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As alluded to in polling data, the intensity of the Russian populace’s anti-Americanism may appear consistent, but is really anything but. Its roots “do not go very deep” according to Vladimir Shlapentokh, who claims that the Putinist state and its media control are to blame for any rampant anti-Americanism in Russia. Changes in regime and media tone would likely lessen widespread anti-Americanism in the countryside. By controlling the media, the Soviets, like Putin, could control the level of anti-American news or propaganda that reached the isolated Soviet population and thereby directly control their level of anti-Americanism. Prior to 1947 that anti-Americanism was tepid at worst. Soviet leaders intensified or curtailed the anti-American propaganda in their media throughout the Cold War. Under Stalin it was rampant; under Brezhnev it was restricted while pursuing a mutual détente; by the time of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, it was practically non-existent. So the current Russian public’s anti-Americanism may be widespread, but may also remain only skin deep.1

Or are the elements or Russian society beyond the Kremlin inner-circle legitimately receptive to anti-Americanism? Mendelson and Gerber hold that the “Putin Generation” of young Russian adults is extremely receptive to the regime’s anti-Americanism and most youths hold similarly deep anti-American convictions.2 Even if so, such a group only represents a fraction of the populace as a whole. The Putinist regime’s survival depends on a much wider base of support. A combination of die-hard anti-Americans and Shlapentokh’s shallow-rooted and passive anti-Americans, created by the Putinist mechanisms, result in an amalgamation of the entire population that allows the Putinist regime to claim itself as reflective of the consensus of its governed. Russian society is anti-American and, therefore, so too is the Putinist government.

1 Vladimir Shlapentokh, “The Puzzle of Russian Anti-Americanism: From ‘Below’ or From ‘Above,’” Europe-Asia Studies 63, no. 5 (2011), 875 — 876.

2 Sarah Mendelson and Theodore Gerber. “Us and Them: Anti-American Views of the Putin Generation,” The Washington Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2008), 137.