Variants of the ‘underdog culture’ in Greek public opinion: soft and hard-core Russophilia

ABSTRACT

Contemporary Russophilia is examined in this article as an outstanding feature of Greek political culture. Recent opinion polls (2016–2017) are used to validate a distinction between two different types of Russophilia: the soft, described as a positive predisposition towards Russia, and the hard-core, which suggests an embrace of Russia by breaking with Greece’s ties to the West. Hard-core Russophilia surfaces as a fitting element in Diamantouros’ underdog culture, as it uncovers sentiments of isolation, support for traditional values and fear towards Western values of modernity. The paper confirms the analytical capacity of the ‘cultural dualism’ framework, not as a dichotomy between modernizers and underdogs, but through the identification and measurement of different layers that outline the contemporary profile of hard-core Russophilia.

KEYWORDS:

• Political culture
• cultural dualism
• Greek public opinion
• Russophilia

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George Siakas

George Siakas (1983) serves as the Research Director at the Public Opinion Research Unit (PORU) of the University of Macedonia Research Institute. Since 2020, he teaches political sociology and electoral behaviour at the Political Science Department in the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTh). His research interests focus on survey methodology, political sociology, electoral behaviour, electoral systems and data collection techniques.

Panagiotis Paschalidis

Panagiotis Paschalidis is a Research Fellow at the South-East Europe Programme of ELIAMEP and a Research Associate at the Public Opinion Research Unit of the University of Macedonia Research Institute. Since 2017, he has been teaching as an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications of Aristotle University and at the Department of Communication and Digital Media of the University of Western Macedonia. His research interests include discourse analysis and the study of representations of the Balkan countries in international media, cross-border cooperation between Greece and neighbouring countries and media framing of mixed migration. In 2019, he co-authored a book on a cultural analysis of the discourse of anarchism in Greece.