The image of the USSR during the Great Patriotic war in Swiss newspaper “Neue Zurcher Zeitung”

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the USSR image in “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” daily newsletter. The three main tasks are to elicit basic USSR characteristics in the newsletter, learn their dynamics, identify “connecting” historical events that governed the USSR image in “Neue Zurcher Zeitung” and its rhetoric towards the USSR as well as learn stereotypes about ‘Bolshevik Russia” in the Swiss “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”. The research reveals that the “Neue Zurcher Zeitung” media showed the USSR as an “enemy” which was based on the idea of the two worlds opposition – communist to democratic, where the former one represented the country of no freedom with no equality along with its common characteristics such as “social imperialism”, “Pan-Slavism” and “threat”. The key events that formed the Soviet perception in the newsletter were military achievements of the red army during the Moscow and Stalingrad battles, activation of the Swiss communist party and pro-Communists ideas in Switzerland, “Neue Zurcher Zeitung” attempt to confront growing “Russophobia”, and the USSR denial to restore diplomatic relationships with Switzerland in 1944. In 1945, by the end of the war in Europe, the USSR was perceived by the Swiss’ as dangerous and military powerful state, ideological project and the successor of Tsarist Russia.