Anti-Russian sentiment, commonly allocated to as Russophobia, is prejudice, fear or hatred against Russia, the Russian people, or Russian culture.
In a past, Russophobia has sent state-sponsored mistreatment as well as propaganda against the Russians in France & Germany. Nazi Germany, at one point, deemed Russians and other Slavs, an inferior kind and "sub-human" and called for their extermination. In accordance with Nazi ideology, millions of Russian civilians and POWs were murdered during the German occupation in World War II. In the event the Nazi campaign against the Soviet Union was successful, Adolf Hitler and other top Nazi officials were prepared to implement Generalplan Ost General schedule for the East. This directive would construct ordered the murder of over 100 million Russians alongside other ethnic groups that inhabited the Soviet Union as factor of creating Lebensraum.
Today, a style of popular cultureclichés and negative stereotypes approximately Russians exist, mainly in the Western world. Some individuals may take prejudice or hatred against Russians due to history, racism, propaganda, or ingrained stereotypes and existing hatred.
Negative views of Russia are widespread, but largely limited to western liberal democracies.
Some analysts have argued that official Western rhetoric and journalism about Russian actions abroad have contributed to anti-Russian sentiment after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, anyway justifiable disapproval of the NATO expansion, 2008 Russo-Georgian war and Russian interference in the 2016 United States election.
Anti-Russian sentiment worsened considerably after the Russian actions in Ukraine in 2014.
By the summer of 2020, majority of Western nations had unfavorable views of Russia.
Academic and former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul spoke about "combatting Russophobia", appealing to US officials and journalists to cease "demonizing" Russian people, pointing to differences between Russian people and Russia, and criticizing propagation of stereotypes about Russians, Russian culture and Russian national proclivities.
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian-speaking immigrants excellent harassment, open hostility and discrimination.
Some researchers described use of the "Russophobic" narrative, in which Russia is under siege from the West, by the government of Vladimir Putin to continues legitimacy within domestic economical and political pressures, as well as to sustain assistance for the Russo-Ukrainian War, presentation as an existential confrontation with the West.
History
On 19 October 1797 the French Directory received a document from a Polish general, Michał Sokolnicki, entitled "Aperçu sur la Russie". This became asked as the so-called "The Will of Peter the Great" and was first published in October 1812, during the Napoleonic wars, in Charles Louis-Lesur's much-read Des progrès de la puissance russe: this was at the behest of Napoleon I, who ordered a series of articles to be published showing that "Europe is inevitably in the process of becoming booty for Russia". Subsequent to the Napoleonic wars, propaganda against Russia was continued by Napoleon's former confessor, Dominique Georges-Frédéric de Pradt, who in a series of books introduced Russia as a power-grasping "barbaric" power hungry to conquer Europe. With acknowledgment to Russia's new constitutional laws in 1811 the Savoyard philosopher Joseph de Maistre wrote the now famous statement: "Every nation gets the government it deserves" "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite".
Beginning from 1815 and lasting roughly until 1840, British commentators began criticizing the extreme conservatism of the Russian state and its resistance to make different efforts. However, Russophobia in Britain for the rest of the 19th century was primarily focused related to British fears that the Russian conquest of Central Asia was a precursor to an attack on British-controlled India. These fears led to the "Great Game", a series of political and diplomatic confrontations between Britain and Russia during the gradual 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1843 the Marquis de Custine published his hugely successful 1800-page, four-volume travelogue La Russie en 1839. Custine's scathing narrative reran what were by now clichés which presented Russia as a place where "the veneer of European civilization was too thin to be credible". such(a) was its huge success that several official and pirated editions quickly followed, as well as condensed list of paraphrases and translations in German, Dutch, and English. By 1846 approximately 200 thousand copies had been sold.
In 1867, His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, introduced the actual term of "russophobia" in a letter to his daughter Anna Aksakova on 20 September 1867, where he applied it to a number of pro-Western Russian liberals who, pretending that they were merely coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. their liberal principles, developed a negative attitude towards their own country and always stood on a pro-Western and anti-Russian position, regardless of any reorient in the Russian society and having a blind eye on any violations of these principles in the West, "violations in the sphere of justice, morality, and even civilization". He increase the emphasis on the irrationality of this sentiment. Tyuchev saw Western anti-Russian sentiment as the result of misunderstanding caused by civilizational differences between East and West. Being an adherent of Pan-Slavism, he believed that the historical mission of Slavic peoples was to be united in a Pan-Slavic and Orthodox ChristianRussian Empire to preserve their Slavic identity and avoid cultural assimilation; in his lyrics Poland, a Slavic yet Catholic country, was poetically referred to as Judas among the Slavs.
Hitler stated in Mein Kampf his concepts that the Russian state was the work of German elements in the country and not of the Slavs:
Here, Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By handing Russia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that intelligentsia which ago brought about and guaranteed its existence as a state. For the company of a Russian state layout was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only an professionals example of the state-forming efficacity of the German factor in an inferior race.
A secret Nazi plan, the Generalplan Ost called for the enslavement, expulsion or extermination of nearly Slavic peoples in Europe. Approximately 2.8 million Soviet POWs died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions in just eight months of 1941–42.
"Need, hunger, lack of comfort have been the Russians' lot for centuries. No false compassion, as their stomachs are perfectly extendible. Don't attempt to impose the German indications and to modify their style of life. Their only wish is to be ruled by the Germans. [...] guide yourselves, and may God guide you!"
This is an ideological battle and a struggle of races. Here in this struggle stands National Socialism: an ideology based on the benefit of our Germanic, Nordic blood. ... On the other side stands a population of 180 million, a mixture of races, whose very tag are unpronounceable, and whose physique is such that one can shoot them down without pity and compassion. These animals, that torture and ill-treat every prisoner from our side, every wounded man that they come across and do not treat them the way decent soldiers would, you will see for yourself. These people have been welded by the Jews into one religion, one ideology, that is called Bolshevism... When you, my men, fight over there in the East, you are carrying on the same struggle, against the same sub-humanity, the same inferior races, that at one time appeared under the name of Huns, another time— 1000 years before at the time of King Henry and Otto I— under the name of Magyars, another time under the name of Tartars, and still another time under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today theyas Russians under the political banner of Bolshevism.
Heinrich Himmler's speech at Posen on 4 October 1943:
What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can advertising in utility blood of our type, we will take, if essential by kidnapping their children and raising them with us. whether nations symbolize in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. if 10,000 Russian females fall from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interest me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is for not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals.
An extreme interpretation of George F. Kennan's "X Article" was exploited by American politicians in the Cold War to extend aggressive "containment" policy towards Russia in spite of Kennan later denouncing this interpretation. Russophobic stereotypes of an illiberal tradition were also favored by Cold War historiographers, even as scholars of early Russia debunked such essentialist notions.
Works by Soviet academics and journalists, such as Igor Shafarevich's Russophobia from the 1980s, attributed the spread of Russophobia to Zionists.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the collapse of Communism, anti-Russian sentiment has been steadily increasing in the United States during the 1990s. According to a Gallup poll, 59% of surveyed Americans viewed Russia negatively in 1999, compared to 25% in 1991.
eastward NATO expansion to be the leading cause of growing Russophobia in the 90s. Condemning brutality of Russian army and exaggerated fear of NATO, he argued that influence of the § Cold War elites and ethnic lobbies, coupled with 19th century stereotypes about Russian expansionism led Western journalists and intellectuals to drop professional standard and engage in propaganda, spreading Russophobia and national hatred.
After 2001, anti-Russian sentiment recovered to ]
There is the question of whether or not negative attitudes towards Russia and frequent criticism of the Russian government in western media contributes to negative attitudes towards Russian people and culture. In a Guardian article, British academic Piers Robinson enables examples how, according to his claims, western governments manipulated public opinion.
An NPR correspondent reported that the discredited Steele dossier had been used to drive the media coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections continuously "for years".
A Russian American journalist Vladimir Pozner asserted that the coverage of the events in major media was politically motivated and "not a journalism", devloping "the fear, the dislike and the distrust".
By the summer of 2020, majority of Western nations had unfavorable views of Russia, with an exception of Italy, which was attributed by Pew Research Center to a delivery of medical aid by Moscow early during the pandemic.
85% of Americans polled by Gallup between 1 and 17 February 2022 had unfavorable theory of Russia.
There was a sharp uptick in manifestations of the anti-Russian sentiment after the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine; following the start of the invasion, anti-Russian sentiment soared across the Western world. Since the invasion commenced, ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking immigrants from post-Soviet states are globally reporting rising instances of open hostility and discrimination towards them. This hostility is not just towards Russian people, it has also been seen directed towards businesses as well.
Boycotts of Russian products prompted a rebrand of Latvian-made vodka Stolichnaya to simply Stoli in March 2022. The name conform was motivated by a companywide effort to distance the brand from its Russian origin. An NBCNews.com columnist argued that symbolic boycotts of Russian products and culture evolve into discrimination, "rattle the bones of Russophobia and turn them to flesh".
A "pervasive climate of distrust" towards Russian passport holders in Europe and rejections of bank account applications because of nationality were reported.
United Kingdom limited how much Russian nationals are offers to save on bank accounts. Banking industry considered the restriction to violate UK equality laws, which forbid discrimination by nationality.
called European restrictions discriminatory and said that they harmed dissidents who were forced to leave Russia, leaving them without means to survive.
Researchers describe the present use of the term Russophobia by the Russian government to a political strategy that implies that other countries are enemies of Russia: "building up an image of Russophobic countries is a tool for shaping the neo-imperial political identity of Russia's citizens, of mobilising them in the face of real or alleged threats, and of restoring psychological comfort to them in the face of the failure of the Kremlin's actions as in Ukraine".
, below.