Dmitry Rogozhin, one of the most well-known Russian nationalists, was recently appointed Russia’s representative to NATO, a move understood in the West as an unfriendly act toward both NATO and the West in general. Rogozhin’s statement to Russia’s movement against illegal immigration before his departure, and his clear affiliation with the movement, indicate the attitude toward the West of at least a good segment of the Russian elite. It shows that the elite is clearly disappointed with the West’s approach to Russia. Still, it is not the West but Asia, especially Muslim Asia, which is seen by the elite as the major threat.

BACKGROUND: Before leaving for Brussels, Rogozhin sent a message to DPNI (The Movement Against Illegal Emigration). The message implicitly reconfirms Rogozhin’s affiliation, at least informally, with the movement and implies that he shares the movement’s basic ideological premises. In the message, Rogozhin called on the members of the movement to be engaged in the work of officialdom and incorporate themselves in the establishment so as to carry out the ideas of the new movement in Russian life. This statement was not seen as being important either for Rogozhin or, implicitly, Russia’s approach to the West.

To place the ideology of DPNI in the broad context of Russian society, one should remember that the Russian oil and gas boom has affected a limited number of people and a limited numbers of regions. Even in the big cities, the major beneficiaries of Russian prosperity, there are a considerable number of poor, including some bitter and prone to violence, who are mostly ethnic Russians. Their members are even larger in small provincial cities, which are not affected by oil and gas riches. At the same time, neither small nor big cities have experienced an influx of ethnic Russians from the countryside, as was the case in the first half of the last century during the rapid industrialization process. Today’s immigrants, of different ethnicity, culture, and often religion, often have no desire to be assimilated. In the minds of ethnic Russians, the problems of daily life are often related to these immigrants. The government is seen here neither as a government of “capitalists and landlords” – the view of Russian masses in the 1917 Revolution – nor as a government of Jews – the point of the “red-brown” opposition during the Yeltsin era – but mostly as a government of or for Muslim migrants.

People from the Northern Caucasus are singled out as the major problem. The feeling that the government is actually on the side of the minorities could be easily detected in the Internet discussions concerning those who participated in ethnic riots in Kondopoga and Stavropol. There was even an assumption that the Chechen militias of Ramzan Kadyrov would play a role of janissaries of a sort in the case of a direct confrontation with ethnic Russians. This feeling is spread not only among the marginal poor but also among growing numbers of the Russian middle class, who increasingly appear to embrace the philosophy of “Russia for Russians.” And it is this feeling that created the framework for the philosophy of the DPNI and, implicitly, for Rogozhin’s philosophy. But is this philosophy essentially anti-Western or even anti-American? A reading of DPNI materials indicates that this is not actually the case.

IMPLICATIONS: Contributors to DPNI’s Internet site published a lot of articles that present life in the West in a way quite similar to the way they present life in Russia. Just as in Russia, the white population of the West has increasingly suffered from the flood of immigrants and increasingly assertive minorities. And this has the direst repercussions for ‘whites’ in Europe and in the U.S.. The white people lose jobs to minorities, are the subjects of endless harassment, and are under attack by minority criminals. The white Europeans cannot do anything because the government is on the side of the minorities. The reasons for this, in their view, are several. To start with, the European elite is debilitated. The intellectual and, in a way, moral degradation of the European elite in the view of DPNI contributors is due to the spread of “political correctness” and similar other liberal or leftist philosophies that prevent Europeans from acting against the minorities’ oppression because of the fear of being accused of being racist. The situation is seen as essentially the same in the U.S.. According to contributors to the DPNI site, white Americans can hardly get jobs because of affirmative action. Moreover, white Americans live under the constant threat of minority terror. In fact, as one author published on DPNI asserted, any case where a black is killed by a white is seen as racist. At the same time, numerous murders of whites by blacks with clear racist motivation are completely ignored. Both in Europe and the U.S., whites have started to understand that the liberal/pro-minority governments should be replaced by a regime that would implement the slogan of “Europe for Europeans” and “America for White Americans” in the same way as Russians need to create a government that would implement the slogan “Russia for Russians.”

This essentially pro-European and pro-Western feeling – of course, for conservative and racist-tainted Europeans and Americans – defined Rogozhin and, implicitly, the Russian elite’s agenda. They regard the present Western foreign policy as inane as their internal policy; inside their countries, the Western governments cater to the interests of the minorities, which are seen as a mortal threat for the West, and persecute the wholesome Western nationalists. They do the same in foreign policy. On the one hand, Western governments once supported Muslim extremists against friendly conservative, racially benign, and Christian Russia. They also do this in Chechnya; and Rogozhin, together with a majority of the Russian elite and populace, believe that Islamic extremism and terrorism, in general, is the result of Western encouragement. At present, and here Rogozhin follows the line of the elite and most ethnic Russians, the extremists are ready to snatch Kosovo from Orthodox European Serbia and create an Islamic extremist state in the heart of Europe, which would be a source of instability, terrorism and crime. According to these views, when in the rare cases Western powers go after Islamic extremists as in Afghanistan, they demonstrate their faulty strategy and absolute powerlessness.

While doing their best to undermine the very existence of Western civilization by helping Muslims, the West still blindly sees Russia as its enemy; it was because of this blindness that the U.S. tried to put an anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe and all Western powers pushed considerable plans for including Georgia and even Ukraine in NATO, tightening the noose around Russia’s neck, despite the fact that Russia is actually a natural ally of the West as a Christian European nation. Russia would happily embrace the West if it would depart from its inane foreign policy toward Muslims, and related policy toward Russia. In fact, Rogozhin, before his departure to Brussels, made a rather conciliatory statement about NATO.

CONCLUSIONS: Rogozhin’s appointment to the position of Russian representative to NATO led Western pundits to conclude that Russia has become extremely anti-Western. However, Rogozhin’s affirmation of his ideological ties with the DPNI paradoxically testifies to the opposite. In fact, DPNI is mostly targeted at Muslims and minorities, whom the members of the DPNI see as the threat for the entire ‘White’ race, including Russians. They believe that the present Western policy toward Russia is self-destructive as it helps the West’s’ enemies and attacks the friends of the West. The philosophy of Rogozhin and the Russian elite groups adhering to these views imply that if the policy of the West would change and rational-thinking conservatives or nationalists would come to power in the West, Russia would be their foremost ally.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Dmitry Shlapentokh is Associate Professor of History, University of Indiana at South Bend.