Anti-Russian propaganda in Europe from the 15th to the beginning of the 20th century. Weltexpress: Western anti-Russian propaganda is increasingly looking like paranoia

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No matter how indignant Ukraine is, no matter how much money the United States pours into anti-Russian propaganda, the fact remains: Europeans are fed up with hysteria in the media. Everyone is tired of the demonization of Russia: both the ordinary population, who suffered the most from the sanctions, and politicians, who gradually began to realize their own failure.

Without realizing it, the European elites went all-in and lost. Neither sanctions nor propaganda worked, and amid dissatisfaction with the government’s policies, opposition forces found themselves on the crest of the wave. Everything did not go according to plan, so now European officials are quickly beginning to deal with the consequences.

Crimea is yours

Reports about these consequences, by the way, have appeared recently with enviable regularity. Less than a month had passed since everyone was discussing the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions, when in Italy a majority vote adopted a resolution in which Crimea was recognized as Russian, in which deputies appealed to the national government with a demand to lift sanctions against Russia.

Of the 51 council representatives, only 9 opposed it. Calling the behavior of Italy and the entire West a policy of double standards, the regional authorities promised to start working with the country’s government and parliamentary structures, as well as with the institutions of the European Union to review relations with Russia. For this purpose, it is even planned to organize a special committee that will collect signatures.

Of course, we need to make a reservation - such documents are advisory in nature. Nevertheless, there is an obvious turn in policy. Active anti-Russian propaganda is no longer coping with its task - it is less and less able to “blur” the eyes of Europeans; in the Old World there is a growing demand for normalization of relations with Russia, to which local authorities can no longer help but respond. It took two years for an adequate perception of reality to return to the EU, but it returned like a boomerang.

The business community played a significant role in the turnaround, calling on the government to be rational with all its might. The Venice resolution, as noted by its author, deputy Stefano Valdegamberi, was also the result of the efforts of business circles. The visits of officials to Crimea were also important - this was perhaps the only way to obtain reliable information about what was happening on the peninsula.

Valdegamberi himself was also part of the delegation of Italian deputies.

“I myself visited Crimea and clearly saw the desire of the people of Crimea for self-determination,” Waldegmari emphasized.

Dumplings are replacing cookies

If the behavior of the pro-Russian part of the French and Italians is no longer surprising, then no one expected a change in aggressive rhetoric from Russia’s main opponents. Nevertheless, yesterday’s “express visit” of Victoria Nuland demonstrated positive movement in relations with the Americans. If a year ago her vocabulary constantly included accusations towards the Kremlin for everything that was happening in Ukraine, now her tone has become more polite.

If in 2014 she cursed the European Union and made grandiose plans in Ukraine, in 2015 she called the Donbass militias “separatist puppets of the Kremlin” and accused Russia of occupying Crimea and violating human rights, but now we suddenly hear calls for joint action in the spirit: “This is very It’s important to keep the conversation going and try to solve problems together.”

With the failure of the multibillion-dollar anti-Russian project “Ukraine,” which was supposed to demonstrate to the unfortunate Russians all the delights of the West and NATO, Nuland switched from cookies to dumplings. And apparently, these efforts are just the beginning of a big turnaround.

Dead-end labyrinths of anti-Russian propaganda

For the first time, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, spoke about the impasse of anti-Russian propaganda:

“Both the voting on the resolution in the Veneto regional council, and other political processes, such as public opinion polls, a referendum in the Netherlands, all show that the process of anti-Russian propaganda in the context of Ukraine has not so much reached a dead end, but is beginning to spin in the opposite direction and work against those who launched it. And this is just the beginning."

In reality, anti-Russian propaganda has always been at a dead end simply because it was initially limited. No one thought about this until they received a retaliatory slap on the wrist.

As soon as propaganda ceased to fulfill its tasks, Western structures found the culprits - “Kremlin projects”. At first, American politicians limited themselves to insulting RT and experts who expressed their opinions on the channel. But then relevant American structures began to demand an increase in the budget and even began to prepare for the reorganization of the Council on Foreign Broadcasting. Now discontent and indignation have literally turned into panic, and even the idea of creating a separate agency to counter Russian and Chinese propaganda is being put forward. As reported, the proposed structure will have to analyze and find ways to counter “the efforts of these countries to disinformation” directed against American initiatives in the world.

But some American experts note that the problem is not in Russian propaganda, but in the US media elites themselves. Their degradation has made lies and propaganda look like “ignorance and stupidity,” says political scientist Paul Craig Roberts.

“What we see is pure propaganda and lies that constantly comes from media outlets like Fox News, from the White House, from executive branches of government and US Congressmen. There are a lot of lies even compared to how they lied under Henry Kissinger,” he emphasized.

Fluctuations in anti-Russian propaganda

In fact, the very phenomenon of “Ukrainian propaganda” of the West against Russia is a complete contradiction, at times spilling over into incoherent nonsense.

The propaganda machine started working with the beginning of the “Maidan riot”, during which Yanukovych, as well as, naturally, Russia and Putin, were denounced in every possible way. For example, in February 2014 it was published under the title “Bound by Ukraine, Putin is watching and biding his time for his next move.”

The author of the article calls the Kremlin's policy towards Ukraine an obvious collapse. After the pro-Russian government was kicked out of Ukraine, Putin's strategy of deepening ties with Europe was destroyed, he writes. In March 2014, the same publication writes. Among them, in the first place is the military “showdown” over the ownership of Crimea, which Putin allegedly intended to organize. According to the author of the article, poor Kyiv, even with the help of Washington and Brussels, cannot get out of the economic crisis, and now Russia is preparing a military offensive.

Although this is remembered less often now, the topic of Crimea has become the culmination of anti-Russian propaganda. This was literally the very lever that launched the whole mechanism for a long time. If the Kremlin’s support for Yanukovych was written more or less restrainedly, then after the reunification of Crimea with Russia, the Western media literally exploded. Since February 2014, the constant repetition of the same words began, developing into a mantra:

“The USA does not recognize the occupation of Crimea”, “The illegal annexation of Crimea must be stopped”, etc.

At the same time, it was impossible to forget about the “annexation” of the peninsula even for a minute - the American media constantly reminded about it. For example, :

“Don’t forget about the Russian invasion and occupation of Crimea.”

The article tells a terrible story about how the Russian military invaded Crimea, how they held a false referendum, almost forcing people to vote at gunpoint. All this, according to the publication, ended in terrible violence and violation of human rights. Naturally, the article did not provide evidence.

But it remains a classic of the genre. In the publication’s articles, literally every characteristic of the events is “beautiful”:

“Putin’s Crimean crime,” “an act of Russian aggression,” “Putin’s cynical and tough way to cure Ukraine.”

This quote belongs to the same collection:

“Why don’t we make the connection from the invasion of Georgia to the arming of Syrian mass murderers to the seizure of Crimea?”

There were a great many similar materials in the Western media from February 2014 until the summer of 2015. However, occasionally they appear even now, but no one is interested in this anymore.

This whole story with obvious signs of schizophrenia is slowed down with the start of the military operation of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria. During this period, they forget about Crimea and Donbass; the focus is now on the connection between “aggressive Putin” and the “bloody tyrant” Bashar Assad.

With the end of the operation in Syria and the adoption of joint efforts to combat Daesh (a terrorist organization banned in Russia) and the beginning of the peace process, Western media tried to return to the Ukrainian issue. True, so far they are doing it somehow completely clumsily and unsuccessfully. Savchenko’s topic lasted in the media for a couple of weeks; now they hardly remember it.

Failures on the information front are accompanied by a decrease in the activity of foreign media in the Russian direction. Between May 2 and May 8, for example, the activity index decreased by 15.8% compared to the previous week. However, this does not mean at all that the information war is coming to an end.

Since the beginning of 2016, the index of aggressiveness of the information environment in Western countries towards Russia continues to remain high. Traditionally, the top five warring parties are Latvia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and the USA. But in the media of these countries there are quite adequate articles, although they are extremely rare.

Means of anti-Russian propaganda in general are rapidly losing their popularity: both in the world and in Russia. For example, the Estonian TV channel ETV+, which was created to combat “Russian propaganda,” has lost 10% of its daily coverage over the past 3 months. And apparently, this is just the beginning. By and large, all the accusations against Moscow regarding the rabid “Kremlin propaganda” indicate one thing: Russian information work is effective.

With each new fact that emerges regarding Western interference in Ukraine’s internal issues, current EU politicians are rapidly losing support.

It remains to be seen what the indignation caused by it will result in, which revealed that Germany, together with the EU, financed the extremely anti-Russian Ukrainian TV channel “Hromadske Telebachennya” (from Ukrainian - “Civil Television”). However, something else is already known for sure: the current European elites will have to pay a high price for their miscalculations. And no amount of propaganda will help them with this.

Radio station “Vesti FM”: Whose will you be?

At the end of April 2016, having finally gathered my courage, I conducted a multi-purpose experiment on some questions, namely: has anything changed in the policy of federal mass media over the past few years, for the better or for the worse, and have my personal predictions come true regarding which direction and what position the central television and radio channels are taking?

A very entertaining radio station was chosen as a test subject. Vesti FM. For four days in a row, from morning to evening, while driving a car for a long time, I listened to this frequency (89.3 in St. Petersburg).

According to the laws of the dramatic genre, using the so-called retrospective plot, which involves first showing the ending, and only then the whole action from beginning to end, I decided to first draw some conclusions. It should be said right away that the conclusions are very disappointing.

Firstly, after a certain time it seems that you are watching the Russia or Russia 24 channel, only without the visuals. Alone and The same“talking heads” wandering from one show to another, who are experts on any topic and on various issues. The same smart conversations are either about nothing or about something that has already been known for a long time (in most cases). The same taboo topics that are forbidden to talk about. Same rudeness and arrogance of “the most brilliant and talented presenter of all times” and his “friends”.

Secondly, adoption of neutral, and often anti-Russian position not only by the presenters and their guests, but also by giving the entire broadcast focus to this trend. Very rarely does something pro-Russian pop up, for example, in the “Bear Corner” program with Andrei Medvedev or Anna Shafran in “The Principle of Action,” but this does not change the general direction.

It should be noted that not only the entire VGTRK holding, which includes Vesti FM, but also , and etc. are, as it were, aloof from the events about which the viewer or listener is informed, and are state-owned only formally. There is a very clear signal - we have nothing to do with you, that is, with Russia and the people inhabiting it, as they say - “You have your own wedding, and we have ours”.

Third, manipulating events and arranging them in the desired sequence. A very telling example is that either on April 28 or 29, the news reported that Russia is planning a gradual increase in the retirement age and that a corresponding bill is being prepared for consideration.

It would seem that this is an absolutely anti-social and anti-people initiative! Well, pensioners are not effective under capitalism; they are superfluous people in the balance of the financial authorities! You are wrong, dear reader! Immediately the next day, the topic begins to circulate that, supposedly, according to research by some authoritative organizations, employers today prefer to hire more mature people than young people after college, etc. So, everything turns out to be for the benefit of the population! Just work!

Fourthly, from Tuesday to Friday, from 7.00 to 11.00 and from 14.00 to 17.00, that is, almost the entire daytime broadcast is provided to citizens, it is not entirely clear which state - Evgeniy Satanovsky And Vladimir Solovyov. It is difficult to say unequivocally whether they have Israeli citizenship or whether they are connected to this country by other threads. But the famous Russian journalist and public figure Maxim Shevchenko, repeatedly directly stated that Satanovsky is a foreign agent and works for the Israeli intelligence services.

Let’s dwell on this in more detail, since this topic is very relevant not only in terms of politics, but also culture. We will not delve deeply into the historical and political intricacies; we will only recall some details: the well-known Middle Eastern state, both in its essence and in the religion of its citizens, is Jewish.

Anti-Russian propaganda of the West is a way to weaken Russia!

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It was then that the concept of “information war,” not yet formalized in clear terminology, acquired forms that are completely recognizable to us in the 21st century. So it began anti-Russian propaganda in Europe. Along with the Bible and solid scientific treatises, at the beginning of the 16th century, flying sheets appeared, containing 4-8 pages of text in large print, often accompanied by primitive woodcuts - essentially the “yellow press” of those years. It was then that the Russian theme first appeared among these predecessors of newspapers. In 1514 In the next Russian-Lithuanian war, the Russians suffered a serious defeat at the Battle of Orsha. True, it did not affect the outcome of the war, but Polish diplomacy and propaganda hastened to present it as a historical event, marking a turning point in the struggle of the Lithuanian-Polish commonwealth against the “heretics and schismatic Muscovites.” According to the contemporary Polish historian and diplomat Hieronymus Gral, “with the help of ‘Orsha propaganda’ we turned part of Europe against Muscovy.”

Therefore, the Poles tried not to let ambassadors and merchants into Moscow, and put pressure on Livonia so that it wouldn’t let them in either. At the same time, they sought, if possible, to monopolize information about the “Muscovites” in their hands. It is not for nothing that Matvey Mekhovsky, a prominent Polish scientist, in the preface to the treatise “On Two Sarmatias,” wrote about the lands of Muscovy as “discovered by the troops of the King of Poland” and which have now become known to the world. “Orsha propaganda” and the scientific work of Mekhovsky strengthened the hostile attitude towards schismatics that had been developing for centuries. The image of the schismatic enemy began to take on more concrete contours. But Europeans seriously began to formulate ideas about Russia as a country of cruel, aggressive barbarians, slavishly obedient to their tyrants, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.

In January 1558, Ivan IV Vasilyevich began the Livonian War for Russia's access to the Baltic Sea. And in 1561 a piece of paper appeared with the following text: “Very vile, terrible, hitherto unheard, true new news, what atrocities the Muscovites are committing with captive Christians from Livonia, men and women, virgins and children, and what harm they are causing them every day in their country. Along the way, it is shown what the great danger and need of the Livonians lies. To warn all Christians and improve their sinful lives, this was written from Livonia and printed. Nuremberg 1561". The messages of the “yellow press” were supported artistically.

This new type of information source, aimed at the general public, has changed the selection of information and the way it is presented. As in the modern tabloid press, shocking, terrible news is selected and presented in such a way as to influence feelings, and not to give an objective picture. Certain stamps form quickly. Directly or indirectly, Russians were represented through negative images of the Old Testament.

The salvation of Livonia was compared to the deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh, and Ivan the Terrible was compared to Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar and Herod. He was clearly defined as a tyrant. It was then that the word “tyrant” became a common noun to define all the rulers of Russia in principle. The authors of news about Grozny’s campaigns directly “borrowed” descriptions of the Turkish conquests. The Saxon Elector Augustus I became the author of the famous maxim, the meaning of which was that the Russian danger was comparable only to the Turkish one. Ivan the Terrible was depicted in the dress of the Turkish Sultan. They wrote about his harem of 50 wives. Moreover, he allegedly killed those who were annoying. Apparently this is where the persistent desire of modern pro-Western historiography comes from to “count” as many wives as possible from the real Ivan the Terrible.

A researcher of printed news about Ivan the Terrible's Russia, A. Kappeler, discovered 62 flying sheets dedicated to Russia during the 16th century. The overwhelming majority of them are devoted to the Livonian War, and in all of them the Russians and their tsar were depicted in the same gloomy tones as those above. It was then that the first marching printing house in the history of the Polish army appeared, the head of which, with the plebeian surname Lapka, subsequently received the dignity of the nobility and the noble surname “Lapchinsky”. Polish propaganda worked in several languages and in several directions throughout Europe. And she did it effectively.

It is clear that objectivity in assessments was not even a goal. In the same era when Ivan the Terrible lived, Henry VIII of England executed his chancellors one after another. In 1553, when the first English ship reached the area of the future Arkhangelsk, the Catholic Mary, nicknamed Bloody, became the British queen. She ruled for only five years, but during this time 287 people were burned, including several bishops of the Anglican Church. Many died in dungeons and were executed in other ways. However, England's "European" reputation did not suffer significantly. What was important was not the objective cruelty of this or that ruler, but, so to speak, the system of recognition of “friend or foe.”

In 1578, surrounded by the Count of Alsace, a “plan for turning Muscovy into an imperial province” arose, the author of which was the former guardsman who fled to the west, Heinrich Staden. A sort of “Vlasovite” of the 16th century...

This project was reported to the Holy Roman Emperor, the Duke of Prussia, the Swedish and Polish kings. English captain Chamberlain prepared similar plans. These plans converged on one thing - the desire to forever eliminate Russia as a subject of European politics. Here is what Staden wrote: “The new imperial province of Russia will be governed by one of the emperor’s brothers. In the occupied territories, power should belong to the imperial commissars, whose main task will be to provide the German troops with everything they need at the expense of the population. To do this, it is necessary to assign peasants and merchants to each fortification - for twenty or ten miles around - so that they pay salaries to the military people and deliver everything necessary ... "

It was proposed to make Russians prisoners, driving them into castles and cities. From there they can be taken to work, “...but not otherwise than in iron shackles, filled with lead at their feet...”. There is also an ideological and religious justification for the robbery: “German stone churches should be built throughout the country, and Muscovites should be allowed to build wooden ones. They will soon rot and only German stone ones will remain in Russia. In this way, a change of religion will occur painlessly and naturally for Muscovites. When the Russian land, together with the surrounding countries, which have no sovereigns and which lie empty, is taken, then the borders of the empire will converge with the borders of the Persian Shah...” There were still 360 years left before Hitler’s plan “Ost”...

To justify potential aggression or other hostile actions, not only the foreign policy aggressiveness of the Muscovites, but also the tyranny of their king over his own subjects was mythologized and promoted. It must be said that in Europe itself everything was not going well with this. In 1572, a messenger from Maximilian II, Magnus Pauli, informs Ivan IV about the Night of St. Bartholomew. To which the compassionate Ivan the Terrible replied that “he grieves over the bloodshed that happened to the French king in his kingdom, several thousand were beaten to the point of mere babies, and it is fitting for the peasant sovereign to mourn that such inhumanity was committed by the French king over so many people and so much blood.” shed madly." As a result, the French king is a scoundrel, but France is a cultured country, despite the fact that Charles's example was followed by Catholics in many French provinces.

Of course, it was impossible for France and England to set records for the brutal extermination of their subjects, and therefore Jerome Horsey in “Notes on Russia” indicates that the oprichniki massacred seven hundred thousand (!) people in Novgorod. The fact that 40 thousand people lived in it, and an epidemic was raging, and at the same time, the lists of the dead, fully preserved in synodics, call 2800 dead, does not bother anyone. These are the laws of the “black PR” genre.
Let us also note that the plot of “the tyrannical atrocities of Ivan the Terrible” has survived centuries. The Livonian War ended a long time ago and the Poles, not without success, tried to seize the original Moscow lands in the 17th century... and another engraving appears, “Ivan the Terrible executes Johann Boye, the governor of Weisenstein.”

At the end of the reign of Peter I, the book “Conversations in the Kingdom of the Dead” was published in Germany with allegorical pictures of Ivan the Terrible’s executions of his enemies. There, by the way, for the first time the Russian sovereign is depicted in the form of a bear.

The finishing touch was the spread of the legend of Ivan the Terrible’s murder of his own son. Note that this version is not reflected in any Russian sources. Everywhere, including Grozny’s personal correspondence, there is talk of Ivan Ioannovich’s rather long illness. The version of the murder was voiced by the papal legate Jesuit Antonio Possevino, the already mentioned Heinrich Staden, the Englishman Jerome Horsey and other foreigners who were not direct witnesses to the death of the prince. Karamzin and subsequent Russian historians wrote based on their materials. It is interesting that, as A.A. Sevastyanov, the author of the translation of Horsey’s Notes, reports, in the margins of Horsey’s manuscript, but not in his hand, near the words “gave him a slap in the face” there is a note made by some mysterious editor, which remained in the text forever and in radically changing the version of the prince’s death presented by Horsey: “Thrust at him with his piqued staff,” i.e. “threw his sharp staff at him.”

Thus, the West created the “necessary” version of Russian history, regardless of how events actually developed. The version of murder, as well as the version of incredible cruelty, was properly visualized. We see the completion of this process today - the cover of the textbook “History of the Fatherland”, grade 10, edited by Yakemenko.

Now let's move on to the second hero - Emperor Paul I. He is akin to Ivan the Terrible in that his historical image is an example of another successful information campaign of the West against the Russian tsars. Moreover, under Ivan the Terrible, the degree of Westernization of Russia was small, and the image of Ivan the Terrible had to be distorted by assigning “necessary” assessments retroactively. In the case of Pavel, the “black PR” campaign was carried out on both Western and Russian audiences simultaneously, accompanied by a set of special operations that ultimately led to the physical elimination of Pavel by the conspirators on the night of March 11, 1801. We are not considering here the version that Ivan the Terrible was also eliminated with the help of European doctors, due to its unprovability. Although the content of sublimate, i.e. poisonous mercury chloride in the remains of the king here also leads to reflection, and makes the analogies even more transparent...

The reasons for the information war against Emperor Pavel Petrovich are the same as during Grozny. By the end of the 18th century, the Russian Empire for the first time reached the peak of power, allowing it to challenge the entire continental Europe on an equal footing. Actually, later - in 1812-1814. - she did it successfully.

Already the end of the reign of Catherine II was characterized by a sharp deterioration in relations with Britain. This deterioration can be very easily traced through the use of a relatively new weapon of information warfare - caricature. The destruction of the predatory Crimean Khanate, the strengthening of Russia in the Northern Black Sea region and the creation of the Black Sea Fleet, and then the brilliant victories of Admiral Ushakov at sea - all this alarmed England. In the spring of 1791, an acute international conflict flared up, which went down in history as the “Ochakovo crisis.”

The British fleet reigned supreme in the Baltic Sea and had complete control over all Eastern European exports. The Black Sea gave Russia a bypass route for trade with Europe, which did not suit England. That is why on March 22, 1791, the British cabinet adopted an ultimatum to Russia at its meeting. If the latter refuses to return the Ochakov region to Turkey, then Great Britain and its ally Prussia threatened to declare war. Diplomatic pressure was accompanied by the creation of an appropriate image of Catherine and her entourage in the European press. In the cartoons we see a bear with the head of Catherine II and Prince G.A. Potemkin with a naked saber in his hand; together they successfully confront a group of British politicians. Behind the politicians are two bishops, one of whom whispers an incredible prayer: “Deliver me, Lord, from Russian bears...”. Here are quite understandable allusions to the European reader to the prayer “Deliver me, O Lord, from the wrath of the Normans...”, well known in the early Middle Ages.

It must be said that British pressure had some influence on St. Petersburg. Most members of the Russian government were inclined to satisfy England's demands. But Catherine II showed political firmness. Russian diplomacy managed to raise public opinion of the English nation against the war and force the British government to abandon its demands on Russia. It all ended not with humiliating concessions to European diplomats, as had already happened, but with the victorious Peace of Jassy, which finally established Russia in the Black Sea region and made it the arbiter in the relations of the Orthodox Balkan peoples with the Ottoman Empire. This happened thanks to the use of its weapons against the West - manipulation of public opinion, including caricatures. The first real Russian political caricature is Gavriil Skorodumov’s painting “Balance of Europe in 1791”, depicting large scales that tilted in the direction where Suvorov’s grenadier stands on the bowl - “alone and heavy” - outweighing all the enemies of Russia.

Catherine clearly hints at how the “Ochakovsky issue” will be resolved if England continues its policy. This language was perfectly understood in England... and they retreated.

After the first defeat, the British propaganda machine began to work at full capacity. The target was “Russian atrocity” and our most famous commander, A.V. Suvorov. Fortunately, a reason was found quickly - the suppression of the Polish uprising. Propaganda "blanks" were used quite in the spirit of the times of the Livonian War. The blow was struck at once against Catherine herself, the best Russian commander and the Russian people, who were presented in the image of “inhuman Cossacks.” Classic battle paintings and caricature were also used. In the first case, the Cossacks destroy civilians, in the second (caricature “The Tsar’s Fun”), Suvorov, who approached the throne (this is his first, but not the last appearance in English cartoons), hands out the heads of Polish women and children to Catherine with the words: “So, my Royal Lady, I have fully fulfilled your affectionate maternal commission to the lost people of Poland, and brought you the Collection of Ten Thousand Heads, carefully separated from their lost bodies the day after the Surrender.” Behind Suvorov are three of his soldiers, carrying baskets with the heads of unfortunate Poles.

The attack on Russia in general, and Suvorov in particular, in the “yellow press” reached its peak under Emperor Paul I, who pursued a foreign policy guided solely by the interests of Russia. The commander appeared before the European man in the street in the guise of a bloodthirsty devourer of enemy armies. A sort of blood-sucking ghoul.

Please note that these cartoons are dated 1799-1800. Those. a time when Russia acts as an ALLY of England against revolutionary France! But by that time, geopolitical contradictions had reached such intensity that no one in England was paying attention to such “little things.” It was from this time that an anti-Suvorov tradition existed in England, reflected, in particular, in the poems of Byron:

Suvorov on this day was superior
Timur and, perhaps, Genghis Khan:
He contemplated the burning of Ishmael
And listened to the screams of the enemy camp...

The latest characteristic note about Suvorov published in the English newspaper “The Times” on January 26, 1818 contains the following characteristic: “all honors cannot wash away the shame of whimsical cruelty from his character and force the historian to paint his portrait in any other colors than those that are worthy of a successful crazy militarist or a clever savage.” These views on the personality of Suvorov have been preserved in Western historical science today. This is one of the laws of information wars - a competently propagated myth is perceived as Truth by the children of its creators.

It must be said that at the end of the 18th century England had a colossal propaganda machine previously unseen in the world. Dozens of newspapers and magazines, as well as more than one and a half hundred cartoonists, and more than a hundred publishing houses that printed these cartoons, worked for propaganda, one way or another. Several dozen large engraving workshops worked around the clock, thousands of prints were exported to the continent every year. Satirical sheets were published daily and were bought up by all layers of English society. There were reprints and even pirated copies. Caricature became the most powerful weapon of the information war, perhaps the most important one at that time.

Already in January, the central English newspapers are making information about the impending overthrow of Paul: “We therefore expect to hear with the next mail that the magnanimous Paul has stopped ruling!” or “Big changes, apparently, have already occurred in the Russian government, or cannot but happen in the near future.” There are dozens of such messages in January-February, they are invariably accompanied by an indication of the emperor’s dementia.

Well, really, who else could there be a person who did to Britain the same way it did to all continental countries? The topic of an alliance with Napoleonic France, as mortally dangerous for Britain, provoked fierce attacks. For example, in one of the cartoons, Napoleon leads the Russian Bear, Paul, on a chain.

Although at that time they still perfectly understood that this was propaganda - in the same newspapers where they wrote about the madness of the Russian Tsar, it was admitted that his foreign policy line was quite reasonable. According to British observers: “Malta is not just a whim of Paul,” but completely coincides with Russia’s interests to have a base in the Mediterranean Sea against Turkey. The Russian fleet, which acted as part of the Second Neutrality, was able to break the British blockade of Europe and land troops on the British Isles - a long-standing fear of the British. This rationalism of Paul’s policy and its correspondence with the interests of Russia was recognized through clenched teeth by the English politicians of those years, and is not recognized to this day by the Russian historiographical tradition...

But let’s return to the information war of the winter of 1801... On January 27, a message appears in the English press that “a Russian official arrived in London with news about the removal of Paul and the appointment of a Regency Council headed by the Empress and Prince Alexander.” There was exactly a month and a half left before Pavel’s death...
This is a kind of black magic of information warfare: by stubbornly repeating what you want to achieve, as if it HAD ALREADY happened, you change Reality, preparing in advance the acceptance of what is yet to happen. Europe then used this method of information warfare for the first time, but not for the last time! No one was surprised either in Europe or in Russia when on March 11, 1801. Emperor Paul was killed...
And finally, here are a few more pictures from the European press.

1854 (Crimean War).

1877 (beginning of the Russian-Turkish War).

1899-1901 (the second repartition of China, due to the emergence of new players on this board, Russia, Germany and the Japs)

And finally, 1914.

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It was then that the concept of “information war,” not yet formalized in clear terminology, acquired forms that are completely recognizable to us in the 21st century. Along with the Bible and solid scientific treatises, at the beginning of the 16th century, flying sheets appeared, containing 4-8 pages of text in large print, often accompanied by primitive woodcuts - essentially the “yellow press” of those years. It was then that the Russian theme first appeared among these predecessors of newspapers. In 1514 In the next Russian-Lithuanian war, the Russians suffered a serious defeat at the Battle of Orsha. True, it did not affect the outcome of the war, but Polish diplomacy and propaganda hastened to present it as a historical event, marking a turning point in the struggle of the Lithuanian-Polish commonwealth against the “heretics and schismatic Muscovites.” According to the contemporary Polish historian and diplomat Hieronymus Gral, “with the help of ‘Orsha propaganda’ we turned part of Europe against Muscovy.”

There are two bishops behind the politicians, one of whom whispers an incredible prayer: “Deliver me, Lord, from the Russian bears...”. Here are quite understandable allusions to the European reader to the prayer “Deliver me, O Lord, from the wrath of the Normans...”, well known in the early Middle Ages.

Catherine clearly hints at how the “Ochakovsky issue” will be resolved if England continues its policy. This language was perfectly understood in England... and they retreated.

Suvorov on this day was superior
Timur and, perhaps, Genghis Khan:
He contemplated the burning of Ishmael
And listened to the screams of the enemy camp...

But let’s return to the information war of the winter of 1801... On January 27, a message appears in the English press that “a Russian official arrived in London with news about the removal of Paul and the appointment of a Regency Council headed by the Empress and Prince Alexander.” There was exactly a month and a half left before Pavel’s death...
This is a kind of black magic of information warfare: by stubbornly repeating what you want to achieve, as if it HAD ALREADY happened, you change Reality, preparing in advance the acceptance of what is yet to happen. Europe then used this method of information warfare for the first time, but not for the last time! No one was surprised either in Europe or in Russia when on March 11, 1801. Emperor Paul was killed...

Since the invention of printing, the circle of people familiar with the printed word has rapidly expanded, and by the end of the 15th century, books went beyond the narrow circle of humanistic intelligentsia and learned theologians.
It was then that the concept of “information war,” not yet formalized in clear terminology, acquired forms that are completely recognizable to us in the 21st century. Along with the Bible and solid scientific treatises, at the beginning of the 16th century, flying sheets appeared, containing 4-8 pages of text in large print, often accompanied by primitive woodcuts - essentially the “yellow press” of those years. It was then that the Russian theme first appeared among these predecessors of newspapers. In 1514 In the next Russian-Lithuanian war, the Russians suffered a serious defeat at the Battle of Orsha. True, it did not affect the outcome of the war, but Polish diplomacy and propaganda hastened to present it as a historical event, marking a turning point in the struggle of the Lithuanian-Polish commonwealth against the “heretics and schismatic Muscovites.” According to the contemporary Polish historian and diplomat Hieronymus Gral, “with the help of ‘Orsha propaganda’ we turned part of Europe against Muscovy.”

Even then - at the beginning of the 16th century - the Dutchman Albert of Campen, at that time the papal chamberlain under Clement VII, openly warned the Pope that “from the King of Poland, a prudent and very pious sovereign, nevertheless, in matters concerning the Muscovites, one cannot expect nothing good,” for, “under the pretext of waging war against schismatics ... he enjoyed the enormous favor of other Christian sovereigns, fighting, as it were, for faith and religion, and great help from us, since, promulgating indulgences everywhere for this purpose, we often provided him support from the common Christian treasury."
Therefore, the Poles tried not to let ambassadors and merchants into Moscow, and put pressure on Livonia so that it wouldn’t let them in either. At the same time, they sought, if possible, to monopolize information about the “Muscovites” in their hands. It is not for nothing that Matvey Mekhovsky, a prominent Polish scientist, in the preface to the treatise “On Two Sarmatias,” wrote about the lands of Muscovy as “discovered by the troops of the King of Poland” and which have now become known to the world. “Orsha propaganda” and the scientific work of Mekhovsky strengthened the hostile attitude towards schismatics that had been developing for centuries. The image of the schismatic enemy began to take on more concrete contours. But Europeans seriously began to formulate ideas about Russia as a country of cruel, aggressive barbarians, slavishly obedient to their tyrants, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.
In January 1558, Ivan IV Vasilyevich began the Livonian War for Russia's access to the Baltic Sea. And in 1561 a piece of paper appeared with the following text: “Very vile, terrible, hitherto unheard, true new news, what atrocities the Muscovites are committing with captive Christians from Livonia, men and women, virgins and children, and what harm they are causing them every day in their country. Along the way, it is shown what the great danger and need of the Livonians lies. To warn all Christians and improve their sinful lives, this was written from Livonia and printed. Nuremberg 1561". The messages of the “yellow press” were supported artistically.

Directly or indirectly, Russians were represented through negative images of the Old Testament. The salvation of Livonia was compared to the deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh, and Ivan the Terrible was compared to Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar and Herod. He was clearly defined as a tyrant. It was then that the word “tyrant” became a common noun to define all the rulers of Russia in principle. The authors of news about Grozny’s campaigns directly “borrowed” descriptions of the Turkish conquests. The Saxon Elector Augustus I became the author of the famous maxim, the meaning of which was that the Russian danger was comparable only to the Turkish one. Ivan the Terrible was depicted in the dress of the Turkish Sultan. They wrote about his harem of 50 wives. Moreover, he allegedly killed those who were annoying. Apparently this is where the persistent desire of modern pro-Western historiography comes from to “count” as many wives as possible from the real Ivan the Terrible.

A researcher of printed news about Ivan the Terrible's Russia, A. Kappeler, discovered 62 flying sheets dedicated to Russia during the 16th century. The overwhelming majority of them are devoted to the Livonian War, and in all of them the Russians and their tsar were depicted in the same gloomy tones as those above. It was then that the first marching printing house in the history of the Polish army appeared, the head of which, with the plebeian surname Lapka, subsequently received the dignity of the nobility and the noble surname “Lapchinsky”. Polish propaganda worked in several languages and in several directions throughout Europe. And she did it effectively.
It is clear that objectivity in assessments was not even a goal. In the same era when Ivan the Terrible lived, Henry VIII of England executed his chancellors one after another. In 1553, when the first English ship reached the area of the future Arkhangelsk, the Catholic Mary, nicknamed Bloody, became the British queen. She ruled for only five years, but during this time 287 people were burned, including several bishops of the Anglican Church. Many died in dungeons and were executed in other ways. However, England's "European" reputation did not suffer significantly. What was important was not the objective cruelty of this or that ruler, but, so to speak, the system of recognition of “friend or foe.”

In 1570, the Duke of Alba, at the Frankfurt Deputation, expressed the idea not to send artillery to Muscovy, so that it would not become an enemy “formidable not only for the empire, but for the entire West.” The same Duke of Alba, who, after being appointed viceroy of Charles V in the Netherlands, established a trial that sent 1800 people to the scaffold within three months of 1567, and after a new offensive of Protestants from Germany the following year, several thousand people became victims of a new massacre, hundreds of thousands of people fled abroad. But Spain, nevertheless, does not threaten “the entire West,” but Russia allegedly does.
In 1578, surrounded by the Count of Alsace, a “plan for turning Muscovy into an imperial province” arose, the author of which was the former guardsman who fled to the west, Heinrich Staden. A sort of “Vlasovite” of the 16th century... This project was reported to the Holy Roman Emperor, the Duke of Prussia, the Swedish and Polish kings. English captain Chamberlain prepared similar plans. These plans converged on one thing - the desire to forever eliminate Russia as a subject of European politics. Here is what Staden wrote: “The new imperial province of Russia will be governed by one of the emperor’s brothers. In the occupied territories, power should belong to the imperial commissars, whose main task will be to provide the German troops with everything they need at the expense of the population. To do this, it is necessary to assign peasants and merchants to each fortification - for twenty or ten miles around - so that they pay salaries to the military people and deliver everything necessary ... "
It was proposed to make Russians prisoners, driving them into castles and cities. From there they can be taken to work, “...but not otherwise than in iron shackles, filled with lead at their feet...”. There is also an ideological and religious justification for the robbery: “German stone churches should be built throughout the country, and Muscovites should be allowed to build wooden ones. They will soon rot and only German stone ones will remain in Russia. In this way, a change of religion will occur painlessly and naturally for Muscovites. When the Russian land, together with the surrounding countries, which have no sovereigns and which lie empty, is taken, then the borders of the empire will converge with the borders of the Persian Shah...” There were still 360 years left before Hitler’s plan “Ost”...
To justify potential aggression or other hostile actions, not only the foreign policy aggressiveness of the Muscovites, but also the tyranny of their king over his own subjects was mythologized and promoted. It must be said that in Europe itself everything was not going well with this. In 1572, a messenger from Maximilian II, Magnus Pauli, informs Ivan IV about the Night of St. Bartholomew. To which the compassionate Ivan the Terrible replied that “he grieves over the bloodshed that happened to the French king in his kingdom, several thousand were beaten to the point of mere babies, and it is fitting for the peasant sovereign to mourn that such inhumanity was committed by the French king over so many people and so much blood.” shed madly." As a result, the French king is a scoundrel, but France is a cultured country, despite the fact that Charles's example was followed by Catholics in many French provinces.
Of course, it was impossible for France and England to set records for the brutal extermination of their subjects, and therefore Jerome Horsey in “Notes on Russia” indicates that the oprichniki massacred seven hundred thousand (!) people in Novgorod. The fact that 40 thousand people lived in it, and an epidemic was raging, and at the same time, the lists of the dead, fully preserved in synodics, call 2800 dead, does not bother anyone. These are the laws of the “black PR” genre.
Let us also note that the plot of “the tyrannical atrocities of Ivan the Terrible” has survived centuries. The Livonian War ended a long time ago and the Poles, not without success, tried to seize the original Moscow lands in the 17th century... and another engraving appears, “Ivan the Terrible executes Johann Boye, the governor of Weisenstein.”

Why is so much attention paid specifically to Grozny in the anti-Russian information war? Without setting a goal to whitewash this undoubtedly complex figure, I will nevertheless note that it was under him that Russia acquired borders close to today’s, annexing the Volga region and Siberia. These acquisitions can be challenged, including by denigrating the historical image of Ivan the Terrible. It is also important that in the Livonian War, Russia for the first time fought against the West as a coalition of states. In terms of the participants, this war is an all-European war. The Moscow kingdom of Ivan the Terrible was at the peak of its military and economic power and it took the efforts of half of Europe to prevent it from reaching the seas. It was then that Europe faced a choice - to recognize the sovereign of Moscow as “one of our own”, and the conflict in the Baltic as a “family matter” among European monarchs (in this case, Russia and Poland), or to consider Russia an alien civilization like Muslims. Europe has made its choice...
Now let's move on to the second hero - Emperor Paul I. He is akin to Ivan the Terrible in that his historical image is an example of another successful information campaign of the West against the Russian tsars. Moreover, under Ivan the Terrible, the degree of Westernization of Russia was small, and the image of Ivan the Terrible had to be distorted by assigning “necessary” assessments retroactively. In the case of Pavel, the “black PR” campaign was carried out on both Western and Russian audiences simultaneously, accompanied by a set of special operations that ultimately led to the physical elimination of Pavel by the conspirators on the night of March 11, 1801. We are not considering here the version that Ivan the Terrible was also eliminated with the help of European doctors, due to its unprovability. Although the content of sublimate, i.e. poisonous mercury chloride in the remains of the king here also leads to reflection, and makes the analogies even more transparent...
The reasons for the information war against Emperor Pavel Petrovich are the same as during Grozny. By the end of the 18th century, the Russian Empire for the first time reached the peak of power, allowing it to challenge the entire continental Europe on an equal footing. Actually, later - in 1812-1814. - she did it successfully.
Already the end of the reign of Catherine II was characterized by a sharp deterioration in relations with Britain. This deterioration can be very easily traced through the use of a relatively new weapon of information warfare - caricature. The destruction of the predatory Crimean Khanate, the strengthening of Russia in the Northern Black Sea region and the creation of the Black Sea Fleet, and then the brilliant victories of Admiral Ushakov at sea - all this alarmed England. In the spring of 1791, an acute international conflict flared up, which went down in history as the “Ochakovo crisis.” The British fleet reigned supreme in the Baltic Sea and had complete control over all Eastern European exports. The Black Sea gave Russia a bypass route for trade with Europe, which did not suit England. That is why on March 22, 1791, the British cabinet adopted an ultimatum to Russia at its meeting. If the latter refuses to return the Ochakov region to Turkey, then Great Britain and its ally Prussia threatened to declare war. Diplomatic pressure was accompanied by the creation of an appropriate image of Catherine and her entourage in the European press. In the cartoons we see a bear with the head of Catherine II and Prince G.A. Potemkin with a naked saber in his hand; together they successfully confront a group of British politicians. Behind
politicians there are two bishops, one of whom whispers an incredible prayer: “Deliver me, Lord, from the Russian bears...”. Here are quite understandable allusions to the European reader to the prayer “Deliver me, O Lord, from the wrath of the Normans...”, well known in the early Middle Ages.

Once again, as in the time of Ivan the Terrible, Russia is presented in the image of barbarians threatening Europeans. Compared to the time of Grozny, we see a shift in the emphasis of the information war. The “Russian threat” is no longer equivalent to the Turkish one. She's much bigger.
It must be said that British pressure had some influence on St. Petersburg. Most members of the Russian government were inclined to satisfy England's demands. But Catherine II showed political firmness. Russian diplomacy managed to raise public opinion of the English nation against the war and force the British government to abandon its demands on Russia. It all ended not with humiliating concessions to European diplomats, as had already happened, but with the victorious Peace of Jassy, which finally established Russia in the Black Sea region and made it the arbiter in the relations of the Orthodox Balkan peoples with the Ottoman Empire. This happened thanks to the use of its weapons against the West - manipulation of public opinion, including caricatures. The first real Russian political caricature is Gavriil Skorodumov’s painting “Balance of Europe in 1791”, depicting large scales that tilted in the direction where Suvorov’s grenadier stands on the bowl - “alone and heavy” - outweighing all the enemies of Russia.

Catherine clearly hints at how the “Ochakovsky issue” will be resolved if England continues its policy. This language was perfectly understood in England... and they retreated.
After the first defeat, the British propaganda machine began to work at full capacity. The target was “Russian atrocity” and our most famous commander, A.V. Suvorov. Fortunately, a reason was found quickly - the suppression of the Polish uprising. Propaganda "blanks" were used quite in the spirit of the times of the Livonian War. The blow was struck at once against Catherine herself, the best Russian commander and the Russian people, who were presented in the image of “inhuman Cossacks.” Classic battle paintings and caricature were also used. In the first case, the Cossacks destroy civilians, in the second (caricature “The Tsar’s Fun”), Suvorov, who approached the throne (this is his first, but not the last appearance in English cartoons), hands out the heads of Polish women and children to Catherine with the words: “So, my Royal Lady, I have fully fulfilled your affectionate maternal commission to the lost people of Poland, and brought you the Collection of Ten Thousand Heads, carefully separated from their lost bodies the day after the Surrender.” Behind Suvorov are three of his soldiers, carrying baskets with the heads of unfortunate Poles.

As for Paul I, they immediately started talking about madness and the imminent overthrow of the tsar - even at the coronation on April 5, 1797. The British “predict”: “An important event will soon happen in the Russian Empire. I don’t dare say more, but I’m afraid of it...” This “prediction” coincided with Paul’s refusal to send troops against France. He had the “audacity” not to fight for interests far from the interests of Russia. The British had to make promises: a naval base in the Mediterranean in Malta, a division of spheres of influence in Europe, etc. Of course, upon completion of the victorious campaigns of A.V. Suvorov, the British gentlemen, as they say, “threw away” the Muscovites. But Paul, in response, defiantly went for an anti-British alliance with France, thereby anticipating the thought of his great-grandson, Alexander III, by eight decades. That’s when the intensity of anti-Pavlovian and anti-Russian hysteria in the English press reaches its limit. Pavel is called “His Muscovite Majesty” - so to speak, greetings from the times of the Livonian War!
Already in January, the central English newspapers are making information about the impending overthrow of Paul: “We therefore expect to hear with the next mail that the magnanimous Paul has stopped ruling!” or “Big changes, apparently, have already occurred in the Russian government, or cannot but happen in the near future.” There are dozens of such messages in January-February, they are invariably accompanied by an indication of the emperor’s dementia.
Well, really, who else could there be a person who did to Britain the same way it did to all continental countries? The topic of an alliance with Napoleonic France, as mortally dangerous for Britain, provoked fierce attacks. For example, in one of the cartoons, Napoleon leads the Russian Bear, Paul, on a chain.

The cartoon was supposed to emphasize Russia's dependent role in the impending alliance with France, which was not true. The poem accompanying the painting contains an amazing “foresight.” Bear-Paul says “Soon my power will fall!”, and the blame for the future is placed on Paul himself with the words “I am intensively preparing my fall.” It is difficult to interpret this other than as a signal to the already formed team of Pavel’s killers, as well as as preparation of public opinion in Europe for the coming “changes” within Russia. And there’s clearly no point in feeling sorry for the depicted crazy monster...
Although at that time they still perfectly understood that this was propaganda - in the same newspapers where they wrote about the madness of the Russian Tsar, it was admitted that his foreign policy line was quite reasonable. According to British observers: “Malta is not just a whim of Paul,” but completely coincides with Russia’s interests to have a base in the Mediterranean Sea against Turkey. The Russian fleet, which acted as part of the Second Neutrality, was able to break the British blockade of Europe and land troops on the British Isles - a long-standing fear of the British. This rationalism of Paul’s policy and its correspondence with the interests of Russia was recognized through clenched teeth by the English politicians of those years, and is not recognized to this day by the Russian historiographical tradition...
But let’s return to the information war of the winter of 1801... On January 27, a message appears in the English press that “a Russian official arrived in London with news about the removal of Paul and the appointment of a Regency Council headed by the Empress and Prince Alexander.” There was exactly a month and a half left before Pavel’s death...
This is a kind of black magic of information warfare: by stubbornly repeating what you want to achieve, as if it HAD ALREADY happened, you change Reality, preparing in advance the acceptance of what is yet to happen. Europe then used this method of information warfare for the first time, but not for the last time! No one was surprised either in Europe or in Russia when on March 11, 1801. Emperor Paul was killed...
And finally, here are a few more pictures from the European press.
1854 (Crimean War).