Authors

Emma Rimpiläinen¹;  ¹ Uppsala University, Sweden

Discussion

Invoking the concept of “zombification” has become a common way of articulating distrust in other people’s ideas in post-Soviet societies (Borenstein 2019). The symbol of the zombie appeared already in the late Soviet period, and particularly the television is routinely nicknamed the “zombie box” for its dangerous capacity to corrupt the minds of culpable viewers. This paper analyses the usage of zombification as a metaphor used by people displaced by the war in Ukraine’s Donbas region since 2014. Displaced Ukrainians often lament how their erstwhile neighbours and even family members were too easy to zombify, that is, deceive through propaganda because of their lastingly “Soviet mentality” which caused them to lack critical thinking skills.

However, the zombified subject in the Donbas does not appear dead, but simply infected: zombified people may look like their former selves but behave on someone else’s behalf. At first glance, it may not be obvious who is zombified and who is not. Due to a fear of contagion, many former residents of Donbas expressed a desire for news hygiene by limiting their media consumption and contact with former friends, neighbours, and family members. This fear of contagion acknowledges the power of media to zombify, and, as Greta Uehling (2023) notes, zombification claims act more as a diagnosis than accusation: zombification absolves the victim of guilt. This also hints at the possibility of salvation through a cure or purification.