Russophobia

Russophobia

Author: A. Tsygankov

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-04-26

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0230620957

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The book suggests that the US-Russia post-9/11 partnership did not endure because much of America's policy is shaped by an ambition to remain the world's only superpower. The book analyzes the negative role played by Russophobia and advocates a different approach to Russia in the post-Cold War world.


Russophobia

Russophobia

Author: Dominic Basulto

Publisher: Dominic Basulto

Published: 2015-12-11

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9780988841956

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The current Russophobia in the Western media should not come as a big surprise. During the Cold War era, the stereotype of dour, unsmiling Russians victimized by a ruthless, authoritarian regime that posed an existential nuclear threat to the West became a mainstay of the media narrative. Even after the end of the Cold War, Russophobia continued to influence the way the West viewed Russia. This book attempts to understand how Russophobia within the Western media during the Putin era (2000-2015) led to a new Cold War between Russia and the West that includes elements of information, cyber and economic warfare. Russophobia attempts to answer the following questions: Why are any attempts by Russia to change the Western media narrative immediately derided as propaganda? What do Western policymakers get wrong about the Kremlin's motives? And, most importantly: Is there a cure for Russophobia?


Creating Russophobia

Creating Russophobia

Author: Guy Mettan

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2017-06-29

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0997896558

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hy do the USA, UK and Europe so hate Russia? How is it that Western antipathy, once thought due to anti-Communism, could be so easily revived over a crisis in distant Ukraine, against a Russia no longer communist? Why does the West accuse Russia of empire-building, when 15 states once part of the defunct Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO, and NATO troops now flank the Russian border? These are only some of the questions Creating Russophobia investigates. Mettan begins by showing the strength of the prejudice against Russia through the Western response to a series of events: the Uberlingen mid-air collision, the Beslan hostage-taking, the Ossetia War, the Sochi Olympics and the crisis in Ukraine. He then delves into the historical, religious, ideological and geopolitical roots of the detestation of Russia in various European nations over thirteen centuries since Charlemagne competed with Byzantium for the title of heir to the Roman Empire. Mettan examines the geopolitical machinations expressed in those times through the medium of religion, leading to the great Christian schism between Germanic Rome and Byzantium and the European Crusades against Russian Orthodoxy. This history of taboos, prejudices and propaganda directed against the Orthodox Church provides the mythic foundations that shaped Western disdain for contemporary Russia. From the religious and imperial rivalry created by Charlemagne and the papacy to the genesis of French, English, German and then American Russophobia, the West has been engaged in more or less violent hostilities against Russia for a thousand years. Contemporary Russophobia is manufactured through the construction of an anti-Russian discourse in the media and the diplomatic world, and the fabrication and demonization of The Bad Guy, now personified by Vladimir Putin. Both feature in the meta-narrative, the mythical framework of the ferocious Russian bear ruled with a rod of iron by a vicious president. A synthetic reading of all these elements is presented in the light of recent events and in particular of the Ukrainian crisis and the recent American elections, showing how all the resources of the West’s soft power have been mobilized to impose the tale of bad Russia dreaming of global conquest.


Bram Stoker and Russophobia

Bram Stoker and Russophobia

Author: Jimmie E. Cain, Jr.

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2006-04-04

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0786424079

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In Victorian England, a marked fear of Russia prevailed in the government and the public. As a result of the Crimean War and other Russian threats to the British empire, the English mind was haunted by a shadowy enemy of barbarous Eastern invaders. The influence of this Russophobia is evident in the works of Bram Stoker, who responded to the Russian challenge to British Imperial hegemony through the character of Dracula, a primitive and menacing Eastern figure destroyed by warriors pledged to the Crown. The text investigates the role of Russophobia in Stoker's fiction, particularly his novels Dracula and The Lady of the Shroud. It offers historical information about Russophobia and the Crimean War, considers Slavic and Balkan connections, and analyzes Stoker's vampire themes. The resulting work shows how two nations' histories intertwine in an unexpected literary avenue. Illustrations include numerous political cartoons of the era.


Russophobia

Russophobia

Author: Glenn Diesen

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-04-22

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9811914680

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This book defines Russophobia as the irrational fear of Russia, a key theme in the study of propaganda in the West as Russia has throughout history been assigned a diametrically opposite identity as the “Other.” Propaganda is the science of convincing an audience without appealing to reason. The West and Russia have been juxtaposed as Western versus Eastern, European versus Asiatic, civilized versus barbaric, modern versus backward, liberal versus autocratic, and even good versus evil. During the Cold War, ideological dividing lines fell naturally by casting the debate as capitalism versus communism, democracy versus totalitarianism, and Christianity versus atheism. After the Cold War, anti-Russian propaganda aims to filter all political questions through the simplistic binary stereotype of democracy versus authoritarianism, which provides little if any heuristic value to understand the complexities of relations. A key feature of propaganda against the inferior “Other” is both contemptuous derision and panic-stricken fear of the threat to civilization. Russia has therefore throughout history been allowed to play one of two roles—either an apprentice of Western civilization by accepting the subordinate role as the student and political object, or a threat that must be contained or defeated. While propaganda has the positive effect of promoting unity and mobilizing resources toward rational and strategic objectives, it can also have the negative effect of creating irrational decision-making and obstructing a workable peace.


Russia on the Danube

Russia on the Danube

Author: Victor Taki

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 963386383X

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One of the goals of Russia’s Eastern policy was to turn Moldavia and Wallachia, the two Romanian principalities north of the Danube, from Ottoman vassals into a controllable buffer zone and a springboard for future military operations against Constantinople. Russia on the Danube describes the divergent interests and uneasy cooperation between the Russian officials and the Moldavian and Wallachian nobility in a key period between 1812 and 1834. Victor Taki’s meticulous examination of the plans and memoranda composed by Russian administrators and the Romanian elite underlines the crucial consequences of this encounter. The Moldavian and Wallachian nobility used the Russian-Ottoman rivalry in order to preserve and expand their traditional autonomy. The comprehensive institutional reforms born out of their interaction with the tsar’s officials consolidated territorial statehood on the lower Danube, providing the building blocks of a nation state. The main conclusion of the book is that although Russian policy was driven by self-interest, and despite the Russophobia among a great part of the Romanian intellectuals, this turbulent period significantly contributed to the emergence, several decades later, of modern Romania.


Plots against Russia

Plots against Russia

Author: Eliot Borenstein

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-04-15

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1501716352

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In this original and timely assessment of cultural expressions of paranoia in contemporary Russia, Eliot Borenstein samples popular fiction, movies, television shows, public political pronouncements, internet discussions, blogs, and religious tracts to build a sense of the deep historical and cultural roots of konspirologiia that run through Russian life. Plots against Russia reveals through dramatic and exciting storytelling that conspiracy and melodrama are entirely equal-opportunity in modern Russia, manifesting themselves among both pro-Putin elites and his political opposition. As Borenstein shows, this paranoid fantasy until recently characterized only the marginal and the irrelevant. Now, through its embodiment in pop culture, the expressions of a conspiratorial worldview are seen everywhere. Plots against Russia is an important contribution to the fields of Russian literary and cultural studies from one of its preeminent voices.


The Legacy of Soviet Dissent

The Legacy of Soviet Dissent

Author: Robert Horvath

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1134317980

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During the 1970s, dissidents like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn dominated Western perceptions of the USSR, but were then quickly forgotten, as Gorbachev's reformers monopolised the spotlight. This book restores the dissidents to their rightful place in Russian history. Using a vast array of samizdat and published sources, it shows how ideas formulated in the dissident milieu clashed with the original programme of perestroika, and shaped the course of democratisation in post-Soviet Russia. Some of these ideas - such the dissidents' preoccupation with glasnost and legality, and their critique of revolutionary violence - became part of the agenda of Russia's democratic movement. But this book also demonstrates that dissidents played a crucial role in the rise of the new Russian radical nationalism. Both the friends and foes of Russian democracy have a dissident lineage.


Should We Fear Russia?

Should We Fear Russia?

Author: Dmitri Trenin

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-11-02

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 150951094X

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Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, there has been much talk of a new Cold War between the West and Russia. Under Putin’s authoritarian leadership, Moscow is widely seen as volatile, belligerent and bent on using military force to get its way. In this incisive analysis, top Russian foreign and security policy analyst Dmitri Trenin explains why the Cold War analogy is misleading. Relations between the West and Russia are certainly bad and dangerous but - he argues - they are bad and dangerous in new ways; crucial differences which make the current rivalry between Russia, the EU and the US all the more fluid and unpredictable. Unpacking the dynamics of this increasingly strained relationship, Trenin makes a compelling case for handling Russia with pragmatism and care rather than simply giving into fear.