Russophobia; irrationality and propaganda

The anti-Russian sentiment is a mixture of historical fear developed by a European indoctrination of several centuries added to the concern of the European bourgeoisie for the emergence of the Bolshevik revolution at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also a political method that from time to time allows European governments to justify some decisions that could be debatable but that, in the face of a proven enemy, ensure the approval of easily convinced crowds.

It is also clear that the fear of Russia, or rather, the fear of possible interference by a supposedly expansionist and warmongering Russia, was a leading element in the history of the 20th century.

This sentiment nurtured by European and increasingly North American regimes has served as a central element of a rather simplistic political culture that reigns in the so-called Western world (that is, the United States and Europe). This idea that there is an aggressive, expansionist and imperialist Russia whose objective would be to dominate all the countries of the world is deeply rooted in European and North American culture.

Some think that for Russia to have become the largest country in the world, it was necessary to conquer many territories and the peoples who inhabited them.

Actually, the origin of this sentiment has historical roots that did not begin in the cold war of the second half of the 20th century. In this period, this idea rose to its maximum expression, but its beginnings go further back and we can say that it began as a central geopolitical argument in the interwar period after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Of course, this feeling was promoted by the European bourgeoisie and Americans who were terrified of the radical projects of the Russian Bolsheviks that clearly threatened their privileges.

In any case, it must be clarified that in reality during the 19th century the power that Europeans considered expansive and authoritarian was not Russia, but Prussia, and then Germany, which was obviously its logical heir.

In a certain way it can be said from a European point of view that it was the Prussian empire or later the so-called German empire that caused the main warlike confrontations at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. For this reason, it was considered that before, during and after the First World War in 1914, the historical duo Prussia-Germany was a kind of international “public enemy”.

It must be remembered that initially, in that conflict, the still tsarist Russia had joined the allies, led by France and England, and paid dearly for this alliance with hundreds of thousands of deaths and much destruction. But it was precisely during this period that the historical and political phenomena occurred that gave rise to the fall of the tsarist monarchy and the social and political revolution that greatly changed the history of Europe and the world. The Bolshevik Revolution.

The Bolshevik agenda had two priorities laid out by Lenin since 1915: to deepen socialism… and to get Russia out of the “great war”.

Given this, Germany welcomed the fall of the Tsar. Not because of ideological affinity with the communists, but because he considered that agreeing with them would give him respite in the final stretch of the war, where the United States had just joined the allies. Thus, Germany made logistical efforts in favor of Lenin, and shortly after the rise of Bolsheviks, signed the peace treaty with them in Brest-Litovsk.

This was interpreted by the Allied powers as the facade of a de facto “perverse” union between Prussian imperialism and the Bolsheviks; They accused Lenin and Trotsky of not being genuine socialists, but rather "German agents" infiltrated in Russia and assumed that the nascent Soviet nation would be a platform at the service of German expansionism. If the imperialist enemy of the nineteenth century had been Prussia in Europe, Russia would have to be in the twentieth century in the Western capitalist world. With an aggravating circumstance: the nascent power was not only expansionist, but communist, and would probably be dedicated to fomenting red revolutions around the globe.

The facts would disprove this idea. By 1918 Germany had already lost the war.

And Russia, now transformed into the Soviet Union, which would only be consolidated in 1922, had too many internal problems implanting socialism in the gigantic Russian territory that had no interest in exporting the revolution.

The oversized idea that the USSR was a blindly expansive entity, however, survived, and was the great feature of the cold war. It is conveniently ignored that the real aggressive and racist expansionism was carried out by Nazi Germany and that it was thanks to the sacrifice of the Russian armies and the Russian population at a cost of millions of dead that the Nazi advance was stopped. Russia and the Soviet Union emerged stronger from that war. 

During the Cold War, the expansionist scenarios, not only of the Soviet Union but also of the United States, took place in the third world. In this world chess game, the Western powers took advantage of the Russophobic fear that prevailed in those countries and that was also fed in the West with continuous and generalized propaganda.

We must not forget that the alibi of the real imperialism of the United States in the peripheral world was to delegitimize its adversaries in the political, intellectual and artistic world (as McCarthyism did) with the name or accusation of being communists or Russophiles or even Sovietists.

Against this background, the anti-Russianism or Russophobia that is taking over Europe and the Anglophone world in this third decade of the 11th century has found fertile ground.

It does not matter that there are no longer any Bolsheviks or Communists who want to provoke the world proletarian revolution. It does not matter that Russian power is greatly diminished both territorially and economically.

In a certain way, Russia, as a country, or its government and even its inhabitants, constitute an easily marketable enemy in the media corporations of the so-called Western countries.

The Manichaean inertia – which in a way is quasi-religious – makes it difficult today, in the 21st century and in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to have an impartial stance against evil Russian imperialism.

Of course, this implies condemning Putin and Russian or Russophile actions in Ukraine and praising Zelensky's questionable political alliances in Ukraine with names tinged with heroism or pseudo-heroism.

These alliances, as is sometimes known, include political actors who are very similar to the protagonists or accomplices of Nazism 80 years ago,

We must be skeptical of the development of both the Russian invasion or military operation and the avalanche of sanctions and media propaganda that was forcefully implanted everywhere.

At this time the lack of reasoning prevails. Russian athletes are banned from participating in international competitions, Russian planes are barred from transiting European airspace, conductors' contracts are canceled because they are Russian, and in short, widespread anti-Russian sentiment is promoted.

And we must remember that this fundamentally irrational feeling can lead to fueling economic, political and military confrontations, and finally

be the reason why the war in Ukraine, now relatively localized, could turn into a European or global conflagration that we would all regret.