in a decent society, like something completely indecent."
  35. ^ The sanctions against Russia are self-defense , NZZ, October 10, 2017
  36. ↑ Russia's adventurous foreign policy - The “Putin Understanders” and their errors , NZZ, January 11, 2016
  37. ^ Robert Horvath: The legacy of Soviet dissent: dissidents, democratisation and radical nationalism in Russia . Psychology Press 2005. p. 262
  38. ↑ Anatoly M. Khazanov: The nation-state in question , 2003 Princeton University Press, pp. 90, 91, 96-97 chapter “A State without a Nation? Russia after Empire ”; "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, only russian nationalists used the bugaboo of Russophobia"
  39. ↑ See z. B. the Wuppertal research project initiated by Lew Kopelew kopelew-forum.de . As part of a project by the German Research Foundation , the west-east reflections were fully digitized and are available from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: digi20.digitale-sammlungen.de .
  40. ↑ Digression into history: Russians abroad ( Memento from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  41. ↑ Jutta Scherrer: Russia in self- and European external images . Lecture at the conference in Genshagen / Brandenburg 1.-2. December 2006 (unpag. P. 1) bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de (PDF).
  42. ↑ Boris Reitschuster: "Putin himself is hostile to Russia". Interview with Reitschuster journalist. tagesschau.de