Part I
Fear, Contempt and Disregard
I had been afraid of Russia ever since I could remember.
Colin Thubron, British travel writer, 1983
The Russian peasant is indeed a barbarian at a very low stage of civilization. In the Crimean hospitals every nationality was to be found among the patients, and the Russian soldier was considered far the lowest of all.
Lady Verney, author and sister of Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale, 1888
Look at the state of Russia now. They’re in enormous decline. By any definition, these guys are on a toboggan run. The question is: when the run ends.
Joe Biden, former US vice-president, January 2018
As I lay awake on my plank bed, the most unorthodox thoughts came into my mind, about how tenuous was the line between high principles and bigoted intolerance, and how relative are all human ideologies, and how absolute the tortures to which men submit their fellow men.
Evgeniya Ginzburg, victim of Stalinist repression, 1967
[T]he next hundred years may become the golden age of civilization, of the human race … [W]ith Britain and Russia as the pillars of this new Europe, it can be done.
Alexander Werth, Anglo-Russian journalist, 19421
More than a simple undifferentiated Russophobia, the Russia Anxiety, as I see it, is an historic syndrome that alternates between three sets of symptoms: fear of Russia, disregard of Russia and contempt for Russia. Western European countries and the United States have spells of the Anxiety, although it comes and goes, the symptoms switch about, and sometimes they disappear altogether. But the worst outbreaks of the Russia Anxiety exacerbate international disorder and risk war. In Part I, I explore the emergence and elaboration of the Russia Anxiety since the sixteenth century, when travellers started coming eastwards to Muscovy in large numbers. I discuss the ‘black legend’ of Russian history on which the Anxiety is based, the absolute categories that Western observers have often used to evaluate Russia, without much reflection on Russian conditions or even awareness of their own societies, and the particular view of how history ‘works’ that makes the Anxiety possible. And then I come to a narrative of Russian history: a story of what’s happened in the last 6,000 years which corrects some of the Anxiety’s assumptions. The chapters are designed to be read in order, but Chapter 3, which is a narrative of Russian history from the beginning to the present, is also a reference point for readers to return to. In other words, Part I recounts the history of the Russia Anxiety and hints that history itself – not only its attention to real facts, but also its cultivation of self-reflection, imagination and a sense of comparison and context – might be its remedy.