(Post-Soviet Affairs) In this roundtable, we bring together a distinguished groups of academics to discuss Gulnaz Sharafutdinova’s excellent new book, The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity (Sharafutdinova 2020). Sharafutdinova addressess two central issues of Russian politics: the source of popular support for President Vladimir Putin and the dynamics of politicsl change in Russia. She critiques those who argue that Russia under Putin is a “return of the Soviet man, the Soviet system, or the Soviet identity: (p. 19).
Instead, she argues that Putin has “been successful in promoting his image as an embodiment of the shared national identity of Russian citizens” by “tapping into powerful group emotions of shame and humiliation, derived from the painful experience of transition in the 1990s” (p. 18). […]
Timothy Frye, Brian D. Taylor, Will Pyle, Klaus Segbers, and Gulnaz Sharafutdinova
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