The Telegraph / UK
CHARLES MOORE
Recently in Sweden, I came across the Swedish word rysskräck. It means “fear of Russia”.
The month before, I was briefly in the town of Poltava, in Ukraine. It was at the battle of Poltava, in 1709, that Peter the Great of Russia defeated Charles XII of Sweden. The impact of that victory explains why fear of Russia is so common that it has its own word.
Poltava destroyed the Swedish empire, extended Russian control of Ukraine and made Russia the dominant power in Northern Europe. Not only the Swedes but also the other countries in the region have felt rysskräck ever since. Since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February last year, they have felt it more strongly than at any time since the 1940s. Hence the successful application of Finland to join Nato and the pending one of Sweden to do the same.
Scholars dispute whether rysskräck means simply fear of the Russian government or of Russians in general. In current circumstances, it most definitely means both. Having suffered so many atrocities at the hands of so many, Ukrainians often now assert that Russians in general, and not just Putin and his gang, are the problem. Ukrainian streets named after great Russian writers such as Dostoevsky and Pushkin are being renamed. The use of the Russian language is discouraged. At a recent conference I attended in Portugal, the Ukrainian view was that it was wrong to classify Russia as part of European civilisation at all.
This is understandable, but also depressing – in fact the only depressing, as opposed to tragic, thing that I found in Ukraine. Despite what can often appear overwhelming evidence to the contrary, one has to believe that the citizens of one’s enemy in war are not necessarily evil people. We decided to take that view about the Germans in 1945. It seemed at the time an act of faith rather than reason, but it paid off.
If Ukraine wins – as, with enough Western help, it will – it will be President Zelensky’s unpopular duty to remind his people that Russians are human, too.