The Russia anxiety: Astute seem at the West’s ‘false history’ of Russia

The wave of Russophobia sweeping through Western states and societies today is, in line with Mark Smith’s compelling e-book, powered with the aid of a “false background” that he aims to refute.

For Smith, recurrent outbreaks of Russophobia express the Russia anxiousness â€" an extended-time period pattern of thinking and feeling about Russia that alternates between worry, contempt and disregard for the nation. This pattern has repeated throughout the 500 years considering that the 16th century when Russia turned into centered as a player within the extremely good game of European politics in the course of the enlargement of Muscovy below Ivan the awful. Smith views the Russia anxiety as pernicious and persistent, however no longer as everlasting; reasonably “it is a syndrome whose symptoms come and go”.

Hysteria, whipped up around Russia’s supposed chance to Western civilization, has been based on such “false heritage” because the nineteenth-century booklet in France of Russia’s 14-element plan for world domination â€" the testomony of Peter the outstanding. This blatant forgery is however one illustration of what Smith calls the “Black Legend” of Russian background â€" the concept that expansionism, aggressiveness and authoritarianism are inherent and indelible to the country’s id.