Translation by Alena Scarecrow
“Украина. Ру” observer Alexander Chalenko interviews Aleksei Kochetkov, the Director of the Fund of Civil Institutions Development.
– Over the course of the last 20 years I’ve been all over Europe, you know. And never have I – an ordinary person – noticed any signs of russophobia. Recently you chaired a conference in Moscow on this subject and, as far as I see it, you maintain that in Europe there does exist such a thing as russophobia. Would you give some examples?
– As a tourist one might well fail to notice it, because tourists are always welcome. In order to feel it you need to live there – not necessarily to emigrate and put down roots, just to settle in for a while and have a proper look at what’s going on around you.
Sadly, russophobia in the modern Western world is not only a politically coloured phenomenon. Deep-rooted in the history and traditions of the Western Europe, it is virtually a part of the mass culture.
Different specialists, both Russian and foreign, studying this problem agree that russophobia has a history of about 400 years, dating back to the time of the first visits of the Catholic Church representatives to Russia and reestablishing contacts between just pinned on the political map Moscovite State and the West, contacts that had been terminated by the Mongol invasion and the events happening in the West at the time. In the pre-Mongol period the ties between Ancient Russia and Western Europe were very close.
– Take Sigismund Herberstein and his “Notes on Moskovite”, for example. This Austrian, on the contrary, seemed to admire Moscovite…
– In a very peculiar way. He assigned to it the traits his homeland was deprived of, the traits he wanted the latter to have, so it’s not at all certain that his Notes represented the situation as it was. Leave alone the memoirs of such “travellers” as Edo Neuhaus or Paul Palkowski…
– Yes, but Herberstein had been born and raised in Slovenia, so must have had a good command of Slavic languages… Or take those British who acted on behalf of Queen Elisabeth and merchants. Seems they too had good relationships with the Moscow of the time.
– Yes but you can also take Pope’s envoys and their “writings” that are as far from the truth as can be. The reason is that the first Vatican ambassadors set off to Moscovite with a very definite mission which was to persuade her governors to enter into an alliance with the Vatican.
The point is at the time Moscovite was the only Orthodox state on the whole planet and, believing herself to be the lawful successor of just perished Byzantine, had every ambition to unite all Orthodox peoples – or the nearby ones at least – under her rule.
So on one plate there was Moscovite with her church and secular elites more and more actively promoting the idea of establishing a powerful Orthodox unity, on the other – the Vatican which had by the time seized control of nearly all of Europe and crushed all the pockets of resistance.
Longing to win over the remaining one – that distant and dark-horsish Moscovite, the Vatican preferred, due to its own internal problems, to resort to peaceful tactics, tasking its Austrian envoys to undertake diplomatic negotiations.
Having failed to perform their talk-into mission and having been turned down by both the Orthodox Church authorities and the Tsar and his environment, the Pope’s envoys’ reaction, naturally, was as strong as it was negative.
Russia’s resistance was something inexplicable. Could there be anything more desirable for a country besieged all around with enemies, a country threatened by Ottomans from the South and Islamic advance from the East, than to get herself such an all-mighty patron as the Vatican? Why not? Why not sacrifice some of her Slavic nonsense for the blissful opportunity to enter the European family of brotherly peoples?
The Moscovite leadership, however, were hard to convince. Even at those distant times they had a clear understanding of who’d caused the collapse and the subsequent death of the Byzantine Empire; the understanding which, among other sources, came from the Greeks who had been moving en masse to the territory of Moscovite. Even at those times there was little trust left for the Latin, Catholics, and all their ambassadors evoked nothing but suspicion. This gave birth to one of the branches of russophobia which is based on the idea that all Russians can and should be re-tailored, all Russians must be somehow trapped, dragged out of the Byzantine utopia and lured into the cultural Western environment.
The other branch originates from the Poles who had been rapidly developing at the time. Having won the stiff competition with their major rivals in the area, the German Teutonic Order, and having gathered some strength, they set their hearts on heading the whole Catholic world team. They were of a different opinion as for how to treat Russians. No re-tailoring, no correction, nothing of the kind. Those ignorant barbarians, they were convinced, were to be crushed with fire and sword, were to be forced into obeying the Vatican, Rome and the God’s vicegerent on earth in the face of the Pope.
In other words, the essence of the second branch is that the Russians are unchangeable, unpersuadable and into-anything-undraggable; they are the ones to be only forced or smashed.
Since then these two views have been going hand in hand all around the West. On the one hand, we are sub-humans but still of some potential use, so why not try to deal with us, for a start even – you won’t believe – in a humane, liberal way. On the other, we are sub-humans alright, but only formally so; in fact we are just beasts only worthy to be treated in the whip-and-stick way, totally subdued and incessantly beaten, and if beating doesn’t work – just slaughtered so that to make room for the human ones. Either way, we are just some evil which, on top of everything else, poses a danger to the Eastern outskirts of the Western world.
Moreover, the Poles were the first to start preaching, together with Germans that joined the choir some centuries later, that the Russians are nothing short of the Mongol Horde, mutated and vigorous and accordingly far more dangerous. Now some Ukrainians are actively exploiting this Horde comparison, without giving a thought to where it comes from, translating-paraphrasing-disseminating it thus severely distorting the original source.
Now let us turn from the origins of russophobia to its modern Western form.
The face of the modern Western world is its media in the first place and the information it presents on Russia and Russians. A cursory look at the top French, German, British etc. print press and their satellites in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as at innumerable books that have been coming out all over the West is enough to understand that not only does russophobia exist but it flourishes bringing a stable income to a large number of people.
Weirdly enough, it all looks like a surge of anti-sovietism – now, when it’s been over 20 years since the Soviet Union voluntarily resigned from the world political scene, in fact, self-destructed. There wasn’t any noticeable hatred in the Western heart to us at the time, quite the opposite – remember all those USSR t-shirts, hats with stars, and so on and so forth that all of a sudden became all the rage. The world seemed to be inflamed with some paranoid love of everything Soviet.
It was then, after the collapse of the USSR. 20 years have passed and here we are, witnessing a surge of wild, even rabid anti-sovietism. Outdoing the one reigning in Senator McCarthy’s days, the current in its intensity is comparable to – or even surpasses – the anti-soviet trends promoted by the Nazi Germany.
– So what is anti-sovietism?
– Just a disguised form of russophobia, I think.
— Could you expand on that or give some more recent examples?
– Destruction and violation of monuments, bans on wearing items with Soviet symbols, parallels that are drawn between the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany. Just make a tour around the North of France, Belgium, Holland, and Northern Europe and have a look at their numerous monuments – historical as well as newly erected ones – commemorating the World War II. They all get one and the same message across – the World War II was won a) by Americans in the first place and b) by the Europeans who later built these very monuments on their territories – the French, the Dutch etc.
The other thing that jumps at you seeing these memorials is that they won the war not only against the Germans but against the Soviet Union as well which too fought on the evil side, against good on earth. Have you been to the war museum in Brussels?
– No, I haven’t.
– Oh, it’s just awesome. There is an exposition devoted to the history of WWII with two busts among other things – Stalin’s and Hitler’s just crying out for a plate with “=” sign to be put up between them. The idea floats in the air but it’s almost tangible – there was some universal Evil with two faces, Hitlerism and Communism, and there was some universal Goodness headed by the USA that did crush that Evil in a hardest battle. What is it if not blatant anti-sovietism?
There is even more to it. It’s aimed at programming the population for the next conflict. So it turns out it was not us who saved them from the plague they themselves had created and tried to pass on to us, but the other way round – we were the demons they had to defend their homeland from and later destroy.
In other words, the attitude they have adopted combines the darkest racist postulates Hitler used to propagate and instill in Europeans’ minds in the pre-WWII period, and overt anti-soviet tendencies that appeared in the US after the World War II.
– You say they strived to implement their Western matrix here in Russia. Look, Peter the Great submitted thus giving birth to the glorious Russian Empire and the great world-level Russian culture.
– We are not talking about choosing or not choosing Western ways, we are talking about the attitude. I completely agree with Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevskiy who always held that there are different civilizations which can well develop simultaneously but independently, and denied Russia’s belonging to the Western European civilization.
Russia belongs to her own, Russian civilization. It does exist, it does develop, even though this civilization has seen hard times of being totally rejected and downright condemned with all its components contemptuously referred to as “pseudo-Russian” style.
Those times are over and now, at least from my point of view, the Russian civilization is about to revive. It’s like a tree, that has long since been cut off, all of a sudden sends out shoots, thin and weak but so adamant in their thirst for light, for air, for life and so determinedly gaining strength with every touch of the sun and every raindrop. It’s all because the huge old roots are still alive deep down there; they have been there all this time, impregnable and indestructible.
Russia has every potential to develop into a powerful dully-fledged civilization for it has strong age-old roots, intertwined not with the Western European civilization but with that of Byzantine which in its turn stems from the Greek rather than Roman heritage. This continuity suggests the idea of some independent cultural tradition, some substantive civilization but with many different characteristics woven into it.
No one denies our “europeanness” but it’s not the europeanness that is characteristic of the peoples of Western Europe. We are Europeans, right enough; it’s just that we are different. And it’s foolish to deny this.
– I do see how beneficial the Western injection turned out to be for the Russia of old days, helping us to achieve new heights in the world science and culture. As for the positive influence –assuming there was some – of the Byzantine culture, I’m at a loss here. How did it change us?
– Regrettably, the vast majority of the population is unaware of what the Byzantine culture is and what heritage it has left behind. It is not because there is none but simply due to the fact that for the course of all these centuries the West, with the help of the Catholic Church, have been methodically eradicating any sign or memory of Byzantine.
Thrusting upon the whole world the stereotype that Byzantine was nothing but an epitome of all possible wrongs, vices and intrigues, the myths-tellers seem to have forgotten, so conveniently, that for several centuries when Western Europe was floundering about the swamp of barbarism, Byzantine remained the only beacon of civilization in our hemisphere.
Even at the eve of her collapse, Byzantine standards of culture and education remained at the highest level and the collapse became possible only because Byzantine, at the time fighting against the advancing Islamic East, was treacherously stabbed in the back by crusaders that took advantage of the situation. The Byzantine Empire, feeble and decrepit as it was, did not find enough strength to recover from that blow.
Turning to Danilevskiy once again, I concur that a people, a nation, just like a living organism, goes through several phases – infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age and, finally, death or rebirth. With civilizations it is all the same.
By the moment of her death the Byzantine Empire, having long since passed over the threshold of maturity, turned to an oldster if compared to the Western Europe, a young overstuffed musclehead.
As for Russia that by the time had only emerged as a state, it was a mere infant. The two of them – the oldster and the infant – could not withstand the hefty European fellow, and Byzantine just passed away.
Time moves on, the Western civilization has got on in years and is giving way to the healthy vigour of the youth. It has completed its life cycle and now Russia, in the prime of her life, has all the chances to take the baton.
That is how civilizations coexist, feeding and teaching each other and absorbing the best each has to suggest.
Say, the Roman civilization adopted the best of the Greek’s and later passed it on to the Western European’s. But there is one major difference between us and Western Europe – our attitude to the material values.
We, as successors of the Byzantine Orthodox Christianity, pay little heed to the treasures the physical world seduces us with, whereas in Western Europe materialism and individualism are the only motive powers. Material well-being is the ultimate objective; that is the reason why it was the Western Europe where capitalism chose to reach its peak.
– Forgive me, but it’s strange to hear such words from you, not exactly a monk. I mean, you’ve got smart clothes on and seem to care about how you look and it feels you’re not that indifferent to the world of material things.
— A man who’s active and efficient can yet keep nail-care much in mind, as Pushkin said. One doesn’t contradict the other.
– So, what should an ordinary Russian person, who is little concerned about reading weighty tomes on russophobia, who has no idea of the low regard his countrymen used to be held in by Europeans in XVII-XIX centuries, who can’t clearly explain why Pushkin wrote “To Detractors of Russia”, be prepared for when setting off to Europe?
– It depends on the country you’re going to. Say, in Poland the attitude to Russians is quite moderate. On everyday life level, that is. There have been some moments when people expressed outright hostility to me or my family, though. At the time of that Maidan hysteria in the Ukraine my youngest son – he goes to an ordinary Polish public school – got seriously beaten there.
– Back in 2013?
– Yes, in the autumn. Some elder boys pushed him off his bike and beat him shouting out “you, Russian swine”. Note that such an occurrence is outrageous in a Polish school, such deeds get severely punished.
The child came home and told us about what’d happened, for how can such a thing be kept back. We talked to the teachers, and cutting a long story short, it turned out that the incident had been initiated by a son of a member of the “Civil Platform” political party that was in power at the moment.
– And his surname?
– I might be wrong, but seems it was Martin Kerwinski. By the way, my car – it has the Russian number plate – has been several times poured paint onto. Another example – the attack on the Russian football fans in the centre of Warsaw in the summer of 2012.
The investigation showed that it’d been carefully planned, those 200 hooligans who went at our fans had been brought to the place from all around Poland with the sole purpose to attack Russians. The Polish police never exposed their sponsors, as for the authorities, they chose to hush the scandal up.
They did figure out who those sponsors were, I suppose, and probably even punished them behind the public’s back, but the point is the whole incident, as serious as it was, was nothing close to a spontaneous surge of pent-up ardent hate but a carefully staged political action. There is no “natural” russophobia in Poland. Russophobia there is a part of the national informational policy.
It’s also ideology. A part of the Polish culture. A sort of, if you are a real Pole, make sure you hate Russia, be it communistic or non-communistic or whatever.
– Regardless of whether you’re going to vote for pro-American conservative Kaszynski or pro-European liberal Tuska?
– The Poles are taught from early age that there is one huge problem in the East named “the Russian State”. You must loathe this state, is all. But you can get on marvelously well with Russians, you are free to marry a Russian, to bring up your common children here in Poland, no one will despise or insult you, it’s all perfectly fine. As long as you hate Russia as a country.
Poles do not exactly burn with passion for the Ukrainians either, you know. But there is one major difference – if their russophobia is more or less impersonal, their ukrainophobia is personal and very much so.
– Does it only go for Western Ukrainians or all of them?
– It’s not that they dislike the Ukraine (I don’t believe the Poles have ever had to deal with it a state), the thing is they strongly dislike the Ukrainians from the regions they used to have some contacts with. Russia – well, the Poles have some vague memories that she deprived them of their statehood, separated them, that there was indeed something not very pleasant in the past but what exactly, they struggle to remember.
There were some rebellions, alright. But it was the Poles who started them, wasn’t it? “Used to start”, better to say. Over and over again. A rebellion, then it got stamped out, then normal life began, then another rebellion, then it was again suppressed, and so it all dragged on and on.
Besides, those rebellions sparked off their patriotism and national honour; now they have every reason to swell with pride for their glorious past – it was not that they simply f…d up their state, oh no, it was their nasty neighbours who snatched it and tore it all apart and they, Poles, did put their act together and did make heroic attempts to defend their motherland.
Weirdly, in living memory there are only the rebellions that took place on the territory of the Russian Empire. And all those Polish riots in Austria and Germany – no one seems to think they’re even worth mentioning, but that’s another story.
Be that as it may, the Poles’ hatred towards Russia is filled with respect. As for the Ukrainians, they are not even considered to be a people, a nation, except for those of them who get paid for ranting on the podium.
– My Ukrainian friends, who studied in Poland, told me that the Ukrainians, as well as the Belarusians are all “Russians” there.
– True. Some time ago I gave a number of presentations in Poland for my book “Euromaidan in the name of Stepan Bandera” published by a Polish publishing house. At one of them, held in Wroclaw, among the participants there was a former Armia Krajowa soldier (Armia Krajowa, or Home Army was the dominant Polish resistance movement in WWII German–occupied Poland, – translator’s note), one of those 10-20 junior officers who are still alive; a legendary man, presently the Head of the Union of Army Krajowa combatants in Silesia.
Unlike the Ukraine, where as if by magic the number of UIA veterans (UIA, or Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan army that engaged in a series of guerrilla conflicts during WWII against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and both Underground and Communist Poland, – translator’s note) does nothing but grow from year to year and the veterans get younger and younger, the Polish veterans like our Russian are all for real.
Anyway, this Polish veteran turned out to be a really nice man; he fought against our army, he fought against Nazis, he fought against Bandera people and in the end got captured by the Russian soldiers. Good for him, for had he been caught by those other two…
– Bandera people would have shot him down.
– Rather, would’ve put him on the rack and turned him into a jigsaw. Either way, we released the lieutenant in due time and he moved back home, to Poland, and stayed there for good. In our meeting this vet soldier was very open and it felt he really spoke his mind. He told me he bore no grudge against Russia or her people but he did have reservations about the Ukrainians. It turns out the Polish nationalists have their own theory, according to which the Ukraine is nothing else but a subversive project that had been created by some evil forces with the aim of sowing discord in Europe; there are no “Ukrainians”, there are Russians or Poles, is all. “Ukraine” or whatever it calls itself is just crap that gets underfoot and grates on everyone’s nerves.
– What about Swedes? They rank first on the list of European russophobes. Why so? It’s been 200 years since our last war; they are neutrals and not a NATO member. Why then?
– I think there are two main reasons – a) state stance, b) business. Swedes, generously fed with American dollars, have turned very inquisitive and enthusiastically poke their noses into Western-European affairs.
– The “Eastern Partnership” project, for example?
– Swedes are literally everywhere, in every sphere. Besides, they are very provocative, including at the official level. Just look at the insolent fuel-to-the-fire commentaries Sweden figures of authority regularly come out with.
There is also c) to be taken into account, I guess. Sweden competes with Russia for influence over the Baltic States. When was the last time you went to Estonia?
– In 2013.
– It seems to me that Estonia is not even a province of Finland, but rather of Sweden. Banks are all Swedish, as well as companies, goods in stores etcetera, etcetera. It really catches the eye. Probably such sticking to all Swedish is how Estonians secure themselves (as if someone lays any claims on their untold wealth).
First and foremost, on Estonians’ and others’ part, it’s the yearning desire to become a cog in the European policy making machine. Today only America’s friends are given such a privilege. And America demands that all her coggy friends take up a certain position. That’s where all this russophobia stems from, I think, for it has one distinctive feature – in 90% of the cases it’s implanted by higher political forces.
Only the rest 10% takes root in something intensely personal, some past experiences, or war and after war memories. Speaking of war… You know, if you’re Russian, you’re far more likely to meet with downright rudeness in Western than in Eastern Germany, which would seem strange.
We occupied both but what Eastern Germans feel is offense rather than hatred. They think that we a sort of betrayed or abandoned them, cast them adrift, allowed the unfriendly, albeit speaking the same language, state to swallow them up. Considered by the modern Germany to be second-class, these former GDR citizens are now struggling to be recognized as a national minority.
– Are you serious?
– Yes, there is such a social movement. They feel discriminated. Just one fact to illustrate the point – all these years, starting from 1989, Western Germans have invariably been given the priority in employment.
– Why is russophobia, as a part of political culture, so blatantly obvious in Poland, but much less so in the Czech Republic and Slovakia? Were they not Soviet tanks that crushed the Prague Spring? Even Zeman and Klaus turned into russophiles. Isn’t it weird?
– Firstly, Czechs on the whole are a bit more cultured people; secondly, Zeman and Klaus are rather an exception than a rule. The rest of the political establishment get on their hind legs before Americans, – again, in a very cultured way. There are adequate Czechs, though. Today I read an article by a Czech journalist, in translation, in which he says he was not only appalled but burning with shame when he was reading Czechs’ comments on the Sinai plane crash.
It’s unconceivable, he says, that so many of his countrymen can be such lousy morons as to scoff at this tragedy. Perhaps, only Ukrainians overdid them in the number of heinous comments horrifying with their vileness and cynicism, but this fact is of little comfort. He adds he can’t and doesn’t want to believe this comes out from the bottom of the Czech heart… Obviously, it’s one of the results of mass brainwashing.
– What about Bulgarians and Montenegrins? Where does their negative attitude come from? We used to be such famous buddies, didn’t we?
– As for Montenegrins, they’re fighting for their place under the EU sun, in this fight resembling a mad rat. There is a normal sensible rat that fleets the sinking ship, and there is a mad rat that tries to jump onto it. That’s exactly what Montenegro is up to now. Making that mad jump and cutting off ways for Russian investment, it through its own will causes irreparable harm to its economy and dooms itself to turning into a kind of Crimea in its Ukrainian times, a third-class sea place with no economical support, derelict and castaway.
Besides, don’t let’s forget that these Montenegrin elites are highly qualified in betrayal. It hasn’t been long since they betrayed Serbs, their blood brothers, when the latter were caught in dire straits. Montenegro just dumped them and merrily popped aside, and now this Cain has turned up again, looking forward to somehow squeezing into the room with big boys slicing up the Serbian pie and grabbing a piece. A fat chance they’ll get even a crumb, though.
They are given all sorts of promises, of course. These funny Eastern European elites have always been the same – racing one another seeking to butter up and please their European masters. Lackeys’ lackeys, a kind of.
– And Bulgarians?
– The same story. There were quite a few clashes between us in the past, sure enough, but the Bulgarian people have never been hostile to Russians and never have they betrayed us. Here’s just one example that tells its own tale. Bulgarians, who officially sided with Hitler in the WWII, yet fought against Serbs and Yugoslavs, not against Russians. Croats, Hungarians, Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks and who not stood against us at the Eastern front but never Bulgarians.
– I can’t make it out why Hungarians’ russophobia seems to have vanished, though they are supposed to hate us for 1848 and for 1956. Latvians don’t seem to be that hysterical about Russians any longer either. Most young Latvians nowadays speak the Russian language pretty well. Moreover, in Riga one can be refused a job if they don’t speak Russian.
– Hungarians due to their rich history have a far more developed state instinct than that of Latvians’. Remember, that the Austro-Hungarian Empire used to be a dual monarchy with Hungarians enjoying full autonomy with their own Parliament, army, currency, everything, but for all that they simply adored their Emperor. Friends are okay when they don’t get in the way, as it goes.
In other words, these people have a clear understanding of what state and public interests are, they possess a certain level of political culture and all this enables their common sense to prevail.
Now, in the face of the ongoing threats and provocations befallen Europe, Hungarians seem to have made right conclusions and started taking right steps towards their self-preservation. As for Latvia, it looks like someone whose head has been cut up and flung open, brain taken away and replaced by funny little wires. A signal comes from the outside, it gets caught by the wire and here you are, cute small arms start moving and feet marching in the given direction.
Latvians and instinct for self-preservation are two absolutely incompatible notions. Instead of befriending Russia, getting transit preferences and loads of other goodies, they are just sitting there and frantically punching the bottom of their own boat.
You must have heard the joke told among Rigans – “Attention, attention. The last Latvian leaving the airport, please be so kind as to turn off the light”. It won’t be long till there is nobody but non-citizens left in the country, with all the citizens having happily set off to wash, at best, Western toilets.
Like it happened in Poland. While Poles had been leaving for the West, their places at home had been being slowly but surely taken by emigrants from the East. But then the crisis burnt out, the Poles that had by that moment settled in Portugal, Ireland and England made a beeline for home but oops, found themselves neither needed nor welcome there anymore. Polish unscrupulous businessmen much preferred docile Ukrainians as employees but not their own countrymen who might well, having assimilated their former Western colleagues’ ways, take it in their heads to start fighting for rights.
– Will our present involvement in the war in Syria lead to a burst of russophobia in the Middle East? And one more question – can the latest terrorist attacks in Paris contribute to strengthening ties between Russia and the West in the fight against terrorism? Will it lessen Western negativism towards Russia?
– First and foremost, there’s no such thing as russophobia in the East.
– In the Middle East?
– Anywhere in the East. It’s something little heard of and written about. There are some clashes on the domestic level, for sure, nobody’s perfect, but as for “hatred” as such, there’s none of it.
Some circles, the same Wahhabis for example, dislike us, right enough. However, it’s not because we are Russian, they don’t care that much about national belonging, but rather because we are Christians hence infidels, the infidels who can drop bombs, into the bargain. That is to say, for them we are not just nobodies whose throats they can cut right and left to their hearts’ content, but some unknown quantity that is unpredictable and can well strike back.
Getting back to track, it’s hard to make any predictions but it’s clear as day that the latest events have left a dark mark on Europe. Heavens only know how they’re going to sort it all out and what it’ll end up with. Today’s Europe is not what it used to be. Just a while ago it already was different but in another sense and now it’s got even more modified. The French political landscape is bound to change drastically, I think.
– Do you mean Martin Le Pen will become…
– No, no, it’s the general layout that’s going to change, this very French dichotomy which emerged long ago – the Left and the Right, like in the USA, the democrats and the republicans. For some reason Europeans in general and the French in particular lay themselves out trying to copy this scheme and tailor their political system accordingly, and it’s of little importance what exactly these left and right are, they just must exist, is all.
I was at the general elections in France in 2012 and remember how much I was struggling to work it out why some of the candidates were considered to be leftists and others rightists – going by their programs it could well be the other way round.
I’m not talking about Le Pen which is a different story but about, say, Hollande and Sarkozy and their parties. The former and co. come across as leftists alright; they stand for increase of taxation – first 40%, now 75%; apparently their cherished dream is 99% which we might well soon witness.
And then the latter, that are presumably rightists, barge in: “Hang on, guys, let’s leave the wealthy alone. How about fleecing only the poor, good idea, no?” Nooo, the left say, here’s a better one – let’s rob all who work and pass the loot to those who don’t. They just don’t want to work, you see, there’s nothing to be done, we’re not going to force them, right?
The French society has had these left-wing hypocrites, devouring the country from the inside, up to here, it seems to me. It’s their door the public now lays blame at for what’s been happening.
There’s no doubt that rightists are to blame too, the same Sarkozy who’s falling all over himself trying to snatch the-Defender-of-the-Nation medal out of Le Pen’s hands.
Be that as it way, it was leftists who started trouble when they, seeking more votes, began granting citizenship to migrant families brought in large numbers by French capitalists from Northern Africa.
That was it, the mess got off the mark. First citizenship, then other rights, then more rights and problems started growing like a snowball which it was beyond leftists’ power to stop. That’s just how the French system works. As a result, the functioning minority found themselves attending upon the idle, aggressive and unwilling to assimilate majority.
France is in a deadlock. It’s evident it will have to go to God knows what lengths in order to get out of it.
hatred is a manifestation of envy
all the little, very tiny ones must have it enbedded in their DNA memory that they are little..while some further out east have been and are great..
Sadly, russophobia in the modern Western world is not only a politically coloured phenomenon. Deep-rooted in the history and traditions of the Western Europe, it is virtually a part of the mass culture.
Nonsense.
Russophobia is an aspect of elite class consciouness, downloaded via mass culture onto uncritical minds by the Zionist media. The uptake on Russophobia, amongst common people, who are too overwhelmed to care, is next to zero, excepting supporters of the gay lobby and those who are unalterably controlled by the vast apparatus of thought control.
Putin would win in a landslide against almost any Western leader if pitted in an election. Yesterday I saw someone wearing a Soviet themed baseball cap and had a conversation with another person who thinks that Russia’s efforts in the MER are heroic.
Another problem concerns the belief Western actions and opinions are the outcome of a Democratic process.
They are not. Do not believe the false rhetoric of Western propaganda suggesting we all move together in consensus. The West is a confused mess and our opinions are completely irrelevant to those who rule.
Do not blame ‘Westerners’ for the actions of their criminal elite. Despite the overwheling use of control and suppression technologies against us, including drugs, media, bio chemical and energy weapons, those who have awakened ALL believe Russia is their greatest hope.
This story, I believe, is the perfect example of how unconscious Russian Fifth columnists conspire with their AngloZionist ‘heroes’ to undermine the cause of truth and humanity.
@C I eh: I agree with your view. What makes me sad is the image the author Alena Scarecrow has of “the west” in general and the (former) negative power of the Pope in particular. As a Roman Catholic, with great sympathy for Russia and Putin, I read a lot of orthodox texts and find beside deep and beautiful thoughts the same hatred against the west (papists). The Saker is a good example for this. As always, when hatred reigns: It is an image which serves as object of the hatred. But rarely the image is a nonbiased representation of the reality. – Speaking of hatred, the beam in the speakers own eye should be considered as well.
Dear Anonymous,
Being the one (even if partially) your comment is addressed to, I feel I can’t but reply. In the first place, please let me disagree with you on the “hatred” part. I can’t speak for the Orthodox texts you referred to in your post, but the article in question is filled with little – if any – of it, at least from my perspective. It is quite expressive, outspoken, edgy, true, but passing it through myself when translating it, I believe what the interviewee feels towards the West is bitter disillusionment and even something close to chagrin, flavoured – probably for colouresness of speech – with condescension, sarcastic defiance and haughty irony. Not that virtuous a mixture, perhaps, but not “hatred”…
I confess I agree the article is at times highly subjective and riddles with broad generalizations, its content being debatable and by no means representative, but is there universal truth? What is truth if not those few tiny grains you grip a fistful of when passing away, back to the light you came from? The grains it has taken you, if your have been fortunate and persistent enough, your whole life to obtain by carefully sieving through every single pile of earthly sand dumped onto your head? This article has given us another pile, some – hopefully – food for thought and that is great in itself, is it not?
As for the image I personally have of the “West”… You know, I was a primary school girl when Perestroika happened, and from those very times till and all through my adolescence every time at hearing anything connected with “abroad” I used to feel – only now, looking back, I realize it – some weird uneasiness inside of me, some vague fear of being hurt or ill-treated. I can’t say for sure what it had been caused by, probably, by some propaganda somehow sneaked into the child’s brain or some talks overheard or whatever. It was too a sort of a phobia, not only mine, but our common phobia, varying in intensity from person to person, – yep, a broad generalization on my part, but it’s my piece of writing, after all, so I can do whatever I please :)
It was quite a long time ago… Now, having been to “Western” places and having had contacts with people from both Europe and the US, I’m getting more and more encouraged, even inspired, with every such visit or meeting. All the foreign – at least the lion’s share of – people I happen upon turn out to be highly adequate, sensible, cultured and just “absolutely normal”. And, well, I like them very much – as simple as this. They have no prejudice or preconceived notions either about my country or her people. They don’t create the impression of the ones who’ve been politically brainwashed or something. They have not the slightest sign of being negatively disposed, either overtly or implicitly, to Russia or, for that matter, to me, her representative. Can it be just through their being tactful and delicate? Or just out of the fear to speak their mind when on the strangers’ territory, – I’m talking here about my colleagues who come to work here in Russia, – “when in Rome do as the Romans do”?
I doubt that. Rather, feels like normal people are perfectly fine with “live and let live” motto, taking care of their everyday lives, bringing up kids, thankful for every new day that dawns, striving for good health and good home, and caring as little as possible, if at all, about judging/labeling/envying/hating others. Are we, ordinary Russians, any different in this respect? No, not at all, nationality or passport data have nothing to do with it.
Silly of me, but this makes me happy, makes me strongly believe that sensibility and common sense will outweigh blind arrogance and stupidity. John Lennon’s “brotherhood of men” immediately asks itself… With its “no hell below us”, “nothing to kill or die for”, “no greed or hunger”. We can achieve it all if we try, can’t we? We have so much in name of what to try – out planet, our children, our freedom, our self-identity. For the very concept of what we are supposed to be – humans.
And yes, “the World will be as one”, of that I’m dead sure.
Alena , the song you quote is Imagine. Please read the lyrics.
Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharin’ all the world
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
Is this not the Marxist utopian dream in a nutshell?
It may surprise you to know that the Beatles, like any other pop music group you’ve ever heard of, are a manufactured product.
They are an invention of the Tavistock Institute, no different from the Monkeys or Rolling Stones. Beatlemania was a fraud perpetrated on the 60’s generation. The purpose was to engineer mass culture in a specific direction favoured by the submerged oligarchical elite.
Don’t you just love the dialectic they created
between good Beatles and bad Stones? These are your supposed ‘choices’ explaining why the boomer generation is such a collective mess. Both good and bad eventually grew their hair and turned to the escapism of drug culture. What could be better for the criminal elite?
Alena, as an outsider to Western culture, you
are already at a severe disadvantage interpreting what you see, although you have advantages too, grounded in your Russianess.
Not only you but 90% of Westerners do not understand that everything they think or believe has been prefabricated. Before you internalize anything you must consider the story of how we got to where we are.
Marxism was an invention of London bankers
and Prussian elites searching for a way to capture and undermine the libertarian socialists of the working and agrarian classes. It was weaponized under Bolshevism and sent on a mission to destroy Russia.
Marxism speaks with perfect clarity about the nature of capitalism but look what their solutions accomplished.
Western elites have succeeded marvelously with their complex strategems right up to the present day, now using climate change as an excuse to impose further adjustments in preparation for their nightmare utopia.
Alena, as a person who has already experienced the social destruction wrought by Zionist elites, I beg you — take back your Imagination. Don’t let them control your dreams.
Tavistockers may know how to cunningly utilize Art, sure as Hell they don’t know how to create it.
Interestingly, much of the conspiracy gospel, memes and mantras, including a multitude of internet outlets where the typical – end is nigh and we are all going to die – gospel is being fed to the public are a product of Tavistock institute et al.
If John Lennon had lived through the nineties and beyond before he wrote his Imagine song he surely would have phrased his words more carefully as not to insult any 21st century conspiracy devotees and pundits.
I am a Christian and I see catholics as my friends, the more so since they believe in good works. The problem I have is with the Princes in the Vatican. this is a big problem we cannot solve on the Sakers site, but we can at least learn to see the difference between the people and its eite.
Bravo. What is mass culture?
It’s idiocy camouflaged as culture designed by academics and spooks working for the elites to dis-empower and ridicule the masses.
Being a Swede I have my personal interpretation that we were at the crossroads up to and a short while after WW2 and could’ve swayed either eastward (not into USSR proper, but kept our own sovereign socialist model) or westward.
However after a long silent coup the political and cultural system was duped into a firm pro-USA position. CIA (with associates) worked really hard to gain key cultural personalities (often without the subjects even knowing) (one example to look up would be Congress for Cultural Freedom) as well as silently forming the political landscape.
Of course the final trophy was the open in broad daylight assasination of PM Olof Palme (the transformation was by far already complete by then of course) but afterwards there really wasn’t any strength left in the population.
I am personally inclined to think that the most important factors were the great (not total yet, back then) media grip by a certain foreign culture as well as the entrenched mindset that the state were always on our side and thus incorruptible (Sweden used to have a exceptionally healthy political climate with a vivid political life in all parts of society up to say the 1940s at least)
Today, I see very little hope. Personally I can’t really see anything that would reverse the transformation from a sovereign nation into a colony. Perhaps something could develop from the nationalists, but alas I think their ideology is too far from the soul of the population. The change would need to come from the leftist, but they too are busy with managing the ever shrinking pool of topics in our control by fighting windmills (controlling gender,environmental,etc issues at home, whilst importing medieval ideals regarding the same topics from the US)
“Swede” Agree. When Palme was murdered the hope fo Sweden being really independant dissappeared. The Left parties are rather non significant. What do you think of the far right? What is their agenda (concerning NATO, Russia?) Some ideas?
I’m not sure that there are a consensus really. If you by far right means Sweden Democrats, SD (the only independent right party that have seats in parliament) they gather voters with different background and opinion regarding foreign policy, due to their main parole being to stem immigration. However the party line is no to NATO, and I’ve at least heard spokespersons talk about Russia positively (almost a crime by Swedish media).
Ironically the populace at large is (still) negative to NATO, not that we really have any say as Sweden is very much active in NATO albeit not being part of NATO formally. Regarding Russia we have a long (hundreds of years) tradition of being at war with or very scared of being in war again with Russia.
It would be better if the term Russophobia is abandoned. It retains the vagueness of all the bogus other “phobias” (homophobia, xenophobia). It conveys the idea that it is merely a “severe mental illness”, or just an “irrational fear” of the “Other” and affects only a minority.
It is actually a “rational” hatred of Russia and Russians by the “West” for obvious reasons. Indeed, Orthodoxy is the first motivator of that hate, Orthodoxy is the painful reminder of West’s betrayal of Christianity. It is a reminder that the Westerners mission of destruction of the Orthodox civilization of Byzance remained an unfinished business and all their efforts to finish it turned to naught because of the resistance of Russia, which was supposed to vanish like smoke blown away by the invincible whirlwind of western scientific, technological, social, political “progress”. It shakes their confidence in their own “superiority” (which stems from their belief that the betrayal of Christianity is a sign of spiritual “evolution”).
And we will not omit from the mix the really irrational hatred of the Jews for Orthodox Russia (for Christianity in general).
There may be some people in the Vatican who care about all this Catholicism vs. Byzantines, Catholicism vs. Orthodox stuff. But I doubt anyone much else in Western Europe (let alone North America, particularly the United States of Amnesia) does. This may be a big deal to the Orthodox, so it may seem a sort of betrayal that the people who wounded you back in the day have forgotten about the whole thing, but they have.
Most Europeans don’t even care about Catholicism any more. In traditionally ultra-Catholic Spain you see old ladies still stubbornly going to church, but the youth don’t give a damn. Half of Europe isn’t even Catholic. England is plenty anti-Russia but they’ve been anti-Catholic for centuries; it has mostly to do with anti-Soviet feeling, somewhat to do with following the US in Russia-hating today, and some roots going back as far as the Great Game in Victorian times, but I doubt any further than that. None of it has anything to do with Orthodoxy. There are so many strains of Christianity in Europe, from Presbyterians to Calvinists to Dutch Reform to Anglicans to whatever the heck else, and nowadays so many non-Christians, particularly Muslims, that Orthodoxy doesn’t stand out from a European point of view–to most, it’s just another Christian sect, which makes it “one of us” compared to Muslim immigrants or Hindus or whatever.
These analyses talking about ancient rivalries between Catholicism and Orthodoxy seem to imagine a kind of racial memory or something that just doesn’t exist.
It’s not about any “racial memory” or stuff like that. It is about a constant anti-Russian war propaganda. The dominant themes can change. The enemy “other” was Orthodoxy, then Tsarism, then the backwardnes of Russia, then Communism, then anti-Semitism, then Communism, then anti-Semitism again, then authoritarianism, then Mafyia, corruption, censorship… Now the pundits, directors of propaganda, have always demonstrated that Communism was successful only in Orthodox countries. Most Europeans don’t even care about Catholicism any more, but they demonstrate in support of “Pussy Riot” and against, well, the Church who supports Putin as it always did support the Tsars and now “the holy war in Syria”. And even if the Europeans care only about their asses, for the Ukrainians Catholicism is a strong motivator in their fight against the tyranny of the Orthodox Moscali, quite openly, fully backed by the Vatican. Protestants are anti-Russian too. And the Jews.
Purple Library Guy…I think you must be American…who don’t ‘get it’, but the Catholic Vatican Corporation is very much alive and well and living in Paris.
Even Zionism is Catholic.
And it is an old rivaliry…but the Jesuits..who exist but if you’re obviously not interested in educating yourself on them, then you won’t know a thing about them….they own the Bank of America though…
And the pope is a Jesuit.
And their old ancient vows are very much still cherished and adhered to…its all about the ‘old world’ wealth…that is….and power….
Meanwhile in AZ occupiued France…
French conservatives top regional vote, but Socialists limit losses
http://www.france24.com/en/20151213-liveblog-france-elections-far-right-national-front-lepen
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party, Les Républicains, won seven of mainland France’s 13 regions, including the key battleground of Ile-de-France, which includes Paris.
President François Hollande’s Socialist Party held on to five regions. France’s ruling party had withdrawn candidates in two regions and urged voters to rally behind conservative contenders in order to block the National Front.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right party failed to win a single region despite coming first in six of them in last week’s first round.
Turnout was up by almost 10 percent compared to the first round. It rose sharply in areas where Le Pen’s party was strongest, suggesting many voters cast ballots to prevent the far right from winning.
Le Pen accused establishment parties of ganging up to keep her out of power, adding that nothing could stop the National Front’s “inexorable rise”.
I’m not surprised. As I posted a few days ago ,the French 2 rounds of voting system is what destroys democracy there. It allows the elites to keep control in France. With the Hollande Socialists (the supposed opponents of Sarkozy’s right-wing Republicans) telling their members to vote for Sarkozy’s party. That sealed the fate of the FN,and makes a mockery of the idea of “competing” parties in France. It will always be the same as long as that system is allowed to exist.
This reads as a gross over-extension of a partial, historically true fact.
People in general have little or no awareness of the power machinations of elites – whether by the historic Vatican of Rome, of Polish, Lithuanian ‘nobility’ or Teutonic disdain for anything, well, not Teutonic. Slavs were far from uniquely reviled.
The current manifestation is entirely orchestrated by vested interests in media, politics, and particular lobbies ( currently LGBT being the noisiest, and who are really a eugenics-by-stealth operation. They are the front for the fundamental altering of the nuclear family, and Russia’s assertion of Christian family values gets in the way of global control.)
Meanwhile the vast majority of Western Europeans – including the British – have no such ‘phobia.’
Mr K’s impressions appear to be gleaned from a very narrow spectrum of self-styled elites, . all of whom have agendas Russia doesn’t seem to support. Maybe he should try ‘slumming’ it, instead of hanging out with stink tank types and politicos?
When was the last time he overheard a conversation about Russia between two ordinary European citizens on public transport
for example?
Russia’s ‘all the way from Vladisvostok to Lisbon’ grand Eurasian ‘vision’ is what’s really behind the apparently ‘irrational’ hatred promulgated by the Anglophone media.
A certain maritime nation would no longer be .in control of the globe’s highways.
And that would be the end of hegemony, a thousand-plus NATO bases or no.
Ps In my old, decidedly Catholic-owned and run university, ‘Crime and Punishment ‘ (Doetstoyvsky) was the virtual ‘bible’ for the liberal arts. You could skip Shakespeare, but not Fyodr. Russian literature and language theory (Vygotsky) was taken very seriously indeed, and considered a vital ‘corrective’ to the dominant AngloUS curriculum.
And most of us preferred the Russians anyway.
This didn’t impress me. There seems to be little understanding in this interview of what and who drive politics or propaganda, or what their objectives or methods are. Anyone who thinks that Western European anti-Russian propaganda and sentiment have had little to do with Communism, that anti-Sovietism is “just a disguised form of Russophobia”, is playing the fool.
And anyone who thinks France’s problems have to do with immigrants from North Africa having too many rights has basically gotten their reasoning wired backwards. If you’re willing to look with your eyes, it takes only a very short time in France before you notice that all the people working the hardest doing the crap labour which the French aren’t interested in doing, are black. Many darker Muslims are, no doubt, also unemployed–but the main reason for high unemployment in France, like much of the modern world, is that wealthy employers like high unemployment. They like high unemployment so much they’ll take crappy economic growth to get it. Lots of unemployed people, ideally desperate, make it harder for the people with jobs to demand decent wages or working conditions, because there are readily available replacements who would settle for less.
So, high unemployment leads to low wages.
And low wages = high profits for owners.
That is the real point of the attack on the welfare state–people with adequate safety nets aren’t desperate enough, people who know they’d be OK if they were laid off aren’t fearful enough. The whole European economic implosion, and the deep unwillingness of European elites to do a damned thing about it when there are plenty of obvious well known and effective methods for returning to growth, may have been triggered by financial instability, but the broader malaise is for cutting European wages, and they’ve refused to fix it because all the ways that work involve low unemployment and better wages. Modern western capitalist elites do not want what we traditionally consider a “good economy”; it’s bad for their profits.
So true. A roaring economy increases wages, which increases demand for labor, which, in turn, increases the bargaining power of workers–whether organized or not. It’s all a function of supply and demand.
My view is that ‘russophobia’ in the West has two elements:
(a) The UK/Europe media demonizes continuously in line with CIA guidelines.
(b) The average European lost assurance on its own values and grasps missing validation by opposing an imaginary virtual evil-incarnate, making the average European a virtual crusader to fight for what is left/allowed as ‘good’ and ‘fair’in this world.
Kind of ‘other-phobia’ which can show as ‘russophobia’, ‘muslimphobia’, etc.
On this basis, the demonizing media has fertile ground, pointing at an evil-incarnate sometimes Russia, sometimes another ‘darker’ foreigner or aliens if they eventually happen to show up.
The author mention several times the Greek influence over the Russian culture and church, but it should be mentioned that the alphabet and the church language were taken from Bulgaria. Old Slavonic is still used in church and that comes from Bulgaria.
I say Macedonia, you say Bulgaria…tomato/tomayto..etc.
When in fact St Cyril and Methodius were on a mission in Moravia (present day Czech/Slovak republic) and the azbuka started spreading from there…but who the f cares?! Right?!
K, there was no Macedonia at the time you are probably aware of that fact. Also Cyril and Methoi went to Moravia but were never given the support and the funding so they came to Bulgaria where tsar Simeon provided all they requested for and set them up in Ohrid.
Yes, although there was no Czechoslovakia either, nor was there Russia (such as we know of it today), Slovenia, Belarus (though I’m sure you’d have no beef with any of that)…or Uzbekistan for that matter – But thanks for proving my point that it’s pretty easy to play ‘divide et impera’ with the Slavic nations.
On another note – you must be a proud member of the EU?
All the Bulgarians I meet seem very dismissive of Macedonia because we’re neither in EU nor NATO which seem to be ‘the proof’ of a civilization being at its peak nowadays…
Thanks for replying btw
literacy comes from sumeria, present day iraq. for all indoeuropean peoples’ languages, even sanskrit is younger in comparison..
different etymology applies in cases of chinese, japanese etc
The very first mission of St. Cyril and Methodius was to Khazaria (858-860). The center of their mission was Kherson in Crimea, where they found the relics of St. Clement, the fourth Pope of Rome, exiled and dead there in 98 AD. The mission was unsuccessful, the Khazars were already Judaized. Legends say that it was nevertheless successful. So, what really happened?
In 860 Constantinople was attacked by the Rus princes Askold and Dir. The attack was repelled by the miraculous intervention of the Mother of God, the Patriarch Photios dipping in the waters of the Bosphorus the Veil of the Mother of God. A terrible storm broke out and scattered the Rus boats. Awestruck the Rus’ decided to be baptized. It was the first baptism of the Rus, but they relapsed into paganism until a century later and very likely under the influence of the Khazars. From Khazaria Cyril and Methodius went to Bulgaria and then to Moravia. It was actually a vast missionary program initiated by the Patriarch Photios to counter the Judaism in Russia and the inroads of Rome in Bulgaria and Moravia.
Oh, one just needs to read Dostoevsky’s “The Gambler” (Игрок) where he impeccably describes the Europeans’ attitude towards Russians to understand this ‘Russophobia’ (and the Russians willingness to “take it”). I’ve re-read it only yesterday, and it really added to my depression…
The thing that bothers me the most is that pan-Slavic (especially Orthodox Slavic) feeling of subservience and all that “aspiring to be “a true European™” crap, when all ‘they’ really want is for us to give up our faith and our Азбука….which is what it all boils down to.
That’s the bottom line really, and I’m more convinced of it with every passing day.
No problems with the Poles mind you (who’s “quasi-Europeaness” Dostoevsky also beautifully describes in the said book by the way), nor the Czechs or the Slovenes – they are pretty much ‘in da club’ – it’s us Russians/Serbs/Bulgarians/Ukrainians/Montenegrin/Macedonians that “proper Europeans™” have a problem with…and they (much aided by us, one may add) play their divide et impera game with us pretty effin’ well. Have done so for centuries, and we’re pretty stupid to see through it and unite, so why on earth SHOULD they give it up?! It’s us giving our own heads to them on a platter, our fault – nothing to blame ‘them’ about.
So, keep truckin’…and..yeah don’t look at Ukraine/Montenegro/Bulgaria please…
Read the “Karamazovs”, read the “Demons”, read “A Writer’s Diary”, for a complete understanding of Europeans attitude towards Russia. Do not forget that Dostoevski had “a Jewish Problem”, he was a “Jew hater” (“The Yid and his bank are now ruling over everything: over Europe, education, civilization, socialism, especially socialism, for he will use it to uproot Christianity and destroy its civilization. And when only anarchy remains, the Yid will be in command of everything”; “Now, what if somehow, for some reason, our rural commune should disintegrate, that commune which is protecting our poor native peasant against so many ills; what if, straightaway, the Jew and his whole kehillah should fall upon that liberated peasant — so inexperienced, so incapable of resisting temptation, and who up to this time has been guarded precisely by the commune? Why, of course, instantly this would be his end; his entire property, his whole strength, the very next day would come under the power of the Jew, and there would ensue such an era as can be compared not only with the era of serfdom but even with that of the Tartar yoke.”).
Yep, read all of ’em, and am aware of his ‘prophetic’ lamentations.
sorry, didn’t read past the title when I made my comment…but will read the stuff…perhaps
“Russophobia as a part of the Western mass culture”
Framing and looking through a microscope restrict vision.
Perhaps wider vision could be facilitated by contextualising within notions predicated upon the “other” and their uses within “exceptionalist” societies, thereby facilitating lateral challenge.
As a Russian who lives in a European country i can attest to this article being nonsense. Locals are afraid of big numbers of immigrants above everything else, no matter where you go in Europe. Russian emigration is too low for people to seriously start fearing Russians. All the western propaganda machine has caused at the local level is increased interest and even respect for the powerful country of Russia. While locals always have wrong impressions about the Russian society, i have never seen any try to associate any of that to the individual. People are afraid of thieves, rapists, and assorted criminals, which is something always (rightfully) associated with mass immigration. They don’t fear the odd “Russian Spy”.
I have only ever seen “Russophobia” from Americans.
Growing up in America, I can say that my whole life I have witnessed the entire range of attitudes, from a good proportion of respect especially regarding cultural perfection (literature, music,etc; and don’t forget millions of little girls have danced in the Nutcracker in their community dance schools) to the opposite extreme of contempt.
I would think that there is no “hatred” or “fear” of Russia as such in America. What is much more common is an emotion of superiority, along with some surprise that such unworthy people as the Russians would be claiming equality of achievement with such uniquely favored people as the Americans. So there couldn’t possibly be fear because “we’ll beat them if they try anything!”
For the most blatant example of Russocontempt I have come across, it always struck me as very odd that (on multiple occasions) when I would mention that the Russians lost 20,000,000 people in World War II (or recent estimates as high as 29,000,000), someone would say (paraphrased) “But the United States gave Russia 11 billion dollars in the Lend-Lease program, and the USA won the war because we were so generous and resourceful!”) So 1 Russian = $550 evidently.
The example always to this very day given as a bad place to be when you want to scare a child is “Who wants to live in Russia?”.
I fear more that this will end badly from the attitude of hubris. As one who has visited Russia multiple times, I can only say that I wish more Americans would get out and see the real world out there! (and quit any contact with all forms of mass media, or as I call it, “propaganda-entertainment businesses masquerading as news and information”).
As an Anglo convert to the Orthodox faith since 1987 I have learned much from my Russian and Carpatho-Rusyn and Ukranian friends as well as a few Greeks and Arabic Christians! I’m sad to say that the USA is largely a ‘mongrel’ culture without deep roots. After all we have less than 500 years on this continent. This is surely reflected in our current political morass! I’d like to say more, but you guys resonate with me.
I think this is spot on but at the same time it’s important to point out that the use of the name Byzantium for what was the Eastern Roman Empire is a western invention to obscure and deny Constantinople as the second capitol of the Roman Empire. The people of the eastern Empire always considered themselves along with the people of Dacia or modern day Romania as Romans not Greeks.
Calling the Eastern Empire Byzantium is just another way to belittle that Empire and the Orthodox Church and deny it’s place as the the true successor to Rome and by extension to Moscow and Russia’s claim as the natural successor to Rome.
Yes I know some in Romania also believe they have a claim but that’s another story.
You are perfectly right. Especially in regards to Romanians and Romania. The term Byzantine was invented by the German Protestant humanist Hieronymus Wolf on the occasion of the publication of his “Corpus Historiae Byzantinae”. “Byzance” was always “Basileia ton Romaion”, the “Empire of the Romans” without qualification. The Occidentals, more precisely since the usurpation of Charlemagne, called it “Imperium Graecorum”.
But, albeit erroneous, the term Byzance, has been adopted by the erudite historians and generalized across the board. It is true that it maintain the confusion, which was the goal. Byzance, the Eastern Roman Empire, was not the “successor” of the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire itself. The Balkanic Orthodox states and Russia, that “Byzance after Byzance” (in the terms of the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga), were part of the Roman Empire, even when they appeared separate. They all formed the “Byzantine Commonwealth” (in the terms of Dimitry Obolenski). Upon the Baptism of Prince Vladimir he was given in marriage Anna Porphyrogenita, the sister of the Roman emperor Basil II (thus becoming a member of the Imperial family) and was bestowed the title of stolnik (ho epi tes trapezes), title that Russian princes maintained all along. The “King of Ros” was a vassal of the Empire. Later on, he was conferred by the Emperor the title of Great Prince as were in time all the rulers of the Balkan states.
The idea of the “Third Rome” appeared first in Bulgaria with the precise meaning that now they were the defenders of the Church. Romanian Princes were, even under the Ottoman rule, anointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople with the ritual used for the coronation of the “Byzantine” Emperors and. That points to the role of a revival of “Dacia” in the grand plans of Catherine the Great and its sabotage by the Western Powers.
As a Dutch born person from Amsterdam I know that in Holland almost everybody is against Russia, Putin and the Russian people. It has been always like this as far as I can remember. With a smile to visitors and tourists, the Dutch people despise and look down very much on Russians. Most Dutch know about Peter the Great who came to learn shipbuilding, navy strategy and tabacco smoking, but that is mainly regarded from a superior level. Very arrogant as westerners are. It is not a nice amicable historical story, no it gives the Dutch a superior feeling. A Russian zcar came to learn from us. And we were so generous to allow him. I worked a lot with Russians and I never understood the point of view my fellow Dutchmen. But it is impossible to discuss the subject. Russians are evil. Putin is a creep. Full stop. That is the reality. No discussion possible. It is a shame but I cannot explain it differently.
Continuing brain-washing from 1945 till now.
Cold War rhetoric in every paper, every school, on tv, for 70 years now.
US-‘culture’ on tv.
Having been born and mostly raised in Amsterdam I can agree with your apraisal of the Dutch opinion towards Russia to a large degree.
But your projection of Dutch opinion and arrogance onto all western European peoples is very far off the mark.
First, consider the fact that the Netherlands has been a ‘subsidiary’ of the British empire ever since Willem III ‘conquered’ the British Isles at the request of the British parliament, what actually happened was a merger of the British and Dutch royalty resulting in the weaker of the two nations (the Netherlands) turning into an unofficial province and secondary capitol of the empire.
The Dutch posess a mix of German and British culture, just as their language is a mix between the two, while the people themselves are ethnically German their subservience to empire politics has colored their mentality.
Second, ever since the expulsion of the Spanish Jewry by queen Isabella the Netherlands has practically been ‘Israel on the Northsea’, it would actually be more precise to call Israel ‘the Netherlands on the Mediteranean’.
Jewish influence has been strongest there in all of Europe, from there the jewish takeover of Britain took place (during and after the above mentioned invasion by Willem III) and most other jewish machinations emanated mostly from the Netherlands, including such catastrophies as the bolshevik/communist takeover of Russia/China for instance, mostly dutch jews involved in that, read up on it Dutch historians even boast of that diabolical episode.
Now that Russia is turning back into an orthodox nationalist state the jews are infuriated.
Third, most common Dutch people don’t like to concern themselves with politics much, and that is where the gay agenda is the main cause for common Dutch peoples hatred of Russia as the Dutch have long prided themselves in being the most tolerant people in the universe while actually being the diametric opposite. The Russian move toward tradition and familly values is opposed to the gay hedonistic agenda of free and frequent sex, the Dutch in their ultra liberal jewish induced mindset can’t stand another people refusing to follow in their perverted example.
The Netherlands is the deepest circle of hell, for six hundred years most of the misery and bloodshed in and around Europe has been caused by the vile emanations spewing forth from it.
But make no mistake, the rest of western Europe is not the Netherlands and to a large extent does not share Dutch mental issues.
There is really no such thing as ‘Russophobia’ in the Netherlands.
As evidenced by some of the sentiments expressed above, the average misinformed ‘socially engineered’ Dutch people care only very little about their own unique culture. They don’t particularly care much about the cultures of other peoples either as long as no one competes for jobs, social housing, benefits or taxpayers money.
Anti Russian mass-media hysteria in the aftermath of the downing of the MH17 has influenced Dutch ‘popular opinion’. Yet, every single Dutch person has meanwhile figured out that no solid evidence has been presented that would justify to blame Putin/Russia. Dutch people generally distrust the MH17 reporting and investigation. Dutch media are currently ignoring the MH17 case and have toned down dramatically their propagandistic assault on Russia.
I think a dislike of Russia and Russians and a feeling that they are somehow inferior to the English, Americans, and some Europeans is a deeply entrenched mass attitude, but it has nothing to do with religion. Societal hierarchies arise and are based on relations of power: the person with the bigger gun and deeper pockets has always ranked higher. The global social-political-economic societal order, based on economic and military accomplishments, has a clearly defined hierarchy. At the top are the English and the Americans (the WASP Americans that is): they “won” that position by conquering and ruling the world. Next in rank are those Europeans who have had advanced economies and militaries but who are now weaker than the Anglo-Americans and cheerfully accept that fact. Then come the Japanese, and then the sundry East Europeans. If Russia and Russians would cheerfully stand in line with the East Europeans and accept their place, Russia’s relations with the west would become harmonious. Russian relations were said to be doing fine under Yelstsin; the western mass media as well its think-tanks and learned professors were developing quite a love for Russia those days. Then came along the uppity Putin who refused to be seated at the servants’ table. The western mindset reacted to that exactly how it had reacted to uppity negroes: with hatred, fear, violence. The west’s relations with Russia have for a long time been based on a simple struggle for power and domination. When Russia is weak, the west sees the beauty of Russian literature, music, and what have you. But when Russia appears to be strengthening, the west sees there all sorts of dangers, problems, evil.
Read the history of colonialism and the colonial peoples’ struggle for freedom and how it was scorned and hated by the west and its citizens. Read about the African-Americans’ struggle and you will again find the same fear and hatred on part of the white west. Think why, why indeed, for a period the French were scorned by having their French fries renamed freedom fries, and then think why perceptions of the French changed when they returned to their place back in the line.
Religion has nothing to do with these things. These are games of power, social relations of power on the global arena, and the behaviour and mass perceptions arise therefrom.
Sad for a countrywoman of us portuguese. She is a doctor, she is big, she is black and she is lovevable by any patient, female or male coleague. Sad for her, sad for russians and sad for my russophylia. Everybody went away from her in the Moscow subway. This goes for you Saker, as a curiosity, in Portugal russian “russo” is another word for blond “louro”. Please anyone tell me that in Moskow they are going paranoid nuts with ebola.
BR, José
to @C I eh? on December 14, 2015 · at 12:45 am UTC
Thank you so much to make it clear for many of the readers for this blog. Russophobia is nothing just a weakness of the bully, because they feel that by hatred and envy manipulations can own the world. How low and primitive is that
this is so beautiful
“Those times are over and now, at least from my point of view, the Russian civilization is about to revive. It’s like a tree, that has long since been cut off, all of a sudden sends out shoots, thin and weak but so adamant in their thirst for light, for air, for life and so determinedly gaining strength with every touch of the sun and every raindrop. It’s all because the huge old roots are still alive deep down there; they have been there all this time, impregnable and indestructible.”
I’m so happy about this…this is our future I think. I want it to be my future..even if its in my next life.
Hi Alena, I agree with this article….I’m just reading it now…its a long one, thank you so much for the translation….yes, the RC is such a disgusting corporation and this article lies it out for all to see.
this quote ::
“Say, the Roman civilization adopted the best of the Greek’s and later passed it on to the Western European’s. But there is one major difference between us and Western Europe – our attitude to the material values.”
The Romans were barbarians compared to the Greeks..and the Greeks became their slaves…and then they were turned out altogether….and went to Baghdad…
Anyway, its an interesting piece of writing and I sent it to my friends, a couple of them are in Europe.
Every 3rd European is Slav.
The western and southern Slavs were somewhat conquered in various degrees at first using religion and later encouraging dialects which turned into languages, and finally using nationalism and the combination of all three.
Old Glagolithic Script (Old Church Slavonic) is proof that Slavs in Europe spoke one tongue with Velika Morava Empire being a notable example.
The article is not quite accurate about the Czechs. Many Czech are pro Putin, a sizable minority in spite of the non-stop Anglo-Zio propaganda like Televize Nova (owned by Richard Lauder) TV Network. Also fought on the Soviet Side with the Czechoslovak Brigades. It was the Slovaks who had their own SS Unit fighting in the Eastern Front and Slovakia was at first a Nazi Puppet State like Croatia, with Tiso as their leader.
The Czech Partizany who killed Reinhard Heydrich were given refuge in an Orthodox Church In Prague which was flooded by The Nazi’s after hours of firefights.
Some sane Czech sites: ac24.cz, zvedavec.org
Forgot to mention that Jaromir Jagr, famous Hockey Player and most popular person in Czech Republic is a Russian Orthodox Christian Convert.
Pan-Slavism and pro-Russian Views in Slavic Europe (minus Poland and Western Ukraine) are slowly coming out into the fore and Russia will be careful and will delicately welcome them to her geopolitical advantage.
This is what the Saker should encourage, as the religious divisions in Slavic Europe are now secondary. The similarities that all Slavs have in their languages, mannerisms, appearance, and tendencies, cannot be denied. The forced E.U. Loyalty Gay Parades are a no-go and anathema to all Slavic European Populations, and even some of their politicians. They admire Russia for standing up to ban this abomination, and this as well as the Russian Action in Syria are the sparks that will rekindle Pan Slavic Thought in Slavic Europe.
Russophobia is Slavophobia, but Russia is only Slavic State retaining independence and cohesiveness, unable to be broken up by Anglo-Zionists and their Western European Minions.
you ring so much truth by your last paragraph arjun quest.
your distinction with regards to poland and west ukr. is spot on too. it so happens that these two nation groups hate russia and slavonics more they they love their respective selves..some intense mass psychopathy stemming maybe from a strong sense of inadequacy?
I tend to think that the Khazarian blood influence in Poland and Western Ukraine is the reason why.
I wanted to add that Pan Slavism is much more viable than pan-Orthodox thinking. However, they can both complement each other. It is only the south Slavs of Croatia and the Serbians whose identities and nationalism are almost solely based upon their religion, and begets the hatred that many there have for each other.
no..i think that serb/croatian antagonism stems from WW2 legacy of: one third of serbs to be exterminated, one third to be converted ( to catolicism) and the remaining third to be expelled – from the regions in croatia they populated. heard of the puppet nazi state NDH? heard of notorious conc . camp jasenovac where ortodox serbs were the first on the list for extermination. second to serbs were gypsies (roma people) and only third on the list of interest were jews. . all with official blessing of catholic pope at the time.
but not just catholics versus othodox, orthodox versus orthodox was also at its’ worst at the time. just remember what bulgarian fascists did to serbs – some of the worst atrocities of the ww2.
pan slavism is a noble cause, but it boils down to russia, check, slovacks and serbs. checks and slovacks being great enough to allow for orthodoxy besides their own catolicism. ..poles would opt out, west ukr. no doubt and bulgarians would opt out too i take it, unless they could be recognised as progenitor slavic country.. slim chances of that happening..
i think you may be check/slovack and familiar with shafarik’s work. great shafarik’s work.
best regards
Another manic, paranoid screed from a bigot who doesn’t know enough about Western Culture to have a valid opinion. Sad. Stop blaming “the West” and “Catholicism” for things that are inherently anti-Western and manifestly anti-Catholic. All of the legitimate gripes the Orthodox have with Catholics are political and historical in nature, not theological and the Orthodox bigots must dress up their political and historical grievances in theological trappings because they know it is a sin to drag Christ into political disputes between Christians.
if i may: what are the ” things that are inherently anti -western and manifestly anti- catholic”. ?
thanks, lb
@ the Orthodox bigots must dress up their political and historical grievances in theological trappings because they know it is a sin to drag Christ into political disputes between Christians
This is turning history on its head. There is nothing “inherently anti-Western and anti-Catholic” but in the resistance against the “Western” delusions of grandeur, based precisely upon dragging Christ into political disputes. The “West” is precisely the Carolingian Empire, which built itself on the foundations of a (wrong) theological interpretation of history (Augustin) in alliance with the “Republic of Saint Peter” (aka Papacy), which built itself on wrong theological foundations. Lies which instilled in the heads of the plundering barbarians who overrun the (Christian!) Roman Empire the delusion of “Western exceptionalism”. This unholy alliance was formed to wage a jihad (“Crusade”) to stamp out the “Greek” schism and “heresies”, to confiscate their goods and territories and submit them to “jizya” (tribute). If the Orthodox “bigots” are anti-Western and anti-Catholic is in fact because they know enough about “Western Culture”, more than the Westerners themselves, to be clear. The West is furious that their delusions and lies are exposed and the truth-teller must be silenced. Actually, what happened to Ezra Pound, BTW!
russophobia is promoted every which way
eg daily Mail today
“Is that a gun in your pocket, Vlad? How Putin’s KGB firearms training skills left him with sinister ‘gunslinger’s gait’
How Vladimir Putin’s KGB training have left him with ‘gunslinger’s gait’
Vladimir Putin and other top-ranking Russian officials’ KGB weaponry training has left them impaired by a reduced arm swing labelled ‘gunslinger’s gait’, experts claim. The gait features a consistently reduced right-sided arm swing, usually considered an early sign of Parkinson’s disease. However, movement disorder experts discovered KGB training manuals that stressed agents move in specific ways, offering a possible explanation to the damage.”
note sinister, Parkinsons ,KGB, impaired inferences………ie translates to crazy mobster president………
Virginia Wolf. Modern Writers. 1919.
Russia, respect for .That goes for a lot of us here!
“In every great Russian writer we seem to discern the features of a saint, if sympathy for the sufferings for others, love towards them, endeavor to reach some goal worthy of the more exacting demands of the spirit constitute saintliness…The conclusions of the Russian mind, thus comprehensive and compassionate, are inevitably, perhaps, of the utmost sadness. More accurately indeed we might speak of the inconclusive-ness of the Russian mind. It is the sense that there is no answer, that if honestly examined life presents question after question which must be left to sound on and on after the story is over in hopeless interrogation that fills us with a deep, and finally it may be with a resentful, despair.” [1]
To Woolf, Russian writers see something entirely different in life than the British. In comparison to Russian writers and authors, Woolf says of British literature:
It is the saint in them [Russian writers] which confounds us with a feeling of our own irreligious triviality, and turns so many of our famous novels to tinsel and trickery…They are right perhaps; unquestionably they see further than we do and without our gross impediments of vision…The voice of protest is the voice of another and an ancient civilization which seems to have bred in us the instinct to enjoy and fight rather to suffer and understand. English fiction from Sterne to Meredith bears witness to our natural delight in humor and comedy, in the beauty of earth, in the activities of the intellect, and in the splendor of the body.>> – Modern Fiction
Had her respect for Russia anything to do with her relations with the notorious homosexual “intellectual secret society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson”, the “Cambridge Apostles” of which her most beloved husband Leonard was a prominent member? The “Apostles” were agents of influence for Communist propaganda and recruiting material for Soviet spies (the notorious Cambrige five).
Why were the Woolfs on Hitler’s “death list” along with known MI6 agents?
“Bulgarians, who officially sided with Hitler in the WWII, yet fought against Serbs and Yugoslavs, not against Russians”
But of course. By the time Red Army appeared in Bulgaria, the tide has turned and Bulgarian Nazis decided to join the THEN seemingly winning side.
And Bulgarian Nazis didn’t “fought” Serbs. They occupied eastern Serbia and committed mass slaughter of people there.
i take it you meant to say genocide..not just slaughter of some. bulgarian fascists were going and systematically slitting the throats of fallen serb soldiers to make sure i don’t know what..that they were dead enough?
there’s extensive documentation
you name it: balkan wars 1912, ww1, ww2.. somehow each time ended up with a wrong “winning” side adopting the right winning side overnight like you point out. serbs do not, will never trust bulgarians, much like macedonians(never mind official bulgarians deny them the very existence), greeks do not trust bulgarinas..i take it they must get on with turks to the east of their border..
i don’t suppose russia is giving bulgaria much thought either, other than as it houses a major nato force . damn..again on a wrong “winning” side!
In the UK its coming from the press, constantly, even the so called liberal newspapers like the Guardian. actually the guardian has become a bit of a joke, especially in this respect, they seem fully committed to their Blairite past and so hate Corbyn and Putin equally. Never miss an opportunity to stick the knife in, its pathetic really, groundless articles fleshed out by keyboard warrior journalists, poor stuff. Perhaps The Independent retains some perspective but generally it appears to me that press are now just printing what the security services say they should ‘on message’ russian aggression, tyrant assad protected by russia, invasion of Ukraine etc etc and then the ‘we need to make NATO strong again’ as a consequence. total bullshit in short! although I would say that generally it doesnt have so much effect on the person on the street who is too involved in the right wing anti muslim propaganda far more and the pro or anti Corbyn song and dance constantly in the media. The press being part of the establishment dont want change of course, so its all hands on deck to coerce and propagandise people into being distracted. The upcoming EU referendum also stokes the fires of argument and is really the British obsession, so, often people see Putin as a side dish to the main course of xenophobic isolationist extremism which if it where to actually happen would finish the country off for good.
Cameron got his war but he is merely illustrating what a true lap dog of the US the British are as no one is particularly convinced of his arguments for bombing Syrians to death instead of ISIL.