Russophrenia: the West’s favourite delusion about Russia

Ten years after I coined the term, the media’s still convinced Russia is both collapsing, and conquering the world.

There’s a peculiar affliction that’s gripped the Western commentariat for decades now which I first diagnosed in June 2015 and gave the name “Russophrenia.” The tell-tale sign is a deep-set conviction that Russia’s about to keel over economically; then somehow rise from the wreckage to take Brussels by breakfast. In those ten years, the condition’s only become more widespread, like a political virus. Sadly, the most badly infected are wielding column inches.

Back in 2015, it was already extremely contagious. You could read any English-language piece on Russia and you’d find the same breathless contradictions: “The ruble is in freefall,” followed two paragraphs later by “Russian 'oligarchs' (sic) are buying up half of France.” Russia, we were told, was a “gas station with nukes,” and a “mafia state,” “on the brink of collapse.” That was just before the same experts warned it could manipulate every Western election, create the mysterious “Havana Syndrome,” hack every NATO server, and brainwash half of Ohio.

So let’s rummage through the old press clippings, shall we? And right from the start, you better be warned that some of them haven’t aged as well as their writers might’ve hoped.

In 2001, The Atlantic boldly declared “Russia Is Finished.” As we know, it wasn’t and nearly a quarter century on, that headline looks more like a cry for help than anything else.

In 2008, the Guardian’s Luke Harding (a man you wouldn’t want to ask to choose winning lottery numbers) declared Russia “close to economic collapse” due to falling oil prices. Within a year, the economy had bounced back and Harding was warning of a “new arms race.” Later, he authored an extensively debunked book built around the mirage of “RussiaGate,” which now lies widely discredited thanks to US intelligence disclosures.

Julia Ioffe joined in 2014 with her own “Russia is falling apart” prophecy and she was echoing Masha Gessen’s 2011 forecast that “Putin’s world is falling apart.” Over a decade later, Putin’s still at his desk, and those takes have aged like unrefrigerated milk.

And then there was Mark Galeotti, who warned in 2015 that a brief Putin disappearance might trigger “succession wars.” He reappeared days later looking mildly bored and leaving a lot of ridiculous-looking tweets hanging around.

But perhaps the worst sufferer of advanced-stage Russophrenia was the late US Senator John McCain, who famously called Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country.” This from an oracle who once took a break from posing with Islamist rebels to compare Putin to Hitler. The irony is that Russia’s economy (gas station or not) is now the largest in Europe after passing out Germany a few years ago on PPP rankings. And, sadly for his nearest and dearest, McCain’s rhetorical gas ran out long before Russia’s did.

Of course, none of this means Russia is a utopia; and it’s far from it. The economy has structural problems, with the political system more fortress than forum. And yes, the Ukraine conflict has triggered enormous costs. But facts are stubborn things and despite the most aggressive sanctions regime in history, Russia hasn’t imploded. The Moscow stock exchange, after being written off in early 2022, was at 2,727 points on Friday; that’s far off its all time high (4,292), but hardly on its knees. Meanwhile, agricultural exports have soared and the birth rate, albeit not great, is still better than much of the rest of Europe (think Poland, Germany, Italy, etc.). And as for those American-made “devastating sanctions”? Well, it seems India, China, Turkey, and most of the Global South didn’t get the memo.

The Western media, however, hasn’t changed its tune and instead it’s just layered it. Now the tale goes: yes, Russia is collapsing… but it’s also exporting authoritarianism, destabilising Africa, puppeteering Hungary, and might invade the Baltics on Tuesday. Which we can call Russophrenia 2.0.

What drives it all is bias, familiarity’s absence, sanctions, the forced closure of consulates and shuttered news bureaus. It’s never been harder for a Westerner to visit Russia and the fewer people who go, the more powerful the myths become. Russia becomes a Rorschach test; some see Mordor and others a 1980s cartoon villain. However, almost no one sees it as it is: complex, contradictory, often maddening, rarely boring and sometimes magnificent. A real country and not a narrative prop.

Back in Ireland, when I mention Russia, I generally get two reactions: one, that its economy is in ruins; and two, that it’s plotting world domination. The contradiction passes without comment because that’s the thing about Russophrenia; you don’t notice the absurdity when it’s inside you.

Meanwhile, most coverage of Russia isn’t even produced from inside the country anymore; it’s written from Riga or Berlin, or cobbled together from Zoom calls with the same four exiled pundits. Thus, the actual country is missing and with it, any chance of nuance.

Of course, Russia’s no tidy postcard and it sprawls out like it means to confuse you. One minute it’s throwing you a smile over breakfast, and by teatime it’s broken your heart. You can touch down thinking you’ve got the place half-sussed, and by the time you hit passport control, you’re not so sure of anything. All of these contradictions aren’t some bug in the system; they are the system. However, for all its mess and mischief, it’s still real, real enough to deserve being seen on its own terms, not squeezed to fit the shape of someone’s word count.

It’s been ten years since I first gave a name to this fever, and still it burns, with the same old phantoms held up as gospel, like clichés with the ink worn thin. At the same time, the patients are just getting louder.

So here’s my prescription: let’s have less punditry and more plane tickets, and less projection but more proximity, and above all, less fear.

You don’t have to toast the place or take its side, all you need to do is just stop seeing ghosts. So wipe your lens and look again, because that’s where recovery begins.