It’s long known that Steven Spielberg is fixated on World War II. It found expression in not one but several of his projects of which Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) are best remembered. Empire of the Sun (1987) and a trilogy on WWII starring Tom Hanks — Band of Brothers (2001), The Pacific (2010) and Masters of the Air (2024) — betray a persistence of 37 years. They call him a major force on WWII cinema for a reason.
Spielberg’s massive canvas on WW II leave little to imagination: War epics, heroism, tragedy, history and even comedy. Yet there is a studious avoidance of Russia. It’s all about the Western and nothing on Eastern Front where the WWII was nailed by Russia at the cost of 27 million people. In the first five months of the war itself, Soviet Union lost three million people. There is not a family in Russia even today which didn’t lose a relative in the Great Patriotic War. Itt was the Red Army which finished off Adolf Hitler. Between June 1941 to summer of 1943, Soviet Union alone fought on the European continent. ALONE. The celebrated Normandy landings were essentially mopping up jobs.
There are many excuses which Mr Spielberg and his countless admirers could trot out. That he was choosing his Western audience; preferring drama over documentary; that his formative years were during the Soviet Union which, let’s admit it, was the story of the 20th century—beginning 1917 and ending in its last decade. But it’s 34 years since—what explains the persistent Russophobia now? Is it memory of the past or it’s overarching shadow on the present?
The world is now in its third and apocalypse edition of Cold War. The first one ended in 1933 when the United States recognized Soviet Union after 16 long years. The second one was over with the passing of Soviet Union in 1991. The ongoing one is since 2007 when Vladimir Putin accused the West in Munich that Russia has gotten nothing for what all it did in post-Soviet phase and that it “can’t be a one-way street.”
What all Russia did yet had to endure between 1991 and 2007?
Chronology of Betrayals
When the Soviet Union ended in 1991, both leaders — Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush Sr – took pains to stress that nobody had lost and both had won. Yet the very next year, during the Presidential campaign, Bush Sr went to town saying he had won the Cold War. It pained Gorbachev immensely who had by now passed on the baton to Boris Yeltsin.
In 1997, at president Bill Clinton’s behest, NATO inducted Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary in is fold. This was a deep wound in Russia’s security concerns. The then US secretary of state James Baker is on record having said that NATO won’t move an inch eastwards after Soviet Union had agreed to let go on East Germany for a unified Germany. It is on record in US national archives. Deniers don’t have a leg on this truth.
Two years later, NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days and ended up creating a fake narco-state Kosovo for itself. Russians and Serbians are Slavic brothers only separated geographically: Family ties run deep; inter-marriages have happened for generations. But Russia was too weak to stop NATO. It was shamed. A historically great power had been asked to swallow its poison with a smile.
Russia, like a hopeless lover, would still not let go on Europe. Stalin had tried to join NATO; Yeltsin requested the same in 1990s; and so did his successor Putin. They all wanted to be in Europe’s safety net: They all were rebuffed.
9/11 happened in 2001. Putin offered anything he could do for the United States in its hour of tragedy. He turned over Russia’s considerable assets in Afghanistan to the United States, including intelligence, airspace access, logistical help etc. Taliban’s enemy, Northern Alliance was passed on in assistance. In return, Bush Jr incorporated seven new nations (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) into the NATO fold. He terminated the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, the bedrock of security against Nuclear War.
Let’s take a pause and be mindful: All those nations once under Warsaw Pact with the Soviet Union are members of NATO today.
Those who lived in the 1960s remember how close was the world to blowing up during the Cuban Missile Crisis. On those 13 days when Fidel Castro agreed to have Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, a nuclear war was minutes away. The US, under Monroe Doctrine, would just not let a nuclear missile be placed at its door.
The United States and Russia had then defused the crisis and reached an agreement: Let’s not cross each other’s red lines. Today there are no red lines. Russia’s security concerns are cry in wilderness. The entire Russia is militarily encircled — from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Romania to Georgia—-and yet it is accused of harbouring imperialist ambitions.
Truth on Ethnic Russians
The truth is Russia was left with no option but to push back, be it in Georgia, Crimea or Ukraine. Then US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has written in her autobiography that Putin in 2005 itself had warned her that if Georgia continued to discriminate against ethnic Russians he would have no option but to invade. He couldn’t have ignored his domestic audience. And so he did in 2008 when the West did little to bring relief to ethnic Russians.
This matter of ethnic Russians in other territories is real. The eastern Ukraine is entirely made up of them. The break-up of Soviet Union placed them in an unenviable position of being under Ukraine, the western half of which is dominated by far-right and West-inclined ultra nationalists. The ethnic Russians bore the brunt of discrimination, terror attacks and repression which Putin’s Russia couldn’t have ignored. It was all West behind powers in Kiev. One has to remember Russian families were left separated on either side of the Ukraine border after the latter was artificially created in 1991. Families which lay on either side of the border.
Yet Minsk Agreements were signed in good hope. That ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine would be treated as equal. It never happened. Today the argument is that after Minsk Agreement the Russian meddling in eastern Ukraine should’ve stopped. But how could it have when Minsk Agreements were nowhere to be seen on the ground? How could have Russians gone back when the US armed presence in Kiev, training and preparing them, was growing all the time? Wasn’t Ukraine promised a NATO membership in Budapest 2008? How this was any different from the Cuban Missile Crisis in raising a security concern for Russia?
Origin of Ukraine Crisis
But since a few nations in NATO dithered, a round-about way was conceived to bring iUkraine into fold. In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych became the president of Ukraine. He was told to join the European Union (EU) market which would bring free visa, prosperity etc. It was a round-about way to induct Ukraine into NATO. Putin, astonishingly, didn’t object. His only caveat was on trade terms: i.e if you let your goods go through Ukraine without customs, Russian producers would be gravely hurt.
EU refused to negotiate for next two years. Putin then offered a way out: Let’s have a tripartite agreement. He was simply told to take a walk.
EU now sent an agreement for Yanukovych to sign: It was a terrible trade deal. It’s last seven pages were startling. It spelt out Ukraine was obliged to abide by the EU military-security policies. In other words a de facto NATO induction of Ukraine. Yanukovych refused. Then the EuroMaidan – a coup d’etat—happened. A constitutionally elected government was overthrown by protestors with US support.
None of it was reported in the Western press.
The Crimea Riddle
Crimea instantly picked up the heat. It had an autonomous status within Ukraine under the Soviet Union. In 1991 itself, it had held a successful referendum for its autonomy. Now with this coup in Ukraine in 2014, Crimea knew it’s number was next. It didn’t lose any time to hold a referendum and overwhelmingly joined Russia. This was a legitimate process, approved under international law, under the presence of foreign observers. Didn’t Sweden lose Norway who in turn suffered Iceland’s separation through referendums in the first half of the 20th century?
Russia first subjugated Crimea under Catherine the Great and formally annexed it in 1783. The next two significant moments were during the Crimean War (1853-56) and again during the World War II. Russian lost great number of soldiers defending the Port of Sevastopol. Crimea is entirely made up of Russians. It was clubbed with Ukraine SSR in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, a move which the Crimeans sought to reverse with a referendum in 1991 even before Soviet Union ended.
Putin has endlessly told West it’s crossing the red lines. The present war is in the heart of Russia-Ukraine civilization. It’s more profound that American civil war for both sides are of the same family. Both have the same soul.
We all have heard there are always two sides to a story—but where is Russia’s side in mainstream media? An academic flushed out that for several years now, there is not one single favourable mention of Russia in New York Times. How the present is any different from 1851-52 when The Times of London depicted Tsar Nicholas like a vampire with big teeth, sucking the blood of the British people?
Hoax of Imperialist Russia
Russia was branded an imperialist power when in reality it took 250 years to move through Siberia to Pacific. They hadn’t committed genocide in this spread unlike what the United States or European powers did in Americas and elsewhere. Russia slowly integrated people over the centuries. Great Britain was two-dozen times a bigger empire than Russia in the 19th century – Egypt to India to Hongkong was some of its arc — but it was always the bloody imperialist Russians in headlines.
Every big power, throughout history, looks to have two borders: one geographical and the other strategical. The larger the country the greater is the need for external stability.That explains why the United States doesn’t want its neighbourhood to fall into hostile forces. Don’t the US have its strategic borders all over the globe given its worldwide military bases? That’s why China is sensitive on its borders. That’s why Russia looked to secure its western borders and southern belly. That’s what explains its red lines on Crimea and Ukraine. And all along, it is in this strategic belt that West has tried to pin Russia down.
In August 2022, the then NATO’s deputy secretary Mircea Groana had said that the Ukraine war is all about access to Black Sea for Russians. There is a pattern through centuries when West has strived to deny Russia access to sea through its borders: Neither Black Sea, nor Baltic Sea nor for that matter in Arctic Ocean.
Between 16th and 18th century, Sweden, then a great power, tried to restrict Russia’s access to the Baltic Sea. It also sought to encroach upon Russia’s Arctic port in Arkhangelsk. Sweden occupied Russia during the “Time of Trouble” (1598-1613) when one-third of Russia’s population died. Russia had to give up its land and access to Baltic Sea through Treaty of Stolbova in 1617.
Peter the Great turned the tables by defeating Sweden in the Great Northern War in 1721. Instead of Sweden, now Russia was the great power. It now had unrestricted access to the Baltic Sea. Russia also now had access to Arctic Ocean which has been one great aim of Scandinavian powers like Sweden to deny.
Over the next three centuries, Britain, and then United States, had a foreign policy to prevent Russia from any access to world’s oceans. During the Crimean War, Europeans were explicit in its mission to push Russia out of Europe and into Asia. The sabotage of Nord Stream is a naked evidence to keep Russia out of Baltic Sea. The next big struggle on Arctic Ocean is not far off.
Scandinavian and Baltic nations, on two sides of Baltic Sea, are ratcheting up Russophobia.
The Baltics Riddle
It’s cited as evidence today that the Baltic states fear Moscow for a reason. They were taken over by the Russians after World War II and suffered the communist rule for over four decades. But its funny that after the Great War, it was Churchill and Roosevelt who didn’t allow the Baltic nations a seat in the United Nations. How misplaced is the notion that Russia would gobble up the Baltics when the history tells us that 100% of its energy till recently came from Russia. Moscow, by occupying, would be nuts to pay its pensions too!
If Russia harboured imperialist notions it wouldn’t have gone into Ukraine in February 2022 with only 100,000 soldiers: Remember Nazi Germany went for one half of Poland in the Second World War with a 1.5 million army!
It was the Poles who had conquered Moscow in the 17th century. It were the Poles who initiated a war in 1919-1920 in a bad to re-establish its frontiers of 1772. It was Napoleon who invaded and burned Moscow in 1812-1813. It was Hitler who stormed Soviet Union and not the other way round. It was Kaiser, the gentleman, who attacked the Tsar in 1914. Contrast it with Russians who captured Paris in 1814 but once order was restored and government was changed, their soldiers returned home without thumping chests.
How many know that Winston Churchill had asked the British army to prepare for war against Russia in the same month the Red Army had annihilated Nazi Germany in May 1945? It was codenamed “Operation Unthinkable” and came to light only in 1988! If Churchill hadn’t lost the elections two months later in July 1945, this war could’ve come to pass against Russia. This was some gratitude shown to a power which took care of Hitler’s Germany. A classic case of Russophobia.
But let’s stay on the Baltics for a moment. It would give a historical perspective on Russophobia too.
In the 15th century, Baltics were infested with powerful barons. In the 1480s, Poland’s kings wanted to send them on a crusade to fight the expanding Ottoman Empire. These barons had no plan to leave a land which they were plundering at will; a population they oppressed without qualms. Facing the Turks would’ve been suicidal. After all Nicopolis (1396), where Ottomans executed nearly all knights, was their recurring nightmare. So they drummed up the fear of Russia, the “barbarians from the East.” It whipped up the genetically embedded “Romans’-barbarians-at-the-gate” anxiety in Western Europe.
This is a long history of Scandinavian and Baltic nations who play the role of frontier victims in order to extract the most from West. That’s how these chihuahuas fatten themselves on Washington and Brussels. These frontier nations, due to geography, are eternally placed in Russia’s shadow. Over the centuries they have monetized this Russophobia.
Yet Russophobia is not a Baltic creation. They only use the code structured first in Paris and London, and later in Berlin. Baltic nations just provide the theatre, the command is with Britain, France and Germany. Baltics are amplifiers, not architects as I read somewhere. In West’ view, they are disposable materials – noisy, loud and shrill but the serious actors are older states. It’s the bigger Europeans who have bigger interests —all the Baltic nations do is to offer subcontract of conflict to them.
NATO: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothes
And then there is NATO. Has it increased or diminished security? Are Baltics more secure today? Georgia? Are Balkans better now since NATO’s intervention of 1999? Is its destruction of Iraq after 2003 been of any help to this unfortunate country? Libya? Shouldn’t NATO be largely held responsible for the growth of ISIS and Islamic terrorism in the vacuum of Middle East? Is Afghanistan any better? Or Ukraine stares at a rosy future? And what about secessionist movements in these broken countries? Hasn’t it spawned a refugee crisis? Aren’t we today on edge of a nuclear war? It’s a bizarre argument to say that every nation has a right to join NATO. But if NATO is all about security of its members, isn’t the evidence to the contrary?
All Russia sees is that it is encircled by NATO. That it could suffer a similar fate as those mentioned above. What leeway does it leave for any leader to placate its domestic audience who have a recurring painful historical memory? Does feeling hemmed in breed liberals or hardliners?
The Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—were included in NATO in 2004. How could Russia have been a threat to them in 2004 when it was barely surviving and extremely weak on its own? Or begging Europe to include Russia in its security framework? Does it convey imperialism? Or should we say its intervention in Ukraine was out of defence?
When Gorbachev proposed “Common European Home” it was a level-playing field for both historically aggressive and victimised nations. All grievances could have been put to rest. It was the Soviet Union which had conceived the idea of Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in the 1970s. When it’s said today that Putin has violated the post-Cold War world order, the truth is it was Russia who was excluded from that order. The threat was brought right to its doors.
The Sinful Media
All we hear today is that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential elections — nobody points out that in 2011, the then US vice-president Joe Biden, told a gathering of Opposition, in Moscow no less, that Putin shouldn’t be looking for his third presidential term. Is it not meddling in Russia’s internal affairs? When the west actively tried to overthrow the Bolsheviks between 1917-1921 wasn’t it meddling in Russia’s internal affairs?
Often it is dinned in ears that Vladimir Putin is a “cold-blooded autocrat”, the “worst dictator on the planet.” But no notice is taken when tens of thousands of protestors descend on Moscow streets yet never sent to Gulag.
What does one make of mainstream US politicians, John McCain in this case, who dubbed Russia a “gas station masquerading as a country.” When Putin wins elections with 80% and above approval, it’s termed mob’s opinion. For Washington Post, it’s a shamed nation. Bloomberg advices to treat “Russia like the terrorist it is” while in The Guardian’s view, it is “Gangsters’ Paradise.” In the opinion of a widely read Harvard policy intellectual: “The brute fact is that we cannot kill the bastard without committing suicide.”
Isn’t Russia allowed to have its own legitimate security interests? It can’t be that Europe is doubling down on alarming militarisation when Russia is prepared to give a written guarantee it won’t attack Europe. It can’t be that for four years, you don’t make a single attempt of peace talks with Moscow and only now when Ukraine is losing, you want ceasefire which is nothing but a frozen conflict – to be reignited when you have recovered from your losses and rearmed again. It can’t be that you accuse Russia of choosing war when all along you thwarted Moscow’s attempt to end it —including as early as in 2022, within months of its Special Military Operation (SMO), in Istanbul.
Vatican’s Unfinished Project
This is nothing new. For a millennium, the Catholic and later Protestant Christianity have strived to destroy Orthodox Christianity of which Russia today is the flag-bearer. The Vatican grievously hurt Eastern Byzantine empire during the Crusades. This in its origin is a religious war. Only, Russia today can’t be taken down without ensuring your own funeral. The winner-take-all approach won’t work. But hubris has blinded Europe. Worse, the “coalition of the willing”is determined on unthinkable—a Nuclear War—and there is no stopping them.
Russophobia is important for West because it helps produce an enemy with a face for the populace. That’s what all politicians, academics, journalists and entertainment industry indulge in. All men like Spielberg do is to abdicate their moral responsibility in a bid to be in the charmed circle. He might not suffer from Russophobia — but he does little to bust it either. He has a voice which few have and could matter. But I guess he is happy with pat on the back by the establishment and thunderous claps in the theatres by cheering fans.
