April 24, 2016, 10:22 pm / Opinions

Why we don't love America

Sociologist Denis Volkov on how Russians’ ideas about the West developed after the collapse of the USSR

Regular studies by the Levada Center indicate that the peak of anti-Western sentiment, which occurred at the beginning of 2015, has passed. Then record values were recorded: 81% of Russians had a bad attitude towards the United States, another 71% had a bad attitude towards the European Union. After which these figures began to gradually decline and today are 64 and 60%, respectively. The number of positively minded citizens is slowly growing – primarily among the youngest, most educated and affluent residents of large cities.

The overall positive or negative attitude towards the West is the most moving indicator. At times of open conflict between Russia and Western countries, such as in 1999 over Yugoslavia, in 2003 over Iraq and in 2008 over Georgia, Russian public opinion always changed sharply from positive to negative, and after the end of the acute phase of the conflict also quickly returned to consistently positive values. It can be said that public sentiment fluctuated along with the tone of news on federal television channels. However, more detailed studies show that over a long period of time, even during periods of the most positive overall assessments of the United States and the EU in Russian public opinion, Russians have developed a persistent prejudice towards the West. Moreover, these sentiments developed slowly throughout the 1990s. and took shape even before Vladimir Putin came to power.

To understand the logic of existing anti-Western sentiments, it is necessary to go back a quarter of a century. Today it will seem incredible, but at the turn of the 1980s - 1990s, Russian society was fascinated by the West, mainly the United States. America seemed to Russians to be an exemplary country to look up to, a major ally on the world stage. Rapprochement with the West seemed more important than cooperation with the former Soviet republics. Therefore, the Yeltsin-Kozyrev foreign policy was not imposed from abroad, as is commonly argued today, but reflected the existing broad public demand for rapprochement with the West and Russia’s entry into the club of leading world powers. If ever there was a chance of building a single European home, it was in the early 1990s. However, such sentiments lasted only a couple of years.

As Russia entered a deep economic crisis, the majority of the population became aware of the abyss that separated the country from the West, which for Russians was (and is to this day) a symbol of a well-fed and rich life. On the other hand, it became clear that no one in the West was waiting for Russia, which demanded special treatment. By 1993, the difference in the views of Russian and Western elites on the same foreign policy events was clearly visible. Social polls of those years recorded a negative attitude of the population towards the bombing of Iraq by American aircraft, despite the fact that the majority of respondents still assessed the US policy towards Russia as friendly and even allied. The public mood should also have been conveyed by the irritation of the Russian - yesterday's Soviet - elite over the fact that the United States unilaterally decided to deal with the former Soviet satellite (remember that some Russian politicians were friends with Saddam Hussein until his overthrow by NATO forces). In other words, hopes for a quick and painless integration of the new Russia into the world community quickly revealed their inconsistency and were replaced by general irritation towards the former object of desire on the principle “he looks good, but he’s green.”

A clear increase in negative attitudes towards the West has been observed since the mid-90s. So, if in 1996 only 6% were ready to call the United States an enemy - among many others, then since 1999 this country is already in the top three (19% of respondents thought so at that time) - after “international terrorists” and “Chechens " Since 2008, the United States has firmly occupied first place among Russia's enemies with a stable 35% of respondents. In 2014 – at the peak of anti-Americanism – this share rises to a record 65% of the population. Today this figure is 46% and on the list of Russia’s enemies the United States shares first place with ISIS, which is banned in Russia.

Already in May 1998, about 75% believed that America was seeking to weaken Russia and turn it into a raw material appendage. Today, about 80% hold similar views. In 2001 The image of the United States in the Russian public consciousness combined contradictory characteristics. Positive features prevailed (61% of respondents considered the United States a rich country, 51% a strong military power, the idea of the United States as a democratic country was shared by about 18%), but the negative components of the image were equally significant: 51% of Russians believed that the United States was unceremoniously interfering in affairs of other countries, 40% believed that they were trying to get their hands on the wealth of the world. Since then, the balance has only changed slightly towards negative characteristics.

The year 1999 seems to have been of particular significance, when several events occurred at once that affected Russians’ perception of the West. NATO expanded to the East, the United States announced a possible withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the operation of NATO forces in Yugoslavia, bypassing the UN and despite Russia’s objections, led to the first open conflict between Russia and the West. The symbol of this conflict was Yevgeny Primakov’s “turn over the Atlantic” and the forced march of the Russian military to Yugoslav Pristina - in defiance of NATO forces. These actions had virtually no impact on Western policy: the operation in Yugoslavia continued, and a few years later the Milosevic regime fell. But within the country, the Russian authorities should have felt the mobilizing effect of anti-Americanism: in one month, Primakov’s hitherto stable rating rose from 56 to 64%, the population and elites felt a surge of optimism and their own importance (all this will be repeated in a much stronger form in 2014. ).

And if in the 1990s. While the growth of anti-Western sentiments was rather spontaneous, in the 2000s they began to be purposefully used by the Russian authorities to interpret events taking place in the world and to justify Russian foreign policy ambitions as a forced response to the aggressive actions of the United States and NATO allies. This was facilitated by the concentration under the control of the Russian state of the main television channels and other major media, which began with the rise of Vladimir Putin to the presidency (today, about 90% of Russians regularly watch news television programs from state channels, while no more than 30% of the population uses alternative sources of information). However, at first such explanations did not work well. Surveys conducted in Russia during the first Maidan showed that only a fifth of the population was inclined to attribute the reasons for what was happening in Ukraine to the machinations of the West. But in 2014, this explanation regarding the Euromaidan was accepted by the Russian population as the main one. A similar interpretation of the events in Georgia and Syria - as a result of incitement by the West ("The West and Saakashvili against the rebel republics", "The West and the Syrian opposition against Assad", while the plot of the civil war was obscured in every possible way) - gave Russia's intervention in these conflicts additional legitimacy in in the eyes of the Russian population.

It is important to emphasize here that Russians’ ideas about the West are stereotypical. As German Diligensky, a Russian scientist who worked at the intersection of political science, sociology and psychology, noted, the further a social phenomenon is from a person’s direct experience, the more difficult it is to test it. Therefore, ideas that a person receives from the media are assimilated automatically and in a ready-made form. In the future, they can be reproduced throughout his life and even transmitted to new generations. In other words, much of what is reported on television is perceived uncritically by the majority of the population. And the more monotonous and primitive the TV news stories, the better they are absorbed. If in the 1990s. the programs of some TV channels could be balanced by the programs of others, then as the information space was cleared in the 2000s, the Russian media became more and more uniform, which made it easier to form the public opinion the authorities needed. On the other hand, today's propaganda may appeal to stereotypes from the Cold War, which lost their relevance in the early 1990s (due to hopes for rapprochement between Russia and the West), but were revived by the middle of the decade.

An analysis of long-term trends in Russian public opinion allows us to make a number of assumptions about what the attitude of Russians towards the West will be in the coming years. Most likely, almost immediately after the lifting of sanctions, overall positive sentiment will quickly recover. However, suspicion of the West's latent hostility towards Russia, as well as distrust of the US and the EU, will persist for a long time. This is partly due to the difference in foreign policy interests and views on what is happening in Moscow, on the one hand, and in Washington and Brussels, on the other. The chance to integrate Russia into pan-European security institutions, which could have prevented or at least mitigated disagreements, was missed in the early 90s.

Within the country, the rapprochement of the foreign policy positions of Russia and the West is hampered by the existing political system, in which supreme power is concentrated in the hands of the security forces, whose views on the world were shaped by service in the Soviet army and security system. It was they who fought and lost the Cold War during the Soviet era. They were the ones who had to feel the most acutely about the reduction in the geopolitical influence of post-Soviet Russia and the expansion of NATO. The defeat at that time was apparently so unbearable for them that they felt the need to win back, no matter the cost.

Groups that have a different understanding of the world and the interests of the country occupy a subordinate position in the political system, are marginalized and stigmatized. State control over the leading media ensures the effective inculcation of the most primitive ideas about the West among Russians. Maintaining a negative image of the West is convenient for justifying Russian foreign policy in the eyes of the population. All this means that until Russian elites and media become more pluralistic and free, the population's underlying negative perceptions of the West will persist.

The author is a sociologist at Levada Center