We need Russia!

The negative view of Russia is partly a product of the universality we have given Western culture, which leads to the conclusion that other cultures are aberrations or somehow handicapped by a faulty inner structure that may be remedied providing they take steps to resemble ours.

From this angle of view Russia seems like a grey version of Western Europe. A struggling, hobbling, left handed copy that only has itself to blame for its ills. Due to a lack of democracy, accountable institutions and the sloth of its demoralised people it stumbles around, cowered by terrible weather and a merciless corrupt state. Only through convincingly adopting Western institutions, know-how and organisation, can they ever be saved.

Amongst those most guilty of proliferating this viewpoint are journalists, who spend so much time together and with other expatriates, that they manage to live in an environment almost uncontaminated by the mindset of the country they are reporting about. The host country's perspective is handily contained in little epigrams and phrases that match the prejudices of their readers and the politics of their management. The voices of local people that echo the mindset with which the journalists arrive are employed to lend additional support to their own. The approach is predetermined and unlikely to suffer any modification.

The journalist's mindset will measure everything against Europe and America, the Norm, the place from where all civilized standards emerge. (And they do too. Wouldn't it be good if other parts of the world started to be more assertive about their own take on civilized standards - which they keep below the radar - instead of kow towing to those of others and waiting for HSBC to come along and do it for them.)

As readers, we will always tend to give journalists the benefit of the doubt from lack of other sources of information - unless they happen to dealing with a subject we have specialised knowledge of.

Russia is used by them as a "convenient other". The old habit of arranging facts about Russia to ultimately point to a negative conclusion is a generalised reflex. The state is bad, the people are to be pitied, they are huddled and defiant.

It has an important cathartic effect. At the mere mention of Russia, our own view of ourselves undergoes a sudden transformation: we see ourselves as rational, inventive, fair minded, democratic and a source of light and inspiration for the rest of the world. Next to Russia, the old hag Europe realises she’s “ultimately” a shining princess, and smiles modestly. It’s too good to be true! We need Russia!