Anti-America cry now the loudest it has been in Russia in years

Thought that the Soviet Union was anti-American? Try today's Russia.

After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-US bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say.

The indignation peaked after the assassination of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, as conspiracy theories started to swirl - just a few hours after he was killed -that his death was a CIA plot to discredit Russia.

There are drives to exchange Western-branded clothing for Russia's red, blue and white. Efforts to replace Coke with Russian-made soft drinks. Fury over US sanctions. And a passionate, conspiracy-laden fascination with the methods that Washington has been supposedly using to foment unrest in Ukraine and Russia.

The anger is a challenge for US policymakers seeking to reach out to a shrinking pool of friendly faces in Russia. And it is a marker of the limits of their ability to influence Russian decision-making after a year of sanctions. More than 80 per cent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States, according to the independent Levada Centre, a number that has more than doubled over the past year and that is by far the highest negative rating since the centre started tracking those views in 1988.

Nemtsov's assassination, the highest-profile political killing during Vladimir Putin's 15 years in power, was yet another brutal strike against pro-Western forces in Russia. Nemtsov had long modelled himself on Western politicians and amassed a long list of enemies who resented him for it.