[ALST-L] Fwd: Mendeloff's paper:"Sympathy for the Devil: Historical Beliefs, Mass Education, and the Russian Reaction to the Kosovo War.

[Besnik Pula]

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Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 17:54:48 +0100
To: balkans at egroups.com
From: Wim de Haar <wdehaar at vub.ac.be>
Subject: [balkans] FW: Mendeloff's paper:"Sympathy for the Devil: Historical
 Beliefs, Mass Education, and the Russian Reaction to the Kosovo War.

David Mendeloff wrote a paper titled "Sympathy for the Devil: Historical
Beliefs, Mass Education, and the Russian Reaction to the Kosovo War"
prepared for delivery at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political
Science Association, Atlanta, Ga., September 2-5, 1999. You can find the
paper at http://pro.harvard.edu/papers/007/007020MendeloffD.pdf  Paper
(requires Acrobat Reader) |

Keywords: Russia, Kosovo, nationalism, misperceptions, ideas and foreign
policy

Abstract:

This paper seeks to explain the Russian popular and elite reaction to the
Kosovo war: its uncritical support for Serbia and vitriolic anti-Western
sentiment. The extreme reaction to NATO bombing was not necessarily
rational or consistent with Russia's strategic interests. This paper argues
that the response was primarily the result of false or distorted beliefs,
assumptions and images found in popular Russian views of history. Those
historical views -- purveyed for decades through Russian mass public
education -- primed the Russian public and elites for their response to the
Kosovo war. Specifically, popular Soviet and Russian historical
interpretations of Russia's role in the Balkans have embodied generally
false beliefs and assumptions about the foreign policy motives and
interests of Russia, Serbia and the West. These false ideas, and the
distorted images they create and project, in turn primed both Russian
elites and society for anti-Western and uncritical pro-Serb sentiment in
response to the Kosovo crisis.

The paper examines the beliefs, assumptions and images found in the Russian
response to the Kosovo war and compares that response to the ideas conveyed
through Russia's portrayal of its past history in the Balkans. Through an
analysis of the most widely-used Soviet and Russian history textbooks, it
finds that the Russians reacted to the conflict in Yugoslavia in a way that
was highly consistent with, if not conditioned by, its view of history.

This argument has at least three theoretical implications: it illuminates
the significance of historical ideas on international behavior; it
challenges traditional psychological explanations for the sources of
perceptions and misperceptions; and it goes beyond basic constructivist
approaches to international relations theory by identifying the source of
those ideas that have particular foreign policy relevance.

Regards,

Wim de Haar


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