The Sochi Games and Russophobia

The Sochi Olympic Games has brought widespread criticism of Russia and its government in the mainstream media. DR KIRILL NOURZHANOV looks at this in the context of a much longer history of “Russophobia”, and provides an alternative view on some of the common themes that have dominated media coverage of the Sochi Olympics. 

The Sochi Olympics began amid a torrent of reports from foreign journalists about Russia’s unpreparedness to host the Games: pictures of unfinished hotel rooms, exposed wires and uncovered man holes quickly went viral across the internet. Aside from this rocky start, the Games have gone relatively well. But why has Russia been getting such a bad rap from the Western media?

An Amnesty International protester at the Olympic Torch run in San Francisco in 2013. Image by Steve Rhodes/Flickr.

The answer may lie in centuries-old “Russophobia”. In his 2009 book by the same name, Andrei Tsygankov defined this phenomenon as “not merely a critique of Russia, but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining the nation’s political reputation.” Behind Russophobia, he says, are US neoconservatives and unreformed Cold War warriors, who initiate periodic campaigns against Russia in the highly partisan media. For them, Russia remains the greatest threat to American global hegemony, and should be kept at bay through a decentralised political system and forced acceptance of US normative influences and foreign policy.

The winter Olympiad in Sochi has seen a massive spike of Russophobic commentary confirming Tsygankov’s analysis. A brief piece published by the neocon think tank The Jamestown Foundation provides a handy script for journalists covering the Games. The mainstream media has reflected its claims that the Sochi Olympics will reinvigorate terrorist movements in the Caucasus, rally ordinary Russians against the dictatorship and corruption of Putin’s regime, and expose Putin’s megalomaniac nature to the West which, consequently, must exercise more caution in dealing with Russia on foreign policy issues.

Variations on the basic Russophobe narratives outlined above are endless in the Western media. Biased, sensationalist and lazy journalism pays scant respect to the reality on the ground, which is that the games are popular among the Russians who do not question the government’s legitimacy in any way.

Russia-bashing as a political vocation

The hype about security threats posed by the unstable North Caucasus to athletes and tourists in Sochi reached ridiculous proportions with stories about an impending chemical attack or toothpaste sabotage. This paranoia is not shared by the Russians. Even security-conscious China expressed a ‘complete faith’ in the safety of the Olympiad.

Russian public opinion polls also tell a story that contradicts the view that Sochi is ‘Putin’s games’, which has become a sui generis truth in the Western media. On the eve of the opening ceremony, 65 percent of Russian citizens voiced a personal stake in the success of the games for reasons of patriotism and national prestige; 68 percent believed that the games would be a glorious accomplishment, and only 3 percent of the latter category ascribed this success to the personal leadership of Putin.

These attitudes do not differ radically from the public opinion recorded in Turin or Vancouver during previous winter games. Despite concerns about high costs and corruption, the overwhelming majority in host countries regard the Olympics as a great vehicle to promote national unity and development.

Another claim is that the games are a shrine to Putin’s authoritarianism. In the absence of any discernable public outrage in Russia about Putin’s growing dictatorship, journalists turn to any number of Russia’s ‘champagne liberals’ who are unelectable and have little connection with ordinary Russians, but are happy to corroborate every Russophobic prejudice.

Corruption is a serious problem in Russia, yet the Russophobic take on it in the context of Sochi pushes the limits of credulity. The games’ price tag is said to have exceeded US$50 bn, making them the most expensive ever and surpassing the US$40 billion spent by China on the much bigger 2008 Summer Olympics. Endemic graft, misappropriation and incompetence are blamed for the cost blowout. In fact, the direct cost of the games amounted to US$7 billion. The rest of the funds have gone to large scale infrastructure projects across the Russian Black Sea coast such as ports, highways and power plants.

The geopolitical narrative is perhaps the most outlandish aspect in Sochi-related Russophobia, especially in light of the ongoing unrest in Ukraine. A piece in the New York Times entitled “Don’t Let Putin Grab Ukraine” unfolded a phantasmagoric vision of Putin as an imperialist aggressor who will either invade Ukraine using forces deployed around Sochi under the guise of providing security for the games, or engineer a coup there once the need of keeping up polite appearances at the Olympiad passes. The idiocy of such prediction has been aggravated by the recent revelations that it is actually the US that has been actively interfering with Ukraine’s domestic politics.

Cultural Russophobia then and now

Tsygankov’s examination of Russophobia highlights political agency informed by the more or less rational fears of a geopolitical competitor. However, Russia-bashing has a venerable cultural pedigree in the Western and particularly Anglo-Saxon tradition. Since the time of Ivan the Terrible (note the pejorative English term), Russia has been portrayed as the West’s significant ‘other’, a sick and deficient world where the Enlightenment values of reason, freedom and tolerance are mirrored by obscurantism, servitude and bigotry.

Russia is not threatening - merely barbaric and occasionally ridiculous. This essentialist caricature has elicited righteous anger, an overwhelming desire to ensure conformity, and bouts of depression among prominent commentators in the West. PG Wodehouse lampooned Russian classical literature as ‘gray studies of hopeless misery’.

Just before the Sochi games British actor Hugh Laurie chimed in quipping that he cannot think of a single thing the Russians do besides making the rest of the world depressed. Russophobic journalists readily use metaphors of gloom and doom to describe the Olympiad, e.g. ‘the darkness behind Sochi’s sparkle’, ‘uneasy games’, ‘shadow over Sochi’ and so on. In the absence of any serious problems vague allusions to Mordor-like atmospherics have to suffice.

In the 1880s American public opinion was incensed by the ‘Asian brutality’ of the Russian government. The local Russophobes luridly depicted its ‘bestial assaults’ on the ‘most cultured and noble women of Russia’ among the nihilists who planned the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. The women/nihilists were hailed as martyrs devoted to American principles that represented the ‘divine regulation of a heavenly state’ whereas Russia was an earthly realisation of Hell.

In 2014, it’s the same old story featuring Putin the Barbarian who tortures starry-eyed Pussy Riot girls and commits hate crimes against homosexuals. Deeply ingrained cultural stereotypes substitute vitriol and hysteria for sober analysis of the situation in Russia and constructive critique of its many problems.

The 2013 Russian law imposing fines upon the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors led to a frenzied campaign to boycott the Sochi Olympics. Objective commentators rightfully point out the unnecessarily conservative nature of Russian legislation. At the same time however, they note that homosexuality is not illegal in the country, nobody has been jailed under the new law, gay people are not beaten up by the thugs as the police looks on, and that these thugs are in fact persecuted and sent to prison for their crimes.

The outbreak of Russophobia associated with the Sochi games may have peaked, punctured by the smooth running of the Olympics thus far and to some extent the fatigue of the English-language audience that does not want to be distracted from a great sporting show too much by propaganda.

However, the geopolitical and cultural foundations of Russophobia are not going to wither away in a hurry, so more of the same can be expected in the lead up to the football World Cup to be hosted by Russia in 2018. It is difficult to anticipate at this stage what that campaign’s central themes will be – the Russians’ endemic drunkenness, misogyny, disregard for the environment and cruelty to animals that have been somewhat underplayed at Sochi may receive greater attention from the Russophobes then.