Images of “Other Countries” in Today’s Worldview of Russian Citizens

This paper analyses the images of other countries as seen by Russian citizens. The author contemplates how the Russians perceive neighbouring countries, the strategic partners (India and China), certain European states and the European Union as a whole, as well as the United States, Turkey, and Thailand. Notwithstanding the differences in the images of these countries perceived by the Russians, they share certain similarities. First of all, those images feature some poor awareness, reflecting how ill-informed we are. The study shows that nowadays our fellow citizens know less about the world than before, and their spectrum of interests is narrower. Following the Western media, the Russian media and Internet focus on a limited number of “important” countries, ignoring the majority of the global states. Second, three decades of travel freedom influenced the worldview of millions of the Russians. Their perception of the world grew more coherent and adequate; however, it still lacks consistency and cognitive clearness. Evidently, personal experience is not sufficient to form such a vision of the global world that includes both awareness and a system of values shaped in consideration of the national interests. And third, the Russian society is not homogeneous in its perception of foreign nations. There are senior people and social groups that have largely retained idealized concepts of the world formed in the early post-Soviet period. Namely, those, who were politically socialized in late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the intellectual elite.