Interview with Professor Yakov M. Rabkin
Trained as a chemist, Yakov M. Rabkin, who earned a Ph.D. (1972) from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, left the Soviet Union in 1973. After a brief stay in Vienna and Israel, where he studied Judaism, he settled in Quebec (Canada), where he obtained a professorship at the Institute for the History and Sociopolitics of Science at the University of Montreal. Following the closure of the Institute (1988), he joined the Department of History.
Interview conducted by Pierrick Hamon (05.06.2026) for I-Dialogos Think-Tank
Professor Yakov M. Rabkin, in the article published in 2023 on the I-Dialogos website, you wrote:“Much like the Soviet authorities who justified the jamming of Western radio broadcasts as protection against ‘imperialist subversion,’ a whole range of national agencies and NATO structures now claim to protect the public from ‘Russian disinformation.’” Since then, in many European — and particularly French — media outlets, the issue of “Russian disinformation” has become central. The narrative is one-sided. Public discourse appears almost locked down: the Kremlin’s primary objective is said to be the “weakening of Western democracies.” Any questioning of this interpretation exposes its authors — labelled “useful idiots” (sic) — to accusations of complacency or even of acting as channels of influence for Moscow. Seen from Montreal, how do you assess the quality of public debate and information in European democracies? Do you believe pluralism of viewpoints is still sufficiently guaranteed today?
Yakov M. Rabkin: Pluralism of viewpoint is nowhere to be found on the most crucial issues facing Europe. A few years ago, I taught a graduate seminar and later co-edited a book on demodernization. This phenomenon was particularly visible in the former USSR in the 1990s. Medical doctors driving taxis, architects selling beer on street corners, rusting carcasses of industrial plants, scientific institutes renting out space to underwear distributors, priests arguing to shorten the compulsory period of schooling – these images become common at the turn of the 21st century in many once modern “civilised” countries. Number one career choice for female high school students in Yeltsin’s Russia was to become a prostitute, charging in foreign currency.
Demodernization is not limited to one country or one region. In a few countries, long-time neighbours come to kill each other, apparently motivated by the newly discovered differences of religion, language or origin. Civil nationalism gives way to tribal, ethnic and confessional identities in Europe, not only in the East of it where nationalism is congenitally ethnic but also in countries like the Netherlands and Sweden, hitherto considered paragons of cosmopolitan tolerance.
Anyone who challenges the accepted narrative is ostracized from mainstream media. Claims of self-righteousness, lumping foreign adversaries in an “axis of evil,” replace rational arguments of geopolitical nature in international relations. “Alternative facts” become ubiquitous, spread instantly around the world by the most modern means of communication. This demodernization is manifest in the absence – particularly in Europe – of rational debate about Russia, its intentions and capabilities. Since Putin’s speech in Munich in 2007 in which he proposed an inclusive security architecture for Europe, positive or even neutral information about Russia – be it the Bolshoi ballet or polar bears – has virtually disappeared from mainstream media. Well before February 2022, Russia had been cast as a dangerous alien antithetical to Europe. Those who questioned the dogma were ostracized from mainstream media and, later, even sanctioned by the European Union.
The EU’s pretense of high moral ground with respect to the war in Ukraine has since been exposed as vacuous. First, this followed the revelations that France and Germany deliberately misled Russia in signing the Minsk II accords meant to bring peace to Ukraine torn by the coup d’état of February 2014. The complicity of several European countries in the genocide in Gaza cast a coup de grace to the pretense of morally superior “European values.” Good old racism has reemerged, which prevents European rulers and a growing part of the population to see Palestinians, Russians or Iranians as part of a common humanity.
Even under Stalin, trains ran from Moscow to Paris
Even when Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, trains ran from Moscow to Paris. When Krushchev was in power, cultural and scientific exchanges with Western countries blossomed. Under Brezhnev, Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts had a rendez- vous in space. Nowadays, Europeans have abrogated all these contacts, closed the borders and one has to travel via Istanbul to get from Saint-Petersburg to Helsinki, normally a flight of less than an hour. They have downgraded diplomatic relations and have Russia excluded from most international sports events. All this happens as none of these measures have been applied to the genocidal Zionist state in West Asia. I-Dialogos: In an interview published yesterday on our website, Vladimir Fedorovski argued that Russia may have felt deceived by the West after the end of the Cold War, particularly following the rejection of the “Common European Home” project promoted by Mikhail Gorbachev and François Mitterrand, as well as the failure of the 1990 Paris Charter on security.
In this context, is the current virulence of former President Medvedev — who had nevertheless chosen, against Putin’s advice, a strategy of rapprochement with the European Union — at least partly understandable
More generally, how do you interpret the evolution of relations between Russia and the West since that period? Can we speak of missed opportunities, or even of a certain strategic blindness on the part of Europeans? Or should we rather consider that Russian authorities themselves maintained a degree of ambiguity, notably during episodes such as the 2008 war in Georgia?
Yakov M. Rabkin: You have asked many important questions that a short interview cannot do justice to. Let me start from the last point. European authorities concluded at the time that the conflict in Georgia in 2008 had been initiated by the then government of Saakashvili. Later, this fact was “forgotten” because it did not fit the image of Russia as an aggressive power.
A rhetoric echoing Europe’s colonial past
The concept of “the West” is intrinsically antagonistic and supremacist. It is predicated on the unity against something else, be it “Putin’s Russia”, “the mollahs’ regime” or the Chinese Communist Party,” this is how Washington hawks call China. All of this is meant to stir emotions and obfuscate rational discussion. It also harkens back to Europe’s colonial past when allegedly superior values were brought to the far corners of the world at the point of the bayonet.
In spite of superficial cordiality, the U.S. policy towards Russia has perpetuated the hostility inherited from the Cold War. Whether American refusal to help Russia overcome financial crisis in the 1990s or consistent snubbing of Moscow’s diplomatic overtures – including a proposal to join NATO, the consistent goal has been to weaken and encircle Russia. After Chirac and Kohl, Europeans gradually abandoned the very concept of national interest and followed the American line. This has led them to drastically reduce economic relations with Russia, and to acquiesce to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, consequently plunging their countries, particularly Germany, into decline. Now, that the American administration makes gestures – so far empty – towards reconciliation with Russia, Europe continues on its anti-Russia course like a chicken that continues running after its head has been chopped off. You may call it a kind of blindness if you like, but it is essentially political demodernization. John Mearsheimer and many other experts attribute responsibility for the current war in Ukraine to the American policy of NATO expansion
John Mearsheimer and quite a few other experts blamed for the current war in Ukraine on the American policy of NATO enlargement.
While they certainly have a point, one should also wonder if Russia’s and even late Soviet policies have contributed to the current crisis. In hindsight, Aleksandr Yakovlev, the protagonist of Mr. Federovski’s latest book, and his successors in the Kremlin appear naïve or worse when it comes to their understanding of the West.
They assumed its benevolence and ignored the centuries-old geostrategic constants of Russia’s position in the world. This led to the dismantlement of the Soviet Union, NATO troops a few hundred kilometers from Saint-Petersburg and, finally, attacks on Russia’s early warning station near Voronezh and on strategic bombers in the Far East. Russia’s deterrence has thus been largely discredited, which immensely increases the chances of broader war on the European continent.
Russia’s policies in Ukraine reflected an astounding degree of insouciance. While hundreds of American and European agencies openly worked to demolish Ukraine’s economic, cultural and, finally, political affinity with Russia, Moscow did little to counteract these actions. Perhaps, many in Russia’s ruling circles had taken Ukraine for granted in view of the three and a half centuries of sharingd the same political and economic space and of millions of families composed of Russians and Ukrainians. It is only after Western intelligence and political officials had been deeply implanted in the corridors of power in Kiev that the Kremlin realized that Washington and its vassals in Europe had misled Russia and ordered its troops across the Ukrainian border in February 2022. Even then, Russia began negotiations and agreed, in April 2022, to restore Donbass to the Ukrainian state in exchange for restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. Washington and London undermined the imminent accord, and the war continues to this day.
And today, what about the future? Some observers fear that political realignments in the United States, particularly around Donald Trump and the dead ends into which he is leading us, could paradoxically strengthen the hardest-line positions and escalation dynamics, both in the West and elsewhere.
Do you share this analysis?
More broadly, how do you perceive the possible evolution of international power relations in the coming years, and what room for maneuver remains to avoid increased polarization?
Yakov M. Rabkin: Erratic behaviour of the Trump administration shows clear signs of political demodernization. Christian pep talks of Secretary of War in the Pentagon, Treasury Secretary’s boasting of “economic statecraft” and nonsensical posts on True Social should not obscure important elements of continuity in American foreign policy. It is estimated that U.S. unilateral financial and economic restrictions (aka sanctions) on other countries have caused over 38 million deaths around the world. Washington attempts to preserve its hegemony in the face of serious military failures and consistent losses in economic and technological vitality compared to China. These attempts are overtly aggressive, often illegal and betray a degree of despair. Europeans contribute to this instability by enabling Israeli-American aggression in Iran and Lebanon and refusing to engage in diplomacy with Russia. As a result, we are closer to nuclear war than ever since Nagasaki.
