Authors

Oleg Kashirskikh¹;  ¹ George Washington University, United States

Discussion

The given research challenges the prevailing thesis on collective ressentiments and imperial thinking among Russians as a new ideology supporting the war. It also takes a critical stance toward the related thesis within the same framework regarding the effectiveness of the Kremlin’s communication strategies, which reference the Great Patriotic War to mobilize and unify people around the state.

Instead, this study argues that the apolitical pragmatics of “self-realization” and “self-improvement” under “autonomized governance” (Foucault), legitimizing inequality and the stigmatization of people from unfavorable social backgrounds, transforms patriotism within a "commercial-biopolitical matrix" into a monetizable commodity, as well as a means of gaining subjectivity and escaping the zone of “biopolitical waste.” The communication of war and mobilization serves less as a tool for direct mobilization and is instead integrated into the neoliberal medium of “utility maximization.” It is flexibly approached by Russians in the context of individual strategies aimed at improving material well-being and social status.

The research argues that the apolitical, conflict-free, and de-antagonized discourse of neoliberal political identity hinders the emergence of internal political differences. This, in turn, allows Kremlin rhetoric to homogenize internal political discourse while constructing an external antagonized frontier, framed in moral terms (Laclau/Mouffe). This goal is achieved through the framing of opposition to the West, including the framing of the war against Ukraine. This framing serves as the only political discourse within the dominant Russian domestic neoliberal framework, creating an equivalent chain of homogeneous, non-political masses. 

As a result, on the one hand, the ideological promiscuity of neoliberalism (Laclau) allows for the unification of Russians through empty signifiers via historical references employed in Russian propaganda. On the other hand, however, this imposed unification lacks an ideologically mobilizing effect, as it is constrained by flexible individual strategies for improving material well-being and social status in line with the logic of “utility maximization.” This dynamic is vividly reflected in the commonly observed "indifference of Russians toward the war" and frequent references to the "normalization" of societal reactions to it.