russophobia is actually a very old term. i first remember interacting with it in the late 90s, while reading a book i found in my step-mother's father's basement, after he died. this guy worked as a signals interceptor in alert during the cold war, so i found quite a few unusual texts in his basement. the book was old - 1940s. it was a detailed history of europe, from the collapse of rome to the end of the first world war.

i can't remember the name of it, and i loaned it out to never see it again, but russophobia is presented within it as a kind of a natural prejudice, much like anti-semitism, amongst the germanic christians of western europe, and even used as a kind of narrative device to describe the relationship between east and west. there was actually some very deep contact between the danelaw (the viking kingdoms in england) and the varangian settlements in kiev, which were also viking. there were actually royal marriages between these viking aristocrats in london and kiev - there was an anglo-russian alliance built around these viking kingdoms. this survived the norman invasions, and you'll note the normans were also vikings, but it fell apart during the mongolian conquests.

it is the mongolian dominance in russia that is at the root of this idea of russophobia which, like islamophobia, was not entirely irrational. the mongols were a powerful military force, and they penetrated deep into germany on multiple occasions. standing in the middle ages, a brit of any background - viking, anglo-saxon, celt or roman - would have good reason to fear the mongolian expansion. further, the mongols were of course famous for their barbarity. russophobia is understood in this context as a kind of traumatic stress disorder, built up over legitimate fear of the mongols burning london to the ground.

this text actually develops the narrative forward, from the crusades to the establishment of the russian principalities, through the anglo-russian competition of the victorian era and through to the first world war, as an imperative component of understanding british history. this is not just an old term - it's one that we have to grapple with to understand who we are, as descendants of british colonial rule.

i have looked into this further recently, and can trace the etymology of the term to the mid-19th century.

"Therefore it seeks in Russia the enemy it has lost in France, and appears to say to the universe, or to say to itself. "If nobody will be so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor armies, and shall be forced to reduce my taxes. The American war enabled me to double the taxes; the Dutch business to add more; the Nootka humbug gave me a pretext for raising three millions sterling more; but unless I can make an enemy of Russia the harvest from wars will end. I was the first to incite Turk against Russian, and now Ihope to reap a fresh crop of taxes." - thomas paine, who himself lacked the deeper context.

see, and paul is kind of making the same mistake that paine is - he knows the recent history, but doesn't understand the depth of it, doesn't realize that this is ancient, that it is not ideological but cultural, that it can be traced way past the cold war and great game to the schism of 1054, to the partition of diocletian and all of the underlying roman-greek contradictions in the empire....that this is the deepest civil conflict in western civilization, the longest war that we have.

rome became london became washington. and athens became constantinople became moscow.