#7
Yezhenedelny Zhurnal
No. 5
February 2002
HOW ARE WE ANY WORSE?
Analysis of the roots of anti-Americanism in Russia
Author: Lev Gudkov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

DISLIKE OF AMERICA IS A TYPE OF WELL-KNOWN IRRITATION AN IMPOVERISHED PROVINCE EXPERIENCES TOWARD A WEALTHY AND POWERFUL CAPITAL OR CENTER. RUSSIA LOST THE 20TH CENTURY, AND THIS IS WHAT IT PERSISTENTLY REFUSES TO UNDERSTAND, MUCH LESS ADMIT. AS FOR CHECHNYA - MOST RUSSIANS SIMPLY DON'T CARE.

The September 11 terrorist attacks drew attention to a problem which, though long known, had never been in the spotlight before. The problem is anti-Americanism. The terrorist attacks against deeply symbolic objects in America horrified observers by the modus operandi and many casualties; but, more importantly, by the sheer force of hatred directed at the United States. Needless to say, anti- Americanism is not restricted to the enmity of Islamic or Arab radicals alone. It is also to be found in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa - and Russia.

The United States is the target of dislike much more profound than any dictatorial regime which kills many of its own citizens or those of another state. This dislike stems from two sources. On the one hand, the 20th century may be rightfully called the American century. The unimaginable and intolerable success of the United States made it the unquestioned leader of the world - but generated a lot of vague but all the more grating feelings of the "Why not us?" or "How are we any worse?" type. On the other hand, by denouncing the American way of life and denying the Americans the status of a cultured nation (to say nothing of ascribing numerous flaws to them), their critics directly or indirectly emphasize their own propriety and traits (real or mythical). In other words, cultivated hatred of America is an effective and cheap means of highlighting national or social self- importance.

Dislike of America is a type of well-known irritation an impoverished province experiences toward a wealthy and powerful capital or center. This negativism appears in modern civilization as well. Not at the nucleus, but on the periphery. Camel-herders do not carry out terrorist attacks. Those who do so are people who were educated at European or American universities, who lived in the United States or Europe for years.

Widespread anti-Americanism is a secondary phenomenon, the sum total of defensive reactions of weak societies or peripheral groups to the substantial attraction of America's image. That is why opinion (not necessarily negative) of the United States reveals more about the opinion-upholder than about America. From this point of view, Russia does not greatly differ from other states. There are certain differences of course, attributable to the remnants of totalitarian society and recent trauma - the collapse of the Soviet empire, the United States' major adversary in the Cold War.

It is perhaps tactless to note that industrialization of the Soviet Union was possible only with the participation of foreigners (Americans and sometimes Germans) but it is prudent to remember it, all the same. Back in the 1930s, the Americans were building factories all over Russia (the GAZ car and truck plant in Nizhny Novgorod is only one of the better-known enterprises). All educated people, such as engineers and technicians, knew perfectly well that Russian-made GAZ, Pobeda, and even Stalin's ZIL cars were modifications of the American Fords and that LI-2, IL-12 and other Russian civil aviation planes resembled the Douglases too much. All this never hurt national pride, because not everybody was aware of the fact. For the average (mostly imagined) foreigner, however, all these machines were supposed to be symbols of industrial triumphs and successes of the first socialist state.

Everything changed with the Cold War. Everything that took place was viewed throught the prism of a global confrontation of the two systems. Attitudes toward the United States became an element of the culture of the mobilizational and repressive Soviet society.

Utopian notions of what life is like in "normal countries" existed side by side with revelations criticizing the bourgeois, with anti-Americanism in the newspapers. The country of money-worship, of the golden calf. Of racial discrimination and dumb consumerism. The country of war-mongers.

The feeling of unity with allies dating back to the meeting on the Elbe made way several decades later to disregard - what kind of soldiers were they!? They fought cautiously at best, not at all like us. We are the people who carried the burden of the war (coupled with the almost perverse pride in the sufferings of the nation that lost more people than any other country). The Russians could not imagine the real ratio of the casualties - they would never have believed that the American commanders could have been so careful with their soldiers' lives. That is why the casualties Russians thought other countries sustained in World War II were exaggerated - about 15 million lost by Germany (the actual losses must have been about half of that) and about 10 million by the United States (this is about 35 times too many). Only for the Soviet Union were the figures less than the actual amount of deaths. Years passed and the figures began changing. In 1991, 61% of poll respondents claimed that the Soviet Union would have won the war even all on its own. In 2001, 71% were of the same opinion.

The loss of leadership in space exploration and even in sports sparked a wave of bitter humor and jokes. The Afghanistan war and chronic shortages of every conceivable commodity in the 1980s only reinforced the inferiority complex and, at the same time, consolidated the importance of the dual American myth. America is the winning side, America is master of the world. No one wishes Russia any luck, Russia is the eternal victim. The Russians are the most enduring and suffering people in the world. No other people's history can match ours for hardships.

It is typical that humanitarian aid in the early 1990s only reinforced the complex further. It generated the phenomenon of mass angst, the feeling of humiliation accompanied by dislike of the West - they are sending utter rubbish here, which they themselves do not need. The anguish was augmented by accusations flung at the new elite. (The reforms are a trick, democrats are traitors who sold off all the nation's wealth, and sold Russia to the West with the aim of turning it into a colony. How else can our poverty and aggressiveness be explained to us?) It should also be noted that no open hostility was apparent.

Dependence and the eagerness to be liked, aggression and the inferiority complex - all this reveals the true attitude toward America, which is actually viewed as something exceptional, the fount of everything strong and wise. That is the center of the world, the zone of concentration of illusions - not something that generates aspirations and jolts one into action. Like any other traumatic experience, an inferiority complex can only be cured in one way - if the cause that generated it in the first place is recognized for what it is.

With regard to America - or rather the Russians' attitude toward America - it would have meant recognition of American society's technical, civilizational, and cultural superiority, and the desire to learn the values and rules of social interaction that resulted in this global social success. The values are clear - unquestionable superiority of basic human rights (priority of individual over the state in politics, private property in the economy, liberty limited by the law in legislation, and so on) and the understanding that the individual's better nature is best revealed in wealth, not poverty. Impoverishment is not a recognition of a nation's exceptional spiritual worth, but an indication of its basic flaw, its inability to create a better life for itself. It is time we admitted that being poor and sick is to a certain extent a choice, not the fate, of the Russian people.

Russia lost the 20th century, and this is what it persistently refuses to understand, much less admit. The competition of the two super-powers was not merely lost by the Soviet Union and Russia, which persists in calling itself the legal successor of the former empire. It was the system that was defeated - the repressive totalitarian system and with it the type of person defending this social order. The current cries over the lack of civic society, accusations of the presidential administration harassing NTV and TV-6, secret services organizing spy trials do not really count because the people viewed as "the public" cannot defend itself. The people do not trust themselves or others like them. Solidarity and consolidation requires a different, humanitarian foundation stipulating difficult cultural values like some form of idealism, readiness for participation and involvement, self-respect and dignity. And hard work, of course.

These days, Russia can boast of almost the world's highest level of aggressiveness, the largest prison population (absolute and relative - as a proportion of the overall population), and the second highest rate of suicide (by the way, almost all of the top ten countries on that list are former soviet republics). Russia is not the only country waging a war on its own territory, but hardly any other country (at least among those usually referred to as civilized) can be found where everyone is so indifferent toward civilian casualties (45,000 in the two Chechnya campaigns is the most realistic estimate). Asked to explain the West's criticism of the Kremlin's policy in Chechnya, 65% of respondents invariably reply that "The West wants to maintain tension in the region" and only 14% refer to human rights abuses in Chechnya.

It is wrong to assume that the public in Russia is completely unaware of the human rights violations, or that state censorship and Yastrzhembsky's demagoguery are so effective in setting up a smoke- screen concealing those abuses. No. Most Russians know that the federal troops in Chechnya behave like killers and looters (55% of respondents know of human rights abuses and violence against civilians in Chechnya). They just don't care. This attitude can be summed up as follows: Whether my country is right or wrong, it is my country. The Americans have interests. We have interests too, like any other state. We are in no way worse. We are like them!

It is not exactly so. Following instincts of the past, the new democratic Russia has maintained contacts with the world's most despised regimes - North Korea, Cuba, Hussein, and Milosevic. This attachment to geopolitical rhetoric conceals - ineffectively - the old longing for brute force, which we no longer have. The Americans use bombs, and we do. There were casualties in Serbia, and there were casualties in Chechnya. And nobody cares that the numbers of casualties are entirely incomparable.

This article uses the results of opinion polls conducted by the National Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM).

(Translated by A. Ignatkin)

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