While some Russian citizens feel as though they are living in a dystopia that has become reality, Vladimir Putin’s regime manages to maintain tight control over the flow of information.
While manipulating public opinion to claim massive support among Russians for the Kremlin’s policy toward Ukraine (75% last June, according to data from the Levada Center), the regime provides the population with discursive strategies that allow them to deny an unpleasant and frightening reality. Other indicators confirm the existence of tangible support for the Russian military campaign: for example, in April 2022, 36% of respondents said they felt pride in the Russian people, compared to 17% a year earlier.
To better understand the nature (and limits) of this popular support for the war effort, it is necessary to examine how war rhetoric is constructed in Russia.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian regime has sought to portray the current situation as part of the natural order of things.
The very phrase “special military operation,” used in place of the word “war,” is intended to emphasize the temporary nature of the conflict, much like previous Russian military interventions in Chechnya (in the 1990s and 2000s) and in Syria (since 2015). Aside from his speech on February 24, 2022, in which he effectively declared war on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has not made regular statements on this subject, unlike his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who addresses his fellow citizens almost daily.
Since the start of the conflict, Vladimir Putin has given only one interview, on June 3, 2022, and it focused primarily on economic issues. However, he is the one who sets the guidelines for the messaging through various statements released by the Kremlin’s communications office.
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In Russia, few other officials are authorized to speak about the war on behalf of the government. Among them, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Deputy Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev grant interviews to both Russian and international media. Although they strive to “downplay” the war in terms of its consequences for Russian society, these figures are simultaneously escalating tensions with the outside world. For example, Lavrov has publicly called for the risks of a nuclear war “not to be underestimated,” and Medvedev has threatened Ukraine with “Judgment Day” if it attempts to retake Crimea by force.
In this effort, spokespeople for the Russian regime rely on a whole group of propagandists—such as Dmitry Kiselyov, Vladimir Solovyov, and Margarita Simonyan—who are ubiquitous in state-run media.
He is Vladimir Putin's favorite TV host. For weeks, he has been brandishing the threat of a nuclear bomb on his daily show. He was recently targeted by European Union sanctions.
— Loopsider (@Loopsidernews) May 6, 2022
�� This is Vladimir Soloviev. pic.twitter.com/E08WoaiCgx
Based on what emerges from these statements, Russian rhetoric has become harsher than in the past, with the repeated use of terms that highlight the division between “us” and “them.” The vocabulary is breaking free from certain taboos and reviving expressions dating back to the Cold War.
The Russian state’s reclaiming of the status of “anti-fascist power” provides a compelling example of this. The Soviet Union officially presented itself as the country that had defeated German “fascism” (rather than “Nazism”). Although Russian rhetoric today denounces the resurgence of “Nazism” in Ukraine, it echoes Soviet tropes by associating “nationalism” (a term once labeled “bourgeois”) with “fascism/Nazism”—in short, the embodiment of absolute evil.
This is evident in the vehemence with which the Kremlin lambasts the Banderovtsy—that is, the followers of Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who collaborated with Nazi Germany in the early 1940s and later fought the Soviets in the name of the struggle for an independent Ukraine. Foreign Minister Lavrov’s statement (May1, 2022), asserting that “among the worst anti-Semites are Jews” and targeting President Zelensky, also follows in the tradition of Soviet propaganda, which long portrayed Zionism and the State of Israel as a reincarnation of fascism.
Finally, the goal of “denazifying” Ukraine, as espoused by the Russian regime, is also aimed at this liberal and “degenerate” Europe, which—through its support for Kyiv—is said to be encouraging the resurgence of “fascism”—which, in turn, is reinterpreted as a symbolic rejection of Russia.
In the Kremlin’s rhetoric, the condemnation of Ukrainian “Nazism/nationalism” stands in contrast to the use of terms borrowed from the discourse of Russian nationalists: “our historic territories” (referring to Ukrainian regions), “traitors to the nation” (referring to liberal-minded Russians who oppose the war), “Russophobia” (to describe the West’s hostile attitude toward Russia). At the same time, Vladimir Putin remains faithful to phrases that highlight the “multinational” character of the state and the diversity of its populations: “I am Russian, but when I see examples of heroism [on the battlefields in Ukraine] like that of the young soldier Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, a native of Dagestan, I want to say: I am Dagestani, Chechen, Ingush, Tatar, Jewish…”
Who are the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine? @FR_Conversation https://t.co/oWlO93DK6n
— Jean-Do Merchet (@jdomerchet) April 22, 2022
These Soviet and nationalist stereotypes serve an instrumental purpose aimed at bolstering the idea of national unity around the leader and his vision of the conflict, without, however, giving rise to a “hardline” ultra-nationalist ideology.
Argumentative patterns have also evolved since the start of the conflict.
Logical reasoning gives way to a repetition of the same facts that resembles an incantation, without the cause-and-effect relationships being clearly defined. Russian communicators thus reiterate a series of geopolitical grievances in which responsibility for the war in Ukraine is shifted to the United States and its European “vassals,” who are described as the instigators of the conflicts in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
The goal here is to legitimize one’s own actions by delegitimizing those of others. Sergey Lavrov thus seeks to portray the West’s support for Ukraine as yet another manifestation of the policy adopted by Western powers as early as the 1990s—particularly in the former Yugoslavia—when they allegedly refused any fair dialogue with Moscow.
This portrayal of events is part of a continuous view of history: Western Europe has allegedly always sought to weaken Russia. The current phenomenon of “Russophobia” is therefore said to be merely a logical continuation of Western policy in previous centuries (Medvedev, March 26, 2022; Putin, July 12, 2021). This narrative establishes a chronological line connecting the17th-century Russo-Polish wars to Napoleon’s Russian campaign and the two world wars, linking them to NATO’s expansion after 1991 and the United States’ alleged support for Chechen separatists.
In Moscow, an exhibition highlights NATO's "cruelty" amid the conflict in Ukraine https://t.co/5jloATIyxR pic.twitter.com/yNFBATUr32
— Nice-Matin (@Nice_Matin) May 7, 2022
The outbreak of the war against Ukraine is thus presented as a defensive response to this long-standing policy implemented by the “collective West.” This latter term refers to all NATO member countries, which are alleged to be using Ukraine as a “pawn” in the great geopolitical game (Lavrov, June 4, 2022). The decision to start the war first is also justified by a “lack of choice” (Lavrov, May 29, 2022) in the face of the construction of an “anti-Russia” in Ukraine since 2014 (Putin, March 16, 2022). This latter “project,” in turn, is said to fall under the umbrella of “cancel culture”—a term adopted by the Russian regime to describe the West’s renunciation of its entire historical legacy, including recent agreements such as the Minsk Accords (Lavrov, March 23, 2022).
The Kremlin’s rhetoric thus attempts to piece together scattered elements to create a coherent narrative justifying the entry into war. However, this narrative is significantly lacking in “evidence”—hence the spread of numerous rumors, such as those claiming that biological weapons intended for use against Russia are being developed in Ukrainian laboratories.
The goal of Russia’s official rhetoric is to rally the population around a patriotic cause, but also to intimidate certain circles of power, civil society actors, and the media.
It is in this sense that the revival of terms such as “traitors to the nation” or “fifth column”—from which society must “purify itself”—takes on the character of an explicit warning against all dissenting views (Putin, March 16, 2022). Any criticism of the state is now tantamount to a criminal act (Medvedev, March 26, 2022).
On the one hand, the goal is to send a message to the elites, warning them of the consequences that even the slightest signs of defection or deviation from the “official line” could entail. On the other hand, it is a signal to the national media and to anyone who might be tempted to express an alternative viewpoint on the war. The rhetoric thus suggests that they adopt appropriate behavior to avoid legal prosecution. Indeed, repressive legislation was significantly expanded after February 24, 2022, with the adoption of a so-called military censorship law. This legislation provides for penalties for “discrediting” the armed forces and the premeditated dissemination of “false information” about them. Through these new legal standards, the Russian authorities have stepped up both administrative and criminal prosecutions.
These intimidation tactics allow the regime to claim, based on polls, that it enjoys broad support from society and to use this support to legitimize the war. However, the conditions under which these polls are conducted—and, in particular, the way in which the regime’s “politics of fear” influences public opinion—are worth noting.
For these same reasons, it is still difficult to gauge how the Russian public has received the official statement.
Admittedly, the propaganda machine is well-oiled to persuade the public of the legitimacy of the conflict. The Kremlin’s control over how its message is received is strengthening as alternative news sources are banned from the digital space. Independent media websites are systematically blocked (81,645 sites were blocked between February 24, 2022, and June 30, 2022, according to the nongovernmental organization Roskomsvoboda), while VPN services that allow users to bypass these blocks are subject to government attacks. This suggests that the persuasive communication strategy deployed in Russia is achieving its goals of social consensus and remains, to date, an effective means of ensuring the regime’s continued hold on power.
But despite this apparent success, the standardized communication system can run up against its own limitations. First, leaders who make decisions in a vacuum lack feedback mechanisms. They do not (or rarely) cross-check information from various sources in order to accurately assess their own legitimacy in the eyes of the public. As a result, leaders tend to view their legitimacy as a given that does not need to be questioned.
Furthermore, consistency in communication does not automatically imply a homogeneous target audience or a similar response from all segments of the population. These segments may have different reactions to the repeated use of the same arguments.
Finally, the official rhetoric is forced to confront the reality of war—with its human casualties, declining standard of living, and Russia’s radical isolation from the Western world. This disconnect between rhetoric and reality is a factor that may, in the end, shed light on the illusory nature of the national cohesion touted by the regime.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.
