The west still looks at Russia through a prism of stereotypes - by Boris Tumanov

Respectable international media are still unwilling to delve deep into the specifics of Russia’s reality, which often leads them to ridiculous conclusions. This perception is due not to bias, but to banal intellectual laziness.

This belligerent lack of inquisitiveness has recently brought many authoritative global media to the point where their anecdotal conclusions are further aggravated by their inability to consider any other scenarios.

Take the example of “Business Week” magazine: this highly respectable U.S. weekly decided that former chess champion Garry Kasparov could become the sole leader of the Russian opposition. “Kasparov is the only one in the movement who commands global recognition,” the magazine wrote by way of explanation. The “Chicago Tribune” all of a sudden ascribed to Vladimir Putin a profound knowledge of Sun Tzu’s “Art of War,” which the newspaper believes was evidenced by the fact that Russia’s “national leader” is “leveraging his opponents’ inherent disorganization against them,” just as the Chinese thinker taught – as if Putin, looking at the never-ending and senseless quarrels among his critics, wouldn’t have thought of this without Sun Tzu.

If the West and especially Europe really want to see the emergence of a civilized Russia in the foreseeable future, they should painstakingly and responsibly broaden their knowledge of Russian society, abandoning their clichéd pictures and the whimpers of our “micro-liberals.”

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