By Augusto Zimmermann, Gabriël Moens AM, and Dejan Hinic
It is a truism to say that Russia is an internationally despised pariah. Its miscalculated military adventure in Ukraine turned the whole world against Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin, has been charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes against humanity. The international community imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia to cripple its war effort. These sanctions included inter alia, asset freezes of Russian individuals and companies, as well as the removal of Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system, and the confiscation of about half of all Russia’s foreign reserves – roughly US$ 315 billion.
Some Western commentators predicted that these unprecedented sanctions would soon “bring the Russian economy to its knees”.[1] The American President, Joe Biden, even declared on 27 March 2022: “As a result of our unprecedented sanctions, the ruble was almost immediately reduced to rubble. The Russian economy is on track to be cut in half.”[2] However, the effect of such sanctions has meant that Russia’s currency, the ruble, is now the world’s best-performing fiat currency. The Russian ruble has reached record highs against the EU’s euro and the U.S. dollar.[3] Thanks to the continuing sales of oil and gas, the nation’s foreign currency reserves remain the fourth largest in the world, which explains the increasing levels of popularity enjoyed by Putin among the Russian people.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) supplies weapons to Ukraine, used for defensive and offensive purposes. The rhetoric emanating from Western leaders is non-conciliatory. The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, an outspoken critic of Russia, has repeatedly indicated that this war must be won by Ukraine. This pariah-status is even noticeable in international sporting competitions where Russian (and Belarussian) tennis players and other sportspeople are no longer invited as representatives of their country, with the name of their country redacted.
It is thus instructive to trace the origins of this profound ‘Russophobia’ and ask the question of whether there is a historical progenitor for its existence. In this context, it should be remembered that Russian society has developed as an offspring of Christian Orthodox civilisation and is a product of its indigenous roots in Kievan Rus.
Russia’s relations with other European nations have evolved through several phases. In the first phase, which lasted until the reign of tsar Peter the Great (1689-1725), Kievan Rus existed separately from the West and had little contact with Western European societies. However, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Peter the Great became determined to Westernise his country, introducing Western words and phrases and sending Russians to the Western European nations to study their latest knowledge concerning science, music, and the arts.
The Bolshevik Revolution initiated a new phase in the relationship between Russia and the West. It created a political-economic system that was mirrored on Western European, mainly German, ideologies. Indeed, while communism enabled its Soviet leaders to distinguish themselves from the West, it also created powerful ties to the West. Throughout the last century, for example, many labour unions and social democratic and labour parties in Western nations were deeply committed to the same communist ideology as the Soviet Union. As Samuel Huntington explains in The Clash of Civilizations:
By adopting Western ideology and using it to challenge the West, Russians in a sense became close to and more intimately involved with the West than at any previous time in their history. Although the ideologies of liberal democracy and communism differed greatly, both parties, were, in a sense, speaking the same language. The collapse of communism ended this political-ideological interaction between the West and Russia. [4]
Until the Bolshevik Revolution, in October 1917, Orthodox Christianity was central to the Russian culture and identity. After that violent communist revolution, however, the Bolsheviks ordered the destruction of churches and monasteries.[5] These enemies of Christianity organised anti-religious carnivals to coincide with traditional feast days and declared the replacement of faith in God with faith in Communism.[6] The Bolsheviks outlawed religion and imprisoned, tortured, exiled and executed thousands of Orthodox priests.
The ‘cold war’ was a conflict between Western-created secular ideologies, masquerading as liberal democratic and Marxist-Leninism respectively. These ideologies were both secular and, despite their differences, ostensibly shared the ultimate goals of equality and material well-being.
The new Western leaders, however, are notoriously woke globalists, demonstrating increasingly Christophobic inclinations. And this precisely so at the very moment that Russia has decidedly embarked on a new phase of proud restoration of its rich Orthodox values and traditions. Arguably, a Western leader could carry on an intellectual debate with his Soviet Marxist counterpart, but it appears simply impossible for the present Western ‘woke’ leaders to do so with a Russian Orthodox nationalist counterparty.
On 7 May 2000, Vladimir Putin took the presidential oath of office in the nation’s first democratic transfer of power. In his inaugural address, the new Russian leader boldly declared that he was taking on a “sacred duty” to restore Orthodox values and preserve the nation’s unity. After that, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Alexei II, pronounced a solemn blessing and offered him a personal prayer. Alexei II presented the new president with religious relics, handing him an icon of St Alexander Nevsky and recreated icons of the Saviour and St Nicholas. The Patriarch then humbly requested Putin “to remember about the great responsibility of the leader to his people, history and God”.
The Victory Day parade on 9 May through Red Square has become one of the holiest days of the Putin administration. The parade is a commemoration of the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Red Army on 9 May 1945, with the President of Russia as the guest of honour and keynote speaker in virtue of his constitutional mandate as Supreme Commander of the Russian Armed Forces. It serves as a space for solemnity and reflection in the general commemoration of the approximately 27 million Soviets who died (14 million of them Russians) in what they call the ‘Great Patriotic War’ – World War II. The parade is also a celebration of Russian military power, with thousands of soldiers delivering the traditional Ura! cheer.
In 2015, the Victory Day parade was fundamentally different from past military marches because it marked a clear departure from the former communist state. When the Minister of Defence, Servei Shoigu, was being driven to Red Square, his car stopped under the gate of the Spasskaya Tower, and he deliberately made the sign of the cross. The Spasskaya Tower, also translated as The Saviour’s Tower, is the main tower on the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, overlooking Red Square. Shoigu, one of the highest officials in the military command, was showing his reverence for the Russian Orthodox Church, a public display that would have been unthinkable during the days of the USSR, but now there was also the emergence of a new popular movement toward Russian faith, heritage, and nationalism.
Most Russians are against legalising same-sex marriage, or any other form of recasting the traditional family. They refuse to follow this destructive path of the West, which, according to their leader, is a form of neo-Bolshevism.[7] On 21 February 2023, while delivering a State of the Nation address to the Russian people, Putin accused the Western elites of deliberately distorting historical facts to advance their woke agendas. He mocked what he perceives as ‘Western stupidity,’ adding that a ‘decadent’ West is deliberately waging a ‘culture war’ against Christianity. Putin declared:
Their main target is, of course, the younger generation and our younger generation. And here, once again, they lie constantly. They distort historical facts, constantly attacking our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church and other traditional religious organizations in the country. Look at what they do to their own people: the destruction of the notion of family, culture and national identity. Perversion, child abuse, and even paedophilia are declared the norm – the norm of their way of life.
I would like to say to you: Look at the Holy Scripture, the sacred books of all the other religions of the world. It’s all said there – including the fact that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. But even these sacred texts are now being revised. As it has become known, the Church of England, for example, plans to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God. What can I say? May God forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. [8]
These are truly remarkable statements that we would never expect another European leader to pronounce, perhaps apart from Hungary’s Victor Urban. Of course, Europe is a complex continent that has fifty sovereign countries, multiple ethnic groups of which the Russian group is the largest, and three major language groups. The three language groups are Germanic, Romance and Slavic. The Germanic language group covers the northern and western parts of Europe, the Romance group covers the southern part, and Slavic the eastern part of Europe, including Russia. The Slavic language is spoken from Bulgaria in the south to Poland in the north and from the Czech Republic in the west to Russia in the east and beyond the Ural Mountains.
In respect to religion, almost all Slavic people are Christians and since 1054, they have been divided into Catholic and Orthodox denominations because of the Great Schism. By this church division, the Russian people automatically became Eastern Orthodox by faith and, for example, Poland, Slovakia, and Croatia remained Roman Catholic. At that time the Great Schism was not that noticeable, but as time passed the division was ever so visible. Among Slavs, Islam is practised within Bosnia and in parts of Bulgaria, Russia, Montenegro and Serbia.
Russians were taught that, as a people, they arrived from southwest Europe where Serbia is located, and that they settled in the area west of the Ural Mountains. Hence, the Slavic people occupied a vast area of eastern Europe that stretched from the Baltic to the Bosphorus. Throughout history, this proved to be of great importance because this vast area served as a barrier against aggressive tribes coming from the Middle- and Far-East. On numerous occasions, Serbs fought off Ottomans and, for this reason, the Austrian Empire paid ethnic Serbs to settle on its border territory to protect the Empire. Russians, too, fought off Asian tribes that tried to conquer Europe. At one point, the Austrian Empire had 55 million people and most of these people were Slavs, including Polish, Ukrainians, Slovaks, and Croats.
The West, predominately the British empire, continuously throughout centuries, expressed a certain level of Russophobia (including Slavicphobia). In 1853, Britain initiated a war together with France and the Ottoman Empire against Russia for the territory of Crimea. Back in 2013, when Russia had the presidency of the G-20, one of the members of the Australian delegation recalled a meeting with the Russian leader in a room under a picture of the first Crimean War, and one of his presidential assistants told him that the 1853-56 Crimean War was a tragedy and that ‘Christian Russia’ had been shocked that the West sided with Muslim Turks, and defeated them.[9]
During the Crimean War, however, the United States helped Russia by sending food, supplies, and building warships for Russia at shipyards in New York. During the American Civil War, the Russian Tsar returned the favour and sent its Atlantic and Pacific fleet and offered it to President Abraham Lincoln. Russia and the United States were throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries far more friends than enemies.
During the post-World War II era, the two powers indirectly helped each other thrive by acting as direct competitors. During the Cuban crisis, President Kennedy and President Khrushchev were obviously clearheaded and not willing at all to go into full war although they were both pressured by their military advisors. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States was the first country to offer assistance and humanitarian relief to Russia. One can only conclude that these two nations were true friends.
This changed in 2014 and the relationship between the United States and Russia further deteriorated since 2022. The question is why? Historically, Russia and the United States have enjoyed a friendly relationship. Even Alaska was almost transferred for free by the former to the latter. By contrast, Britain was never that friendly with Russia, even during the beginning of the twentieth century when Russian Tsar Nicholas II and King George V were very close since they shared the same grandmother, Queen Victoria. It is well known that, as children, they spent their summer holidays at the same palace together with their third cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II from Germany, and that their grandmother would care for them. Just before the start of World War I in 1914 the three cousins met for the last time, and it is not known what was discussed. But it is well documented that after the 1917 October Revolution, King George V cruelly declined to give asylum to his Russian cousin and his children. The years that followed changed the entire world and, although Kaiser Wilhelm II survived the war, Nicholas II and his family did not, and George V was the only victor among the three cousins.
In recent history, Russophobia became the norm. For example, the American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, mentioned many times that Russia is selfish for keeping all the natural resources for themselves. Similar sentiments were expressed by John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign as well as by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State.
Is Russophobia a consequence of envy, that one empire has such substantial riches, and the other party wants to steal it? Or are they scared that the Russian empire would attack them and that the West will be ruled by Russians?
We may never know the answer, but even a perfunctory study of history reveals that Russia never aspired to conquer the territories on their west and even more important is the fact that Russia is a Christian nation that greatly focuses on culture and heritage. That said, whenever Russia was engaged in large-scale war against common enemies of the United Kingdom, notably by Napoleon’s expansionist Russian adventure and by Hitler’s barbaric Barbarossa campaign, it defeated its enemies.
In post-communist Russia, the Orthodox faith, even though Russia’s population includes 25 million Muslims, is broadly regarded as a key element of the nation’s moral foundations. These key elements are nationalism and Orthodox Christianity. Accordingly, revived Orthodox symbolism has been fully incorporated into state practices and ceremonies. Around 25,000 Russian Orthodox churches have been built or rebuilt since the early 1990’s. Additionally, the Church has been given rights that have vastly increased its role in public life, including the right to teach religion in Russia’s public schools and the right to review any legislation before the Russian Duma (i.e., Parliament).
In October 2000, the lyrics of the Soviet anthem extolling ‘the great Lenin and the triumph of communism’ were revised and new words were drafted, in which references to Communism and Lenin were replaced with ‘Holy Russia’ and ‘God’. Officially approved via the Council of State was the official reintroduction of the white, blue, and red pre-revolutionary national flag, as well as the imperial coat of arms with a double-headed eagle on a red heraldic shield, both provisionally reintroduced by Boris Yeltsin. Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia since 1682, and a profound admirer of European culture, is considered the legal father of Russia’s tricolour flag. Red means state, blue is the colour of the Virgin Mary, who is the protector of Russia, and white is the colour of freedom and independence.
The Russian coat of arms, which depicts St. George as a knight with a spear in his hand slaying the Dragon, had been part of Russia’s coat of arms since the 16th century. Yaroslav the Wise (d. 1054), the ruler of Kievan Rus, had an image of St. George on his seal because this was his personal patron saint. As for the double-headed eagle, this can be traced back to the rule of Tsar Ivan III, who used this symbol on his royal seal in 1497, although images of double-headed eagles (or other birds) have been found in earlier ancient Russian art. They were also a symbol of Byzantine spiritual power and an aspirational claim to power in both East and West.
Perhaps the only justifiable Russophobic threat is this: if you poke the bear, the bear will be awakened and then the bear will not be stopped. Otherwise, as we argue, there is no reasonable justification for current Russophobia. Russophobia may not even be justified because of the ill-conceived Russian special military action in Ukraine. Of course, Western politicians often claim that the Russian military operation in Ukraine was ‘unprovoked’, the New York Times’ favourite adjective to describe the Ukrainian War. However, a more judicious consideration of the Ukrainian crisis reveals that there are two sides to this story, only one of which is being told.
In this sense, the late American diplomat, George Kennan, in a 1998 interview given shortly after the U.S. Senate had approved the first round of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, warned that this would result in a “new Cold War, probably ending in a hot one”.[10] He predicted that NATO expansion would inevitably provoke a military crisis, after which the proponents of NATO expansion would say that “we always told you that is how the Russians are”.[11] “I think it is a strategic mistake. There is no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else”, Kennan admonished.[12]
On 9 September 2023, NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, accidentally revealed the truth about the war in Ukraine. In testimony to the European Union Parliament, Stoltenberg made clear that it was America’s relentless push to enlarge NATO to Ukraine that was the primary cause of the war. Here are Stoltenberg’s revealing words:
The background was that President Putin declared in autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition not to invite Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that. The Opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. … We rejected that. So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite”.[13]
These provocations put Russia in an untenable situation. In his insightful book How the West Brought War to Ukraine, Dr Benjamin Abelow makes these important considerations:
Had the United States not pushed NATO to the border of Russia; not deployed nuclear-capable missile launch systems in Romania and planned them for Poland and perhaps elsewhere as well; not contributed to the overthrown of the democratically elected Ukrainian government in 2014; not abrogated the ABM treaty and then the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty, and then disregarded Russian attempts to negotiate a bilateral moratorium on deployments; not conducted live-fire exercises with rockets in Estonia to practice striking targets inside Russia; not coordinated a massive 32-nation military training exercise near Russian territory; not intertwined the U.S. military with that of Ukraine; etc. etc. etc. – had the United States and its NATO allies not done these things, the war in Ukraine probably would not have taken place. And even that is not the end of it. The U.S. government, through its words and actions, may have led Ukrainian leaders, and the Ukrainian people, to adopt intransigent positions toward Russia. Instead of pressing and supporting a negotiated peace in the Donbas between Kiev and pro-Russian autonomists, the United States encouraged strongly nationalist forces in Ukraine. It poured weapons into Ukraine, stepped up military integration and training with the Ukrainian military, refused to renounce plans to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, and may have given the impression to the Ukrainian leaders and people that it might directly go to war with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf.[14]
President Putin at least made one last attempt at diplomacy at the end of 2021, tabling a draft U.S.-NATO Security Agreement to forestall the war. The core of the draft agreement “was an end of NATO enlargement and removal of U.S. missiles near Russia”.[15] Western leaders could have easily ended the conflict early on, as Moscow and Kiev had largely worked out a peace deal during talks in Turkey, which revolved around Ukraine’s neutrality. Russia’s security concerns “were valid and the basis for negotiation”, Professor Jeffrey Sachs says. However, as he also points out,
Biden rejected negotiations out of a combination of arrogance, hawkishness and profound miscalculation. NATO maintained its position that NATO would not negotiate with Russia regarding NATO enlargement, that in effect, NATO enlargement was none of Russia’s business.[16]
Why is Ukraine deemed to be so important for the Russians? Modern Russia as a nation finds its origins in Kievan Rus, founded in the ninth century with its first capital in Novgorod, then in Kiev. The Russian Orthodox religion spread from Ukraine, and even celebrated anti-communist dissidents, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, insisted that Ukraine is an integral part of Russia. Indeed, for 500 years it was.[17] Precisely for this reason, Henry Kissinger, who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, advocated that Ukraine “should not be allowed to join NATO”.[18] As Kissinger once pointed out,
The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began with Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries. The Russian Black Sea Fleet – Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean – is based in Sevastopol, Crimea (with Ukraine’s longtime agreement).[19]
As can be seen, the war in Ukraine is primarily a result of provoking Western expansionism. This is deeply disappointing even because, at first, Russia was seriously willing to be an ally of the United States and Western European nations. On 14 December 2000, for example, Putin had officially announced that Russia no longer viewed The United States as an enemy or even as an opponent. “The United States is Russia’s partner”, he said.[20]
When terrorists mounted their 9/11 attacks on the United States, the Russian leader was the world’s first leader to offer condolences and help. Russians linked the 9/11 attacks in America to the same global terrorist threat they faced in Chechnya. Russia had supported the Northern Alliance with weapons and money for several years to curb the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. Russia was now fully aligned with the United States in the war on terror. The Russians offered logistical aid, intelligence, search missions, and Russia’s military rescue if American pilots were shot down in Afghanistan. They even offered the right to U.S. military flights over Russian territory.
Russians are Eastern Europeans with a rich cultural heritage, and, throughout history, they displayed an amicable attitude with respect to Western neighbours and unselfishly protected those who needed protection. Like many Americans, most Russians believe in their nation’s uniqueness and rich Christian heritage. This is something that deeply infuriates the Western woke elite, hence their naturally Russophobic feelings.
These feelings are far more accentuated than during the previous Soviet era. Arguably, when Russia was communist, this was, at least, a Western ideology notoriously shared by far too many Western intellectuals and politicians. And yet, Russians now primarily believe that their nation is destined for the advancement of Christianity and, particularly, Orthodox Christianity. Of course, this is simply not acceptable for the modern, anti-Christian and secular Western woke elites. It certainly explains the current Russophobia which, as history reveals, is unjustified.
Augusto Zimmermann PhD is the Founder and President of WALTA Legal Theory and a former Law Reform Commissioner in Western Australia.
Gabriël Moens AM is Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Queensland.
Dejan Hinic is a financial and investment expert operating from Belgrade, Serbia.
[1] Alexander Hill, ‘Why Vladimir Putin still has widespread support in Russia’, The Conversation, 7 September 2022, at https://theconversation.com/why-vladimir-putin-still-has-widespread-support-in-russia-189211
[2] President Biden, Twitter, March 27, 2022, at https://twitter.com/potus/status/1507842574865866763?lang=en
[3] Jennifer Sor, ‘The Ruble is gaining and is the world’s best performing currency versus the dollar’, Yahoo! Finance, 22 November 2023, at https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ruble-gaining-worlds-best-performing-232052620.html
[4] Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster, 1997, 14
[5] Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, Vintage Books, 1994), 338-339.
[6] Nicholas Werth, ‘A State against its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union’, in: Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, 124.
[7] Vladimir N. Brovkin, From Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Putin, Routledge, 2024, 267.
[8] ‘Putin mocks ‘gender-neutral God’ proposed by Church of England’, Daily Mail, 21 February 2023, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib79nDamfno.
[9] Tim Costello, ‘Vladimir Putin: a miracle defender of Christianity or the most evil man?’, The Guardian, 6 March 2022, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/06/vladimir-putin-a-miracle-defender-of-christianity-or-the-most-evil-man
[10] Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler, In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones (St. Martin’s Press, 2019) 51-52.
[11] John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014, 8.
[12] Ibid. 7.
[13] ‘NATO Chief: NATO Expansion Caused Russian Invasion’, Consortium News, 9 September 2023, at https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/09/nato-chief-nato-expansion-caused-russian-invasion/
[14] Benjamin Abelow, How the West Brought War to Ukraine, Siland Press, 2022, 58.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Jeffrey Sachs, ‘NATO Expansion and Ukraine’s Destruction’, Consortium News, 21 September 2023, at https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/21/jeffrey-sachs-nato-expansion-ukraines-destruction/
[17] Jonathan Power, ‘Ukraine Should Have a Policy of ‘Non-Involvement with NATO’, Opined Zbigniew Brzezinski’, IDN – InDepthNews, 26 February 2022, at https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/5106-ukraine-should-have-a-policy-of-non-involvement-with-nato-opined-zbigniew-brzezinski
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Philip Short, Putin: His Life and Times, The Bodley Head, 2022, 369.
