United by History: Government Appropriation of Everyday Nationalism During Vladimir Putin’s Third Term

Abstract

During Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, the Russian government and media’s rhetorical embrace of illiberalism, patriotism, and chauvinism was accompanied and partly facilitated by the invocation of historical precedent and “correct” historical understanding. Politicians stressed the importance of a shared historical memory to Russian national identity, rendering the interpretation of history a question of patriotism. The government and state-supportive media then used “patriotic” historical memories to legitimize government policies. Through framing analysis of three significant episodes—namely, the Ukraine Crisis, imposition of sanctions, and Russian intervention in Syria—I outline how the government and state-supportive media conflated these events with supposed historical precedents. This conflation made “patriotic” (or government-approved) history an everyday topic of discussion, but it also confused supporting government policy with celebrating historical triumph (or condemning historical tragedy). In this way, the government co-opted the emotional power of the history they invoked for the purposes of legitimizing their policies. This was compounded by the government and state-supportive media using and citing images and descriptions of ordinary people performing their patriotism in a manner that simultaneously demonstrated awareness of Russian history and support for the government.

Cruel Speech:

“…I feel ashamed for my ignorant and aggressive parliament, for my aggressive and incompetent government, for [Russian] leading politicians -supporters of violence and treachery, those who aim to be supermen. (Ulitskaia, as quoted in Ryazanova-Clarke 2016, 4) As a great many scholars and writers have chronicled, the Russian state media has for years choreographed the dispersal of rhetoric around specific ideological campaigns and myriad nationalistic, fabulistic, violence-promoting, and often anti-Ukrainian tropes and devices (Urban 2010;Gorham 2014;Yampolsky 2014 andSzostek and Hutchings 2015;Ryazanova-Clarke 2016;Wood 2016;Tolz and Teper 2018;Zvereva 2020;Wijermars and Lehtisaari 2020;McGlynn 2020;Pidkuimukha 2021;Etkind 2022;Fusiek 2022;Zabuzhko 2022). Russia's violent rhetoric is theorised, institutionalised, ritualised, planned, and coordinated, and as such is constitutive of the prosecution of the war, not merely reflective or secondary to physical assault and military atrocity.…”

“…Vast regime resources have served to consolidate a nationalist battle to transform public consciousness. This ideological project uses film, television, art, literature, educational institutions, publishing campaigns, museum exhibits, memorials, commemorative rituals, posters and banners, and many other forms of discourse, display, and performance to sell a story of Russian historical victimization and sacrifice, and to draw the public into the fantasy of Russia's imperial resurrection through all necessary means (McGlynn 2020, Balakhanova 2022Klein 2022a, 2022b;Khislovski 2022;Garner 2023). The narratives that constitute the story of why this resurrection is necessary are incoherent, contradictory, ahistoric, and phantasmagoric, but their constant repetition across multiple platforms and media has given them considerable ideological traction.…”

Representation of everyday nationalism practices on “Russia 1” TV channel

“…Корни изучения повседневного национализма как подполя национализма восходят к попыткам М. Биллига (Billig, 1995) переключить внимание исследователей с традиционной озабоченности возникновением феноменов наций и национализма к воспроизводству национализма в повседневной жизни и массовой культуре (McGlynn, 2020(McGlynn, , p. 1069(McGlynn, -1085Edensor, 2002). Тем не менее упор на нисходящие подходы к построению нации привел к различию между исследованиями «банального национализма» и анализом повседневных национализмов, когда люди потребляют и воссоздают национализм снизу вверх (Antonsich, 2016;Skey, 2011).…”

“…Хотя украинский кризис 2014 года и оказал огромное влияние на рост националистической и патриотической риторики (McGlynn, 2020(McGlynn, , p. 1069(McGlynn, -1085, правительство начало риторический сдвиг в сторону вопросов идентичности раньше -еще в 2011-2012 годах. Так, вступая в должность Президента Российской Федерации в 2012 году, В. Путин подчеркнул, что российская идентичность находится под угрозой со стороны внутренних и внешних врагов 1 .…”

“…Несмотря на рост новых медиа, российские федеральные каналы (преимущественно государственные) продолжают оставаться основным источником информации для многих россиян. Третий срок В. Путина был отмечен драматическим ростом политических обращений на государственных российских телеканалах 2 , особенно возросла роль "softnews" (Merriman, 2003) -не связанных напрямую с политической повесткой дня историй. Этот глобальный медиаформат известен своей способностью привлекать политически не ангажированную аудиторию, создавая продукцию с сильным эмоциональным эффектом.…”