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Comparison between Russian and British Politics: Has British Politics Become More Virtual?
Comparison between Russian and British Politics: Has British Politics Become More Virtual?
The thesis assumes that there is an ideological dimension to virtual politics. The Andrew Wilson’s concept of virtual politics. Virtual Politics: Definition, Origin and Evolution. Political Technology and Protest. Populist Nationalism and Dramaturgiiya.
| Рубрика | Политология |
| Вид | дипломная работа |
| Язык | английский |
| Дата добавления | 18.07.2020 |
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Evolution
The Putin administration brings us to a critical point in the evolution of political technology. As we have seen, in the 1990s, political technology was a marketised commodity, available to wealthy individuals and ready to serve their private interests. However, under Putin, the political technologists `have become centralised and systematised' (Pomerantsev, 2015, p.79). One of the undoubted successes of the Putin regime has been the successful monopolisation of the political manipulators, concentrating them in the hands of the Kremlin and getting them all to face the same direction. This was one of the additional benefits of the Yukos affair and Khordokovskii's arrest. Khordokovskii had been funding almost every political party, including United Russia, and was looking towards the 2008 elections (Wilson, 2014, p.22).
By taking Khordokovskii out of the equation, political technology became a purely Kremlin activity. Moreover, one of Putin's top priorities, when he first came to power, was to bring the media, in particular TV, under government control. He quickly got rid of Berezovskii and Gusiniskii, who were the two main private owners of TV stations (Wilson, 2005, p.44). This demonstrates his recognition of the virtues of dramaturgiiya and maintaining control over the narrative from the early days of his administration. As we have already seen with the use of `media technologies', that `control of the mass media is… key to control of the virtual world' (ibid., p.43). The `miracle-working of political television' was evident in Dimitri Medvedev's transformation from an `unknown bureaucrat' into a `household name' in a short period of time, culminating in his 2008 presidential victory with 71% percent of the vote. The presidency was also the first elected office for which he had ever been a candidate (Holmes, 2015, p.47).
The Kremlin's centralised control over political technology has been embodied by Vladislav Surkov, the former Kremlin ideologist who has held a number of key government positions since Putin came to power. Adam Curtis, in his documentary `Hypernormalisation' claims that Surkov's bewildering use of political theatre (what we have termed dramaturgiiya) has been a significant contribution to Putin's hold on power (Curtis, 2016). After the Yukos affair, Surkov's influence began to grow - he has been credited with creating the `phantom fear' of the Orange revolution in Ukraine spreading into Russian in 2004 (Wilson, 2014, p.23). The fear of a foreign backed `coloured revolution' in Russia, led Surkov to create Nashi, a pro government youth group who are `trained for street battles with potential pro-democracy supporters and who burn books by unpatriotic writers on Red Square' (Pomerantsev, 2015, p.77). For the imaginary Russian colour revolution, he manufactured an artificial counterrevolution, which was openly called “counter-revolutionary technology” (Wilson, 2014, p.23).
One of his most famous exploits was the creation of a fake opposition party, Rodina, or the `Motherland Party'. The party was designed as a `shock absorber with a left-wing, hypernationalist, anti-Western, and anti-oligarch profile and was meant to drain votes away from the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation)' (Holmes, 2015, pp.51-52). Later another party was created, Spravedlivaya Rossiya, in order to siphon off votes from the CPRF in a `classical divide-and-rule operation' (ibid., p.53). Surkov was soon everywhere - `he was even his own opposition' (Wilson, 2014, p.22). He is said to have, as deputy head of the administration, met once a week with the heads of the television channels, `instructing them on whom to attack and whom to defend, who is allowed on TV and who is banned, how the President is to be presented, and the very language and categories the country thinks and feels in' (Pomerantsev, 2015, p.77).
Political technology also expanded into civil society, looking to manipulate and reduce the influence of NGOs, who were presented as foreign funded trojan horses (Wilson, 2015). This has been primarily achieved with the massively increased funding of GONGOs, `Government Organised Non-Governmental Organisations' which provide the illusion of a functional civil society, while promoting governmental interests. In terms of dramaturgiiya the old enemies of the 1990s (Communist revanchists, Chechens, oligarchs) `were now replaced by a much more toxic combination of domestic fifth columns and their foreign backers' (ibid.). This new `enemy' was both the significant `other' for the `Conservative Values Project' and a justification for intervention in Ukraine. Both of which followed `the logic of political technology. They were a smokescreen, a diversion, and belated overkill - new and much more radical causes to mobilize the population' (ibid).
Finally, it is worth noting that political technologists have proven to be adept at utilising new technology to control narrative and produce dramaturgiiya, they are even something of a trend setter in this field. The clearest example of this, is the infamous troll farm - the `International Research Agency' (IRA) in St. Petersburg. The IRA capitalised on the advent of social media to push government narratives, simulate public opinion and denigrate opponents. Although the IRA gained global notoriety for its role in the American election campaign, it was initially developed for and continues to predominantly focus on domestic opposition (Pomerantsev, 2019, p.33). This `farm' consists of people employed to leave comments on newspapers and social media, attacking targeted Russian opposition figures, labelling them as CIA stooges and traitors (ibid., p.35).
Other techniques used by the farm to produce virtual government support are far more subtle. Lyudmilla Savchuk, the journalist who exposed the `troll farm' has divulged the details of her `special project', when working for the IRA (ibid.). She was enlisted to create a mystic healer called `Cantadora', who was presented as an expert in `astrology, parapsychology and crystals' (ibid.). Cantadora was fabricated to entertain middle-class housewives, who had little knowledge or interest in politics. Lyudmilla was tasked with dropping in the occasional hint about current affairs, between blog entries on star signs and romance (ibid., p.36). The two messages she was most frequently instructed to integrate into the blog were; `The EU is just a vassal of the US' and `Ukraine… was run by fascists' (ibid.). Lyudmilla once wrote about her `sister' enduring a nightmare which featured two aggressive snakes, the snakes according to Cantadora, unsurprisingly, represented the US and the EU (ibid.).
Savchuk also revealed the astonishingly granular level which trolls are sometimes deployed at. She recalls an example in which `two trolls would go on the comments section of small, provincial newspapers and start chatting about the street they lived in, the weather, then casually recommend a piece about the nefarious West attacking Russia' (ibid., p.36). Such new ventures with social media have allowed political technologies to further obscure the distinction between fact and fiction. Gleb Pavlovskii explains how political technologists view this as simply reflecting the realpolitik conditions of the contemporary world; `We live in a mythological era. We have gone back to the Ancient World where the distinction between myth and reality didn't exist' (Wilson, 2014, p.23). It is worth noting, the connection between the troll farm and the Kremlin remains blurry, but it is thought to be owned by Evgenii Prigozhin, a personal friend of Putin, his `chef' who also owns mercenaries stationed in Syria and Ukraine (Pomerantsev, 2019, p.37).
Having looked at the origins and development of political technology, it should be fairly clear why the metaphor `virtual' is invoked to describe `virtual politics'. The central point is that the visible presentation of politics bears no resemblance to its inner workings. Moreover, characters, scripts and parties are invented as TV projects, with almost no existence outside of the television, while more recently, public opinion is being manufactured on social media.
This renders the spectacle of Russian politics as somehow unreal, in which the politics voters can engage with is artificial and illusory. Baudrillard's provocatively titled thesis `The Gulf War did not take place', begins with the line `Since the war was won in advance, we will never know what it would have been like had it existed' (Baudrillard, 1995, p.61). Moreover, he suggests that the American military's control over the TV footage replaced any coverage of a real event (Gleditsch, 1998, p.402). In some ways this describes the same sort of virtuality present in political technology. Similarly, as the outcomes and characters in dramaturgiiya are controlled, we will never know what it would have been like had the dramas actually taken place. Moreover, political technologists present their political reality via the television and the internet, substituting coverage for scripted drama. The image of politics they filter through mass and social media, never existed in the real world but was conjured up and experienced in the virtual world. Identifying the true stories and events, from the fictitious ones becomes an arduous task.
Chapter 2
Dramaturgiiya and ideology
Post-Soviet Identity
As already mentioned, the 1990s were a dislocating and uncertain time in the former Soviet Union, widely associated with economic turmoil and social upheaval. The collapse of the USSR not only resulted in the dismantling of the state but proved the eternal truths of communism to be mortal. The country lost its preordained Marxist-Leninist historical direction and was no longer engaged in a perpetual ideological battle with the West. Francis Fukuyama's infamous proclamation that `the end of history' had arrived, certainly expressed the Western view that the battle between communism and capitalism had come to an end (Fukuyama, 2012). The breakup of the USSR destroyed one political order and a way of life, paving the way for radical cultural and social change. As Epstein put it, `finally, all Soviet reality collapsed in a few years of Gorbachev's and Yeltisn's rule' (Epstein, 1995, p.197). For political technologists this new world offered a great range of opportunities and increased the value of their services. Recalling Gleb Pavlovskii's interview with Pomerantsev, he described the era as a `blank canvas' in which a new political system and language had to be invented.
In and amongst this disorder was a nation building project, as the Russian nation reemerged as the single biggest unit from the fractured union. What sort of nation it would be was unclear; `the collapse of the Union came so quickly after glasnost' and `democratization that Russians were left bewildered as to where the great power had gone, and ready to listen to new ideas' (Duncan, 2000, p.3). Trying to conceive of a Russian nation is always a daunting task from the offset, as the very concept of Russian nationhood is opaque and unsettled. The difficulty in conceptualising Russian nationality is manifest in a linguistic distinction, between rossiski and russkii. Rossiski describes a `civic identity intended to encompass everyone residing within the borders of the new state'. Russkii, on the other hand, refers to a `traditional ethno-cultural core' (Kolstш and Blakkisrud, 2016, pp.249-250). This dual conceptualisation of Russian national identity can lead to a `slippage and possible conflation of the meaning/difference of this civic category with the ethnic category Russian' (Suchland, 2018, p.1078).This demonstrates a fundamental tension between ethnic and civic representations of the nation and people, which make it difficult to delimit and define Russian national identity.
This is a particular problem for post-Soviet Russia. Previously Marxism-Leninism attached identity to the Soviet Union and before that the Tsars presided over an Empire, it was `only in the post-Soviet Russian Federation have the Russians had a chance to free themselves from imperial claims and develop their own nation-state' (Duncan, 2000, p.3). This uncertainty led to `Russia's sense of itself (Russian or Soviet? State, empire or nation?)' being `turned upside down over the last two decades' (Wilson, 2005, p.42). The population was void of a clear identity marker or `the confidence of a stable traditional cognitive environment' leaving it as `easy prey for the manipulative technologists' (ibid., p.43). By examining the content of dramaturgiiya in post-Soviet Russia, we can see multiple enemies being constructed and subtle reinterpretations of the Russian nation. It seems the ambiguity surrounding Russian nationhood, leaves it exposed to the exploitation of the political technologists.
Friends and Enemies
The various dramaturgiiya produced by political technologists have been described as the following: In 1996 it was Yeltsin versus the communists, followed by Putin versus the Chechens in 1999-2000, then Putin versus the oligarchs in 2003-04 and finally `Russia restored' versus `all comers' in 2007-08' (Wilson, 2014, p.21). I have added an additional one following the 2011 protests and the turn towards conservative values, as roughly `Russia vs the West'. Furthermore, the dramaturgiiya from the Putin years seem to fit together, to form a wider story about the regeneration of national pride and dignity. As Gill points out, `the principal theme of... Putin's presidency was the strengthening of the state and the revival of Russia's greatness' (Gill, 2013, p.157).
It seems possible to identify a pattern in the dramaturgiiya, that is, they have a common theme. In each case, there is a clear `us' and `them' dichotomy, which reflects a Schmittian decisionism and a proclivity to reduce politics to a zero-sum game. Moreover, the `us' panders to a populist nationalist conception of the people. In each case, it is the Russian people under threat, either from a foreign enemy (the West/Chechens) or an internal enemy (revanchist communists and greedy oligarchs), who would squander the country's tradition of great power and make the lives of individual citizens intolerable. This pattern is also present in the fabrication of public opinion on social media. Even Cantadora from the troll farm spreads anti-western messages.
Finally, even in the exportation and utilisation of political technology as a foreign policy tool (interference in the American election and the use of trolls in Europe, sponsoring far-right parties), we observe it operating in support of populist nationalism. A striking example of this occurred in Tallinn in 2007, when the Estonian government moved a red army soldier honouring world War II casualties from the central square to a cemetery. This resulted in a successful cyber-attack on the Estonian governmental lines of communication and street riots decrying the government's contempt for the red army. The Estonian government blamed Russian political technologists for organising and stirring this nationalist anger at the decision to move the statue (Etkind, 2009, p.196). More recently they have used political technology to support Brexit, Trump's election in America and Marine Le Pen, among other populists across Europe (Apuzzo, 2019).
It is worth noting that Russia and the political technologists started off with one-time disposable enemies (communists and Chechens) but they now seem to be stuck with the West, or more specifically, the USA as the enemy. While much of the focus in virtual politics is on the creative powers of the political technologists and their ability to orchestrate political reality, the pattern indicates there are in fact limitations to what they can produce. They are constrained within an ideological framework which presupposes the supremacy of the nation and the people, which, in turn, must be protected against an existential threat.
Firstly, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by `Schmittian' decisionism in this context. Carl Schmitt is often considered to be one of the political technologist's favourite political philosophers (Auer, 2015) and his definition of `the political' seems to be reflected in the dramaturgiiya. In his `Concept of the Political', Schmitt sets out a definition of politics which can distinguish it from other fields; such as economics, philosophy or history. In other words, he tries to identify properties and characteristics which are uniquely political. This results in what he terms the friend-enemy distinction (Schmitt, 1996). Schmitt claims that all definitions rely on a distinction, for example aesthetics is only understood if we have the notion of ugly and beautiful, or morality can only be grasped if we understand the distinction between good and bad.
Politics, too, requires its own distinction from `which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced' (ibid., p.26). That is the friend-enemy distinction which conveys `the utmost degree of intensity of a union or a separation, of an association or dissociation' (ibid.). When describing the enemy, he explains `the other, the stranger… it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien' (ibid., p.27). So, in order for a group to understand their identity it must be in contrast to another group. It is only possible to recognise your `friends' if you are able to discern your `enemies'. All ideologies are political in this sense, even if they are unaware of it - liberals pitch the enlightened versus the backward and socialists juxtapose the rich and the poor. For Schmitt, a state which is incapable of choosing who are the friends and who are the enemies, can no longer be considered to be acting politically; in politics `the aim is always the same, namely, to declare an enemy' (ibid., p.47). When a state no longer `possesses the capacity or the will to make this distinction, it ceases to exist politically' (ibid., pp. 43-44).
So, according to Schmiit, the ability to declare an enemy is the fundamental task of the state, as it provides the contrast from which the state and its people can identify and define themselves (`We know we are X because we certainly are not Y'). In other words, `the process of collective, including national identity formation entails the need for communities not only to determine who they are and what they value, but also to decide who they are not and what they do not value' (Hunter, 2003, p.143). With this in mind, it seems the appeal of developing dramaturgiiya which contains such an explicit friend-enemy distinction is clear. On the one hand, it confirms the state as the decisive political entity in the nation (the entity which makes the friend enemy distinction). On the other hand, in a state where the concept of national identity is so complex and malleable following the collapse of communism (nation, empire, russkii, rossiski, European or samobitnost), it provides a point in common for people to rally around. The friend-enemy distinction exploits the weakly defined Russian national identity, in which it may not always be clear who the enemies of the people and the state are. It provides Russians with a clear sense of `us', when that may not be so obvious to identify.
Putin suggested the significance of establishing a sense of the Russian people himself in his 1999 campaign for the Presidency, when he recognised the country was without a `unifying concept' (ibid., p.127). A 2005 `Concept Paper', highly influenced by Surkov, also stressed the need for a unifying concept (Warhola & Lehning, 2007, p.945). Political technologists have invoked the friend-enemy distinction to create a sense of internal cohesion throughout Putin's presidency, as it is a message which is particularly appealing in a nation without a clearly demarcated identity. Alexei Yurchak has analysed the emergence of the `monstration' movement in Russia, in which participants wield purposefully absurd and incomprehensible slogans, such as, “Racoons are people too”, “Roosters are not human” and “Deer cannot even think” (Yurchak, 2018, p.102). Yurchak explains that `the rise of the seemingly “absurd” political language of monstrations is symptomatic of a crisis of representation that reduces the political complexity in and around Russia to the binary division between patriots and traitors, or liberals and brainwashed masses… effectively depoliticizing political reality and obscuring political analysis' (ibid., p103). In other words, it is a form of protests that has been specifically designed to overcome the Kremlin's reliance and insistence on splitting the political territory by invoking the friend-enemy distinction.
As Wilson notes, `virtual politics continually evokes the narod - the masses, the people. Constitutions are enacted in their name; politicians claim to be in touch with their deepest feelings; but the popular presence is only virtual' (Wilson, 2005, p.48). One of the ways, it seems, to create a sense of `the people', is to continually create a threat to the nation, a threat to `the people' themselves. As noted, this threat can change substantially, as it has done, from the `almost comic opera enemies of the 1990s and early 2000s (Communist revanchists, Chechens, oligarchs)' to `domestic fifth columns and their foreign backers' (Wilson, 2015). While the threat can change, the target always seems to remain the same, the Russian people and the future of the Russian state. We already discussed the technologist Belkovskii's dramaturgiiya during the Yukos affair, when he created the story of a creeping an imminent oligarchic coup, which had to be stamped out. It is important to note that he did this alongside `a general policy of “national revanche”, continuing the post-Yeltsin process of “recapturing” state power and taking back the ill-gotten gains of the 1990's' (Wilson, 2005, p.109). Therefore, that dramaturgiiya, which could have looked like a spat between the country's economic and political rulers, was in fact presented as the promotion of public interest over private interest and bringing the state power and resources back to the people. Once again, conforming to the general trend within dramaturgiiya.
Political Technology and Protest
Perhaps the clearest indication of the reliance of populist nationalist themes in dramaturgiiya came after the 2011-13 protests. Generally speaking, the protests were about the lack of transparency during the Duma 2011 elections, which seemed to have obviously been fixed (Elder, 2011). The reinstatement of Putin in 2012 after Medvedev's presidency further added to the sense that Russian democracy was non-existent, and evidently exposed the faзade of free and fair elections which the technologists had been working on (Wilson, 2014, p.27). Three slogans were predominantly used by protestors: `rossiya bez Putina' (Russia without Putin), rossiya bez Putii (Russia without a path, also a play on words with Putin's name) and `Putin - vor' (Putin is a thief). It seemed that Putin could not hide any longer and the protests demonstrated the `facade being lifted' (ibid., p.29). At the time, this was an unprecedented opposition movement during the Putin presidency which resulted in a media clampdown and lots of arrests.
However, the most telling reaction was to shift the narrative, hence the introduction of the “conservative values campaign” to define the “real Russia'' and a `new-found fondness for protecting Russians in the “near abroad”' (ibid., p.21). Nationalist themes and the presentation of Russian culture in opposition to western `values' suddenly went into overdrive. Political technologists began `promulgating the myth of Western Russophobia and promoting ethnic nationalism, homophobia, neo-imperial dreams, and a uniquely Russian spiritual values to co-opt the Right and rally the country's majority against liberal protestors… in a desperate search of any possible source of popular support' (Holmes, 2015, p.35). In doing so they invoked Schmitt's friend- enemy distinction, by pitching liberals (westernisers) against `us' (the Russian people with Russian values). It is significant that when the regime was under genuine political stress and pressure (unlike the invented threats), the political technologists needed to ramp up the populist nationalist messaging in order to pacify the public and reframe the state as the protector of the nation. This mainly consisted of anti-western messaging. Therefore, Putin returned in 2012 as a nationalist, `albeit for pragmatic reasons' (Wilson, 2014, p.36).
New threats were invented, which were envisioned as attacking Russian values and traditions. A notable example was the threat of homosexuality. This was not simply presented as homophobia, but also in terms of a western cultural invasion. Homosexuality was identified with the west and in particular Europe, as demonstrated by the moniker `gayropa' (Riabov & Riabova, 2014a). Therefore, a dislike towards homosexuality was not simply seen in homophobic terms, but also in a populist nationalistic light, as a rejection of western values and an affirmation of Russian traditions. LGBT members began to embody the west and were seen as traitors and foreigners, which had to be dealt with by the state. The Pussy Riot episode was also framed as a battle between Russian conservatism and western liberalism. Their imprisonment represented the victory of conservatism. Additionally, NGOs became the target of government attention, as they were perceived to have been western sponsored institutions with the intention of influencing Russian society and politics. Finally, the Orthodox church became a much more public and prominent entity, now at the centre of political and cultural practices in the country (Stoeckl, 2017, pp.273-274).
This all played into the dramaturgiiya of Putin as the protector of the Russian nation, unwilling to let the country rot like liberal Europe. This once again demonstrates the need for dramaturgiiya to produce national enemies and provide the state with something to defend the nation against. Alongside the increased nationalistic rhetoric came a strengthening of state power as arrests and sentences for protestors were ramped up, opposition channel Rain TV was taken out and, finally, internet regulations were introduced via the `bloggers law' and the social media site Vkontakte was given new Kremlin friendly owners (Wilson, pp.31 -32). The murder of Boris Nemtsov, one of the main oppositionists and few politicians regarded as a plausible alternative to Putin, also took place in the years following the protests (BBC, 2015). While the technologists were identifying hidden foreign threats in homosexuality and NGOs, the regime was increasing its grip on power.
Masculinity and the Nation
Another noticeable feature of contemporary Russian politics has been the concerted effort by technologists to amplify Putin's masculine image, creating for him a `strong man' script. Examples include, but are not limited to; widely disseminated photographs of Putin fighting forest fires in a plane, riding horses and fishing topless, defeating judo opponents, revving a Harley Davidson, discovering sixth-century Greek urns immediately after diving into the Azov Sea, shooting tigers with a tranquilizer gun and shooting a gray whale with a crossbow (Holmes, 2015, p.49). All of these events were recorded by photographers or a film crew nearby, as technologists looked to engineer and inflate what an American diplomat referred to as Putin's “alpha dog” image (ibid.)
These endeavours to construct Putin as a `strong man' and avoid the appearance of weakness fit into the wider dramaturgiiya of the country's regeneration under his presidency. In this case regeneration is identified with remasculinisation. Although images of gender may seem unconnected to the portrayal of a nation, they are in fact associated forms of discourse. Perhaps this is most evident in the use of gendered language to describe nations; `fatherland', `Mother Russia', `mother tongue', `brothers' and `sisters' of the nation and so forth (Riabov & Riabova, 2014b, p.25). Depicting the nation as a family acts as an expedient way to present the national community as a natural one that is aligned with the everyday experience of the individual.
In order to understand the cultivation of Putin's masculine image today, it is important to understand the demasculinsation which took place during perestroika and the 1990s. Due to the collapse of the state and the economic troubles that followed, a large portion of Russian men were no longer able to play the role of breadwinner, which was `the main criterion of masculinity in this period' (ibid.). Moreover, during this period Russian men were not only rendered incapable of serving their family, but also the country. Defeat in the Cold war weakened the international position of the country and the status of a superpower. This was reinforced by the Russian army's defeat in the war against Chechnya in 1994 - 1996 (ibid.). Tellingly, in the 1990s Russia was often characterised, not as the traditional `Mother Russia', but rather, a promiscuous woman. The metaphor of prostitution was invoked to portray the relationship Russia had with other countries and the foreign policy more generally (Borenstein, 2006, pp.174 -95). Finally, the country's dependence on foreign aid was evaluated as evidence `of the country's lack of self-determination and hence nonmasculinity' (Riabov & Riabova, 2014b, p.27).
Masculinity is often associated with self-reliance and power. Therefore, dependency on others demasculinised the country. Indeed, this feeling that the country had been demasculinised was reflected in discourse of both the nationalist and communist opposition during the 1990s as they called to restore collective male dignity (ibid., p.25). So as socio-economic conditions and the country's international standing deteriorated, men also became deprived of their traditional duties and social obligations - primarily defending the country and providing for their family.
That's why one of Putin's principal tasks was to restore national and male pride. Indeed, the cornerstone of his political system, `sovereign democracy' stressed the masculine virtues of self-reliance, independence and power. All the while great effort has been made to preserve his own masculinised image - today Russians can be fined and arrested for sharing an image of Putin in make-up (Cresci, 2017). Moreover, his foreign policy, both the annexation of Crime and the country's dominant role in Syria, is in stark contrast to the subservient days of the 1990s, in which the country was unable to assert itself internationally and men struggled to fulfil traditional social obligations at home.
To some extent, this explains the eagerness to demasculinate others, most prominently seen in th effort to attach homosexuality with Europeans. It is interesting to note that protestors in 2011, deliberately targeted the idea that Putin represents the epitome of masculinity. For example, some of the protestors nicknamed him “Botox”, as rumours began to circulate he had been using it. Of course, excessive concern with `one's own appearance violates the traditions of masculinity and especially the image of the Russian muzhik' (ibid., p.29). So, even within the script to shape Putin's masculine image by technologists, we can observe an underlying promotion of nationalist values, once again reinforcing it as an indispensable component of dramaturgiiya.
When analysing virtual politics, the limitations of political technologists must be recognised. Although highly influential, political technologists are not omnipotent and Russia is by no means a totalitarian state where `everything can be controlled' (Wilson, 2005, p.266). As this thesis tries to suggest, even in their dramaturgiiya they are restrained in what they can and cannot invent. It follows that they, of course, cannot control how their message will be interpreted by their audience and how the meaning they produce will be altered when it collides with other forms of meaning in the real world. Recourse to the principle of intertextuality in discourse analysis can help to explain the predominance of populist nationalist motifs in dramaturgiiya.
Despite its name, at least in discourse analysis, intertextuality is not confined to the written text, but relates to `all forms of meaningful semiotic human activity' (Blommaert, 2005, p.3). The key to intertextuality is the belief that no `speech events' or utterances can take place in a vacuum or in isolation from one another (Hodges, 2015, p.42). In short `discourse produced in one context inevitably connects to discourse produced in other contexts. As social actors interact, they imbibe their discourse with voices indicative of their social world, draw upon established genres to frame their discourse, engage with words that have come before them, and orient to anticipated responses' (ibid.). As dramaturgiiya is first and foremost the creation of text, it is important to consider which pre-existing subtexts they draw upon in order to make their message intelligible to the public. Political technologists have to operate and work within ideas and themes which are already held in society. They tend to choose certain populist nationalist motifs which are deeply entrenched in society and have fairly predictable reactions. As Gill puts it, `the only way an elite-driven metanarrative can gain intellectual dominance in society is if there is some connection between that metanarrative and the values of the populace as a whole. This means a form of mediation between elite and popular values in which at least part of the popular values is co-opted and incorporated into the metanarrative' (Gill, 2013, p.6).
It is therefore unsurprising that the communist revanchist enemies of the Yeltsin campaign were also defamed as fascists. Fascists, of course, represent the greatest existential threat in recent history to the Russian nation and Slavic people as an ethnic group. Nowadays, the fascist slur is directed towards contemporary Ukrainians. Clearly, evoking fascism has a much greater impact in Russian than it would in other countries, due to the specific historical conditions. Similarly unsurprising, is the use of America as the all-encompassing enemy today, whether it is to justify annexation of Crimea or banning Navalny as a `foreign agent' (BBC, 2019a). The cold war is in living memory for many Russians and the perception of America as an enemy endures. Likewise, Putin's self-styled masculine image refers to the subtext of demasculinisation in the 1990s.
Another example relates to homophobia and Russian exceptionalism. Russia, is of course, not the only country which prescribes to its own exceptionalism, but nevertheless it is central in much of Russian political thought (Alekseev, 2015, pp.1-10). A historic feature of Russian exceptionalism has been its self-perceived moral superiority with regards to the `moral degeneration of the Western World' (Doroszczyk, 2018, p.49). Associating the West with homosexuality helps to maintain this sense of Russian exceptionalism, as the authentically Christian Europe and a conservative outlier, with a mission of religious salvation originating in the idea of the Third Rome. Former Deputy Prime Minister Dimitry Rogozin makes this position explicit, stating, `Russia is the authentic Europe, without the domination of gays, without pederast marriages' (Essig, 2014, p.1077). Russia's homophobia can be viewed as part of their exceptionalist historical divergence from the `immoral' West.
By playing on motifs which inspire national pride (defeating fascism, the cold war, Russian exceptionalism, remasculinisation), the texts produced by political technologists land and interact with other forms of emotionally powerful and socially embedded elements within the existing discourse, which, in turn, allows individuals to invest their own nationalist tropes within the dramaturgiiya. In other words, the invented dramaturgiiya of the political technologists create meaning by referencing the real views held by many people.
The Construction of Nations
Analysing the construction of nations can help explain the prevalence of national motifs in dramaturgiiya. In order to understand nationalism, it is necessary to examine the material it is built upon, namely, the nation. As Gellner demonstrated in his work `Nations and Nationalism', nations are fundamentally constructed and artificial entities. His work is premised on the claim that industrialisation in the late modern period required people to find a common identity and language. Rather than local and provincial identities, the transition to large industrialised cities necessitated people to conform to a new language group, which fundamentally altered social relations, and how individuals regarded themselves in relation to others.
Industrialisation resulted in `the establishment of an anonymous impersonal society, with mutually sustainable atomised individuals, held together above all by a shared culture of this kind, in place of the previous complex structure of local groups, sustained by folk cultures reproduced locally and idiosyncratically by the micro-groups themselves' (Gellner, 1983, p.34). Alongside standardised language, common education systems were developed as part of the process to enforce cultural similarity. This process, Gellner claims, led people to identify on a national level and not the local level. By analysing the historic establishment of nations, Gellner was able to demonstrate that nations are not naturally occurring or organic entities but artificially constructed responses to the needs of the industrialised world in late modernity.
Benedict Anderson's famous notion of `Imagined Communities' also locates the idea of a nation, and, therefore, nationalism in modernity. Anderson, rather than industrialisation, identifies the advent of print capitalism as the significant moment in the development of a sense of nationhood - a national `us'. Books, newspapers and other forms of text, circulated by a new breed of capitalists, were printed in the language which ordinary people spoke and not in exclusive written languages like Latin. Consequently, readers of the same texts learnt to understand each other and communicate in this newly formed common discourse, as they were no longer restricted to local dialects with people from their locality. Nation states were then constructed around these national print languages, as a sense of nationhood was made possible by new and common forms of communication (Anderson, 2006). This led Anderson to describe nations as `imagined communities'. The nation is imagined because `members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their members… yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion' (Anderson, 2006, p.6). The provision of common literature and stories allows people to conceive of themselves as living in a national community without any real-life contact with members of that community.
The imagined community is confined to a nation as `no nation imagines itself as coterminous with mankind' (ibid., p.7). This national community `is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship… it is this fraternity that makes it possible… for… the people to die for such limited imaginings' (ibid.). For Anderson, nationalism derives from this imagined sense of community as people begin to conceive of themselves as in national communion despite never having met each other. Therefore, Anderson concurs with Gellner's assessment, insofar as, the basic premise that nations are socially constructed communities and not self-evident or self-generating. This allows nations to be reinvented and reimagined. This is only possible because the initial sense of a nation is not `real' but the result of collective imagination. Imaginations can, of course, be influenced and altered. This seems to be an important observation when we consider Russia, as national identity has been heavily reimagined throughout its history from Europeanisation under Peter the Great to communism and finally in its current post-Soviet existence.
If the nation is imagined and notions of national identity emerge out of the availability of common information sources and language, control over information plays a vital role in how the community is imagined. While Anderson specifically discusses print capitalism, the same logic can be applied to modern forms of communication. We can think of Putin's Russia as an imagined community for the digital age - a community in which social and mass media have a significant capacity to bend and produce realities. As already discussed, Putin was particularly preoccupied with gaining control over the media, and Russians, on average, still receive most of their news from the TV. As Wilson points out, for virtual politics, `the essential part of the system of control was still to direct the message or narrative; and the most important instrument of power in post-Soviet Russia has always been the media' (Wilson, 2014, p.21). It seems, therefore, that control over the media is particularly advantageous for proponents of nationalism, as it allows a government to dominate the depiction of the imagined community.
If people only get to see their `community' on the TV, their knowledge of that community exists solely in the virtual world. Clearly a Russian will not be able to meet and observe all Russians in the country. In the real world, they will only come into contact with a tiny percentage of the national population during their lifetime. However, they will make assumptions on what they think their fellow countrymen are like. What they see of the nation, and not just the few people they have met, comes from TV, which is manipulated by political technologists. There is no mechanism for them to verify what they are told `Russian people' are like, or what `Russian people' value, as they will only get to corroborate it with the few real Russians they know in their life. This makes notions of national identity particularly malleable, as political technologists can influence how Russians imagine their community, by showing them what their `community' looks like and values on the TV.
For example, polling shows that attitudes towards LGBT people became significantly more hostile in 2013 (Volkov, 2019). This coincides with Putin's `conservative turn' and the introduction of the anti-gay propaganda law. As already explained, the government's attack on the gay community has a populist nationalist subtext. Russians throughout this period were being informed about what their community's, and therefore their own, attitude towards homosexuality was .Clearly, what constitutes the national and imagined community can be reconstructed and reimagined with the control of information - in this case, Russia is a country hostile towards homosexuality and in favour of `traditional values'.
Another example is the rewriting of history textbooks for schools, which regularly change how they appraise Stalin's rule over the Soviet Union (Sherlock, 2016). In this case, the government control over information informs the community of their own national history and therefore how they regard themselves today. How a nation is perceived by its members is no means fixed or predetermined. So it seems that nationalism is a particularly expedient ideology to be the foundation of dramaturgiiya because it rests on such fluid and malleable principles itself. In other words, it allows political technologists to reimagine and reinvent the nation for the community, when it will be valuable for them. As nations themselves are an invented reality, it gives political technologists greater scope to produce their own realities via dramaturgiiya. It is not possible, for example, to create a reality about gravity, as people can test that themselves by dropping something. However, it is possible to make up stories about the nation and its people, as the nation, in the sense of a community, never existed in the first place.
The Invention of Tradition
Eric Hobsbawm's work on `invented traditions' also helps us understand the way in which national identities are manipulated and then conferred onto a population. The central argument is that traditions involved in the creation of a national identity, are in fact, often, relatively recent in origin or even invented. When citizens are engaging with their national traditions, they can be unaware of their origins as modern innovations, and they believe themselves to be tapping into a much older and `natural' national activity. Traditions form an important aspect of human relations with the past, but, in the present `all invented traditions, so far as possible, use history as a legitimator of action and cement of group cohesion' (Hobsbawm, 1983, p.12). More than this, invented traditions are an `indication of the values which the state seeks to promote' (Fedor, 2011, p.132). By revealing the relative recency of traditions, Hobsbawm questions the notion of national authenticity, while also repudiating the claims of nationalists, that their states are ancient, natural human communities, as opposed to constructed and modern political entities.
During Putin's presidency, we have certainly witnessed the invention of tradition. More often than not, with the intention of inspiring national pride. His own inauguration for his first term in 2000 involved the invention of tradition. He moved the ceremony to the grandiose St. Andrew's Hall in the Kremlin Palace, the place where Russia's last tsars used to sit. The medieval setting endowed the tradition with depth and age, as an attempt to artificially attach a sense of history and legitimacy to the democratic transition of power in Russia. A process for which there is no precedent (Goscilo, 2013, p.171).
Since then, the most notable attempt to manufacture tradition has been the introduction of national holidays. A striking example was the transformation of the old holiday commemorating the October Revolution into `Unity Day', in memory of the Moscow uprising to expel Polish and Lithuanian forces from the city in 1612. The day's name is laced with populist undertones, as it refers to and reveres the spontaneous uprising of all Russians, irrespective of class, to liberate the city from Polish occupation without the guidance of a tsar or patriarch (Moscow Times, 2013). Aleksei Levinson, the founder of the Levada Centre, one of Russia's leading independent polling organisations, sums up the function of `fictional' national holidays:
In general, I would say the essence of holidays in our culture is a way to unite a large number of people. A national holiday means the unification of all residents of a given country, state or people. It so happened in our country that the holidays were mainly public holidays, November 7, May 1, even March 8 and February 23 - these were the holidays introduced by the authorities from above. (Levinson, 2005)
It is also significant that other invented traditions have centred around the collective memory of World War 2. The common place St George's ribbon, worn to remember the victims and victors of World War 2 on Victory Day, was in fact, the creation of RIA Novosti journalists in 2005 (Miller, 2012). Although it appears to have begun life as a grassroots movement, it has been described as a `skillfully plotted political symbol' as it circumvents associations with communism, allowing it to be a politically acceptable symbol in other post-Soviet countries (ibid.). In any case, it was quickly co-opted by the government, who are now in charge of both the production and distribution of the ribbons. A similar story can be told about the `Immortal Regiment' - the routine of marching on Victory Day with a portrait of a soldier who served in the second world war. It, too, started off as a grassroots initiative, founded by Siberian journalists. The first event held on May 9 2012 proved to be a big success. Within three years the initiative was picked up by PR managers with government funding and substantial media support (Nemtsev, 2019).
Anthony Smith outlines the significance of symbols in the formation of national cohesion and identity:
symbols such as flags, emblems, anthems, costume, special foods, and sacred objects, give expression of our sense of difference and distinctiveness of the community… myths of origins, liberation, the golden age, and chosenness link the sacred past to a sense of collective destiny. Each of these elements articulated a vital dimension of the culture community. (Smith, 1995, p.129).
In line with this analysis, we can view the government's attempts to invent symbols and traditions as not only reflective of the values they seek to promote, but also an effort to shape notions of national identity and how individuals view their own country and its history.
The Invention of Enemies
It seems it is not only symbols and tradition, which can be invented or reinvented, but also threats and enemies. The graph below is compiled from Levada Centre polls on who Russians perceive to be their enemy (Levada-Center, 2018; Figure 1 below).
Figure 1 “Russia's Enemies”
It is clear that enemies are also malleable and can be subject to manipulation. As already discussed with Schmitt, the declaration of an enemy constitutes a fundamental element of politics. It also serves a crucial purpose for the creation of national identity, as it is through declaration of the enemy `them', we are able to define `us'. For example, identifying Europeans with the toleration of homosexuality, allows Russians to understand their identity negatively, as not being part of the liberal and untraditional west. In this sense, being Russian means not being western European. In general, the graph demonstrates the extent to which `enemies' can be created or disposed of. It is clear that public opinion is highly responsive to government action and media campaigns directed by political technologists.
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