Only Political Russophobia Can Save Russia and the World, Muzhdabayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 23 – When Germany went haywire under Hitler, Ayder Muzhdabayev says, “Germanophobia didn’t surprise anyone and everyone understood its usefulness and its basis.”  And that political Germanophobia disappeared overnight when Hitler was defeated and the Germans committed themselves that such outrages would never happen again.

            Today, the Crimean Tatar journalist argues,“political Russophobia” is equally justified and equally needed by both the Russian people themselves and by the international community and that it will also disappear overnight once Russians recognize the source of their problems and commit to change (nv.ua/opinion/muzhdabaev/chem-polezna-rusofobija--2453181.html).

                In an article in Kyiv’s Novoye vremya, Muzhdabayev argues that the world “must become consistently Russophobic, in everything from economics to sports,” something justified by Russian attitudes and Russian actions rather than by any specific hatred to ethnic Russians as such, despite what many of them believe.

            No one ‘fears Russians’ or ‘doesn’t like Russians’” just because they are Russians, a sharp contrast to the attitudes of anti-Semites toward Jews.  And no one “doesn’t like Russians’ as specific personalities and individuals. If an ethnic Russian behaves, no one will ever say a bad word abut him.  These are objective facts.”

            What political Russophobia is about, the journalist continues, is a horror about the specific actions of the Russian state and the Russian world – “wars, murders, illegality, the destruction of the histories and cultures of others, moral terror, and in fact the racist hatred of part of Russian society to other people, countries and peoples,” to name just a few.

            Just as Germanophobia was useful in opposing Hitler and disappeared when he was defeated and Germans committed to change, so too “Russophobia is useful and justified in our time. Russophobia is not ethnic and not anti-human; it does not touch specific innocent peoples or their human rights. Russophobia is political.”

            It reflects, Muzhdabayev says, the real concerns many have about “the threats which Russian society in its overwhelming majority albeit in the interests of others and its ‘own’ outcasts has generated on its own. There are no other guilty parties.”  Until these causes are removed, “Russophobia in the world will only grow.”

            Indeed, he argues, “political Russophobia as a conscious strategy of the civilized world in relation to ‘the Russian world’ – on all fronts – is not only an inevitable but also vitally necessary option.”  And “not to be a political Russophobe now means not to recognize reality and not to assess objectively the extent of the threat.”

            “The world must become consistently Russophobic in all sectors, from economics to sports,” Muzhdabayev says. If it doesn’t, “the fascistic majority of Russian society will never recognize” that it is hated not because of who it is but because of what its leaders do and will not see any reason to change.

            Perhaps even more important, the writer concludes, “Russophobia is the only path of salvation not only for the entire world from Russia but of the Russians themselves from the chauvinist paranoia” which now infects their society so dangerously.