During the initial fiery days of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Western public’s reaction against the Russian government suddenly erupted into total hatred toward Russian culture.
Western civilization has witnessed spectacles of disgrace from putting Russian literary masterpieces off the library shelves to requesting Russian classical compositions be banned from philharmonic orchestras.
It is common for the mainstream media in the West to provoke its people against any country to rally the public behind their authority during times of crisis and war.
Surprisingly, how did the political stance towards Putin turn into an unconscious outburst of ire that radically denies Russian culture?
Undoubtedly, today’s unchecked “Russophobia” in most Western societies has been significantly influenced by Western intellectuals, particularly the European left.
Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were published and read as widely as surpassing all French classics. During the most virulent anti-communist propaganda campaigns, the European left did not become this unguarded.
Although buttressing their neoliberal power, the European left’s falling into line against Russia today initially recalls the “political treachery” of the Second International, the roots of its Russophobia go far further back.
From Enlightenment to Marxism
Russophobia is evident in the republican, democratic, and socialist as well as conservative thought in Continental Europe.
From the last quarter of the 18th century to the late 19th century, Russia symbolized “autocracy, barbarism, despotism” for almost all progressives in Continental Europe.
To put the Russophobia of the Western intellectual on a sound historical basis, it is necessary to look at the changes in attitudes and values experienced before and after this century and why and how the existing judgments have changed.
It is essential to see why and how the existing judgments have changed, as well as shifts in attitudes and values that took place before and after this century, to contextualize the Russophobia of the Western intellectual within a sound historical frame.
First of all, the attitude of the Western intellectuals towards Russia directly relies on the relationship of these thinkers with their own political systems.
In the periods when the monarchies in Continental Europe hindered social freedom and impeded progress, Russia was an alternative land for the ideas of Enlightenment to flourish. However, Russia was perceived as the biggest threat to reviving freedom in Continental Europe throughout times of social movements and revolutions.
All these fluctuating changes in the Russophobic approach of progressive thinkers in Continental Europe can be traced most clearly from Diderot to Marx.
In a sense, a cyclical liaison is traced between Diderot’s early ideas and Marx’s later ideas.
The journey of the Enlightenment into the Russian steppes
Leibniz, a German philosopher, was the first to express and even translate into political action that Russia would be the state where the Enlightenment’s ideals of development and freedom could be realized.
Not standing the endless conflicts of German rulers and tiny principalities in Prussia on where the darkness of feudalism was felt, Leibniz believed that the most suitable place for the social projects of the Enlightenment was Tsarist Russia, with its large geography and firm administration.
Saying, “It would be more applicable to render these proposals realized in a great country like Russia than in any of the competing German principalities,” Leibniz became an adviser to Peter the Great and joined his entourage during the Tsar’s tour in Europe. [1]
French Enlightenment thinkers also turned to Russia to realize their projects of an egalitarian and free society. Presenting herself as a disciple of the Enlightenment as a part of her European policy, Tsarina Catherine extended her patronage to French thinkers targeted by monarchies and the church.
Diderot adopted a similar stance as Leibniz, declaring “it was impossible to reform existing legislation in France because it was too strongly bound up with traditional property relations, whereas in Russia (…) How happy is the nation where nothing has as yet been done!”.[2] He himself visited Russia in 1773 upon the invitation of Catherine.
After the Pugachev uprising that broke out while Diderot was in Petersburg, Catherine suspended the reforms and abruptly abandoned Enlightenment thought. This led to the first notable rupture in the view of Enlightenment thinkers toward Russia.
Diderot’s observations about Russia following his visit, such as “no individual freedoms in Russia,” “lack of public life,” and “despotism that shackles natural rights,” would become the primary rhetoric of progressives in Europe.
Especially in the face of the French Revolution and the following Jacobin period’s radical policies, through the conservative policies, Russia tried to ward Tsarism off the emerging revolutionary waves. These policies cemented these Russia-biased opinions in European intellectual circles.
Undoubtedly, the victorious parade of the “barbarian” Scythian warriors in the streets of Paris after chasing Napoleon from Moscow to France contributed to the image of Russia as the biggest enemy of freedom in Europe and the entrenchment of “Russophobia.” [3]
In both the Restoration Era and revolutions in 1830 and 1848 after the fall of Napoleon, Russia’s rise to political prominence as the most significant power that helped the European monarchies survive reinforced the anti-Russian sentiments among progressive circles.
Russia became not only the epitome of “despotism” but also the “greatest enemy” of democracy and revolution and the stronghold of counter-revolution in the eyes of European intellectuals.
Marx vis-à-vis Russia
The position of European socialists against Tsarist Russia was defined by failure of the 1848 Revolution as a result of the Russian military and political support provided to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In the writings of Marx and Engels, particularly between the early 1850s and the end of the 1870s, Russia received more criticism than nearly any other European monarchy.
In his article “Democratic Pan-Slavism,” dated February 1849, Engels writes that “hatred of the Russians was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among the Germans (…) we know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated in Russia and the Slav regions of Austria”.[4] In a sense, his anti-Tsarism reached to the point of ethnocultural antagonism.
Similarly, Marx condemned the presence of the Russian rural commune (obschina) as the economic and political foundation of Tsarist despotism in an article published in the New York Tribune in February 1853.
After the Crimean War outbreak, Marx and Engels’s anti-Russianism had turned into an explicit political stance. Marx’s Russophobic articles appeared during the Crimean War in the Free Press, owned by a British conservative, David Urquhart.
More strikingly, in his Tribune article on April 12, 1853, Engels supported the British government against Russia: “Russia is decidedly a conquering nation (…) But let Russia get possession of Turkey, and her strength is increased nearly half (…) In this instance the interests of the revolutionary democracy and of England go hand in hand. Neither can permit the Tsar to make Constantinople into one of his capitals.” [5]
Marx and Engels undoubtedly employed a tactical policy to deepen the imperial rift between England and Russia with the hope of an upcoming revolution in Europe.
In this sense, there is a substantial ideological rift between the stance of Marx and Engels and the support to imperialisms of the Second International, which gave up the revolution.
Notwithstanding, the European socialist parties capitalized on these anti-Russian sentiments.
Russia reborn for Marx
Two things happened that fundamentally altered the progressives’ view towards Russia in Continental Europe. In 1871, with the Paris Commune, not only did the 20-year repression of Napoleon III come to an end, but the international mechanisms that had been suppressing the working class and socialist movement in Continental Europe also changed. The Battle of Sedan following the Commune also shattered the conservative consensus in Europe.
On the other hand, in the early 1870s, the populists in Russia turned to villages, whereas Russian intellectuals started a revolutionary movement against Tsarism. At this moment in history, the developments in both Continental Europe and Russia would radically change the views of European socialists, notably Marx and Engels, on Russia.
In his essays, Chernisevki brings up the idea of implementing the methods of the modern economy to transform Russian rural communes into the foundation of socialist communal structures and writes about the possibility of transitioning to socialism without experiencing capitalist destruction. Especially, Marx was interested in these ideas.
Having been researching Russia for a long time, Marx had also changed his views on Russia drastically. In his thoughts, rural communes no longer represent the foundation of despotism but the bedrock of socialism. Russia also symbolized the country where the European revolution could be first sparked, not the stronghold of the counter-revolution.
In 1881, Zasulich of the Russian revolutionary movement sent a letter to Marx posing his thoughts about the future of Russia.
For a long time, Marx worked on four drafts in which he examined the possibility of Russia’s transition to socialism without reaching the phase of capitalism. Due to his unending diligence, Marx never actually sent these drafts to Zasulich. In a short letter, Marx only wrote that he asserted the “historical inevitability” of capitalism solely for Western Europe.[6]
Working on Marx’s draft, the Italian historian Venturi says, “in brief, Marx finally embraced Chernisevsky’s theories.” [7]
Nevertheless, Zasulich and Plekhanov concealed Marx’s letter for evident political reasons, and it was published only in 1924.
In a sense, blanketing Marx’s insights about the possible future revolution in Russia paved the way for European socialism to eventually side with its imperialism.
The centenary shame of Western left
After the break between the European socialist movements and the Russian revolutionaries on the eve of the First World War -despite a brief rapprochement in the Popular Front experience-the ideological tension of the Soviets with the European socialists, particularly during the Spanish Civil War, continued.
In the background of this intellectual conflict throughout the Cold War, it is straightforward to observe the traces of the ossified anti-Russian presuppositions of the European left.
It is open to debate to what extent the course of history would have been different if Marx’s drafts on Russia had been out on time.
What is unquestionable is the current reckless hatred of Russia displayed by the European left.
At the end of this period which witnessed the removal of Dostoevsky from many literature departments’ curricula, Germany might go so far as to ban Leibniz’s works. The West is characteristically known for denying its progressive tradition in times of crisis.
Following this period in which the hegemony of Western imperialism would collapse, and new international political balances would begin to be established, the tradition of Western thought giving Asia its historical role is to rise again within a more proper context.
[1] For Leibniz’s thoughts on Russia and China, see Maria Rosa Antognazza, Leibniz, İş Bankası Yayınları, 2013.
[2] Andrzej Walicki, Rus Düşünce Tarihi, İletişim Yayınları, 2009, p. 30.
[3] On the historical relations between Russia and France, see Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, La Russie et La France, Fayard, 2021.
[4] For writings and discussions of Marx and Engels on Russia in the 1850s, see Kevin B. Anderson, Marx Sınırlarında, Yordam Kitap, 2018, p. 98.
[5] Anderson, p. 91.
[6] For Marx’s final Works and his relations with Russian Narodniks, see Marcello Musto, Karl Marx’ın Son Yılları, Yordam Kitap, 2021, p. 132.
[7] For an extensive study on Russian populism, see Franco Venturi, Histoire du Populisme Russe, au XIX. siècle tome 1-2, Gallimard, 1972.
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