Anatol Lieven raises an extremely important issue when he points out "the existence of deliberately structured prejudices in Western media coverage" of all things Russian (JRL #4587, Oct. 17). Calling those "structured prejudices" Russophobia, he gives a number of persuasive examples. His critics miss the point, if they think Lieven is calling for Russo-philia. As I understand his appeal, Lieven is calling for greater balance, objectivity, and fairness in coverage of Russia.

I have no doubt that he can defend himself against his critics. However, I cannot help noticing that Maris Ozols, while picking on minor points, simply ignores Lieven's main argument that Communist crimes cannot be blamed only on the Russians, that, for instance, "Red Latvians had played a key part in Lenin's revolution, and returned in large numbers to Latvia to help impose Stalinist rule on their Latvian compatriots."

As to Miriam Lanskoy's response, one may sympathize with her implicit concern with possible misuse or even abuse of the "highly emotional label 'russophobe.'" But again, I don't think that Lieven uses it indiscriminately. He would not want to--and neither do I-- in any way, stifle objective criticism of Russian government (or U.S. government) or even Russia's (and Western) historical traditions and records. What needs to be discerned and condemned is the "sin" of russophobia, not those who occasionally might indulge in it, due to ignorance or fashion.

And the "sin" is real, pervasive, ubiquitous, and afflicting not only the media, but scholarship and policy-makers. In fact, the indulgence in Russophobia was one of the key factors that prevented Western sovietologists from understanding the true nature of Communism--and from predicting its downfall. More than twenty years ago I debated against Professor Richard Pipes who alleged in his writings that Soviet expansionism was due more to the alleged "Russianness" of Soviet leaders, especially to their peasant origin, than their Marxist ideology ("Richard Pipes's Foreign Strategy: Anti-Soviet or Anti-Russian?"The Russian Review, April 1979; reprinted in the British Encounter magazine in April 1980)

Later, in my book, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth (published by Westview Press, 1991, under the name of Vladislav Krasnov), I argued that the resurgence of Russian nationalism in the wake of glasnost should be welcomed, that, besides its extreme and anti-Western manifestations, there were benign, moderate, and healthy varieties, such as Solzhenitsyn's nationalism (he prefers to call it Russian patriotism, as distinct from the ideological "Soviet patriotism") which deserve sympathy and understanding, if not support from the West.

I also predicted that the resurgence of Russian national self-awareness woul be the key factor in the (then forthcoming) fall of Communism in the Soviet Union. Condemning Russophobia as morally reprehensible and politically blind, I took to task the Russophobic tendencies in the writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Richard Pipes, and Hugh Ragsdale, all of whom seemed to prefer Soviet Empire to a new Russia, if it were constituted on national foundations. They feared, in Kissinger's words, that, should the Soviet Union disintegrate, "In the end, Russian nationalism may outweigh liberalism and provide the motive for cohesion that communism seems to have lost...The West will be faced with an autocratic state stretching over two continents and possessing 30,000 nuclear weapons what emerges will be most comparable to the imperial Russia of Czarist times." (Now we may wish that there were such cohesion!)

In contrast, I argued that "Only by re-establishing its own national identity--by restoring itself as a unique civilization that has something of Europe, something of Asia, and much more that is entirely its own--can Russia assume its rightful place in the global community" and "serve as a magnet for a commonwealth of good neighbors" gravitating toward the Russian civilization.

Of course, arguments, such as this, were roundly ignored by U.S. foreign policy-makers. Instead, apparently yielding to Russophobia and triumphalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they did everything to bend the emerging new Russia to its knees, weaken it and reduce it to the status of raw materials supplier.

The results are well-known: instead of a free-market economy we helped to create "nomenklatura capitalism," instead of democracy--oligarchy, instead of the rule of law--ubiquitous corruption, presided over by the autocratic (and erratic) ruler of the Kremlin to whom the White House gave its blessings. The results were also: the shrinking of Russian economy well beyond what America had experienced during the depression, the collapse of social and healthcare services, and the loss of life like in war time. Russia was, still is, on the brink of demographic catastrophe.

Characteristically, we delivered our "assistance" to Russia in violation of our own free-market principles: the U.S. government simply granted the monopoly on giving macro-economic advice to Yeltsin's government to a group from Harvard University. The requirement for open bidding was circumvented "For foreign policy considerations." Some of the principals of that Harvard group are now criminally charged by U.S. court..

In addition to our cynical meddling in the feeble new Russia's domestic affairs, we added insult to injury by a reckless expansion of NATO, followed by the "humanitarian" bombing of Russia's historical ally, Serbia.

No wonder that, while completely failing to re-make Russia in our image, we only succeeded in weakening it to the extent that its very survival became precarious. We also succeeded in discrediting Western-sponsored reforms, humiliating and antagonizing the Russian people to the point that distorted, malignant, caricature varieties of Russian nationalism, like the Zhirinovsky movement, asserted themselves.

However, even our success, inspired as it was by Russophobia, was of dubious nature. Leaving aside the morality and our hypocritically professed democratic values, our pragmatic sense is challenged by this cynical question: By weakening Russia the way we did, didn't we succeed beyond what is good for even our own national security interests? I certainly think so. For one thing, we created more enemies than friends among the Russians, the vast majority of whom, rejecting Soviet propaganda, felt nothing but good will toward the West in 1991. Secondly, we created a power vacuum in the entire northern half of Eurasia, a power vacuum that neither the U. S. nor its allies are capable or willing to fill in. This was an invitation to instability that flew in the face of our long-term geopolitical interests.

Fortunately, the Russian people had enough sense to put in power a younger leader who vowed to restore Russia to a great power. Stretching as it does across two continents, Russia can be only a great power--or no power at all. For, one country's power should be commensurate with the territory it is expected to control. It remains to be seen whether Vladimir Putin will be able to fulfill what he promised. Since, by meddling in the Russian affairs the way we did under Boris Yeltsin we made Putin's task immensely more difficult, the best thing we can now do--not only for Russia's sake, but for ourselves--is to stay on the sidelines and pray that he succeeds. Hopefully, he can do it without resorting to more autocratic means than his predecessor.

When Mr. Lieven warns against excessive Russophobia, he, in effect, calls for less arrogance, more humility and more introspection on our part. He questions the prevailing assumption that just because the West has a greater democratic tradition and prosperous economy, it has always acted right and can do no wrong. I have my list of Western "wrongs," but this a different subject.

On a more practical level, if I understand him correctly, Lieven suggests that the indulgence in russophobia is not only unfair to the Russians, but ultimately harmful to the West's own interests. Instead of trying to make Russia "bow to US wishes," Lieven suggests that it is more profitable to seek "limited co-operation" with Russia on many crucial issues, while opposing on some others. It is this "limited co-operation," which the West needs as much as the Russians, that "is threatened by the irrational hatreds and ambitions of Western Russophobes."

Didn't Samuel Huntington remind us, in his book "The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order," that what the West, especially, the "missionary nation" of the United States, in their self-righteousness, call "globalization" and "universalism," may seem, to the rest of the world, just plain old Western imperialism? In our post-Communist triumphalism, bordering on hubris, we certainly behaved like such imperialists in the eyes of the Russians.

We forgot that, to assert Western values as universal--and I submit that, in my personal views, many of them deserve to be universally accepted--we have to practice abroad what we preach at home: a sensitivity and respect for, and desire to learn from, the multi-culturalism of the entire constellation of remarkable civilizations, including the Russian one, that illuminate our globe. The indulgence in Russophobia deprives us of such sensitivity.

To prevent "The Clash of Civilization" about which Huntington warns, we need not only a balance of powers, but a balance of civilizations. And for this balance we may need to ally ourselves not only with nation-states, like those in NATO, but with other than Western civilizations. Russia is both a core nation and civilizational magnet. We should respect both Russia's national core and its magnetic field. After all, it may only strengthen a future alliance.

The indulgence in Russophobia blinds us to such eventuality.

Dear RAGA Friends,

This is a follow up on my Halloween night letter. Let me share with you some of the fallout, released by Anatol Lieven's pointing out (JRL 4587) "the existence of deliberately structured prejudices in Western media coverage" of Russian affairs. Lieven subsumed those prejudices under the name of "russophobia." In addition to my letter in support for Lieven (JRL #4607), Johnson's Russia List published a number of other comments, both pro and con.

Professor Stephen Blank, whom Lieven named as one of the offenders (along with Paul Goble, William Safire, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Ed Lucas), denied that he had "nothing good to say about Russian policy anywhere." He admonished Lieven for the very use of "the term Russophobe" because it was used by "the reactionary anti-Semitic right...and should be avoided at all costs."

Blank's censorial stricture was challenged by another JRL contributor, Roderic Braithwaite of the United Kingdom. Praising Lieven's "gallant attempt to introduce some balance into the debate about Russia," Braithwaite countered Blank by affirming the legitimacy of the term "russophobia." According to Braithwaite, this term "is sanctioned by long usage," since, at least, in the British press the term has been used since the first half of the nineteenth century.

Braithwaite even cites bibliographic evidence, namely, JH Gleason's book "The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain" published by Harvard in 1950.(Did anyone read this book? I would love to) "Despite the attempts of Russia's unpleasant anti-Semites to hijack it," Braithwaite insists on the futility of Blank's endeavor to banish "russophobia" from common usage as it remains "a useful word."

Lieven also got a strong support from Patrick Armstrong. According to Armstrong, those Western experts who "take certain, mostly wrong or at least debatable, assumptions about Russia for granted" could be legitimately called russophobes. Below are six such assumptions which Armstrong spelled out (and which I had to abbreviate):

• (1) "Russia is just the same as the USSR - communism was a Russian invention"
• (2) "Russia is the only actor in the region and all the other states are either puppets of or manipulated by Moscow"
• (3) "Nothing happens by accident in Russia - it's all planned and executed...so every event has a plot behind it"
• (4) "Everything official Russians say is suspect and much less to be believed than things officials in the West say"
• (5) "Russians are naturally expansionistic or imperialistic to a degree other peoples are not"
• (6) "Russians are very resistant to change" so that "the Marquis de Custine is considered to be an authoritative observer of contemporary Russia."

In my opinion, the six assumptions are a fair summary of the main symptoms of the malaise of Russophobia, the reverse of which is Western post-communist triumphalism, jingoism and arrogance, bordering on hubris.

Here is something from my RAGA e-mail bag (unlike JRL, my correspondents must remain unonymous). One of them, who works for U.S. government, writes:

"I do not doubt that Russophobia exists. Unfortunately, I think there are many people in our government who regard all Slavic people as being somehow primitive, backward people who need the West to tell them how to do things.

This, I think was part of the racism inherent in the intervention of NATO in Kosovo.

I think it is very sad that at the end of the Cold War, the West had a golden opportunity to improve relations with the Russians, when the Russians wanted that very much - but we blew it by interfering in Bosnia and Kosovo, and expanding NATO, giving the Russians reason to mistrust us once again.

Equally sad is the fact that we proved that multinational capitalism (of the IMF, WTO brand) could be just as oppressive a force in Eastern Europe as Soviet Communism was. These imperialists see any form of nationalism, be it Russian or Serbian, etc. as an obstacle to their goals of controlling the area economically and militarily, hence the demonization, in the media, of anyone who espouses such nationalism."

I could not agree more. I especially appreciate this respondent's pointing out the anti-Slavic bias. I would even broaden it into a sort of anti-East European bias. As a political defector, residing first in Europe (back in the 1960s) and then in the States, I often came in contact with anti-communist refugees from Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Rumania, Bulgaria, you name it.

Perhaps, I was lucky, but I never noticed any russophobic streak among these people. On the contrary, all of us felt as a fraternity of people whom the West, especially the media and the governments, didn't understand and didn't even try to. In fact, well into the 1980s, the prevalent attitude toward all these countries was that of Helmut Sonnenfeld who was then, if I remember correctly, U.S. State Department official and certainly one of the talking heads. According to that "Sonnenfeld doctrine," U.S. national security interests were best served by a continuation of Soviet dominance over Central and Eastern Europe because it alone provided "stability" to the entire region. And, yes, one of the "scholarly" shibboleths used against the admission of these people (including, East Germans, by the way) into the Free World was the alleged lack of democratic credentials in their history.

Anatol Lieven kindly acknowledged the receipt of my letter and thanked me for supporting him on JRL.

One more quotation from a letter by an old friend of mine, distinguished China and Russia scholar and former Time bureau chief:

"I agree completely. I think the current arrogant and contemptuous attitude towards Russia by many Americans in the policy-making community not only morally wrong, but plain stupid. People remember when you have treated them badly, and payback time always comes most inconveniently for the one paid back."

My friend even feels that the issue of russophobia is important enough to be conveyed to Condoleeza Rice. "I think she ought to see it, since George W. has made a point about being 'humble' in his foreign policy," my friend writes.

This reminds me to remind you to exercise your civic duties today. RAGA does not take a stand, and I suggest you vote your conscience.

I am still waiting for some feedback on the other issues I raised in my JRL letter, such as the distinctiveness of Russian civilization and the need to transcend the arrogance of exclusive Western "globalism" in favor of a balance of civilizations as suggested in Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilization.

The closest JRL came to a discussion of the above issues was in a letter by one of the Russian JRL contributors, Andrei Liakhov, "Why am I interested in Russia."

"It seems to me that what's going on in Russia since 1987 is history in the making...
Irrespective of the quite widespread notion of Russia's almost messianic destiny, ...
I believe that the future development of human society is, to a large extent, being determined by what's going on in Russia...Quite apart from its role as a testing ground for models of social development,...it seems to me that Russia has a great potential of becoming one of the leading countries of the modern world with the incomparable influence, impact and strength in the world affairs. What it will become is unclear, but irrespective of what it will become it will affect the course of history on the scale comparable with the Reformation or the Enlightenment."

Liakhov backs up his messianic vision for Russia with an appeal to Western pragmatism. For us, to understand what's going on in Russia, Liakhov ask us to live for a minute in the state of "national shock Russia went through in '91-'92" and " imagine that when you wake up tomorrow morning there will be no mighty US of A; you will need a visa to go to New Jersey from New York; there will be a different currency across the Hudson; CNN will announce that George Washington was a traitor and produce documentary evidence of this, there was no War for Independence, Alexander Hamilton took orders from the King of England who wanted him to become a president; and under the secret agreement signed by FDR with Hitler, the state of California does actually belong to the Germans."

Together with Liakhov, I wonder: "How would an average US person feel if all that would happen in a day? And how long do you think Americans will need to come to grips with the new reality?" We should ponder these questions before lecturing and hectoring the Russians, be it about their behavior in Chechnia or restricting the freedom of oligarchy-controled media.

To those who wrote me personal letters I apologize for the delay in responding and promise to do so soon. I also apologize for the failure to use BCC function to protect the privacy of RAGA Friends. I promise to work on improving my computer skills.

Finally, although I personally appreciate Bill Mandel's letter celebrating "The launching today of the first space station" as "essentially a Russian-American endeavor, primarily Russian technology and primarily American money," I did not authorize his use of my mailing list. But don't you think Bill made an excellent point against russophobia, Russia-bashing, "forgetting Russia," whatever fashionable Halloween mask we find to cover up the inadequacy of our understanding of Russia?

With Best Wishes,
W. George Krasnow
President
Russia & America GoodWill Associates
www.raga.org
e-mail: president@raga.org
Washington