Russophobia – the last refuge of a dying tabloid rag…

"Simples" - the British media's approach to all things Russian...

Perhaps it should not surprise anyone that, in the year of the 65^th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, Britain’s gutter press would seek to heap yet more muck on the reputation of the men and women of the Red Army who more than half a century ago rid all Europe so decisively of the hell that was Nazi terror and occupation.

The real and shameful acts of rape and criminality, mainly against German, Austrian and Hungarian women, perpetrated by a minority of Soviet military personnel at the end of the war, as portrayed in the recent movie Anonyma: A Woman in Berlin, have certainly provided a useful battering ram with which the Western media has sought to destroy the entire reputation of the millions who served in the Soviet armed forces from 1941-45. This contemporary crusade by the Western media serves the dual purpose of rehabilitating the extreme right in Western politics and bashing resurgent Russia at the same time.

Leading the charge in this regard have been those two well known champions of women’s rights and rigorous historical analysis - the British tabloid newspapers the Daily Mail (which has a notorious history of Russophobia dating back to its publication of the forged Zinoviev letter in 1924) and its rival the Daily Express (whose almost identical political stance was once mercilessly ridiculed by the punk poet John Cooper Clarke).

The Express article, penned by veteran Fleet Street hack Paul “So flattering is [his Wikipedia] profile that you could almost think he wrote it himself. Surely not.” Callan, even screams about the culprits being “Russian” (i.e. no attempt at all is made to explain that the Red Army was in fact composed of soldiers from a wide range of countries and nationalities). But hey why let the facts get in the way of a good tabloid rant against those pesky Russki rapists? Callan feeds the readers of his article (sensationally entitled “At the Mercy of Monsters”) a lurid tale of how:

 “Russians unleashed an orgy of sickening self-gratification as soldiers of the Red Army embarked on a lengthy campaign of rape, looting, murder and depravity.”

Any lay member of the British public reading Callan’s piece might simply conclude that Russia is a nation composed of rapists and “monsters”.

It is of course the case that downmarket British tabloids are much more interested in propagating “infotainment” than in balance and serious historical objectivity. We unreservedly condemn rape as a crime whenever and by whoever it is committed. However to suggest that only Russian soldiers committed rape and that ergo Russian men are somehow more likely to commit rape than other men is a disgraceful slur on an entire nation.

So as a blog written mainly by and for women from the former Soviet countries we thought it only right to redress this one-sided account. Let’s start by looking at what Dr Kelly Dawn Askin, an acknowledged expert on human rights and international law, had to say in her 1997 book “War Crimes Against Women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals” about how women fared in the countries conquered and occupied by the Nazis. Much of what Askin describes in her book (see pp.55-56) is simply too harrowing and depraved to recount here. Quite simply there was no outrage that was too bestial for the German fascists – especially when the victims were Jewish, Ukrainian, Polish or Russian women. Askin quotes evidence presented at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials in which the International Military Tribunal was told how:

‘“Everywhere the lust-maddened German gangsters break into houses, they rape the women and girls under the very eyes of their kinfolk and children, jeer at the women they have violated, and then brutally murder their victims.” Some of the most horrendous accounts of gender specific abuses were reserved for Russian women. According to evidence presented at Nuremburg: “Women and young girls are vilely outraged in all the occupied areas. In the Ukrainian village of Borodayevka the fascists violated every one of the women and girls.”’  (Askin p.56)

Meanwhile, Ruth Seifert in War and Rape. Analytical Approaches wrote of how: “in the Eastern territories the Wehrmacht used to brand the bodies of captured partisan women – and other women as well – with the words “Whore for Hitler’s troops” and to use them accordingly.“   

Rape is one of the most bestial of all crimes – and rape as a weapon of war is doubly so. To simplify these horrific events in the interests of crude, one-sided Russophobic propaganda does a great disservice not only to the memory of the overwhelming majority of Red Army men who were not rapists – but also to the wartime rape victims of all nationalities.

Берлинская наступательная операци

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Above: Acclaimed military historian Dr Aryeh Nusbacher explains the real reason why the defending Nazis fought to the bitter end at the Battle of Berlin in April 1945

Make no mistake – Russophobia is a very real problem in the British media. As Anna Matveeva commented in response to the biased coverage of the Russia-Georgia conflict in August 2008:

“When a fashionable detective writer wants to write a thriller with a foreign twist, guess who will be the nemesis? An al-Qaida plot in Hackney runs the risk of being politically incorrect. But Russian dissidents and oligarchs chased by Scottish police fit the bill perfectly. The British media, mindful of inter-race relations, seeks to avoid hurting the feelings of Muslims, but the idea that Russians can feel hurt does not occur to them. For Russians in the west, if one is not an oligarch, pop star or secret assassin, and does not think that “Putin’s regime” is second-worst to that of Ivan the Terrible, treading these waters is problematic.”

As we have reported previously, the British media can barely bring itself to use the word “Russian” as an adjective without immediately following it up with the noun “mafia”. A prime example of this is this recent BBC report concerning a pan-European police operation designed to clamp down on the Georgian mafia. As can be seen, the BBC cannot report this issue without also reminding its readers that some Russian gangsters were also arrested on Majorca in a completely seperate operation some two years previously! 

As for the Mail and the Express, thankfully, as well as simplistic and outdated Little Englander nationalism, the other characteristics these ugly twins share are sharply declining circulation figures. We look forward to these floundering rags being rescued in the nearest future by a generous Russian oligarch, perhaps at a purchase price of as high as £1 each…

Elena Sinclair