Bilder av Ryssland: Annorlundahet och misstro i samtida svensk Rysslandsdiskurs

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This thesis analyzes contemporary Swedish discourse on Russia, i.e. the ways Russia and Russians are perceived in Sweden today. After a summary of historical Western and Swedish perceptions of Russia, and a discussion about the treatment of these tensions within modern research, contemporary Swedish discourse is reconstructed based upon analytical articles in three major newspapers during the period 1992-2007. It is argued that the prevailing image of Russia contains the reproduction of old stereotypes and prejudices. The five major representations of Russia in contemporary Swedish discourse are: non-Western, unreliable, authoritarian, threatening and eternal, with the last one being a meta-representation functioning both as a representation of its own and a mechanism for the reification of the others. This discoursive chain of equivalence is tantamount to a mental journey, which starts with the construction of Russia as an enigma, and ends in pure enmity. Finally, the importance of non-biase...