Fear Of Russia Research Articles

Cyprus, 1955–1959: The US, Britain and the USSR: Then is Now

ABSTRACT Using recently released documents, this paper considers the viewpoints of Britain, the US and the USSR vis-à-vis Cyprus in the crucial years between 1955 and 1959. Having explained the author’s historical and mental underpinning, the paper shows how crude Cold War geopolitical considerations dictated the approach of all three countries, whatever the moral arguments. The documents revealed in the article show that the British colluded secretly with Turkey, and were fully aware that the Turkish Cypriot leadership had planted a bomb at the Turkish consulate, in order to instigate anti-Greek rioting—a fact covered up at the time, and only recently proven by the eventual release of British documents. The paper demonstrates unequivocally how the whole 1959 arrangement was predicated on the Anglo-Saxons’ insistence on a NATO solution, and how critical the USSR was about an arrangement that was clearly dysfunctional. The paper concludes that external tensions, fear of Russia, and a continuing attempt to solve a problem by repeating the same errors still hold true today.

“In the Grasp of the Pan-Slavic Octopus”*: Hungarian Nation Building in the Shadow of Pan-Slavism Until the 1848 Revolution

This study analyzes the impacts that fear of Pan-Slavism had on Hungarian politics and how this fear was politically instrumentalized in the 1840s and during the 1848 Revolution. Pan-Slavism was the best-known image of the enemy and is associated with the fear of the Russian Empire. The fear of Russia and Pan-Slavism permeated the thinking of the Hungarian reform generation, and together with the vision of national death, had an impact on politics. In addition to its impact on nation- and state-building, the fear of Pan-Slavism also served as an argument in favor of socio-political reforms. The Hungarian political elite aspired to create a national state on the French model, and the instrumentalized use of Pan-Slavism was in many cases used to justify measures intended to speed up the formation of a Hungarian national state.

Threat and fear: Pragmatic purposes of emotionalisation in media discourse

The impact of mass media on individuals and society is to a great extent based on emotions. We concentrate on fear as it is one of the basic emotions triggered by risk and threat, which is claimed to play a key role in the twenty-first century consciousness (Furedi 20018). The study focuses on the emotionalisation of fear in contemporary media discourse about Russia, more specifically, on constructions of Russian threat and fear of Russia in Anglo-American media texts to highlight pragmatic effects and to speculate on possible purposes of such discourses. The study aims to explore the functioning of the lexemes threat and fear , in textual contexts with the focus on their pragma-discursive characteristics. It identifies the mechanisms as well as linguistic tools involved in media strategies of scare-mongering. The dataset was derived from quality British and American newspapers in the period 2018-2020, and was analysed drawing on an interdisciplinary approach combining critical discourse analysis, pragmatics, medialinguistics, psycholinguistics and the theory of proximisation. The paper argues that appealing to emotions as well as constructing emotions is aimed at enhancing the persuasive function of media and fulfilling their own agenda. The persistent use of the words threat and fear in relation to Russia as well as the obsessive discussion of this topic in media aim to shape a certain negative public opinion of Russia among readerships. The findings show that to achieve this goal different strategies and linguistic tools are used including: exaggeration, repetition, proximisation, interrogative headlines, presupposition, among others. The results go beyond linguistics, and may find implementation in political studies, since they provide researchers with tools for understanding contemporary social and political processes.

“Phlegm defines the Russian national character …”

In current historiography, the German General Staff with its responsibility for war planning and military intelligence is usually playing a key role in the emergence of World War One. Surprisingly, no recent study focuses the military agency’s perceptions of Russia and the Russian people, although these notions build an important part of the bilateral relationship between the Russian and the German Empire. This study shows that the views of certain leading General Staff officers about Russia were based for the most part on long-standing Russophobe resentments felt by the German bourgeoisie. Most of the German General Staff members thought of their eastern neighbor as a vast and hostile country with a barbaric and despotic government, while the Russian people were seen as dumb and lazy, frugal and naive. In addition, German perceptions were characterized by a sort of flamboyant ambiguity, with contempt and disdain going hand in hand with fear of Russia’s irresistible demographic economic and military growth. Together with underestimation of the Russian national character, especially those fearful German perceptions were an important factor in the German military leadership’s decision to go to war in July 1914.

Tallinna ja Harju-Viru rüütelkonna alistumine Rootsile 1561: vormid ja põhjused [Abstract: The capitulation of the town of Tallinn and the Harju-Viru knighthood to Sweden in 1561: forms and causes

Tallinna ja Harju-Viru rüütelkonna alistumine Rootsile 1561: vormid ja põhjused [Abstract: The capitulation of the town of Tallinn and the Harju-Viru knighthood to Sweden in 1561: forms and causes

EU–Russia Security Relations and the Survey of Russian Federation Foreign Policy: One Year On

The Kremlin's change of leadership on 7 May 2008 and growing international fears of Russia's resurgence, especially in the aftermath of the Georgian conflict, make this an interesting time to reflect upon EU–Russia security relations. This article does so by examining closely the Survey of Russian Federation Foreign Policy and, one year on from its approval, drawing upon subsequent developments as preliminary corollary or otherwise of its bearing on policy. On balance, it seems that the Kremlin's evolving perception of Russia and international relations has encouraged revised priorities and objectives and a more forceful foreign policy that not only slow progress in filling the Common Spaces, but also increase the likelihood of Russia–EU competition especially in their shared neighbourhood.

Implications of putin's regional and demographic policies on the evolution of inter-ethnic relations in Russia

This paper examines the impact of regional standardization and immigration policies on the evolution of inter-ethnic relations in Russia. The paper argues that these initiatives resulted in the emergence of a simmering ethnic discontent among Russia's indigenous nationalities and gave rise to Russian ethnic majority nationalism. The arrival of such policies was predetermined by multifarious fears of Russia's political elites. These primarily concerned domestic factors, such as the country's potential disintegration along ethnic lines, and international concerns, related primarily to the revolutionary developments in Georgia and Ukraine. Moreover, such initiatives had been executed in accordance with the logic of a ‘political market place’, without seriously considering the particularities of Russia's nationality structure and the history of her inter-ethnic relations. This work concludes that, from theoretical and comparative angles, such policies could lead to a range of unanticipated negative outcomes.

Estonian Identity Formations and Threat Framing in the Post-Cold War Era

This article shows that threat framing by the Estonian elite has changed significantly since the end of the Cold War. In order to explain these changes, the identity formations salient in Estonian political discourse are analyzed using discourse analysis and contrasted to two other explanatory approaches: one based on the ideas of realism, the other on cognitive theory. This demonstrates that the variation of threat images, as well as Estonia’s wish to join international organizations, is guided not solely by fear of Russia, but also by a desire to re-establish bonds with an identity formation Estonia once was part of. Thus, the change of threat images can be explained by the dynamics of identity formations, which in turn are linked to processes of socialization, as Estonia adapts to the discourse of the West. It is further argued that previous research on the linkages between identity formations and threat images has tended to oversimplify this relationship. In contrast to earlier research, this article claims that after independence, the Estonian Self has not developed in polarized terms vis-‡-vis the Russian state and the domestic Russian Other. Rather, it is concluded that what is at issue is a process of socialization. This implies not only learning and using language as a means towards the recognition of a multicultural Estonia and the inclusion of the Russian minority in the Estonian Self, but also the institutionalization of such a language in terms of official policies.

The Russia of the Tsar and North Norway. "The Russian Danger" Revisited

The fear of Russia in Norway goes back far beyond the Russian Revolution. It played an important role in Norwegian Swedish foreign policies towards Russia from the 1830s and up to 1905 (and in Norwegian conceptions of threat between 1905 and 1917 as well, although the threat seems to have been more down-played in that period) (Nielsen 1994 95). In particular, there has been a fear of a possible attack on North-Norway. Roald Berg, in his recently published work entitled Norsk forsvarshistorie 1814-1905 (The History of the Norwegian Defence 1814 1905) presents evidence that the conception of a Russian danger was an issue in Norwegian military considerations as far back as in the 1820s and 1830s. According to Berg, it is evident that this idea was central in Norwegian military-strategic thought in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (Berg 2001: 112 115, 307-308). My purpose in this paper is to try to establish whether there was reason for this fear, that is, if there were any plans among the Russian authorities to conquer Norwegian territory in the period between the Eidsvoll Assembly and the storming of the Winter Palace (1814 1917).

Russians in Germany: 1900-1914

In the summer of 1914 Europeans went to war not only at the urging of those crowned rulers, diplomats, army officers and industrialists who had set the stage for the conflagration that followed, but also for their own causes. Even when public opinion did not decisively alter public policy, it helped to convince policymakers that their decisions enjoyed popular support. Widespread Russophobia was an important element in German public opinion in the decade before the war. Germans went off to war in the East in I9I4 with the feeling that they were at best defending Western civilization against Eastern barbarism and at least defending economic progress against political autocracy. Russia was a political anachronism staving off the forces of revolution; as such she symbolized a bastion of despotism for the German left (except for a brief moment in I905), and the threat of revolutionary Slavic upheaval for the establishment. Even the German middleclass reading public, with its new editions of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gogol, and Tolstoi, saw in Russia a fantasy-world both exotic and dangerous. One of the most important contributing factors to widespread fear of Russia in Germany after I900 was the mass migration of disaffected political refugees from Russia into Germany. Since the second quarter of the eighteenth century Germany had exerted a powerful cultural attraction on Russian intellectuals. But increasingly after I88I Germany became a centre of Russian exile political activity as well. The newer generation of Russians in Germany came for two main reasons: to obtain a professional education unobtainable in Russia, and to carry on political activity suspect at home. Highly critical of the regime from which they had fled, these emigres quite naturally passed along their own interpretation of events in Russia to those in Germany who cared to

Britain and the Common Market

WAS at The Hague in the spring of I948 when Sir Winston Churchill, against the background of a great thunderstorm, called upon the nations of Western Europe to unite. There was plenty of ardor and enthusiasm at that meeting. Those pres ent felt that they were at the birth of a great movement. My own committee (on economic unity) labored long and hard, and did not quail at sitting on hard chairs-with no refreshment-until 6 a.m. on the final night to complete our draft. In one sense the impetus was the negative one of fear. At that time the Russian situation looked extremely menacing. Here were these ancient countries, having between them sufficient popula tion and resources to match the Russians, finding themselves in fact completely at their mercy. In the actual situation, the oppo sition to a Russian aggression could be but feeble. Even if one put the best possible complexion upon Russian intentions, it was not pleasant to be in an exposed position, to be dependent on the good will of a strange and, to all outward appearances, hos tile Power about which little was known. Yet if these countries could get together quickly and act as one, their relative strength could be radically altered. It would be wrong to say, however, that the meeting was solely animated by fear of Russia. There was a more positive feeling of pride in the European heritage, and a sense that the countries concerned had fallen into a sorry plight through lack of resolution and cooperation. As individuals, the citizens of Europe were as vital and resourceful as they had ever been; but their political setup failed to galvanize their energies. The proud and ancient civilizations, which had given so much to the world, seemed to be crumbling under our eyes. Revival could not be achieved on too narrow a base. Europe, nothing less, must be the watchword in future. And our thoughts concerned the future. Though pride in past achievements formed a background to the thinking, the spokes men at The Hague represented a wide popular movement which believed that cooperation could bring greater efficiency, higher living standards and quicker progress. On the wave of enthusiasm, very far-reaching plans were dis

V. Anglo-Russian Relations 1815–40

Russia in 1815 appeared with England as the saviour of Europe from Napoleon's despotism; the Tsar Alexander I, both by his moderation towards the French nation and by the generosity of his promises to the Poles, earned the respect of all good Europeans. In England especially the Whig party, true to the traditions of 1790 and of opposition to Pitt's warlike threats, was always ready to admire the Tsar and to co-operate with Russia. Twenty years later dislike and fear of Russia was in the minds of most Englishmen, and the responsible utterances of party leaders ranged from extreme reserve to unconcealed hostility. It is curious that some of the most hostile voices were now among the Whigs, while the tone of Conservative leaders was more cautious, and the only friends of Russia were to be found in Lord Durham and Richard Cobden, both men of Radical leanings.