Sir Winston Churchill, one of history's most quotable characters, once described Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." The Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad summed it up as "an Asiatic monster with a European veneer," while the English writer Rudyard Kipling had a slightly more nuanced, but no more positive view: "The Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western people instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle."
These quotes all reflect a long history of misunderstanding and often justified suspicion of the Russians, an impression that was strengthened by the Cold War, when reliable information about the Soviet Union could only be gleaned from the long-distance forays of American U-2 spy planes.
Since then a lot has happened, but the old image persists, making it imperative for the country to have something of a public relations makeover and rebranding, just like any other major institution that has undergone drastic changes and altered its name.