She’s In Russia

Air Force One. Die Hard 2. Rocky 4. Rambo: First Blood Part II. All classic American movies. And all distinctly Russian villains.

American movies have gotten pretty comfortable with casting Russians as villains, and more recently the news cycle has too. There’s a verifiable ‘Russiaphobia’ going around now, and many people are willing to take the movies and media at face value without ever trying to go deeper.

She’s in Russia is a podcast started by two friends, Smith Freeman and Olivia Capozzalo, to challenge this depiction and look a little closer at the way Western media portrays Russians.

“We have an equal amount of disdain for both the Russian and American governments.”

Freeman lives in Brooklyn and when Capozzalo moved to St. Petersburg in 2014, the friends kept in touch.

“Olivia was often bothered by the fact that the portrayals of Russia and Russians were, more often than not, reductive or cliche or simply inaccurate,” said Freeman. “Something about  St. Petersburg and Russia keep Olivia attached, and we wanted to communicate that affinity in the best way we know how: by talking to each other.”

Although the Cold War ended in 1990, the US and Russia have had tense relations off and on. But everything got cranked up to 11 again with the 2016 election and Trump’s presidency. Any Russiaphobia that had fallen with the Berlin Wall appeared again in American news media, and intentionally or not, people have been pushed toward nationalism, xenophobia, and sensationalism.

“There’s individuals within Western media and culture that get Russia right, for sure,” said Freeman. “Unfortunately, those reasoned and mild voices often get drowned out in the torrent of detritus that is collectively known as ‘Russiagate.’”

While Freeman and Capozzalo keep more of an open mind, they don’t shy away from Russia’s missteps. Freeman says Russia’s bad reputation is “certainly not mitigated by Russia’s invasion of Crimea, tit-for-tat sanctioning, and the hot mess in Syria.”

But Freeman and Olivia try not to land on either side of the argument. “We have an equal amount of disdain for both the Russian and American governments,” said Freeman. “We’re a very fair pair.”

But it seems that the American mindset still hasn’t quite recovered from the Cold War. Casting Russians as villains is easy and familiar, and when movie characters talk like Boris and Natasha, you already know not to trust them.

“Whatever rhetoric and sensationalism was entrenched during the Cold War lay dormant but ultimately not forgotten,” said Freeman.

The villainous stereotype is based mostly on the wave of Soviet immigration in the late 80s, when many of those who came to America had connections to organized crime. “Arguably, if you had enough money to move to the U.S. at that time, you probably had some questionable connections,” said Capozzalo.

The point is, after we’d researched this topic, I had a much more nuanced opinion of it, and could definitely have a much more interesting conversation about it and about its implications.

But the fact is, Russian people don’t tend to be any more villainous than Americans. In several episodes of She’s in Russia, the hosts take to the streets and interview strangers in Russian or English.  

“On a recent episode, Olivia went to Palace Square in St. Petersburg to talk to people about Victory Day and one man told her how once he was digging for potatoes and he found a burial ground,” said Freeman. “Another woman told her how her own mother had helped rebuild her native city, which was near Leningrad, after the war.”

What Freeman and Capozzalo try to do first and foremost is just to explore the history, news, and culture of Russia without filtering it through an Americanized worldview.

In their episode Indict Me, Capozzalo did some research into the infamous “Troll Factory,” a Russian research agency that’s been accused by the US Department of Justice of working illegally to meddle in the 2016 American election. She was surprised when she learned that “the ‘Troll Factory’ is really more like a giant media company.”

“That fact made me think more about what we define as media, and content in general, what we value about it, how we approach it,” said Capozzalo. “The point is, after we’d researched this topic, I had a much more nuanced opinion of it, and could definitely have a much more interesting conversation about it and about its implications — which is kind of what I hope our podcast does for people on the ever ‘enigmatic’ Russia.”

She’s in Russia is independently produced and releases new episodes weekly. Visit She’s in Russia on Podchaser to listen with your favorite app, and leave it a rating or review.

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