Xenophobia is present in all nations. I'm happy to go further and say that xenophobia plays a more central role in Russian identity than, say, English. Demandin

Xenophobia is present in all nations. I'm happy to go further and say that xenophobia plays a more central role in Russian identity than, say, English. Demanding "statistics" is a way of setting a bar that's more focused on dismissing historical and non-quantitative evidence than it is on clarifying anything. I could just as easily demand you prove the existence of Russia using statistics, and you'd fail. The Russian state has always had a fraught and conflicted relationship with the West. It had a fairly unique place in being geographically situated to avoid economic and political domination by the West, but being less developed and near enough that its interactions with the Western powers led to a persistent inferiority complex. The court ladies excitedly took up the latest fashions and fads from Paris, while the political leadership attempted difficult reforms, partially to ensure their continued ability to resist Western domination and partially because they wanted approval of the more cosmopolitan powers. (The quasi-apocryphal Potemkin villages were built in order to impress Catherine II and a group of Western ambassadors.) Pan-Slavism emerged in the 19th century. Instead of focusing myopically on aping Western powers, its intellectuals wanted to build a pan-Slavic identity and nationalism, centered around the Slavic folk, the Orthodox church, and the Tsar. This naturally led to conflicts with the more-Westernized countries that dominated Slavic peoples, as well as the Ottoman Empire. The people who questioned religion and the Tsar, for their part, were filthy liberals who were stooges of Western intellectuals (sound familiar?) And, for what its worth, most of the liberals were relatively privileged folk who looked down on the idiocy of the countryside, who made up the heartland of Russia (sound familiar?) It formed a useful dialectic for everyone involved. Revolution and war come. Through an unlikely series of (un)fortunate accidents, the Bolsheviks come into power. They were a very funny set of people to rule over Russia, but they ruled. Their opinions of the Western ranged from (at best) negative to incredibly bitter and angry. But some compromises were made, in the first decade of Soviet rule. Ultimately, though, Stalin came to power. Mostly because he was the most ruthless autocrat. But he was more than happy to deploy xenophobia and the trope of his enemies being stooges of foreign powers when it suited him, as it often did. The scars of WW2 made him and Russian society even more sclerotic, leading to the present day.