If you need a short and comprehensible answer to the question of why Russia is not like the rest of Europe, look at the “Pussy Riot” trial. Perhaps the group would be fined and morally condemned in Europe but they would not get two years of incarceration as they did in Russia. The verdict shocked many of my German friends, who “simply couldn’t believe it.”
Defending the Kremlin has become almost impossible mission. The cover page of “Spiegel” magazine reads: “Putin’s Russia: On the Way Toward Crystal-Clear Dictatorship.”
Andreas Schockenhoff, a member of the Bundestag and deputy chairman of the parliamentary fraction on international affairs, lambasted Russia for mishandling the “Pussy Riot” issue and proposed to close down the St. Petersburg Dialogue project due to its ineffectiveness.
Schockenhoff’s utterance provoked a harsh reaction from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which through its “unidentified representative” accused him of arrogantly interfering in Russia’s domestic affairs. The Russian Foreign Ministry also reproached the government in Berlin for lack of reaction to Schockenhoff’s “inappropriate and irresponsive” rhetoric.
In the matter, it is telling that the Russian diplomat tangentially alluded to Germany’s interest in becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which won’t be possible without Moscow’s consent.
Playing power muscles instead of launching political debate is quite typical for Putin. The Russian president hates politics, and does so for a good reason. His entire career was a mix of administrative manipulations and bureaucratic (mis)management. But, it is the rise of political momentum that Putin will inevitably receive in response to repressions.
Those in Russia’s officialdom who were tasked with embellishing Russia’s soft power profile in the West are desperate. Russia’s international image is a disaster. If you were to ask ordinary Europeans about Russia most likely you’ll hear: “Oh, isn’t this the country that supports the Syrian dictator and sets their dogs on three girls?” Unfortunately, on both accounts, they are absolutely right.
All of this confirms the correctness of those theorists who wrote piles of books arguing that politics in today’s world increasingly become more and more aesthetical and image-driven. It is more about perceptions than about rational (if not cynical) calculations or legal arguments. The miscomprehension of this shift appears to be the weakest point of the Putin regime, which tries to criminalize a political protest movement that is void of calls for violence. These days, actually, it expressed most often by performative and artistic means.
What the Kremlin certainly underestimates is the inevitable politicization of Russian popular culture regarding the sending of three young, well-reputed, harmless singers to jail.
The Russian protest movement has become a subject of academic research, especially for those who deem that words and visual representations matter in politics.
This last weekend I attended a seminar on the semantics of Russian protests. The key note speaker was Mikhail Gabovich, a researcher at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam who is finalizing a book on this topic (perhaps, one of the first to appear in the West). With the help of his research assistants, Gabovich collected a unique database of several thousand slogans that were displayed at anti-Putin demonstrations globally since December 2011: posters, flyers, jokes, anecdotes, demotivators on the internet, and even rumors in the crowd. All of these verbal acts counted as research material worthy of scrupulous attention.
Nowadays, colored masks, white ribbons, and even teddy bears are political attributes and signs of protest in Russia—there’s now an Internet clip with a Swan Lake scene performed a-la “Pussy Riot.” This is certainly an artistic response to the criminal persecution of the Russian punk band, which turned into a powerful symbol of resistance to the regime.
The seminar made clear that the Kremlin faces an intellectual protest, and the challenges to the regime are mostly ideational and immaterial. The Kremlin itself generates a discourse that easily becomes an object of parody. Ironic and chummy references to Putin (Vova, Vovan), derogatory references to his obsession with facial rejuvenation (proverbial botox), mocking satire of his most controversial statements (like comparing the white ribbon campaign to advertising condoms) can all be taken together as a clear and personal offense to Putin’s political machismo.
Yet, do demonstrators intend to convey their messages to Putin? Or do they basically just communicate with each other? Or, are their language games targeted at their fellow citizens? These are three different language strategies: to influence the ruling elite (thus simultaneously legitimizing its rule by the very act of speaking to it), to intrinsically consolidate the space for protest, and to expand their ranks by demonstrating the new openings for public policy.
However, as some seminar speakers assumed, there is a certain danger in investing too much energy in a post-modernist irony. Is not carnivalization of protest a sign of its “unbearable lightness?” Don’t language games prevent the development of a more substantial political language of communication between the society and authorities? Sometimes the protest street discourse is as depoliticized as the power itself: in their slogans, many demonstrators appeal to common sense and family values (“Don’t beat me, I have kids”), instead of raising political demands. Yet in the meantime, it is de-politicized language strategies of protestors that most effectively deconstruct Putin’s leadership by de-sacralizing his authority.
As for international dimensions of Russian domestic politics, they seem to be quite ambiguous. On the one hand, Russia seems to be in line with the worldwide trend of mass-scale riots against repressive regimes, as exemplified by the color revolutions and the Arab spring. In this sense, the Russians do integrate to a global world through social networking and new media technologies.
Yet on the other hand, unlike in most Central and Eastern European countries, Europe was never referred to as an important signifier or reference point for protestors. This absence of the most important “figure of speech,” of course, may attest the authenticity of the Russian protest movement(s). But, in the meantime, it testifies to its lack of a nodal point in the discourse of protest which is indispensable for all serious projects where democracy and human rights are at stake.
Andrey Makarychev is a Guest Professor at the Free University of Berlin, blogging for PONARS Eurasia on the Russia-EU neighborhood.
