by Tony Judt
cette création de l’âge technique qui réduit les œuvres de l’esprit à l’état
de pacotille ou, comme on dit en Amérique, d’entertainment.” Ibid.
43. E. Schwarzenberg, “Le conflit entre les Etats-Unis et l’Europe s’étend à
la culture,” Le Figaro, May 17–18, 2003; Thomas Fuller, “Paris wins
amendment in new EU constitution,” International Herald Tribune,
July 11, 2003.
44. There is a reservation, however, such a veto exists only when a trade deal
“risks prejudicing the Union’s cultural and linguistic diversity.” Ibid.
45. Lech Walesa on the occasion of his first visit to France stated: “You have
material goods, we have spiritual values.”
46. After his debate with President Clinton at CUNY, Lou Reed gave a concert
for President Vaclav Havel on his last official visit to the United States.
47. See, in particular, his 1994 essay “Politics and Conscience” published in
Vaclav Havel, Essais politiques (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1989), pp. 221–248.
In a recent interview, he spoke of a “totalitarianism of consumption” asso-
ciated with globalization. Interview with J. Rupnik, Politique Internationale
(winter 2003), p. 22.
48. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1959), p. 37.
49. Conversation of the author with Ivan Chvatik, translator of Byti a cas, on
the occasion of its publication by Oikumene (Prague, 1996).
50. Vaclav Havel, speech at the tenth anniversary of Gazeta Wyborcza
(Warsaw, May 1999).
51. “Car la francophobie, ça existe. C’est la médiocrité planétaire voulant se
venger de la suprématie culturelle française qui a duré des siècles.
Ou bien, peut être, est-ce, au-delà de notre continent, une forme de rejet
de l’Europe.” Milan Kundera as cited in Paris-Prague, les intellectuels en
Europe, edited by F. Mitterrand and V. Havel (Prague: Institut Français,
1994), p. 94.
* * *
6
T he Special Russian Way :
T he Origin and Evolution of
R ussian Perceptions about
the United States
Nikolai Zlobin
When I was a student at a Moscow elementary school, one of my
class duties involved the preparation of so-called political information
for my classmates. Political information took up 10 minutes of our
daily class time and was devoted to global events of the past 24 hours.
My tasks were: to make a list of the daily presenters and to remind
them about it the night before; to supply the information if someone
fell sick; and finally, to make sure that 90 percent of the news was
devoted to exposing “American imperialism.”
Exposing it was never a problem—practically everything we read
in the papers about America had an extremely negative tone. My job
was merely to supply the required amount of criticism. Despite our
young age, we knew this to be another element of the propaganda
machine, whose rules we had to obey. Moreover, we were sure that
American kids were doing the same thing. We just couldn’t understand
what for.
We never placed much trust in what we read about America. I’ll
cite as evidence, two typical children’s jokes of the time. In the first, a
Russian and an American are playing chess. The American makes
a move and says, “You have no meat in your country.” The Russian
makes his move and responds, “Your country oppresses blacks.” The
American counters the move and says, “But your country has no
meat.” The Russian while making his move says, “But your country
oppresses blacks.” The American thinks about it, makes a move, and
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N ikol ai Zlobin
says, “We’ll steal Brezhnev from you.” The Russian’s response: “Then
you won’t have meat.”
In the second, a boy comes home from school and says, “Tomorrow
I have to bring a ruble to class for the starving people in America.” The
father says, “I’m not giving you any money—I don’t know for a fact
that America has starving people.” The next day the son comes home
again and says, “I have to bring a ruble for the homeless people in
America.” The father responds, “No, I need evidence that America has
homeless people.” On the third day, the son says, “I need to give a ruble
to the American Communist party.” The father immediately takes out
three rubles: “Here you go—if the US has a Communist party, I’m sure
it has plenty of homeless and starving people.” The cynicism acquired
under communist rule, instilled in us a critical approach to reality and
prevented us from developing real anti-American sentiments.
But to this day, there is still no complete understanding of the
colossal differences that separate Russia and the United States. The
more Russia integrates with the West, the more it faces the incompat-
ibilities of mentalities, psychologies, lifestyles, and systems of values
between the two countries. This is leading Russia to an inevitable psy-
chological breaking point. No one knows what price it will have to pay
for this integration—not from a military, political, or economic point
of view, but in terms of having to adapt its own cultural and spiritual
values. The growing awareness of this inevitability complicates the
Russian–American/Western dialogue and amplifies anti-American sen-
timents in a significant portion of Russian society.
The Russian perception of America can be distinguished by two
mindsets. The first is based on deep-seated notions within Russian
culture, history, religion, and mentality. These perceptions have been
shaped over centuries, and, depend to a great extent, on how Russia
has viewed herself and her place in the world, and on how she relates
to other countries and cultures, particularly the West and the United
States. This perception is a fairly stable assortment of views and judg-
ments, where changes take place slowly and painfully.
Even anti-American propaganda, which the USSR was subjected to
over the course of several generations, could not influence this per-
ception decisively. In many ways, its nature is objective. It includes, for
instance, the Russian dislike of America’s religious pluralism (as Vasily
Klyuchevsky wrote, “the West has a church without a God, Russia has
a God without a church”1), the doctrine of privacy,2 and the rule of
law. As in a mirror, we can observe fundamental changes occurring
within Russia herself in incremental steps. This perception relates to
America’s own evolution to a much lesser extent.
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The Special Russian Way
117
The second way or altered mindset toward the United States is
related to superficial phenomena, ephemeral factors that encompass a
wide spectrum of issues—from business and politics to sports and
fashion. The changes here are more rapid, influenced by events, news,
and political campaigns. Stereotypes and emotions reign supreme, as
do personal subjective motives and the manipulation of public opinion.
In this category, everything is, to a large extent, connected to events
in America, its actions around the world, and how these actions
are interpreted by the Russian media and political elite. One example
is the reaction to the judging scandal at the Salt Lake City Winter
Olympics, which practically the entire Russian society took as an anti-
Russian campaign, an insult to the entire nation, and an attempt to
denigrate Russian successes in sports. The State Duma devoted a special
session to examining the possibility of withdrawing the team from
international competition, and President Putin was forced to produce
several statements.3 In other words, we have here a subjective percep-
tion, that has little to do with the first, deeper, cultural perception.
The Russian perception of America, at any given moment, is always
a combination of these two elements. Each time, the combination is
different, and the two elements do not play equal roles. On a day-to-day
basis, the subjective factor has more influence in forming Russian per-
ceptions, which leads to political miscalculations on both sides of
the Atlantic. This happens not only because people tend to react more
sharply and emotionally to the contemporary events that have a direct
bearing on their life, but also because, first of all, the objective elements
of percieving America deal with fundamental Russian values rather than
with America proper, and are therefore turned inward rather than out-
ward. The United States is a mirror into which Russia constantly gazes.
Second, because of various factors, Russian society knows excep-
tionally little about America, but thinks otherwise. Much of this
knowledge has a twisted, fragmented, and sometimes-falsified character.
This is especially true for such fundamental issues as America’s political
evolution, the American system of values, their morals and style of
thinking, the logic of democracy, and capitalist markets. To be fair,
the average Russian knows more about America than the average
American knows about Russia. But the Russian is certain that he
knows enough to draw his own conclusions. This forms the basis for
a large number of stereotypes and false judgments, widespread in
Russia, that bloom tumescent after each individual incident, preventing
a rational examination of it.
Third, several times over the course of the last century, Russian
society was forced to fundamentally change its system of values and
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N ikol ai Zlobin
moral priorities. Each time, the state forced people to reorient them-
selves toward new ethical and ideological systems, which were modified
to suit the political needs of the time. The ideology of “building com-
munism” was based on a rejection of the past. Schoolbooks were
constantly rewritten, and history was falsified on a colossal scale. This
rejection of history was partially successful—the ties between ages and
generations were nearly severed. People’s cultures and worldviews
were, to a significant extent, removed from their historical roots, and
grounded instead in communist ideology, with its perpetual political
campaigns that took the form of “the struggle against . . .” It could
be against “rootless cosmopolites,” “warmongering capitalists,” the
kulaks, the “doctors-killers,” cybernetics, “dilettante corn-growing,”
or Stalinism. Since the end of the 1980s, Russia’s Weltanschauung has
experienced catastrophic shifts. Moreover, anti-American propaganda
during the Cold War imposed a firm negative image of the United
States in the minds of a part of society. But a more objective perception
of America in the mass consciousness has always existed and continues
to exist and the events of 9/11 did not change that.4
Taking all this into account, let us briefly try to analyze the con-
temporary content of the first objective element of the Russian
perception of the United States.
Those who have read War and Peace may recall the highly
Franconized Russian zeitgeist at the time of the Napoleonic war—
French manners, ideas, fashions, literature, art and education formed
a significant part of Russian society. The novel begins with a conver-
sation at a ball, spoken in French. The upper and middle classes spoke
only in French, treating it as “the language of progress.” Russian was
for the servants. And yet, all of the protagonists express a sincere
hatred toward Napoleon, and toward French politics in general.
Curiously, all of the novel’s characters—regardless of class, income,
or education—treat the French (“the frogs”) and indeed all foreigners
with a sense of slight condescension, a feeling of vague superiority, an
awareness of possessing some higher knowledge denied to all non-
Russians. This sentiment can be observed in the characters of Anton
Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, and others. France stood for a concentrated
expression of the West in general.
In today’s Russia, this perception applies to America. Just like the
victory over Napoleon or the Russian Army’s March 1914 entrance
into Paris did not create a shift in the perception of France, neither did
the events of 9/11 cause a noticeable change in “the hearts and
minds” of Russians. For contemporary Russians, the United States is
the new concentrated expression of the West. In his time, Peter the
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The Special Russian Way
119
Great called upon Russia to catch up with Europe, an idea that Nikita
Khrushchev later reformulated with his slogan: “Let’s match and
surpass America.” As the malnourished Russian citizens joked surrep-
titiously, “Khrushchev never said we’d be fed on the way.”
But Khrushchev, unlike Peter, promoted victory over the United
States, not integration with it. In Soviet times, the United States
became the catch-all for the negative traits and stereotypes of the
West. Negative perception of the United States became loaded with
all the “detrimental Western traits”—spiritual death, aggressiveness,
individualism, narcissism, egoism, mercantilism.5 Western Europe was
always seen as coupled with the West, and ceased to be a “full-fledged
West” outside of that coupling.6
The United States became the newest, more powerful source for
the traditional split in Russian society’s perception of the West.7 On
the one hand, Russia’s status as a perpetual straggler caused a feeling
of jealousy toward the United States, as well as feelings of admiration,
desire to imitate, respect and fascination. But on the other hand, aver-
sion toward the American experience and lifestyle strengthened a
sense of moral and intellectual superiority. In other words, the powerful
inferiority complex was at least counterbalanced, if not replaced, by
the no less powerful complex of spiritual superiority.8 Even in today’s
political circles in Moscow one frequently encounters the view that in
the alliance between Russia and the United States, the latter should be
the purse and the fist, whi
le the former the brain.
In “Public Readings on Peter the Great,” Sergey Soloviev noted
that since Russia was poorly defended by geography and was subject
to enemy invasions, “the lack of defining physical boundaries was
replaced by the Russian people with spiritual boundaries—religious
differences in the west and south, inter-denominational differences in
the west. Within these boundaries the Russian national consciousness
fortified itself, maintaining its uniqueness and independence.”9
In that respect, America is perceived as the complete opposite.
On the one hand, her territory was securely guarded by natural
boundaries, which has always been a cause of jealousy for the
Russians. “Not possessing any enemies around herself,” wrote Nikolai
Danilevsky 130 years ago, “she could economize on everything that
others spent on sovereign existence. If we look at what it cost Russia
having to arm herself at the time of the Vienna peace congress, these
expenditures alone would comprise billions that Russia, like America,
could have spent on building a web of railroads, a merchant fleet,
and all sorts of technological improvements for manufacturing and
agriculture.”
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N ikol ai Zlobin
In the United States, “a long-term economizing on the country’s
assets, not spent on national defense, accumulated immense riches,
which could not have appeared otherwise.”10 Russia, on the other
hand, always had to devote tremendous resources to defense—
primarily against the West.
On the other hand, America, in the Russians’ perception, is a country
without spiritual unity, without the originality in which Russia takes so
much pride. The “melting pot” mentality, tolerance, religious pluralism,
the neglect of ethnic roots—all of it considered inferior to and in
contradiction with the Russian system of values.
The Americans’ national character, with its pragmatism, optimism,
and openness, has always been one of the most irritating features
for Russians, who see pragmatism as the opposite of spirituality, and
tolerance as a form of permissiveness and lack of moral boundaries.