Lyubov Ivanova
AFRICAN UNION , Saint-Petersburg
atunkara@yahoo.fr; atunkara@mail.ru ; caashoru@mail.ru
Abstract
Regular attacks on African students in Russia , murdering of African immigrants in Russian capital and big cities makes this presentation internationally important. Rising the level of international awareness to this issue can help to find the solution.
Image of Africa and Africans in Russian mass-media has transformed generally for the last two decades as a result of basic transformation of Russian mentality and ideology. In our presentation we'd like to point out three periods: Soviet Union period (1960-1991), Perestroika period (1991-1999), Russian period (1999-up till now).
Image of a country, nation or people, created in mass-media depends on three main factors that we are going to discuss regarding Russia :
1. Historical experience (Russian general experience in Africa and in having personal contacts with Africans started from 1960).
2. State policy (Russian Government has no more ideological and not yet economical interest in dealing with African countries). State interest in creating positive international image of Russia is very low, that resulted in very low level of state protection of foreigners who reside in Russia .
3. Russian internal instability (uncontrolled internal migration from former Republics of Soviet Union makes society aggressive towards any stranger. Economical and political transitional period resulted in psychology of the most Russians when any foreigner is treated as an enemy).
To find the reasons of contemporary negative image of Africa and Africans in Russia we will consider the process of its creation according to 3 above-mentioned periods:
Soviet Union period
Soviet government has ideological interest in getting and educating communist agents. Soviet media create image of poor Africa and discriminated by capitalist world Africans. Soviet Union creates the base of Soviet journalists working in Africa , though informational links are weak, as well as scientific base (the first Institute for African Studies was opened in 1959). Soviet authorities create the image of the flourishing Soviet Union without racism, image of the country of total friendship (in fact, friendship with communists, potential communists or victims of capitalist world).
Perestroika period
In this period Africans become symbols of AIDS, as well as valuable link for purchasing fashionable foreign" products: clothes, tape-recorders, chewing gum etc. Mass-media image of Africa and Africans is mostly compiled from foreign media as the result of breaking down Soviet agencies working on international level (such as Radio Moscow etc).
Russia 's period
Compilation of foreign image of Africa and Africans is on the top. Racist ideology is the best example of it (image of total Black Enemy).
This is a period of double standards or - in other words - absence of any standards and authorities. Image of Africa as an extremely poor continent is created to raise the level of self-estimation of the Russians. Russia is regularly compared with Africa in general (even not African countries!) in the level of economical, social and political development.
Image of Africans as symbol of glamour and high life contrasts with image of poor and suffering African immigrants.
Generally it must be mentioned that the image of Africa and Africans in Russia is not well detailed, there are many contradictions in it. Collective mind still dominates over personal experience in contemporary Russia . According to this collective mind that is controlled by the State - Africans (as an image and physically) are used as scape-goats in reducing (redirecting) social aggression and as the only way for showing masculinity by Russian declassified youngsters (by hunting for lonely and weak victims). Image of Africa ( Africa 's selected statistics) is used as low standard comparison to demonstrate Russian better statistics.
NB. In power-point presentation (video and photo expositions) we are going to show the image of Africa created by Africans residing in Russia (exhibitions of African artists, original shows, public activities etc.) as well as activities of AFRICAN UNION of Saint-Petersburg.