Now We Know What is Russia's Soft Power: It's Cats, Maybe Dogs, Too
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It was a real shock to learn about Russia’s world leadership in an absolutely unexpected area. In fact, we have been holding that position for five years already, and 2025 has only confirmed us at the summit.
This is it: Russia is leading the world in cat ownership per capita (not in absolute numbers, of course). As we have been told as early as in 2017, around 59 per cent of the households own, or, better say, host a cat or several of them. The year 2025 may have only slightly change that figure, but then who cares about such details.
Again, that’s not even news, but this week’s publication is. Mr. Vladimir Kasyutin, Secretary of the national Journalists’ Union, has published a philosophical essay on a prestigious Vzglyad website. There, he has given publicity to an international prize, just awarded to the best journalist’s essay on cats (and dogs).
Initially, he says, there was another prize, a purely local initiative in Kaliningrad, an Alaska-like isolated Russian territory squeezed between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. The folks down there were collecting stories about household animals heroically helping their human friends in dire situations, like fires or gas leaks. Dogs often are dragging owners out in such cases, if they are strong enough for that. But cats, too, are at least warning people about such calamities, risking their lives instead of running away.
So, first there were awards to animals saving humans, then the animal-loving society of the region began to reward people risking their lives or health to save animals from whatever there is. And, finally, the mentioned federal Journalist’s Union joined in, with an idea of awarding people writing or broadcasting about, simply speaking, the tender union of living creatures. Suddenly, that contest from being provincial rapidly became all-Russian, and now it’s international.
All the regions of Russia has participated this year, with almost all of the former USSR republics joining in, together with some nations of Eastern Europe. If they do their job in Russian language, and publish it in their national media or blogs, then they may submit it. As a result, we have dozens of pet-loving writers from Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan (this year’s winner) and the rest, taking active part.
And here the mentioned philosophy begins, elevating the message to global dimensions. As in how it happened that soft power got its name? To remind, we are talking about the essay by the above-mentioned Vladimir Kasyutin. And the title of that essay is, Dogs And Cats Are Russia’s Soft Power. No less.
Isn’t that a bit of too much, to say such things?
But, here comes a long quote from his essay. He says: In the era of political upheavals and military action some may say that soft power, that is, the concept of emotions, personal stories and ideas influencing politics, is losing its meaning. Or, at best, that’s something that the states are supposed to project, since such effort is becoming a part of machinery that is promoting state’s interest at the taxpayers’ expense.
But, the man says, soft power has been called just that because it follows the strategy of indirect action. Its sources are not always been controlled by the state structures. These sources are often based in deep countryside, not in the big cities. And we are talking about something that emerges not at the orders of powers that be, but comes straight from the hearts.
The real soft power works, because you cannot find a deliberate ideology in it, and you cannot see that ideology because it has never been there. But that power all too often contains something bigger, of supranational dimensions. And that’s how it transgresses the national borders, creating the right image of a nation.
End of quote. One may add that Kasyutin’s piece has provoked an avalanche of discussion on the website where it was published, with a noticeable and inevitable bickering of dog-lovers and dog-haters, the latter being the ones who say that dogs are dangerous and have to be eliminated. Mind you, there are not many or none of cat-haters among that unruly crowd, and that says a lot about Russia’s national character. Cats are our best friends, while the dogs arouse mixed feelings.
And, finally, a bit of personal experience. Three of my best friends with country houses own, between them, a veritable crowd of pets. In two out of three cases they refuse to accept the verdict that dogs and cats fight each other. That they don’t, if you know how to introduce yet another pet to the household.
One lady has picked up a miserable dying puppy from a gutter and brought home, that became kind of empty after the death of her previous powerful hound. The lady is a doctor, and she managed to save the puppy from wounds and starvation. He has got himself a Russian name meaning “the boy” and, growing into a powerful creature able to knock you down in a fit of adoration, has instilled respect to the lady’s country house at least into the crowd of other dogs owning the village. Then the lady’s daughter decided that she needed a cat, has studied a lot of texts about treating dogs from a shock of seeing a cat in the house, and finally got herself what she wanted. And that is not to mention a couple of other, lower-ranking cats who got themselves a right to invade the garden, but not the house.
Yet another lady, living next door, is a hunter and a feminine edition of a biker by nature. She owns two big invincible shepherd dogs, terrorizing us through the fence but greeting us when we enter the lady’s house. A week ago that lady has cancelled our dinner invitation, since one of her shepherds had a serious operation, and the lady was not leaving her side, nursing her. No one has snubbed me that way for a long time, but this case was an exception.
Finally, yet another neighbor and an old friend of mine comes from a dog-owning family, and still has a tiny Tibetan. But it so happened that his wife had accidentally befriended a cat, that was entrusted to her while the owners were on leave. The Tibetan did not protest overmuch. More cats followed, and, among other things, I witnessed that lady sending two kittens all the way to Germany by air, with all the necessary shots and a chip in the ear, as the Germans proscribe. That cost money, by the way.
That’s how I learned that there was a permanent link between Russia and Germany, where the cat-lovers society organized delivery of homeless kittens from Russia for the local families. That link worked until 2022, when the German government banned it, since all Russians were supposed to be bad, aggressive and cruel fellows from that time on.
And I never even gave all these facts a thought, until I read that piece about the soft pet power of Russia. Looks like the author of that essay has something there.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
