Our last lecture in this module will focus on the few years around 1991 which is when the Soviet Union officially dissolved and the Cold War came to a surprising end. As a reminder, we started this module on America's Russian eyes with a discussion of Russia's current attitude towards the United States. Before going back in history and looking at moments and situations that generated particular images of the United States in the Russian and Soviet imagination. With today's lecture, we will have come full circle. We're focusing on the years around 1991, because it was the time mid to late 1980s to early 1990s when Russia's perception of the United States and of the Americans dramatically changed, because Russia itself dramatically changed. We will discuss how Russians saw America at this very fragile moment in Russia's history, why they perceive their former enemy in this new way. And finally, why this moment did not last very long. As always, first a bit of history. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power initiating a series of political economic and social reforms that became known throughout the world as perestroika and glasnost. In English, those words are best translated as reconstruction and openness. As a result of this reforms, the Soviet system of central economic planning gave way to a creation of private enterprise. The media was freed from strict governmental control and private citizens little by little were allowed to voice their critical opinions about many aspects of Soviet life. Expected or not, this opening of the doors towards more liberal social, political, and economic practices soon led to a complete crashing down of the Soviet system, but not without resistance. In response to Gorbachev's reforms, a group of communist hardliners staged a coup in August of 1991. Although the coup was unsuccessful Gorbachev's influenced significantly diminished. By December of 1991, most of the Soviet republics declared their independence. Gorbachev was effectively the president of state that just ceased to exist. In a public television broadcast, he resigned from his post declaring that the Soviet Union was disunited. The Soviet hammer and sickle flag at of the top of Kremlin was replaced with the Russian tricolor flag and Russia just as other Soviet republics became an independent state with its own government. The United States meanwhile, considered itself as a triumphant winner of the Cold War. And of the ideological competition that had dominated world events for the better part of the 20th century, democracy prevailed and communist rule became history. Importantly, much of the Russian population did not feel any sense of loss or humiliation during these years and they did not consider itself to be a loser. It was the moment of new beginnings, new opportunities, and of great interest in the West, especially the United States, the country which very, very few Russians had any direct encounters. One public opinion statistic of the time speaks for itself, about 70% of the Russian population had positive opinions of the United States in 1991. 39% of Russians said, they were particularly interested in the life and affairs of the United States as opposed to other countries, only 17% for instance, were interested in Germany. And 37% expected the US to help Russia through its coming transition to a capitalist economy, and of this about half believed that the Americans will be more than willing to do so. Such a positive tilt towards and interest in America emerge from different sources. Including high level political meetings, newfound economic interest, the flood of American popular culture. And in particular, a new kind of television programming in which Russian and American audiences participated as dialogue partners. All of these influences helped Russia to reimagine what an ordinary American and the United States as a nation was like. Let us address some of these cases. In 1992, for instance George Bush Senior and Boris Yeltsin, the new and first President of Russia elected a year earlier. Finished their first meeting at Camp David with an announcement of a new alliance of partners working together against the common danger of nuclear proliferation we face. After decades of hostilities and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction such a language of partnership of peace and common values was a truly historic step. Such words as alliance and partners as well as friend and of similar spirit were suddenly used in Soviet public discourse about the United States. The former enemy was seen as an experienced older brother, even noble in its intentions. The rhetoric of Americans as a danger to Russia completely disappeared and ordinary Americans appeared not as ignorant narcissists and capitalists, but as freedom loving people with well-deserved rights for private property and private life. This radically new rhetoric can be explained both in pragmatic and psychological terms. Russia imagined itself in the post-Cold War era on par with the United States and as an equal economic superpower that would exercise enormous influence on one side of the globe. But the Russian government also understood that in order to redefine itself as such a superpower it needed help from the United States for economic and political restructuring. The rhetoric of friendship was also driven by a real interest in the life of others. And it would not be an exaggeration to say that popular culture and in particular, television programming in the mid to late 1980s played an enormous role in Russia's warming up to the United States. And then moving ordinary Russians away from the stereotypical perceptions of their American counterparts that had been negative for so many years. Certain TV programs, the so-called space bridge programs in which two groups of audiences, one located in the Soviet Union and the other in the United States were connected in TV studios via satellite. It was an early version of videoconferencing if you will, but with two very different National publics as the target audiences in mind. The most famous of the space bridge programs were led the American journalist Phil Donahue and the Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner. One of these encounters called Citizen Summit one took place in December of 1985 and brought together regular people about 200 on each side in Leningrad and Seattle. The second called Women to Women was filmed in May of 1986. The conversations were completely unscripted, open-ended, without any central topic and invited sincere expressions of opinions on both sides. The US side much more used to uncontrolled public discussions dominated this conversations with Phil Donahue behaving sometimes in uncomfortable and provocative ways towards Soviet participants. At one point for instance, Donahue said that Russians were not being honest because they were afraid to speak the truth. For this, he earned criticism from the American side, his remarks in their directness were seen as offensive. But Soviet audiences who were raised on stiff and scripted television performances were fascinated by such American brusqueness. They were astounded the American government would allow such public behavior and they perceive it as sincere as the very embodiment of a free media. Perhaps even more importantly such encounters with American truthfulness made Russians painfully aware of their own inability to speak honestly in front of the camera. The space bridge television programs were extremely popular in the Soviet Union. About 180 million people hungrily consumed boss the information offered by ordinary American citizens and their way of behavior. In the United States, the show was broadcasted only in the truncated form with only 8 million people l watching it. Vladimir Pozner interpreted this limited broadcasting as an American reluctance to let go of standard perceptions of Russians as evil. Whereas in Russia, the emerging culture of public openness allowed for a perfectly ripe moment in which to envision new relationship with the United States. Russia's honeymoon with the United States did not last however. By the mid-1990s the tone began to change, this had to do with the disillusionment of Russia's development. Its economy went from bad to worse, its democratic desires crushed against a complete absence of necessary institutions. Its influence on world events rapidly diminished and its sense of identity was shattered. In this context, Russians began to perceive the United States as acting only in its own interest and undermining those of Russia. The integration of the East European countries of the former socialist bloc into NATO at the turn of the 21st century despite a previous agreement that NATO would never expand Eastward was perceived as probably the biggest American betrayal. Anti-American sentiment began to build up again, to return this full force in the mid-200s as we saw in the first chapter of this module, which you might want to re-watch now. Time will tell how Russian opinion about Americans and the United States will evolve. Two main factors that will be critical in evolution are first, a more honest Russian media that would move away from anti-American propaganda. And second, an American willingness to look with empathy at the needs of Russians.
