For those of you that don’t know, there’s this weird trend going around on Twitter where someone says “I’m [nationality] and I hated Russians before it was cool.” I don’t know how it started or who started it, but unfortunately it’s been making the rounds.
While terrible, it is also a bit funny that the people doing this are the nationalities that had associations with Nazis (Germany, Japan, Finland, etc.); like, yeah you would hate Russians considering they dog walked your grandpa. But then again, it wasn’t just Russian people, the USSR was more than just them that defeated the Nazis.
Anyway, it’s just awful Russophobia being completely normalized.
Russophobia was always cool in the west, or at least since 1600’s-1700’s
Eh, it’s more of a early 20th century phenomenon.
The “Russophobia” of that era was just classic empires hating each others guts because they saw each other as threats.
Was the Russian empire really that unpopular back then? I guess with the way people romanticize the Tsars I’d assume they weren’t nearly as hated as they are now.
It’s not really chiefly about the tsars*, but the same thing that today minus communism. Peter I reformed Russia and immediately after defeated Sweden - a great power back then. In the subsequent century Russia had a major win streak and stopped being seen as weak and started to be seen as danger, with highlight points being the 7 year war, then the napoleonic period. Only in middle XIX century due to the rotting of the tsarist regime it started to be relegated to the sick man of Europe and potential colony. Also of course antislavic racism, constantly present in western Europe.
*However a lot of western autocrats were rather jealous of the extent of tsar power. And various factions in the west all pointed at tsars as back then version of “we are the lesser evil” to pacify their liberals.