Russian Occidentalism: Gayropa and Russia’s Traditional Values

In Orientalism Said asserts that “the Orient has helped define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image.” European culture gains identity “by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.” Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit write about Orientalism’s mirror image, Occidentalism, as a corresponding discourse about the West as perceived by non-Western cultures. Though they focus primarily on Islamic and Asian anti-Westernism, Buruma and Margalit trace some Occidentalist ideas back to the writings of Russian Slavophiles in the 19th Century. The recent escalation of tensions between Russia and the West has seen a resurgence of Russian projections onto the West, especially in press propaganda, in which sex and sexuality (primarily homosexuality, but also incest, pedophilia, and bestiality) figure prominently. This phenomenon was particularly visible in the anti-European propaganda deployed against Ukraine’s movement towards the European Union. Russian propaganda dubbed Europe “Gayropa,” and entry into Europe was described in Russian in terms of anal sex. Many encounters with the West were perceived through this discourse, from the Eurovision song contest, in which a bearded man in a dress from Austria won over the virginal Russian girls in white, to Ukraine’s Majdan movement, in which queers and fascists became interchangeable on Russian TV. What is the genealogy and etiology of these Russian Occidentalist discourses? Are they equally rooted in Slavophile ideology? If, as Larry Wolff argues, Enlightenment projections about Eastern Europe reveal more about Western Europe itself than about any real material Eastern Europe, what do these Russian images of the West reveal about Russian “traditional values” and “spiritual bonds”? How do Europe and the West function as a sort of surrogate or underground self for Russia?