Subject: Why are the American media, both liberal and conservative, so unanimously anti-Russian? Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 From: "Branko Milanovic" <bmilanovic at carnegieendowment.org>
Dear David,
May I raise a question that other contributors to your List, much more qualified than I, may be able to answer; or to try to answer (or even possibly write a piece on it elsewhere; see for example Stephen Cohen’s excellent article in the 31 January issue of The Nation).
The question is: why are the American media, both liberal and conservative, so unanimously anti-Russian? By that I mean, why are the implicit assumptions apparently held by every major analyst and reporters of the most influential US papers, (1) that whatever problem at hand where there is some Russian involvement, it is the Russians who are guilty until proven the reverse, and (2) that the only Russian policy that is to be applauded is a policy that is supposed to serve the interests of other countries but Russia. In terms of (2) Russia is supposed to behave like no other country in the world: it simply must not follow its national interests whatever they are, or betteraccording to the analyststhese interests must not exist.
For the sake of brevity, let me try to make several competing hypotheses why such a strong anti-Russian sentiment exists among US pundits and the press.
(1) For seventy years, commentators have been anti-Soviet and since obviously some of Russia’s foreign policy stances will coincide with those of the USSR, their knee-jerk reaction to argue against these positions in the past carried over to the present day.
(2) Russia is viewed as a defeated power, say like Germany and Japan in the late 1940 and the 1950’s. Hence Americans are annoyed by Russia’s truculence. In other words, Russia should accept that it lost the Cold War, behave like a defeated power and keep a very, very low profile. In other words, do not box out of your league.
(3) Russia is viewed as an ultimately conservative force. This may go back to the socialist pre-World War I view (shared, of course, by Marx and later by the Bolsheviks) that Russia is an anti-progressive and anti-socialist force ready to send its Kozaks in the defense of the capitalist capitals of Europe. Since “progressive” no longer means socialist but pro-market and “pro-democracy” and since the latter is identified with being “pro-US”, then Russia is by definition on the other side of the divide.
(4) Similar to (3), Russia is viewed as an anti-progressive and anti-Semitic forceagain harking back to the 19th century imagery. Although among the Bolsheviks, Jewish and minority representation was very strong, later reversion to grand-Russian policies by Stalin and then ultimately the fall of Communism, turned, as it were, the clock back to the 19th century perception of Russia.
(5) East European propaganda has been very effective perhaps because there was some truth in it (Communism was in most cases imposed by Soviet arms), or perhaps because it is a simple story (big guys oppress small guys), or perhaps because there is a lot of ignorance among the pundits. On the latter, I wonder how many journalists know that Rumanians and Hungarians in their thousands were fighting the Soviets together with the Nazi all the way to Stalingrad (and after); or that “the nice and helpless” East European countries often fought among themselves (Hungary and Poland each taking a slice of Czechoslovakia in Munich in 1938) so that territorial aggrandizement was hardly a Russian specialty.
(6) Analysts and pundits know better but they try to play to the popular prejudices which are anti-Russian (which of course begs the question, why are they anti-Russian?) or to play to the preferences of the US administration (which may perceive Russia as being irremediably anti-American). So, in order to curry favor with the administration officials, they have to express anti-Russian views which they know the administration (whether Democrat or Republican) to hold even if the officials cannot, for political reasons, express them openly.
Qui sait?
Branko Milanovic Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Email: bmilanovic at ceip.org or branko_mi at yahoo.com tel: 202-473-6968 (leave a message) www.worldbank.org/research/inequality http://econpapers.hhs.se/
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