Gloomy Russian cliches have long persisted and have been nurtured by public and published opinion abroard. There's nothing new about these types of complaints. On the markets of the global information society, its members argued, it is no longer so important 'how a country really is, but rather how it appears and is represented.' Some countries have a 'clearly overinflated image,' but Russia, on the other hand, 'despite the recognition of all its problems, is clearly underrated.' Foreign media organizations and their correspondents were again sorted and given labels like 'enemy' or 'cooperative' just as they were in the days of the Soviet Union. Around that time, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, an organization of the Moscow intelligentsia aimed at popularizing the liberal-conservative superpower ideology, formulated a new idea.

Petersburg in July, when he will host a summit of G8 leaders.Įven before the change of power in the Kremlin six years ago, Moscow began taking steps to change its image abroad. 'No one has ever managed to revamp a country's image in a short time,' the diplomat said.īut Putin wants to do just that, especially because he is chairing the G8 group of leading industrial nations for the first time this year. He wants to start by staging an international mega-event in his home town of St. He said the government would have to earmark at least a billion euros a year for a decade, about the same amount the United States spends on sprucing up its tarnished reputation. 'The honor of the homeland is an expensive undertaking,' he says, explaining how the West has 'learned very well to hurt us and portray us in a bad light.' Experts put the price tag on the Kremlin's PR campaign for the Motherland at over €100 million annually.Ī few months beforehand a senior official in the Russian foreign ministry estimated that it would cost far more to give Russia a positive foreign image. Sergei Mironov, the head of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and a Putin-backer, is convinced that if Moscow doesn't put out enough propaganda about Russia, others will. All in the service of polishing the image of the Russian state.Īs if that's not enough, 'the creative potential of journalists, authors and filmmakers in the area of patriotic education' is to be developed. However, the Kremlin has even more planned: the government has started a new monthly publication called 'Patriot of the Motherland' it's backing national festivities on the 'Day of Military Service' it's holding a scientific conference on the topic 'Moral Foundations of Patriotism,' and even organizing patriotic games - for roughly €14 million. For non-Russian speakers, a new English-language television station called Russia Today went on the air in mid-December, with generous government backing of $30 million. Meanwhile, at home, both schools and barracks are being targeted for more pre-packaged patriotic propaganda. In order to keep anti-Russian images from the West - or what Pavlovsky calls 'European civilization' - from infecting the Motherland, the government has decided to embark on a patriotic vaccination program. According to his victimization analysis, his countrymen are 'objectively today's pariahs in Europe.' The powerful political consultant is considered one of forces behind Putin's rise, and many inside the Kremlin believe he could pack the power of an entire psychological warfare department. Once susceptible to theatrical conspiracy theories, the former history teacher continues to oscillate between very Russian mood swings between imperial euphoria and a national inferiority complex. 'Russians are the Jews of the 21st century,' says Kremlin advisor Gleb Pavlovsky.

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Upper volta with missiles schmidt