A Counter-revolutionary Potential of the 2011 Protests in Russia [A Case Study of Digital...

Elena Morenkova Perrier Work in progress, please do not quote

A Counter-revolutionary Potential of the 2011 Protests in Russia [A Case Study of Digital “Anti-Orange” Movement]

Object: A particular type of conservative rhetoric underpinned by references on the Soviet past and Soviet nostalgia and diffused by a number of communities through the web: “the Russia variant” of antiliberalism, shaped by the cultural and historic legacies of both the antiliberal tradition and subsequent peculiarities of perestroika transformations. Key questions: how this rhetoric if diffused through the web networks? What are the key actors, their ideology, their structure, their issue agenda and it’s implementation? Challenging the classic sociological and “web-utopian” framework of analysis of Russian protest movement (“new middle class” / “modern performers” / “post-materalists” / “internet people” vs “budgetniki” / “TV people”). The antiliberal and conservative potential is not only borne by this group of population; the part of young and web-savvy, “creative class” are responsive to the antiliberal and anticapitalist conservative ideas; their antiliberalism is underpinned by a mythologized romantic image of the URSS. Going beyond the digital, the conventional rather then virtual elements of their activity reveal the well-structured and disciplined organization that was (partially?) captured by the State. Methodology: Classic web ethnography (inclusive observation of discussions of some platforms and networks combined to network analysis with the help of software tools (IssueCrawler, IssueCloud).

1. Ideology of Super-Modernity (SverhModern): the New Avatar of Russian Antiliberalism?

A “Russian variant” of antiliberalism (Umland, 2007). Shaped by the cultural and historic legacies of both the antiliberal tradition and subsequent peculiarities of perestroika transformations, linked to the new extra-systemic anti-western intellectual right movements that emerge during the last decade in Russia Sergei Kurginyan and Essence of Time: History & Ideology ° Eminent leader of the new conservative ideology, self-styled academic with an impact on the formation of public opinion through his Youtube channel, becoming further a TV commentator (purposefully?) promoted on governmental television (The Historical Process TV Show). His role during the 2011 protests (“the third way”, but in fact supporting Putin, “anti-orange committee”). “Sut’ Vremeni” (Essence of Time, EOT) Movement: the new avatar of classic Russian intelligentsia discussion club. ° “After Capitalism” Emotionally Loaded Manifesto. [Quote (translation from Russian)

1. We all consider the collapse of the USSR as the tragedy of the Russian people and our personal tragedy and we aspire to the revenge.

2. We want to know why the URSS collapsed and who is responsible for this tragedy. We want the truth. 3. We want to understand how to have back what we lost, to restore the USSR. What was lost exactly is the Great

country and the “our own way of development”. 4. We want to change the world by our love of the truth. /Quote]


° The theory of Super-Modernity. The new type of society that will effectively response to the crisis of current western civilization; bearers of this project are the intellectual elite of Russia, offering the world an anti-Western alternative. Contemporary avatar of classic “third way” theory, inspired in XIX century by German romanticism (sonderwege as opposition to West).

Wishful thinking of EOT members: the need of conjectural alliance with Putin while constructing the numerous and structured circle of partisans; “being close to Kremlin can help us change things”.

2. Social Portrait of EOT Community.

Randomly choosing 50 members of EOT Vkontakte community. Calculating average age in R and plotting: 27 years old, urbanized elites (figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1: randomly choosing members of EOT community. Figure 2: Calculating and plotting average age

in R.

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

c


3. EOT network and principles of functioning.

Methods: Online observation April – September 2013: understanding inner structure & functioning. Locating, capturing, analysing & visualizing the EOT network with Issuecrawler // Gephi. ° “Kurginyan-friendly” antiliberal conservative network captured from the starting points (see Table 1 in Appendix), covering more broadly the field. Co-link analysis by the Issuecrawler tool to see the micro-association politics and how an actor may be characterized by the types of hyperlinks given and received (see Figure 3.)

[Algorithm of Issuecrawler (roughly) 1) Find all external links from each site; 2) Sort links alphabetically; 3) Scan through all lists returning those sites which exist in the external links of two or more sites]

Figure 3. EOT network.

° Individual blogs and communities joint by anti-western, anti-Navalny, antiliberal rhetoric, interest for Soviet history and USSR nostalgia. The net of links is quite tight: the exchange of ideas among the communities and individual blogs who are actively linking each other. The eot_su community standalone site links only to his own mirror blog, while receiving over 5800 links from crawled population, that shows his central position. ° Functioning, structure, underlying principles. Proclaimed principles: understanding (enlightening), developing (reproduction) and diffusion (information widespread) to form the wide circle of politically enlightened supporters. A cult of personality of Kurginyan that assumes his charismatic authority on members, being treated as a real guru. Forum’s discussions that are all strictly, rigorously framed by watchful moderators: either you accept and don’t’ question, or you’re out -> low activity, scarce intellectual work, no stirring discussions.


4. EOT IRL: going beyond the digital.

While the ideology seems to stagnate, the common antiliberal activity is high. ° Quite poorly crafted to do viral. Their “real” organisation is quite more interesting: the network-based movement is rooted in considerable number of entities formed nationwide. Numerous groups well-structured nationwide with leaders (dispatchers) coordinated by the Political Centre with Kourginyan at the top, a pyramidal structure (see Figure 4). Carrying out a number of ongoing permanent projects (See Figure 5 and 6). Every entity and every member is bounded by a set of rules and advice reinforcing awareness and group social capital (See Figure 7). Well-organized work, comparably perhaps to conventional state organized civil society youth organisations.

Figure 4. The structure of the eot movement nationwide. The project The objective 1. Territorial integrity The defence of the territorial integrity of Russia Federation 2. AKSIO Providing the citizens with authentic information about the society they live on 3. Historical dignity + Anti-defamation league

Ensuring the citizens’ right on deep study of their historical heritage; Struggling the defamations and falsifications of Russian history

4. ALMOR (Alternative Models of Development)

Coordination of research in: - world project analysis (miroproektnaya analitika) - world project modelling (miroproektnoe modelirovanie) - studying the real alternatives to development

5. Substantial Unity (Soderjatel’noe ednistvo)

Discussion club that helps to develop the current Russian agenda

6. Experimental Creative Centre (Centre of Kurginyan)

Development of conceptual, ideological and political tools

7. School of Superior Senses Kurginyan’s Theatre “On Stage” Laboratory of research in historical, cultural and metaphysical problems Methodological seminars

8. Diffusing ideas TV Internet Books, journals Newspapers

Carrying out projects

Nationwide network of 49 dispatchers

Every member is in charge of 1) regional activity; 2) one of the 12

transversal projects.

The Command Center Sergei Kurginyan, The President of

the Coordination Council (Koordinatsionnyi Sovet)

20 members of the Council managing the dispatchers' work

Local dispatchers

Local activists

Local activists

Local dispatchers

Local activists

Local activists


9. Counter-regression activity Creating the environment of spiritual self-defence and spiritual development. Discussion club, cinema club, lecturing.

10. Educations activity Create an alternative for current educational system in order for Russia to became the number 1 intellectual superpower

11. Social activity Productive activity within the community of associates (the knots of counter-regressive activity)

12. Constructing the future “The fourth project”. Figure 5. The 12 ongoing EOT projects.

Figure 6. Ongoing projects & goals.

1. Self-learning: the members of units have to watch the cycle of Kurginyan’s lectures, the cycle of

“Historical Process” show, and read at least one of his works “Esau and Jacob”. Enlighten yourself before you come to enlighten others.

2. Regularly organise group meetings with unit members, build the network of solidarity. 3. Form the unit’s library, exchange books. 4. Participate on informational resistance. 5. Diffuse the results of AKSIO survey. Do everything that is authorized by the law. 6. Diffuse the lectures of Kurginyan via torrents. 7. Start your blog, twitter or Livejournal. Promote your blog, be popular. 8. Think about regional strategy, but be careful not to deviate from the centre’s line, always submit every


idea to centre’s approval. 9. Be specific in your projects; focalise on one thing at once. 10. Uncover and analyse and the tendencies and scenarios of destructing of our Motherland and their

authors, uncover the destructive forces. 11. Participate in local Wiki. 12. Formulate your ideas and post them in the forum. 13. Lecture others. 14. Publish articles in local newspapers, sites, mentioning the site’s address and inviting to join us.

Figure 7. 14 advises to regional units (source: http://eot.su/node/4063)

5. Restoring historical dignity and Construction USSR 2.0: the NeoRomantic Generation

Issue Cloud tool used to build an issue dictionary extracting issues from the list of URL’s. Observing a strong historical commitment of the EOT movement.

Figure 8. Main issues extracted from EOT community site: AKSIO and “Historical dignity” on the top.

The goal of the AKSIO project: positive re-evaluations of Soviet history. ° Production of alternative data opposing the dominant discourse and state memory politics, perceived as false and blackening the glorious Soviet past, to construct a space of counter history and counter memory and to re-evaluate the image of the whole of Soviet history. Organizing and carrying out a relatively large scaled poll showing that the majority of Russians are actually against the “destalinization” of Russia; the survey was conducted from A to Z by eot activists, and the results relatively largely mediatised (See Appendix.) ° Launching the “20 years without USSR” project: the activists took photos of current Soviet artefacts (buildings, cinemas, infrastructure, parks), emphasizing the degradation of the infrastructure; a number of thematic expositions were organized in Russian cities, going beyond the web activity. The ideology is profoundly anchored in a certain image of Soviet past, idealized as “The Great USSR We Have Lost”. References on the “new perestroika” during the 4th February rally (see Appendix). ° Participation in annual commemorations of Stalin’s birthday, and on the “Stalinobus” project that makes circulate a bus with Stalin’s effigy in different cites in Russia but also Ukraine and even Latvia during the Victory Day.


Conclusion ° While key players of antiliberalism movement are rooted in a well-structured ideology, the structure created on the basis of this ideology is clearly politically operational. The Putin’s regime will further use the antiliberalism potential of the Russian society to create a special mobilisation form of organisation that can potentially be used in crisis situations. The “Kurginyan case” has more to do with the capturing and recuperation of existing groups and civil society actors by the State, trigging their protest potential into political benefices so that they act according to the State’s own agenda, rather than with the state-orchestrated movements. ° The political potential of Kurginyan’s movement can be pivotal, especially in view of the massive support for the Soviet nostalgia and fear of changes nationwide. ° Actually the public life is restructured, consolidating itself as a relevant political force and the third pole between anti Putin and pro Putin has emerged; this movement seems to be forming, within Russian political life, as a stable third pole between the authoritarian regime and the democratic opposition. Claiming their desire of evolution, they are supportive of the existing system as long as it is threatened by what is called “agents of the West”. They portray themselves as independent, yet acting in accordance with state agenda. ° Not sociologically significant, but while they are lacking web mobilisations as compared to Navalny’s supporters, they are already well present on the streets on the local level. The 2011 protests trigged their consolidation around the case of counter-revolution and mobilized this kind of post-materialists, antiliberal and anticapitalist activists.


Appendix

- www.eot.ru: main community of Kurginyan supporters; registration needed to visualize and participate in forum discussions; - http://vk.com/eotsu; http://vk.com/essenceoftime; Two Vkontakte community - http://eot-su.livejournal.com/profile (1579 member, 2155 readers); http://ecc-inform.livejournal.com/ (1,413 friends); Livejournal communities - https://www.facebook.com/groups/227442200671805 FB community, 1,974 members - http://eotcontent.ru/: Visual content studio - http://specistoriya.ru/: alternative history of perestroika - http://nk12.su/ alternative control of elections - http://pismasfronta.ru/: 2WW community - http://twentyyearsafter.su/ 20 years after USSR - http://www.kurginyan.ru/: Kurginyan’s club - http://www.youtube.com/wwwEotSu YouTube channel - http://vimeo.com/ecctv vimeo channel - https://twitter.com/eot_su Twitter

Table 1. Starting points for the IssueCrawler Tool.

Figure 2. Key findings of the AKSIO Project.


Figure 3. Placard for the 23th February Rally: against the “new perestroika”, for the “Great country”

Figure 5. Bei liberal’nogo gada!

A Counter-revolutionary Potential of the 2011 Protests in Russia [A Case Study of Digital...

Documents

Transcript of A Counter-revolutionary Potential of the 2011 Protests in Russia [A Case Study of Digital...