In Persuasion, Jade McGlynn pushes back against the idea that “ordinary Russians” have had the invasion of Ukraine thrust upon them and should bear no responsibility for it:
There has been an attempt, not least among policymakers, to regard the war as “Putin’s War” rather than as “Russia’s,” but this misses the essentially compliant nature of how propaganda is consumed in today’s Russia. Opposition media was officially banned only in March 2022, and yet few chose to follow it before then. Though state-directed, most television channels rely on advertising revenue. Russia’s 40 million Telegram users can access almost any news they want—including foreign and opposition—yet, the overwhelming majority of the most popular political channels are pro-war.
[…]
The deployment of narratives that feed on, and feed, popular senses of victimhood, of insecure innate greatness, and of betrayal ensure much of the Russian population’s acquiescence to, if not especially enthusiastic support for, the war. They also make it hard to visualize an end to Russian designs on Ukraine. Informed by the same stereotypes he seeks to perpetuate, Putin’s sense of historical justice convinces him he has the right to Ukraine, that the morally decadent and hypocritical West lacks his strategic patience, and that Ukrainians, who have no real agency, can be quelled into submission.
But Vladimir Putin is not the only one to express this type of worldview. He is, in many ways, a product of Russian mythmaking as much as he is the instigator of it. After all, polling over three decades shows that Russians profess an aggressive form of patriotism, Soviet nostalgia, and pride in the past. For instance, a Levada Center poll in 2017 found that 58% of surveyed Russians “regretted the collapse” of the Soviet Union while only 26% did not. And, in another poll of Russians from the same year, Josef Stalin was named “the most outstanding person in world history,” narrowly eclipsing Vladimir Lenin, Peter the Great, and Putin himself.
These emotions and preferences will likely outlive Putin. Many variations of these war-fuelling myths can be found even among those Russians who opposed the war or don’t support it. Such Russocentric stances draw on a widespread insistence of the primacy of Russian victimhood.
This need ties into narratives abounding on Russian social media that ordinary Russians are the victims of an out-of-touch elite who—depending on whom you read—have launched a disastrous state-weakening war or whose luxurious privileges render them incapable of successfully prosecuting the war. As Russia’s war falters, “patriotic” variations on such arguments have become more prevalent as a way of explaining the Russian army’s military shortcomings in Ukraine.
Increasingly, the tendency to treat Russia as an eternal victim results in an attempt to save Russia’s reputation from itself. If or when Russians are left to confront the burden of the many heinous atrocities committed in their country’s name, it is easy to envisage a scenario where an enduring sense of victimhood, a natural desire to “externalize” atrocities, and a need for something, anything, to feel proud about ends up leading to a less-than-total reckoning.
If we only look at the Kremlin’s lies, and not why people want to believe them, we will fail to identify the sources of propaganda’s emotive power—and of other, future, types of political messaging, in Russia and beyond. At the very least, we need to acknowledge the demand, without pandering to it, because the need for comforting stories won’t simply cease to exist, even when Putin does.
So many political and cultural trends which have emerged in recent years - including the rise of Trump and the MAGA right, and of identity politics on the left - are based on a sense of victimhood. And it is intoxicating. The idea that some oppressor class - “cultural elites,” “white supremacy,” or NATO - is holding you down is much more attractive than your own choices bearing at least some responsibility for your plight.1
As anyone in Ukraine (or Estonia, or Latvia, or Lithuania, or Georgia, or Poland) will tell you, the 2022 invasion and ongoing war isn't an historical anomaly but the latest episode in centuries of imperial persecution by its much larger neighbour (sometimes with an assist by Germany, followed by their territories being used as the arena for their subsequent battle to the death).
Hence, the inevitable backlash against not just the Russian government, but Russian citizens, Russian history and even the Russian language. As Adam Zivo reports in today’s National Post, Russian attacks against the historic Ukrainian city of Odessa have even its Russian-speaking residents swearing off their mother tongue:
Though Odesa is a Russian-speaking city and has historically been quite pro-Russian, its inhabitants now loathe Moscow and do not wish to be “saved” by it. Support for joining Russia peaked in 2014 at only 24 per cent. Since then, Vladimir Putin’s near-decade of military aggression against eastern Ukraine, which scattered millions of refugees throughout the country, has burned away that erstwhile Russophilia. The full-scale invasion incinerated whatever affection remained.
You cannot feel fraternity towards a country that blows up your home. The hatred now is so searing that many Odesans, particularly younger ones, refuse to speak the Russian language when they can avoid it, as it is like acid on their tongues.
Throughout all of this hardship and resilience, it was still widely believed that Russia would not bomb Odesa’s historic downtown. The city’s cultural heritage is precious to the Russian imagination, so many assumed that Moscow would avoid going that far. To further mitigate risk, city officials petitioned UNESCO to expedite the designation of downtown as a world heritage site, which was finally done earlier this year.
Spoiler alert: a UN resolution did not, in fact, make Vladmir Putin’s heart grow three sizes that day and convince him to spare downtown Odessa.
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