If official discourse has avoided explicit references to Russophobia, the narrative of Western Russophobia has been employed by various channels of Russian state-controlled propaganda. An illustrative case worth exploring is InoSMI, the Novosti online site which publishes translations of media texts about Russia and world affairs. Making foreign articles accessible to Russian speakers is not a new technique: it was previously widely used in Soviet propaganda (Fateev 1999). In post-Soviet Russia the idea of using Western publications to promote propaganda was first picked up by MediaMost – the media empire of the oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky – whose internet project InoPressa was launched in 1999. The idea apparently originated with current Chief Editor of RIA Novosti Svetlana Mironyuk, who was then working for Gusinsky (InoSMI 2007). In 2000 Russian authorities made an attempt to employ this method for their own propaganda campaign. The national information service Strana.Ru – a large-scale internet project created by the pro-Kremlin Effective Politics Foundation headed by Gleb Pavlovsky – planned to launch a project, InoStrana, which would publish translated articles. The idea was abandoned but Strana.ru launched a project ‘Foreign press about Russia’ (Zarubezhnaya Pressa o Rossii) which was then transformed into InoSMI (Foreign Media). In 2002 InoSMI changed its owner: among other internet projects that belonged to Pavlovsky’s Strana.Ru it was handed over to the Internet Directorate of the state media corporation VGTRK – Russian State TV and Radio Broadcasting Company (Rossiiskaya gazeta, 11 July 2002). In 2004 it was taken over by RIA Novosti which was also part of that media corporation (InoSMI 2007). Since 2004 the project has succeeded in attracting a growing number of Downloaded by [Hacettepe University] at 20:40 14 March 2017 Constructing Russophobia 99 readers. According to then main editor Yaroslav Ognev, in 2009 about 150,000 people visited the webpage daily (Rossiiskie vesti, 4 March 2009). The project achieved unprecedented popularity in Russia, and its success was recognized not only by readers, but by the professional community as well: Ognev was awarded the title of ‘editor of the year’ and ‘producer of the year’ on two occasions. InoSMI plays a unique role on the Russian internet. On the one hand, it appears that the project contributes to democracy promotion as it provides access to critical publications about Russia. On the other hand, it feeds into the narrative of Russophobia. The availability of a large number of critical publications has been interpreted by many of the project’s readers as constituting objective evidence of widespread Western Russophobia. As one of the readers noted in the InoSMI forum after having read a series of translated articles, ‘I have the impression that Russia … is encircled by implacable enemies and there will be no end to this confrontation’ (InoSMI 2005). Predictably, the project became exceptionally popular during Russia’s conflict with Georgia in 2008 when, according to Ognev, it enabled Russian readers ‘to assess the quality and characteristic features of how the Western mass media covered the conflict in South Ossetia’ (Rossiiskie vesti, 4 March 2009). In 2009 the policy line endorsed by the project changed subtly with the appointment of a new editor-in-chief, Marina Pustilnik. She voiced her intention to adopt a more balanced approach in selecting publications, a move which coincided with general softening of official discourse in relation to the West (Nezavisimaya gazeta, 9 June 2009: 2). Although the number of InoSMI readers appears to be very small when compared to the size of the Russian electorate, the impact of the project exceeds by far the size of its audience. A way this occurs is through dissemination of materials published on the webpage to other Russian media. A number of Russian national and local newspapers, including Nezavisimaya gazeta, Trud, Novye izvestiya, Sovetskaya Rossiya, Rossiiskaya gazeta, Moskovskii komsomolets, and Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, occasionally publish complete articles or extracts from the InoSMI webpage. Many Russian mass media have also engaged with the narrative of Russophobia. After Russia’s conflict with Georgia, some newspapers even published what they described as ‘ratings of Russophobia’ among foreign countries (see Izvestiya, 2 September Downloaded by [Hacettepe University] at 20:40 14 March 2017 100 Valentina Feklyunina 2008). A transparent use of this narrative was the TV programme Vesti+, with prominent journalist Dmitrii Kiselev as host, which in August 2008 devoted one of its broadcasts to the discussion of Russophobia. The transcript of this program provides a valuable insight into the way in which the narrative of Russophobia has been promoted in state-controlled propaganda. Several points are particularly significant. First, Russophobia is presented as having a long history in the West and as a ‘well established phenomenon of Europe’s life’. Second, through the use of examples that imply the existence of Russophobia in different countries at different times in history (with Hitler’s Germany as one of the most commonplace examples), Russophobia is constructed as being a consistent feature of the way in which the West (united in its ‘irrational hatred toward Russia’) has viewed Russia. Third, similar to official discourse, the link between Western Russophobia and reality is interpreted as being reversed: according to Kiselev, ‘the extent of the hostility does not depend on [Russia’s] political regime, but it increases whenever Russia gains more strength’. Similar to official discourse, it also emphasizes agency: ‘Russophobia is turning into a job, and like every job it can be carried out at someone’s orders’. Finally, this narrative constructs domestic criticism of the regime as a manifestation of an internal Russophobia – a phenomenon that is presented as equally threatening to Russia’s survival (Kiselev 2008).
the narrative of Western Russophobia has been employed by various channels of Russian state-controlled propaganda. in 2009 about 150,000 people visited the webpage daily InoSMI plays a unique role on the Russian internet. it feeds into the narrative of Russophobia. The availability of a large number of critical publications has been interpreted by many of the project’s readers as constituting objective evidence of widespread Western Russophobia. ‘I have the impression that Russia … is encircled by implacable enemies and there will be no end to this confrontation’ A number of Russian national and local newspapers, occasionally publish complete articles or extracts from the InoSMI webpage. Many Russian mass media have also engaged with the narrative of Russophobia. some newspapers even published what they described as ‘ratings of Russophobia’ TV programme Vesti+ devoted one of its broadcasts to the discussion of Russophobia. the narrative of Russophobia has been promoted in state-controlled propaganda. Russophobia is presented as having a long history in the West and as a ‘well established phenomenon of Europe’s life’. Russophobia is constructed as being a consistent feature of the way in which the West has viewed Russia. ‘Russophobia is turning into a job, and like every job it can be carried out at someone’s orders’. this narrative constructs domestic criticism of the regime as a manifestation of an internal Russophobia – a phenomenon that is presented as equally threatening to Russia’s survival