Anti-American Fever Rises in Russia
On April 4, a lively meeting was held at the Russian Public Chamber. American Ambassador Michael McFaul, who was invited to speak on Russian-American relations, was questioned by Veronika Krasheninnikova, a member of the institution and director of the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies. “These individuals are former employees of the CIA. What do you have to say?” she spat, recounting the biographies of former officials of USAID, the organization forced to close by the Kremlin. “I meet people who used to work for the KBG on a daily basis, but I don’t care about their CVs,”* replied the diplomat.
McFaul arrived in the Russian capital in the beginning of 2012 and has seen from close range the rise in anti-American sentiment in the country. This mood has close correlations to the presidential campaign of March of last year and Putin’s resultant return to the Kremlin. According to the Levada-Center, just 23 percent of Russians expressed a “negative” attitude toward America in November 2011, yet this figure shot up to 39 percent in March 2013, with the proportion of sympathizers falling from 66 to 48 percent over the course of eighteen months. Last year, the U.S. was listed at second place among the “principal enemies of Russia,” with the former Soviet state of Georgia in first.
After the publication by Washington of the “Magnitsky list” that sanctioned 18 Russian officials implicated in human rights violations, the tension stepped up a notch. Harkening back to the peak of the Cold War, the Russian government declared eighteen U.S. officials persona non grata, notably those suspected of complicity in torture at Guantanamo Bay. “The publication of the list is not an end in itself. The Obama administration can at any time add new names to it,”* warned a journalist from the Russian television station NTV, speaking of “a means of permanent pressure on Russia.” A Kremlin spokesman described the act as a “blow to bilateral relations” and as “an interference” in Russian domestic issues.*
The three main public information channels are the principal purveyors of anti-American propaganda, inspired by the Kremlin but bolstered enthusiastically by the Duma and by officials and politicians across the spectrum. They were behind the sensation that swelled around the accusation by pro-Kremlin Duma member Irina Iarovaïa that the U.S. Congress “fail[ed] to protect defenseless children who suffer horrific violence and death at the hands of their adoptive parents.” NTV, under the orders of its controller, gas giant Gazprom, is doing its best to reveal Washington to be behind the “attempts by the Russian opposition to usurp power.” Certain teams from NTV, suspected by Washington to be manipulated by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), specialize in pursuing McFaul, and succeeded on one occasion in forcing the diplomat into committing an error, losing his temper and describing Russia as a “country of savages” on camera. He was obliged to apologize publicly.
State television channels remain the sole source of information for 70 percent of Russians, and only 15 percent of the population has ever traveled abroad. Their influence, thanks to the Internet, is somewhat on the wane. “The sort of constant anti-American propaganda that was normal in the Soviet era cannot be reproduced today. The propaganda is only infrequently effective in swaying public opinion now,” explained Denis Volkov, a sociologist at the Levada-Center. He went on to describe how its effects are sometimes turned upside-down. “The Magnitsky Act was welcomed by the part of the population that believes that those officials sanctioned by Congress are corrupt.”* Furthermore, the vote to pass the Yakovlev Act banning the adoption of Russian children by U.S. couples was countered by a demonstration involving more than 20,000 people.
*Editor's Note: Although accurately translated, this quotations could not be verified.
McFaul arrived in the Russian capital in the beginning of 2012 and has seen from close range the rise in anti-American sentiment in the country. This mood has close correlations to the presidential campaign of March of last year and Putin’s resultant return to the Kremlin. According to the Levada-Center, just 23 percent of Russians expressed a “negative” attitude toward America in November 2011, yet this figure shot up to 39 percent in March 2013, with the proportion of sympathizers falling from 66 to 48 percent over the course of eighteen months. Last year, the U.S. was listed at second place among the “principal enemies of Russia,” with the former Soviet state of Georgia in first.
After the publication by Washington of the “Magnitsky list” that sanctioned 18 Russian officials implicated in human rights violations, the tension stepped up a notch. Harkening back to the peak of the Cold War, the Russian government declared eighteen U.S. officials persona non grata, notably those suspected of complicity in torture at Guantanamo Bay. “The publication of the list is not an end in itself. The Obama administration can at any time add new names to it,”* warned a journalist from the Russian television station NTV, speaking of “a means of permanent pressure on Russia.” A Kremlin spokesman described the act as a “blow to bilateral relations” and as “an interference” in Russian domestic issues.*
The three main public information channels are the principal purveyors of anti-American propaganda, inspired by the Kremlin but bolstered enthusiastically by the Duma and by officials and politicians across the spectrum. They were behind the sensation that swelled around the accusation by pro-Kremlin Duma member Irina Iarovaïa that the U.S. Congress “fail[ed] to protect defenseless children who suffer horrific violence and death at the hands of their adoptive parents.” NTV, under the orders of its controller, gas giant Gazprom, is doing its best to reveal Washington to be behind the “attempts by the Russian opposition to usurp power.” Certain teams from NTV, suspected by Washington to be manipulated by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), specialize in pursuing McFaul, and succeeded on one occasion in forcing the diplomat into committing an error, losing his temper and describing Russia as a “country of savages” on camera. He was obliged to apologize publicly.
State television channels remain the sole source of information for 70 percent of Russians, and only 15 percent of the population has ever traveled abroad. Their influence, thanks to the Internet, is somewhat on the wane. “The sort of constant anti-American propaganda that was normal in the Soviet era cannot be reproduced today. The propaganda is only infrequently effective in swaying public opinion now,” explained Denis Volkov, a sociologist at the Levada-Center. He went on to describe how its effects are sometimes turned upside-down. “The Magnitsky Act was welcomed by the part of the population that believes that those officials sanctioned by Congress are corrupt.”* Furthermore, the vote to pass the Yakovlev Act banning the adoption of Russian children by U.S. couples was countered by a demonstration involving more than 20,000 people.
*Editor's Note: Although accurately translated, this quotations could not be verified.