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Δευτέρα 13 Ιουνίου 2016
THE LONG HISTORY OF RUSSOPHOBIA, STARTING WITH ITS RELIGION
THE
LONG HISTORY OF RUSSOPHOBIA, STARTING WITH ITS RELIGION
Russia,
for one reason or the other, has always been portrayed as a
threat
by the West.
This
originally appeared in Izvestia-Russian daily news. Translated by
Julia
Rakhmetova
The
former editor of the Tribune de Geneve, Guy Mettan-RI) visited Moscow and
presented his new book Russia and the
West: A Thousand Year Was, which reviews the phenomenon of Russo phobia:
its roots, historical evolution and modern incarnations. Izvestia had a chance to interview him.
What
inspired you to write about this?
There
are two reasons why I began this work.
The first is personal, family reason.
In 1994, my wife and I adopted a Russian girl, who now is 25. Her name is Oksana, and she is from the
Vladimir region. After we adopted her, I
became interested in learning as much as possible about Russia and becoming
familiar with this large country. In the
1990’s, one could obtain Russian citizenship after adopting a Russian
child. So we did that: my wife and I am
citizens of Russia and Switzerland, and Russia became part of our family’s life
and history. I am a citizen of Russia,
but I pay taxes in Switzerland.
The
second reason why I started this work is professional. My trips to Russia gave me an opportunity to
learn what this country was all about. I
understood how big the difference was between the Russia presented in the
Western media and the one I saw myself.
I just couldn’t bear to watch this situation, and decided to investigate
the reasons.
What
made me actually start this project were the events in Ukraine in 2014. I saw the Western press systematically
supporting one side, expressing only one point of view—that of the government
that usurped power in Kiev. And I decided to figure out why this happened.
It
is important to understand that I wasn’t trying to answer the question of who
was to blame for the events in Ukraine.
I was interested in why the Western media presented this story in their
own way. What was at the root of such a
heightened negative relation with Russia?
Could
you tell us a little about the main thrust of your book?
I
looked at history and concluded that all this Russo phobia started when
Charlemagne created the Western Empire 1,200 years ago, laying the foundation
for the Great Religious Split of 1054.
Charlemagne created his empire in opposition to the existing situation,
when the center of the civilized world was Byzantium.
The
most shocking thing I realized was that everything they taught us in school was
wrong. They claimed that the dissidents
belonged to the Eastern Orthodox Church, who split from Rome. Now I know that what happened was just the
opposite: it was the Western Catholic Church that dissented from the Universal
Church, while the Eastern Orthodox Church remained and still is Orthodox.
In
order to shift the blame from themselves, Western theologians of that time
launched a campaign to justify putting the onus on the Eastern Orthodox
Church. They used arguments that
returned again and again as part of the confrontation between the West and
Russia. Back then, in the Middle Ages,
they began referring to the Greek world, i.e. Byzantium, as a “territory of
tyranny and barbarism” in order to disavow responsibility for the schism.
After
the Fall of Constantinople, when Byzantium ended, and Russia took the place of
Byzantium as the Third Rome, all those superstitions, all those lies
transferred to Russia.
It’s
strange to see the notes of Western travelers through Russia starting in the 15th
century: they all describe Russia in the same terms that had used to describe
Byzantium. These fabrications, this
criticism considerably increased after the reforms of the Peter the Great and
Catherine the Great, when Russia became powerful on the European political
scene. And by the end of the 18th
century, it had become Russo phobia.
Born
in France under Louis XV, it was used for a while by Napoleon to justify
animosity toward Russia, which stood in the way of France’s expansionist
policy. The “Will of Peter the Great”
was used by Napoleon as a justification for his Russian campaign.
We
can compare this with modern times, when in order to achieve their goals,
American invented the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. Russo phobia existed in
France as a political ideology up until the 19th century, when after
losing the Franco-Prussian War, France realized that is main enemy was no long
Russia but Germany, becoming Russia’s ally.
As
for England, Russo phobia appeared there around 1815, when Great Britain, in
alliance with Russia, beat Napoleon.
Once the common enemy defeated, England reversed course and made Russia
its enemy, feeding Russo phobia. Since
the 1820’s, London has used an anti-Russian ideology to mask its expansionist
policies, both in the Mediterranean and in other regions—Egypt, India and
China.
In
Germany, the situation didn’t change until the end of the 19th
century, when the German Empire was created.
It had no colonies, and there was no place to get any from, since
England, France, Spain and Portugal had got a head start. All the colonies having been allocated
without Russia, a political movement appeared in Germany that sought “expansion
toward the East,” i.e. modern Ukraine and Russia. This attempt failed during the First World
War, and later, Hitler used the same ideology.
It’s
no accident that German historians were at the origin of what is known as
“revisionism,” the tendency to understate the USSR’s contribution to the victory over the Third Reich, overestimating
the contribution of the US and Britain.
The
third type of Russo phobia is American, and it began in 1945. As soon as they defeated Germany through
joint efforts with the USSR, at the cost of millions of Soviet lives, the same
story born after the victory over Napoleon in 1815 was disseminated. The US reversed course and yesterday’s ally
became its major enemy. This is how the
Cold War started.
The
American used the same arguments as the English in 1815, claiming that they
“fought against communism, tyranny, expansionism,” their arguments hardly
differing, except for the so-called fight against communism. This turned out to be a gimmick, because when
the Soviet Union collapsed, the confrontation between the West and Russia
didn’t end.
The
nineteenth century story is repeating itself: the US keeps talking about a
“threat” supposedly emanating from Russia, in order to achieve its own goals,
promote its own interests, and pursues its own expansion. Today it demonizes Russia in order to place
NATO missiles in Poland, using the same words and arguments that Napoleon used
200 years ago.
Once
at an international conference in the mid 1990’s, I spoke to a journalist from
Denmark. He told me why Europe was so
afraid of Russia: “See how big Russia is, and how small Denmark is. We were always afraid of you. We are still afraid of your aggression.”
If
you look at the map, you will see that the territory of Russia dominates all of
Europe. So when Europeans look at the
map, they feel anxious and concerned, because “such a huge country cannot be
anything other than a threat.” Besides,
European maps deliberately depict Russia as even bigger then it really is,
increasing Russo phobia. Its immense
size is great for European cartoonists, who traditionally draw Russia as a huge
bear standing over a tiny Europe.
Recently
I read the following statement by a French author: “Europe is a peninsula in
Eurasia.” What would you say to that?
Today
Europe is frustrated. As a colonial
power, it dominated the world for two and a half centuries. Today the situation is totally different, and
Europe is uneasy. It’s used to playing a
different role. That’s why it’s
anxious. On the one hand, the European
ego finds itself in this uncomfortable situation; on the other the European
Union has reached the limits of its development and has internal problems. That’s why it’s easy to blame Russia for
everything.
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