The tactic might sound transparent, even laughable. But the Russiophobia smear has a long and nefarious history.
Ever wonder what’s behind those documented reports about Russian trolls and bots sowing discord, spreading disinformation, and promoting fake news on social media? It’s Russophobia, of course. How about those indictments of 12 Russian military intelligence officers for their role in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s servers? More Russophobia! And Maria Butina's arrest and conviction for working as an unregistered agent for the Russian government? Still more Russophobia.
Indeed, in a 2013 article, the Russian historian Oleg Nemensky went so far as to compare Russophobia to anti-Semitism, arguing that it constituted a “complete ideology.” The grandfather of the term was the 19th-century Slavophile poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev, who is most famous for the phrase “Russia cannot be understood only with the mind.”
In a letter to a relative in September 1867—in French, interestingly enough—Tyutchev complained about a “modern phenomenon that is becoming increasingly pathological—the Russophobia of some Russian people.” But it resurfaced in the late 1980s with a vengeance. It took on a distinctive anti-Semitic character when the renowned mathematician and nationalist dissident Igor Shafarevich published a lengthy samizdat essay titled “Russophobia.” Essentially a polemic against pro-Western dissidents, Shafarevich's essay accused Jewish intellectuals in the Soviet Union of being motivated by a hatred of Russia.
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