This article originally appeared in Russia & India Report
Before writing this column I would like to make it absolutely clear that I am not anti-West, and there are a lot of things about western countries that I absolutely admire. However, I find this need among many influential people in Russia to have western approval absolutely cringe-worthy.
Over the last two and a half decades, the American film and television industry has managed to completely capture the Russian market. It’s incredibly difficult to find a Russian film being screened in Moscow. The cinema halls mostly show dubbed Hollywood pictures. This domination of the Russian cultural space by the U.S. and its allies has led to many Russians seeing their own country through a western prism.
While there may be some justification for calling St Petersburg the ‘Venice of the North, why is Vladivostok called the ‘Russian San Francisco?’ The list goes on with some smaller regions in the Caucasus being labeled the ‘Switzerland of Russia.’ As nice as Venice, San Francisco and Switzerland are, they have their plus and minus points just like any other place on earth. The problem with many Russians is that they blindly accept the hype over places in the West and try overly hard to equate their own cities with benchmarks set in Europe and the U.S.
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