Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Anti-Russian sentiment
Summary
Anti-Russian sentiment, commonly referred to as Russophobia, is dislike or fear or hatred of Russia, the Russians, Russian culture, or Russian policy. The Collins English Dictionary defines it as intense and often irrational hatred of Russia. It is often related to anti-Soviet and occasionally also to anti-Slavic sentiment. The opposite of Russophobia is Russophilia.
Historically, Russophobia has included state-sponsored and grassroots mistreatment and discrimination, as well as propaganda containing anti-Russian sentiment. In Europe, Russophobia was based on various more or less fantastic fears of Russian conquest of Europe, such as those based on The Will of Peter the Great forgery documented in France in the 19th century and later resurfacing in Britain as a result of fears of a Russian attack on British-colonized India in relation to the Great Game. Pre-existing anti-Russian sentiment in Germany is considered to be one of the factors influencing treatment of Russian population under German occupation during World War II.
Nowadays, a variety of popular culture clichés and negative stereotypes about Russians still exist, notably in the Western world. Some individuals may have prejudice or hatred against Russians due to history, racism, propaganda, or ingrained stereotypes.
Negative views of Russia are widespread, but most prevalent in Western liberal democracies.
Some analysts have argued that official Western rhetoric and journalism about Russian actions abroad have contributed to the resurgence of anti-Russian sentiment, besides disapproval of the Second Chechen War, Russian reaction to NATO expansion, the 2008 Russo-Georgian war and Russian interference in the 2016 United States election.
Anti-Russian sentiment worsened considerably after the Russian actions in Ukraine in 2014.
By the summer of 2020, majority of Western nations had unfavorable views of Russia.
Academic and former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul spoke about "combatting Russophobia", appealing to US officials and journalists to cease "demonizing" Russian people, criticizing propagation of stereotypes about Russians, Russian culture and Russian national proclivities.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.