Memory, Media, and Securitization: Russian Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis

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SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET POLITICS AND SOCIETY

Vol. 1, No. 1 (2015)

proof copy - Elizaveta Gaufman 2015-05-21

Russian Media and the War in Ukraine JSPPS 1:1 (2015)

GENERAL EDITOR AND ISSUE EDITOR‐IN‐CHIEF: Julie Fedor, University of Melbourne

CONSULTING EDITOR: Andreas Umland, Institute for Euro‐Atlantic Cooperation, Kyiv GUEST EDITOR: Andriy Portnov, Humboldt University of Berlin


JSPPS EDITORIAL TEAM General Editor:

Julie Fedor, University of Melbourne Editors:

Samuel Greene, King's College London André Härtel, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena

Andrey Makarychev, University of Tartu Consulting Editor:

Andreas Umland, Institute for Euro‐Atlantic Cooperation, Kyiv

JSPPS ADVISORY BOARD Hannes Adomeit, College of Europe, Natolin Timofey Agarin, Queen's University, Belfast Mikhail Alexseev, San Diego State University, CA Catherine Andreyev, University of Oxford Anne Applebaum, The Legatum Institute, London Anders Åslund, Peterson Inst. for International Economics Margarita Balmaceda, Seton Hall University, NJ Harley Balzer, Georgetown University, DC John Barber, University of Cambridge Timm Beichelt, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) Mark R. Beissinger, Princeton University, NJ Thomas Bohn, Justus Liebig University, Giessen Giovanna Brogi, University of Milan Paul Chaisty, University of Oxford Vitaly Chernetsky, University of Kansas, Lawrence Ariel Cohen, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, MD Timothy J. Colton, Harvard University, MA Peter J.S. Duncan, University College London John B. Dunlop, Stanford University, CA Gerald M. Easter, Boston College, MA Alexander Etkind, European University Institute, Florence M. Steven Fish, University of California at Berkeley Gasan Gusejnov, Higher School of Economics, Moscow Nikolas K. Gvosdev, U.S. Naval War College, RI Michael Hagemeister, Ruhr University, Bochum Stephen E. Hanson, College of William & Mary, VA Olexiy Haran, Kyiv‐Mohyla Academy Nicolas Hayoz, University of Fribourg Andreas Heinemann‐Grüder, University of Bonn Stephen Hutchings, University of Manchester, UK Stefani Hoffman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mikhail Ilyin, Higher School of Economics, Moscow Wilfried Jilge, University of Basel Markku Kangaspuro, University of Helsinki Adrian Karatnycky, Atlantic Council, New York Andrei Kazantsev, MGIMO, Moscow

Jeffrey Kopstein, University of Toronto Hrant Kostanyan, Centre for European Policy Studies Paul Kubicek, Oakland University, MI Walter Laqueur, Georgetown University, DC Marlene Laruelle, George Washington University, DC Carol Leonard, Higher School of Economics, Moscow Leonid Luks, The Catholic University of Eichstaett‐Ingolstadt Luke March, University of Edinburgh Lisa M. Sundstrom, University of British Columbia Mykhailo Minakov, Kyiv‐Mohyla Academy Olga Onuch, University of Manchester Mitchell Orenstein, Northeastern University, MA Nikolay Petrov, Higher School of Economics, Moscow Andriy Portnov, Humboldt University, Berlin Serhii Plokhii, Harvard University, MA Alina Polyakova, Atlantic Council, DC Maria Popova, McGill University, Montreal Alex Pravda, University of Oxford Per Anders Rudling, Lund University Mykola Riabchuk, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kyiv Ellen Rutten, University of Amsterdam Jutta Scherrer, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Dieter Segert, University of Vienna Anton Shekhovtsov, The Legatum Institute, London Stephen Shulman, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Oxana Shevel, Tufts University, MA Valerie Sperling, Clark University, MA Susan Stewart, SWP, Berlin Mark Tauger, West Virginia University, Morgantown Vera Tolz‐Zilitinkevic, University of Manchester Amir Weiner, Stanford University Sarah Whitmore, Oxford Brookes University, UK Andrew Wilson, University College London Christian Wipperfürth, DGAP, Berlin Andreas Wittkowsky, ZIF, Berlin Jan Zielonka, University of Oxford


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Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society Vol. 1, No. 1 (2015)

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v

CONTENTS

From the General Editor JULIE FEDOR ......................................................................................... vii

SPECIAL ISSUE: RUSSIAN MEDIA AND THE WAR IN UKRAINE

Introduction: Russian Media and the War in Ukraine JULIE FEDOR ............................................................................................ 1

Putin’s Crimea Speech, 18 March 2014: Russia’s Changing Public Political Narrative EDWIN BACON ...................................................................................... 13

Filtering Foreign Media Content: How Russian News Agencies Repurpose Western News Reporting ROLF FREDHEIM ................................................................................... 37

“Gayromaidan”: Gendered Aspects of the Hegemonic Russian Media Discourse on the Ukrainian Crisis TATIANA RIABOVA and OLEG RIABOV ................................................. 83

Historical Myths, Enemy Images and Regional Identity in the Donbass Insurgency (Spring 2014) ALEXANDR OSIPIAN ........................................................................... 109

Memory, Media, and Securitization: Russian Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis ELIZAVETA GAUFMAN ......................................................................... 141

Combating the Russian State Propaganda Machine: Strategies of Information Resistance TATIANA BONCH-OSMOLOVSKAYA ..................................................... 175

Infiltration, Instruction, Invasion: Russia’s War in the Donbass NIKOLAY MITROKHIN ......................................................................... 219


vi

Ukraine and the Global Information War: Panel Discussion and Forum Featuring: ANNE APPLEBAUM; MARGARITA AKHVLEDIANI; SABRA

AYRES; RENAUD DE LA BROSSE; RORY FINNIN; JAMES MARSON; SARAH

OATES; SIMON OSTROVSKY; KEVIN M. F. PLATT; PETER POMERANTSEV; NATALIA RULYOVA; MICHAEL WEISS; MAKSYM YAKOVLYEV; and VERA ZVEREVA ............................................................................. 251

REVIEW ESSAY

Ukraine Crisis—Where From, Where To?

Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands Andrew Wilson, Ukraine Crisis: What it Means for the West RASMUS NIELSEN ................................................................................ 301

REVIEWS

Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? ANDERS ÅSLUND ................................................................................ 309

David R. Marples, Frederick V. Mills (eds.), Ukraine’s Euromaidan: Analyses of a Civil Revolution MYKOLA RIABCHUK ............................................................................ 312

About the Contributors .................................................................... 317


141

Memory, Media, and Securitization: Russian Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis1

Elizaveta Gaufman

Abstract: This article uses securitization theory as a lens for analyzing the Russian media framing of the Ukrainian crisis as a struggle against “fascism”. It argues that the distinctive shape of the post-Soviet Russian collective memory is a crucial factor enabling the successful use of the “fascism” frame. The article combines “big data” and qualitative analysis of the Russian media discourse in the spring and summer of 2014. It compares the prevalence of the fascist frame in different forms of media: Pervyi kanal news reports; mass media more broadly; and social media (Twitter, VKontakte, and Zhivoi Zhurnal), and finds that there is a high degree of similarity across “old” and “new” media in the categories and terms used to narrate the conflict in Ukraine.

Introduction

From the outset, the Euromaidan was viewed as a threat by the Russian authorities. For the Russian elite, these events called up an alarming parallel with the 2004 Orange Revolution:2 not only had the possibility of Ukraine moving into the “West”’s sphere of influence reared its head once again, but so too had the threat that of a Ukrainian revolutionary movement spreading to Russia. As the

1 During the work on this article I received valuable comments from two

anonymous reviewers and JSPPS editors. I would like to specially thank Julie Fedor for her insightful suggestions, editorial work, and assistance with the translation.

2 On the Russian elite’s reaction to the Orange Revolution see further R. Horvath, Putin’s Preventive Counter-revolution: Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012).


142 ELIZAVETA GAUFMAN

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confrontation between the protesters and supporters of President Yanukovych deepened, the Russian official position on Ukraine became increasingly hostile. This position was mirrored in the Russian mass media coverage, where the conflict in Ukraine was framed as a clash between the forces of good and evil, and as a noble struggle against the “fascist” Western-sponsored Ukrainian nationalists intent on carrying out a “genocide” of Russians in Ukraine.3 What purposes does this framing serve, and how successful has it been in shaping the agenda and discourse across different forms of media in Russia, including social media? This article sets out to offer some preliminary answers to these questions, based on both “big data” and qualitative analysis of the Russian media discourse on the conflict in Ukraine.

In this study, I use securitization theory as a lens for analyzing media commentary on Ukraine. The Copenhagen school of security studies have developed the concept of securitization as a framework for understanding how security is constructed.4 While securitization theory was conceived as an instrument for the study of democratic systems, it also constitutes a useful approach for the analysis of similar processes operating in the context of hybrid and authoritarian regimes like Russia,5 since the basic mechanisms at work here are the same.6 3 In fact right-wing organizations represented a small minority amongst

supporters of the Euromaidan, and the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary elections returned only 12 MPs holding radical-right views (down from 37 in 2012); see Anton Shekhovtsov’s commentary, cited Annabelle Chapman, “The Ukrainian Elections—A Vote for a Western Path”, Center for European Policy Analysis, 3 November 2014, http://cepa.org/content/ukrainian-elections-vote-western-path. See further on this topic A. Shekhovtsov and A. Umland, “Ukraine’s Radical Right”, Journal of Democracy 25, no. 3 (2014): 58-63. Unless otherwise indicated, all websites cited in this article were accessible on 15 March 2015.

4 B. Buzan, O. Wæver, and J. de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998).

5 On debates over how to define the current Russian political regime, see R. Sakwa, Putin Redux: Power and Contradiction in Contemporary Russia (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).

6 On the applicability of securitization theory to non-democratic regimes, see Juhi A. Vuori, “Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization: Applying the Theory of Securitization to the Study of Non-democratic Political Orders”, European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 1 (2008): 65-99.


MEMORY, MEDIA, SECURITIZATION 143

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The Russian media framing of Ukraine can be viewed as an example of a “securitizing move”, that is, as an attempt to depict a given phenomenon as an existential threat, thereby enabling the legitimization of extraordinary measures ostensibly aimed at combating this threat. In order to be successful, a securitizing move must be supported by public opinion.7 Russian social media can offer us valuable insights into the state of Russian public opinion,8 and the findings set out in this article indicate widespread popular support for the securitization of the discourse on the situation in Ukraine. It is not only state-controlled television channels that are using the discourse of “Ukrainian fascism”; social network users also refer to Ukrainian supporters of European integration and the Poroshenko government as “banderites” and “fascists”, and thereby participate in constructing the Ukrainian side of the conflict in special categories which serve to justify the use of extraordinary measures.

In this article I argue that post-Soviet Russian collective memory is a crucial factor enabling the successful securitization of the Ukrainian crisis. It is the distinctive shape of this collective memory that fulfills the condition that the securitization discourse be “embedded”, that is, capable of resonating with existing constructions, in this case, with constructions present in collective memory.9

I begin by sketching out the key salient features of Russian collective memory that lend themselves to being pressed into the service of this securitization campaign. I then present my findings on the prevalence of the “fascism” frame across different forms of

7 T. Balzacq, “The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and

Context”, European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 2 (June 2005): 171-201.

8 I. Lunde et al, “Introduction”, in Digital Russia: The Language, Culture and Politics of New Media Communication, ed. I. Lunde, M. S. Gorham and M. Paulsen (London: Routledge, 2014), 1-8.

9 Оn the role of the “embeddeddness of the discourse” in a successful securitization process, see Holger Stritzel, “Towards a Theory of Securitization”, European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 3 (2007): 357-383; and Thierry Balzacq (ed.), Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (New York: Routledge, 2011).



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media, based on an examination of Pervyi kanal news reports (representing the standard, officially sanctioned pro-Kremlin narrative); Russian mass media more broadly; and Cyrillic segments of the social networks Twitter, VKontakte and Zhivoi Zhurnal.

Online material was gathered using the social media archiving tools developed by Amit Agarwal,10 and analyzed using voyeurtools.org, which enables visualization of word frequency in big data samples. The Integrum World Wide database was used to analyze the frequency with which particular terms were used in Cyrillic mass media.11 I primarily examine the period from the Crimean crisis of March 2014 through to August 2014, with a particular focus on the July-August period, which was characterized by heightened military hostilities.

Russian Collective Memory of Fascism

The specificity of Russian collective memory of the Great Patriotic War has been a key factor shaping society’s response to the “fascism” media frame and helping to build popular support for measures aimed at combating this existential threat, which has been consistently described and constructed using categories and tropes drawn from the Soviet Great Patriotic War lexicon.

For a number of reasons, the memory of the war is especially immediate and emotionally charged in Russia. In this context, “fascism” is not simply a dry term describing distant events and existing only on the pages of history textbooks. It is a highly evocative term that calls up a series of vivid images that are saturated with distinctive meanings and associations, and that have deep contemporary relevance, touching on issues at the very core of the post-Soviet Russian identity. In this context the “fascism” frame is thus an especially powerful tool for constructing a sense of existential threat. The well-established, multi-layered and heavily

10 See Amit Agarwal’s website: http://ctrlq.org. 11 For details on Integrum’s coverage, see http://www.integrumworld.com/

rus/about.html.



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mythologized meanings associated with the Russian memory of “fascism” serve to increase the likelihood that Russian audiences will accept and support securitizing moves that employ this frame.12

The Russian memory of the war has a number of distinctive features. First, the struggle with fascism is closely interlinked with Russia’s national identity as a “great power” and as the “liberator of Europe”.13 As Tatiana Zhurzhenko has noted, by condemning “neo-fascism” in the Baltic states and Ukraine, Moscow not only positions itself as the true defender of European values, but also relives its moment of “geopolitical triumph”.14 This memory is cherished especially dearly in the context of the international order that was formed with the end of the Cold War and the emotions linked to the perceived fall in status that came with the demise of the Soviet Union.15

Second, the vitality and prominence of the Russian collective memory of the Great Patriotic War in part represent the fruits of decades of work by ideologists, from the Soviet period onwards,16 including recent renewed and intensified efforts aimed at capitalizing on the growing popularity of Victory Day.17 The Great

12 On the role of the audience in the process of securitization, see Balzacq, “Three

Faces of Securitization”. 13 T. Zhurzhenko, “The Geopolitics of Memory”, Eurozine, May 10 (2007),

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-05-10-zhurzhenko-en.html. 14 Ibid. 15 As Peter Burke has observed, history is not only written by the victors—it also

forgotten by them. Burke writes: “They [the victors] can afford to forget, whereas the losers are unable to accept what happened and are condemned to brood over it, relive it, and reflect how different it might have been”; Peter Burke, “History as Social Memory”, in Memory: History, Culture and the Mind, ed. T. Butler (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 106. The emotions around such remembering help to explain why the “loss” of former Soviet republics now moving into NATO’s sphere of influence is such a sensitive issue in Russia.

16 Full-scale institutionalization and sacralization of Victory Day began under Brezhnev; see further L. Gudkov, “‘Pamiat’ o voine i massovaia identichnost’ rossiian”, Neprikosnovennyi zapas 2-3 (2005): 40-41.

17 See J. Lassila, “Witnessing War, Globalizing Victory”, in Memory, Conflict and New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States, eds. E. Rutten, J. Fedor, and V. Zvereva, (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 215-217; and L. Gudkov, “The Fetters of Victory”, Eurozine network (2005), http://www.eurozine.com/ articles/2005-05-03-gudkov-en.html.



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Patriotic War represents one of the few events in Russian history capable of uniting the overwhelming majority of Russians,18 and precisely for this reason, the memory of the war was actively used for identity-making purposes in the late 1990s and 2000s.19 The revival of the Victory parade on Red Square in 1995,20 numerous patriotic commemorative initiatives by pro-government organi-zations, the use of the St George’s ribbon as a visual commemorative symbol, and the large volume of cinematic works on the war21 all testify to the activization of the war memory during this period, often with the direct involvement of securitizing actors from Russian government structures.22

Some degree of mythologization and glorification of the national past is an essential element of all nation-building,23 but this is especially important for post-Soviet Russia, which has been experiencing an ongoing identity crisis since the collapse of the USSR.24 Recently, the Russian memory of the war has reached a new level of mythologization: numerous legislative bills banning criticism of the role of the Red Army in the war and calling into

18 Gudkov, “‘Pamiat’ o voine”: 40-41. 19 Rutten, Fedor, and Zvereva (eds.), Memory, Conflict and New Media; and V.

Tolz, “Conflicting ‘Homeland Myths’ and Nation-State Building in Postcommunist Russia”, Slavic Review 57, no. 2 (1998): 267-294.

20 K. E. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia: Politics and Memory during the Yeltsin Era (Cornell University Press, 2002), 85-87.

21 Many new films and TV mini-series about the war were produced in the 2000s, including perhaps most prominently Nikita Mikhalkov’s Exodus (2010) and Citadel (2011). In general contemporary war memory in Russia can now be described as a form of “postmemory”—that is, people remember the war through the prism of their relatives’ memories and of fictional representations of the war, through literature and film, and hence in a lyrical, mythologized form; on “postmemory”, see M. Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory”, Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (2008): 103-128; and on Russian war memory, see L. Afanas’ev and V. Merkushin, “Velikaia Otechestvennaia Voina v istoricheskoi pamiati rossiian”, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia 5 (2005): 11-22.

22 See E. A. Wood, “Performing Memory: Vladimir Putin and the Celebration of World War II in Russia”, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 38, no. 2 (2011): 172-200.

23 I. Yablokov, Тeoriia zagovora i sovremennoe istoricheskoe soznanie (Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012), 45.

24 A. Etkind, Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 184.



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question the rulings of the Nuremberg Tribunal essentially officially equate such criticism to blasphemy.25 In this context, it is hardly surprising that one of the main bogeymen used as part of the process of constructing the Euromaidan as an existential threat should be the controversial figure of the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera. While the trajectory of Bandera’s career was complex and included periods of Nazi imprisonment as well as periods of Nazi collaboration,26 he figures in Soviet and post-Soviet official Russian historiography unambiguously as a “fascist accomplice”.27

Third, the Russian memory of the war differs from its European and North American counterparts in its lack of emphasis on the memory of the Holocaust.28 For Russians, the memory of fascism is associated first and foremost with the immense suffering of the Soviet population, especially the civilian population in the occupied territories. As Maksym Yakovlyev writes, the primary chain of associations evoked by the Red Army’s victory over fascism focuses on atrocities perpetrated against Soviet women and children.29 This is the standard chain of associations evoked by the concept of “fascism” for the average Russian citizen, who, even if he or she paid little attention in school history classes, will at least have

25 For examples of legislative measures aimed at “defending” the history of the

war, see “Duma khochet zapretit’ kritiku Krasnoi Armii vremen VOV”, Russkaia sluzhba BBC, 24 June 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/rolling_news/ 2013/06/130624_rn_red_army_war_criticism_crime.shtml; M. Degtiarev, “О vnesenii izmenenii v Federal’nyi zakon ‘Ob uvekovechenii Pobedy sovetskogo naroda v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941-1945 godov’ i v Ugolovnyi kodeks Rossiiskoi Federatsii”, http://degtyarev.info/document/zakonproekti/139237/.

26 Stepan Bandera is a complex figure whose biography does not lend itself to an easy summary. On this subject see R. Fredheim, G. Howanitz and M. Makhortykh, “Scraping the Monumental: Stepan Bandera through the Lens of Quantitative Memory Studies”, Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media, no. 12 (2014): 25-53.

27 Ibid.: 25. 28 S. Rohdewald, “Post-Soviet Remembrance of the Holocaust and National

Memories of the Second World War in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania”, Forum for Modern Language Studies 44, no. 2 (2008), 180-181.

29 M. Yakovlev [Yakovlyev], “Antimaidan posle Yevromaidana v sotsial’nykh setiakh: obraz vraga i opaseniia zhitelei vostoka Ukrainy”, Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul’tury—Russkoe izdanie, no. 1 (2014), http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/inhaltruss21.html.



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watched a few movies about the war, and whose family will also have been touched directly by the war experience in one way or another. In the Soviet drama and demonology of the war, the perpetrators of atrocities against Soviet civilians function as the embodiment of absolute evil, and as we shall see below, this aspect of the Russian war memory has proved especially useful for framing the current events in Ukraine.

In addition, the Soviet and Russian historiography on the war employs a distinctive lexicon which is in some respects especially supple and broad, thus lending itself to wider application beyond this concrete historical instance. Thus, for example, the term “Nazi” is used only infrequently in Soviet/Russian discussions on the Great Patriotic War, and then generally only with reference to contempo-rary neo-Nazi movements. This is a convention dating to the Soviet period, and may possibly reflect a reluctance to draw undue attention to the fact that the Nazi or National Socialist German Workers’ Party was at least nominally a “socialist” and a “workers’” party. Consequently “fascism” is the label more commonly used in Russia for German National Socialism.30 In Soviet historiography the prevalence of the stock phrase “German-fascist occupiers” meant that fascism almost invariably implied its German variant. In the contemporary Russian usage, by contrast, “fascism” and “Germany” have largely become decoupled,31 with the exception of the occasional joke bumper stickers displayed on German-made cars reading “To Berlin!” or “Trophy Car”.32 In general, as Stanley Payne has noted, the term “fascism” is notoriously hard to define and is sufficiently broad and vague as to encompass a range of different

30 The standard Soviet stock phrase is nemetsko-fashistskie zakhvatchiki. On the

Soviet use of the term “fascism”, see also G. G. Khazagerov and Ye. Yu. Shchemeleva, “Paradoksy totalitarnoi ritoriki: yazyk”, Gramota, no. 7 (25) (2013): 205-210.

31 The situation is different when it comes to neo-Nazi organizations in Russia—for these groups, the German connection is very important; see A. Verkhovskii, “Evoliutsiia postsovetskogo dvizheniia russkikh natsionalistov”, Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia: Dannye. Analiz. Diskussii 1 (107) (2011): 11-35.

32 Stranitsa VKontakte “Nakleiki na avto k 9 maia. Fabrika Nakleek”, http://vk.com/nakleiky_9maya.



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movements and ideologies.33 This flexibility, combined with the strong stigma associated with the term, opens up wide possibilities for its abuse for propaganda purposes, as in the current case, where it is freely re-applied to Ukrainian nationalists (“banderites”) and their “US sponsors”.

Russian Mass Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis

Vlad Strukov has flagged up the need for scholarly debate on the ramifications of the convergence of mass media in post-communist states, and on the associated transmedia practices in the region, that is, on the ways in which “old” and “new” media interact.34 In this article I examine this relationship by analyzing and comparing materials both from traditional mass media (especially Pervyi kanal TV broadcasts) and from social media, with a view to investigating what differences and similarities might be observed in the use of terms and categories referring to events in Ukraine. On the whole, as set out below, I found that the framing of the conflict was remarkably similar across different media, with the same discursive features present on federal state TV and in social media alike.

The television framing of the conflict is especially significant given that the majority of the Russian population relies primarily on federal TV news broadcasts as their main source of information.35 According to sociological polls conducted in June 2014, 94%(!) of the Russian population acquires most of its information about the world

33 S. G. Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition (Madison: University of

Wisconsin Press, 1980). 34 V. Strukov, “Kolonka Redaktora”, Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and

Central European New Media no. 5 (2011), http://www.digitalicons.org/ issue05/ru/vlad-strukov/. On the relationship between “old” and “new” media see also A. Robertson, “Connecting in Crisis: ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Media and the Arab Spring”, The International Journal of Press/Politics 18, no. 3 (July 2013): 325-41.

35 Over the past five years, over 90% of the Russian population have acquired most of their knowledge about events in the world primarily from television; see D. Volkov and S. Goncharov, “Rossiiski media-landshaft: televidenie, press, Internet”, Analiticheskii Tsentr Yuriia Levady (2014), http://www.levada.ru/17-06-2014/rossiiskii-media-landshaft-televidenie-pressa-internet.



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from TV.36 Let us, then, briefly survey how the events in Ukraine have been framed and narrated in TV broadcasts.

Perhaps the most obvious feature of the Russian TV coverage of the protests in Ukraine was the emphasis placed on the role of radical right-wing Euromaidan activists. The labeling of this group as “fascists” can be viewed as a bid to activate and instrumentalize the collective memory of the Great Patriotic War. This was especially noticeable in Pervyi kanal news reports,37 which frequently included video footage of armed men wearing Pravyi sektor arm-bands,38 and abundant references to Stepan Bandera.39 Indeed, practically every report on the Euromaidan on Pervyi kanal featured references to “fascism”. The Integrum World Wide database enables us to map the frequency with which particular words are used in Russian mass media. On Graph 1 below we can see a clear upsurge in references to “fascism”, essentially from the beginning of the Euromaidan. This is markedly different from previous years, where the frequency of “fascism” references was generally linked primarily to the war’s key anniversary dates (9 May and 22 June).40

36 Ibid. 37 See for example “Ukrainskie natsionalisty ustraivaiut pogromy i zakhavytvaiut

predpriiatiia”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 20 March 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/ news/world/254620.

38 See for example “Informatsionnaia voina za Ukrainu v SMI i v internete nabiraet”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 6 March 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/news/ world/253625; “V Kiev priekhali okolo 300 inostrannykh naemnikov”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 5 March 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/news/world/253517.

39 For example: “Across the whole Euromaidan—portraits of Stepan Bandera. Across the whole Euromaidan—black-and-red banners. Have we all forgotten what this banner is? Have we forgotten that Soviet partisans were killed under this banner? The UPA—the Ukrainian Insurgent Army! We’ve all forgotten about this so quickly!”; “Ukraina: prognoz razvitiia sobytii”, Politika, Pervyi kanal, 22 January 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/sprojects_edition/si5905/fi28587.

40 A small deviation from the usual frequency of occurrence of the term “fascism” can be made out in October and November 2013. The next increase took place as tensions rose in late January, February and March 2014 in connection with the Maidan shootings and the Crimean annexation. The upsurge in May-June 2014 was especially large, presumably because of Victory Day (9 May) and the anniversary of the German invasion (22 June). Here we can discern a particular resonating effect: the situation in Ukraine amplified the memory of the war and the frequency of media references to “fascism” more than doubled as a result.



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Graph 1: Frequency of references to “fascism” in Russian mass media. Graph produced using Integrum World Wide.

As we can see on the graph, in January 2014 the frequency of references to “fascism” reached a level roughly equivalent to that of June, that is, the month when Nazi Germany’s invasion of the USSR is most actively commemorated. The next rise in frequency came in March, that is, at the time of the Russian annexation of Crimea; and in April-May, during the armed conflict between pro-Russian fighters and the central Ukrainian authorities. In general the variations in the frequency of references to “fascism” map closely against the dynamic of the conflict.

The nature of the TV reporting changed after the Crimean annexation and the beginning of the Ukrainian government’s “anti-terrorist operation” in South-East Ukraine. It was at this point that the terms “Novorossiia”, “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) and “Lugansk People’s Republic” (LNR) appeared in the Pervyi kanal



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lexicon.41 However, the latter two terms subsequently temporarily disappeared in the wake of the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on 17 July 2014, an event which occurred, according to Pervyi kanal, “over Ukrainian territory”, even though the territory in question was under the DNR’s control at the time.42

The terminology used in narrating the conflict in Ukraine is heavily loaded and indicates immediately where one’s sympathies lie. The Russian mass media signal a positive attitude towards the pro-Russian militarized groups in East Ukraine by using the term employed by the fighters themselves, namely “militia” (opolchentsy).43 This term calls up a chain of associations linked not only to the Great Patriotic War and the popular resistance to fascism, but also back further, to the militia led by Minin and Pozharskii during the seventeenth-century Time of Troubles, and, in turn, to the celebrations marking the end of the Troubles on the “Day of National Unity” (Den’ narodnogo yedinstva) (4 November).44 It thus serves to create a positive image associated primarily with the notion of defending one’s homeland from foreign invaders.

When it comes to describing the Ukrainian side, the brutality and inhumanity of the forces fighting the pro-Russian militia is constantly underlined. Moreover, on occasion, instances of such brutality have been simply invented by Russian journalists. The most notorious example here is the Pervyi kanal report on the “execution of the small son and wife of an opolchenets” on Lenin Square in the center of Slaviansk/Sloviansk. According to this

41 See for example “Prestupleniia ukrainskikh vlastei protiv sobstvennykh

grazhdan zafiksirovany v ‘Beloi knige’”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 3 June 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/news/social/262276.

42 “Rossiia trebuet nezavisimogo rassledovaniia s privlecheniem mezhdunarod-nykh ekspertov”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 18 July 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/ news/polit/263400.

43 See for example “Opolchentsy govoriat o bol’shikh poteriakh v riadakh ukrainskikh silovikov v poslednee vremia”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 12 August 2014, https://www.1tv.ru/news/social/265207.

44 This holiday, which was introduced in 2005, is also viewed as commemorating the victory over the Polish invaders, an issue which led to a minor Russo-Polish “memory war”; see E. Gaufman and K. Wałasek, “The New Cold War on the Football Field”, Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media, no. 12 (2014): 55-75.



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report, a three-year-old boy had been “nailed like Christ” to a noticeboard on the square.45 Subsequent investigations found that the “refugee” who had allegedly witnessed the “executions” was not really from Sloviansk; and that there is in fact no Lenin Square in Sloviansk.46 The obvious point of this fictitious report was to show the “barbarity” of the pro-Ukrainian side.47

Finally, the term karatel’ is also frequently used on Pervyi kanal.48 The word karatel’ is another borrowing from the Great Patriotic War lexicon. It has no direct equivalent in English.49 It is conventionally used for describing the perpetrators of Nazi (and

45 “Bezhenka iz Slaviansk vspominaet, kak pri nei kaznili malen’kogo syna i zhenu

opolchentsa”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 12 July 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/ news/world/262978.

46 O. Кashin, “Кrovavyi navet v efire ‘Pervogo kanala’: izvinitsia li Konstantin Ernst pered zriteliami?”, Slon.ru, 14 July 2014, http://slon.ru/russia/krovavyy_navet _v_efire_pervogo_kanala_izvinitsya_li_konstantin_ernst_pered_zritelyami-112 6862.xhtml.

47 Crucifixion has long been a favored motif in war atrocity stories. Trudi Tate notes that “Crucifixion stories—whether of babies, children, or Americans—reappeared throughout the [First World] war, but no verifiable cases of crucifixion were ever found”. She speculates that the reasons why crucifixion makes a “good propaganda story” have to do not only with its religious connotations, but also with the fact that, in the context of modern warfare, “[c]rucifixion is the wrong kind of death in this war; an inappropriate use of its technology. The event is contaminated—dirty—matter out of place”. She further points out, “The many terrible and revolting acts which really did take place during the First World War were hardly ever used as propaganda; indeed, true stories were rigorously censored in Britain throughout the war. The most compelling and memorable stories to be taken up and circulated were almost always fictions, and they were fictions of a particular kind”; Trudi Tate, Modernism, History and the First World War 2nd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 54-55.

48 See for example “Ob istinnykh masshtabakh razrushenii v gorodakh, kotorye bombiat karateli, rasskazyvaiut bezhentsy”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 24 July 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/news/social/263819.

49 The 1953 Ozhegov dictionary defines karatel’ as follows: “a gendarme, policeman, carrying out brutal actions against laborers, participant of a punitive detachment”. The Ozhegov entry also gives zverstva karatelei (“atrocities by karateli”) as an example of a phrase using the term; Tolkovyi slovar’ pod redaktsiei S. Ozhegova (Мoscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo inostrannykh i natsional’nykh slovarei, 1953).



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especially SS) atrocities against civilians on occupied territory.50 The use of the term karateli with reference to pro-Ukrainian forces thus creates yet another clear discursive parallel with fascism, further reinforcing the notion that these forces represent an existential threat.51

Russian Social Media on the Ukrainian Crisis

While television is the major information source for the overwhelming majority of Russians, there are also around 68 million Internet users in Russia, 56 million of whom use the Internet on a daily basis.52 Given that Russia is currently ranked in 148th place on the World Press Freedom Index,53 such that the significance of alternative online media is increased, and given the rapid and ongoing growth in the number of Russian Internet users and social media users in particular,54 it would be difficult to over-estimate the importance of new media in the Russian context.

Judging by the legislative measures that have been adopted with a view to controlling online media in Russia,55 and the massive 50 See for example B. Izakov, “Bor’ba prodolzhaetsia”, Pravda, no. 299, 26 October

1942. 51 The term karateli was also used to demonize the protesters from the Orange

Revolution; see for example the 2010 Pervyi kanal “documentary” entitled “Orange Children of the Third Reich” and with the subheading “How To Make Pro-Democracy Fighters out of Death Squad Members [karateli] and Pathological Chauvinists”; “Оranzhevye deti Tret’ego reikha”, Pervyi kanal, 3 February 2010, http://www.1tv.ru/documentary/fi=6441.

52 According to data from the RF Ministry of Communications and Mass Media: “Glava Minkomsviazi Rossii vystupil na meropriatii vysokogo urovnia v ramkakh Genassamblei OON”, RF Ministry of Communications and Mass Media official website, http://minsvyaz.ru/ru/news/index.php?id_4=44571.

53 World Press Freedom Index, http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php. 54 The number of Runet users is growing annually by roughly 7%, and reached

68.7 million in spring 2014; see presentation by S. Plugotarenko, “Glavnyi analiticheskii doklad agregiruiushchii informatsiiu po sostoianiiu razvitiia Runeta—po itogam proshedshego goda”, Rossiiskii internet-forum 2014, http://www.slideshare.net/Dimanius/2014-rif-2014.

55 For example, Federal Law No. 97-FZ, 5 May 2014 (in force from 1 August 2014), requires all Internet uses with over 3000 followers daily to register with Roskomnadzor. See also Federal Law No. 139-FZ, 28 July 2012, “On Amending



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resources that have been invested in regulating and penetrating the Russian blogosphere,56 the Russian leadership is also keenly aware of the influential role played by new media in shaping public opinion. The government’s general attitude towards new media would appear to be encapsulated by the famous phrase used in early 2012 by Stanislav Govorukhin, then head of Putin’s election campaign staff, who described the Internet as “a rubbish-dump controlled by GosDep [the US State Department]”.57 During the 2011-12 elections, DDoS attacks on oppositional websites, seemingly with state involvement, were registered by numerous independent organizations.58 The 2012 “Kremlingate” scandal also showed that the Russian authorities had in fact gone much further than merely obstructing oppositional media, and that millions of rubles had been spent by the government with the aim of channeling online discussions in the desired direction.59 The hacked correspondence between then head of the Agency for Youth Affairs Vasilii Yakemenko and his deputy Kristina Potupchik demonstrated that a significant amount of budgetary funds were being spent on paying an “army of bots”—people paid to write “correct” online comments and posts on themes of interest to the government.60 These online

the Federal Law ‘On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development’ and Other Individual Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation on the Issue of Limiting Access to Unlawful Information on the Internet” and Federal Law No. 398-FZ, 28 December 2013, on blocking extremist websites.

56 See S. Smirnov, A. Artem’ev and G. Tumanov, “'Obvinit’ nas nikto ni v chem ne smozhet’”, Gazeta.ru, 8 February 2012, http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2012/ 02/08_a_3993349.shtml.

57 “Stanislav Govorukhin: Internet—‘pomoika’ v rukakh Gosdepa”, Golos Ameriki, 20 January 2012, http://www.golos-ameriki.ru/content/govorukhin-internet-20 12-02-20-139712463/250926.html.

58 L. Mikhaylova, “Internet as a Battlefield in Russian Elections”, The Examiner, 3 March 2012, http://www.examiner.com/article/internet-as-a-battlefield-rus sian-elections.

59 A. Karimova, “Kremlevskaia blogodel’nia”, Kommersant, 13 February 2012, http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1868022.

60 Ibid.



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warriors reportedly take their cue at least in part from the current discourse on RT and Pervyi kanal.61

For this study, I decided to focus on three social media platforms: Zhivoi Zhurnal, VKontakte, and Twitter. All three play an important role in the Russian media landscape. As Roesen and Zvereva have observed, in recent times Russian Internet users’ preferred genre for online communications has shifted away from blogs and towards social networks.62 In the early 2000s Zhivoi Zhurnal (Livejournal.com) was the most important online platform, but by the mid-2010s social networks had overtaken blogs, and “liking” and “sharing” posts had become the most common methods for communicating online.63 The social network VKontakte has become especially popular in post-Soviet space, and VKontakte has played an important role in the discursive war over Ukraine.64 While the Twitter microblog service was not widely popular amongst

61 See “Тrolli iz Ol’gino pereekhali v novyi chetyrekhetazhnyi ofis na Savushkina”,

dp.ru, 28 October 2014, http://www.dp.ru/a/2014/10/27/Borotsja_s_om erzeniem_mo/. Pro-Kremlin paid Internet commentators are the frequent butt of jokes; see for example a caricature by Yelkin in which an Internet user measures his Internet speed by the rate and number of “kremlin-bot” comments appearing on a particular post; “Karikatura dnia na Radio Svoboda”, Radio Svoboda, 21 October 2014, http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/26648 017.html.

62 T. Roesen and V. Zvereva, “Social Network Sites on the Runet: Exploring Social Communication”, in Digital Russia, ed. Lunde, Gorham and Paulsen, 83-84.

63 Ibid., 82. 64 I chose to examine VKontakte rather than Facebook since the latter is used by

less than 6% of the Russian population, and is also less accessible due to its privacy settings. As the most popular social network in post-Soviet space, VKontakte plays a very important role in shaping the discourse on the conflict on Ukraine. See further A. Gruzd and K. Tsyganova, “Politically Polarized Online Groups and their Social Structures formed around the 2013-2014 crisis in Ukraine”, paper presented at the 2014 Internet, Policy & Politics (IPP) Conference: Crowdsourcing for Politics and Policy, University of Oxford, UK, 25-26 September 2014.



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ordinary Russians (as at 2014),65 it was and is used quite often by Russian officials and pro-government mass media outlets.66

Having established the prevalence of the “fascism” discourse in traditional mass media, I then carried out preliminary monitoring of Twitter, VKontakte and Zhivoi Zhurnal by performing keyword searches for “Ukraine” and “fascism”. Next, I archived tweets from July-August 2014 containing the term “fascism” (almost 28 thousand tweets), and conducted an analysis of the most frequently used words. For Zhivoi Zhurnal, I analyzed the comments on the most popular posts on the Ukrainian issue. For VKontakte, I explored the most popular communities linked to the Ukrainian issue with a view to analysing related visual and news resources posted by these communities. The results of this “big data” and qualitative analysis confirm that the “fascism” discourse is highly prominent in online discussions of events in Ukraine.67 Thus, social media discussions feature the same terminology and phrasing as Pervyi kanal reports, referring to “fascists” and “karateli”.68 Like the mass media reports on the topic, social media posts on “Ukrainian fascism” often mention “atrocities” (zverstva) and “torture” (zamuchit’). 65 According to 2014 data, the Russian version of Twitter currently has 12 million

users; VKontakte has 52.1 million users; Ye. Frolova, “Samye populiarnye sotsial’nye seti v Rossii”, Pro-SMM, 31 October 2014, http://www.pro-smm.com/populyarnye-socialnye-seti-v-rossii/.

66 V. Barash and J. Kelly, “Salience vs. Commitment: Dynamics of Political Hashtags in Russian Twitter”, Berkman Center Research Publication 2012-9 (April 2012), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2034506.

67 Another widespread narrative involves the feminization of Ukraine, whereby Ukraine is figured as a woman needing to be rescued. In the most aggressive version of this discourse Ukraine is described as a prostitute “who has sold herself to the Atlantic thieves’ syndicate”, as one text put it; L. Miro, “Moia sestra”, 26 May 2014, http://miss-tramell.livejournal.com/548288.html. This narrative is beyond the scope of this article, but see further the article by Tatiana Riabova and Oleg Riabov elsewhere in this issue for a related discussion on this topic.

68 To some extent, this may be attributable to the fact that so-called “Kremlin-bots” deliberately use the same terminology and phrasing as Pervyi kanal. The term karatel’ is also favored by the pro-Russian fighters themselves; see for example, the VKontakte page “Reports from the Novorossiia Militia” [Svodok ot opolcheniia Novorossii], where one can see posts such as the following: “20:00-20:10—positions of the karateli shelled by BM-21 ‘Grad’, not far from Stepanovka village”, https://vk.com/wall-57424472_10802.



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The following tweets are typical examples of the online pro-Russian discourse:

senko: “on how fascism is rearing its head, on how insane karateli are shooting civilians with large-caliber choppers in Slaviansk” (16 July 2014)69

VKartashov31: “Moment of truth. Ukrainian fascism. (2014). Bloody provocations in Mariupol’ and atrocities in Odessa. Bombings of Donetsk and Lugansk. Beatings and kidnap…” (19 July 2014)70

berkut_crimea: “Ordinary fascism: communist brutally tortured at National Guard post in DNR / Fascist atrocities on occupied… htt…” (24 July 2014)71

As these examples illustrate, in social media the “fascism” discourse is manifested in distilled and concentrated form, which may arguably make its impact especially powerful, particularly when consumed together with the graphic “adults only” videos with titles such as “atrocities of the karateli” (zverstva karatelei) that are circulated widely in VKontakte and elsewhere.72

We can trace the growing intensity of the social media discussions on Ukraine over time by comparing the use of language across 2014. During the February 2014 events on the Maidan the words most frequently used in comments included “revolution”, “regime” (vlast’), and “Russia”; that is, at this point commentators discussed the situation in Ukraine without making particular

69 https://twitter.com/senko/status/489306109556297728. 70 https://twitter.com/VKartashov31/status/490395249672716288. The tweet

contains a link to Andrei Karaulov’s film Obyknovennyi fashizm on “show executions of militiamen’s families”—another example of the transmedia practices operating in Russian communicative space.

71 https://twitter.com/berkut_crimea/status/492014725044396033. 72 For example, this “adults only” LifeNews video: https://vk.com/search?c%5B

q%5D=зверства%20украина&c%5Bsection%5D=video&z=video15216916_170459387.



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reference to “fascism”.73 Indeed, prior to the Russian annexation of Crimea, “fascism” was not discussed on a mass scale in Zhivoi Zhurnal. This corresponds to the Integrum data, which also show a rise in the use of the term “fascism” in March 2014.

An analysis of references to “fascism” on Twitter in July-August 2014 produces the following picture:

Figure 1: Word cloud showing the frequency and distribution of “fascism” and associated terms in the Russophone segment of Twitter in July-August 2014. Figure produced using the Voyeur web-based text analysis tool (http://voyeurtools.org).

As Figure 1 shows, in July-August 2014 the overwhelming majority of Russian tweets containing “fascism” or “#fascism” were used in the context of the crisis in Ukraine. While the “fascist” label was used by both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian Twitter users, various elements of this picture, such as the popularity of hashtags “#novorossiia” and “#junta”, reflect the predominantly pro-Russian orientation of Twitter users posting on the topic of Ukraine.

When it comes to individuals mentioned in connection with fascism, two names stand out: “Hitler” and “Putin”. The relative frequency with which these two names were mentioned in connection with “fascism” in tweets from June-August 2014 is mapped on Graph 2 below.

73 See for example comments on I. Varlamov, “Detali Maidana”, Zhivoi Zhurnal

post, 23 February 2014, http://zyalt.livejournal.com/1008187.html.



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Graph 2: Frequency of references to “#putin” and “hitler” in tweets about fascism in the Russophone segment of Twitter, June-August 2014. Graph produced using the Voyeur web-based text analysis tool (http://voyeurtools.org).

President Putin’s name was used here in both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian tweets, testifying to how closely he is personally identified with the conflict by all parties concerned.74 Pro-Ukrainian commentators frequently drew a parallel between Putin and Hitler and accused Putin of being a “fascist”75—a charge that has also long been characteristic of Russian oppositional discourse, where Putin is often called “Putler” and pro-Kremlin young organizations (such as “Nashi”, “Molodaia Gvardiia Yedinoi Rossii” and “Idushchie vmeste”) have often been labeled the “Putinjugend”.76 Pro-Ukrainian commentators also used the word Rashizm. Derived from Rasha (from the English “Russia”), combined with the Russian

74 It should be noted that for technical reasons, “Putin” could not be tracked

jointly with “#Putin”, and so in fact the overall frequency of Putin should be higher than shown here.

75 See for example a tweet from 31 July 2014: SergiyAquila: “Communism + fascism + stalinism + chauvinism + imperialism + retardism = Ruscism [Rashizm] #UkrTwi #Putler #Moscow”, https://twitter.com/SergiyAquila/sta tus/494897014174658561.

76 See further the entry for “Putin-yugend” in Lurkomor’e: http://lurkmore.to/ Путин-югенд.



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fashizm, and perhaps best translated as “Ruscism”,77 this term is designed to highlight Russian expansionism and also to re-claim the anti-fascist discourse that the Russian state has sought to appropriate and monopolize, and to turn this anti-fascist discourse back against the Putin regime.78

The term “#junta”, which occupies a quite prominent position in the word cloud, is one of the terms most commonly used by pro-Russian bloggers with reference to the post-Euromaidan Ukrainian government. The term was first used to designate the temporary Ukrainian government put in place after Yanukovych’s flight to Russia, and was subsequently “inherited” by the Poroshenko government. The term “junta”, of course, has strong negative associations. According to Artem Krechetnikov, Putin was the first to use this term with regard to the Ukrainian government, in his address at a media forum in Petersburg in April 2014, when he said: “This is a junta, some kind of cabal [klika]”.79 Despite the fact that Putin later met with Poroshenko and officially recognized the new government in Ukraine, Russian social network users have persisted in calling the Ukrainian government a “junta”.80

The pro-Russian discourse is exemplified by the following tweet from 28 July 2014:

DVladimir70 The “work” of Ukrainian artillery http://t.co/0LpByCkVYq #warcrimes #fascism #artillery #junta #Lugansk #warinUkraine.81

77 For example, this tweet from 12 August 2014: lewa2013: “RT @bakushinskaya

@who___am___I Fascism-is a scary word! But it has long been remade as ruscism, and this is much scarier and much more shameful! Ruscists-from Russia..”, https://twitter.com/lewa2013/status/499179544675631104.

78 For example, this tweet from 27 July 2014: “YevhenS: “DON’T WORRY, I HATE HITLER!!! FASCISM AND NATIONAL-SOCIALISM WILL NOT PASS IN UKRAINE! PUTLER WON’T PASS EITHER! GLORY TO UKRAINE…”, https://twitter.com/YevhenS/status/493392380260003840.

79 A. Krechetnikov, “‘Khunta’ i ‘terroristy’: voina slov Moskyv i Kieva”, Russkaia sluzhba BBC (2014), http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/blogs/2014/04/140425 _blog_krechetnikov_harsh_speech.shtml.

80 For example, this tweet from 13 August 2014: vizutijilola: “Kiev junta pays mercenaries so fascism will win in Ukraine http://t.co/qnyqtCGuH4”, https://twitter.com/vizutijilola/status/499204917236891648.

81 https://twitter.com/DVladimir70/status/493961963785838593.



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Тhis example illustrates the typical chain of semantic associations linking atrocities against civilians and the “fascism” narrative to events in Ukraine. Such tweets also frequently reinforce the Ukraine-fascism nexus via visual methods, such as links to ultra-violent photographs or videos and hashtags flagging up “fascist” motifs.82

The “Ukrainian fascism” narrative dovetails with various conspiracy theories currently circulating on Russian social media, and again, often also fueled by federal TV programs.83 One particularly prominent theme here is that of US and EU involvement in the events in Ukraine, which is often articulated with the fascist motif. Thus, for example, numerous collages depicting President Obama with a Hitler moustache have appeared since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis.84 Here, then, the US is constructed as the underlying source of the “fascist” existential threat.85 This notion of the US as a crypto-fascist state can be traced back to the Cold War era, when it was a prominent trope in Soviet propaganda. In the

82 Мany accounts associated with tweets of this kind have been removed for

violating the Twitter terms of service. 83 See for example the live Pervyi kanal interview with Aleksandr Dugin, leader of

the “International Eurasianist movement”, in which he states that “basically it is the West and its satellites throughout the whole world that stand behind this genocide of Russian people in Ukraine; we only have one chance: we must save their lives using any means necessary to do so”; “Politika: Ukraina: kak ostanovit’ krovoprolitie?”, Pervyi kanal, 4 July 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/ sprojects_edition/si5905/fi31858.

84 See for example this image from the “AntiMaidan” VKontakte community (with 585 453 followers as of 30 March 2015), https://vk.com/albums-41232698?z=photo-41232698_354966236%2Fphotos-41232698.

85 See also for example, this comment: “all the horrors in Ukraine were organized by the US and the EU. They’re the ones who for 23 years prepared an operation to seize and destroy Ukraine. It was the US that cultivated a fifth column of fascists in Ukraine. It was the US who together with the EU overthrew the elected government and set up their HELL HOUNDS to rule Ukraine. And now it’s on US orders that the war continues to rage in Ukraine. Only power can defeat the fascists”; comment on the VKontakte page “Nam pishut”, by Natalya Kondratova, 14 August 2014, https://vk.com/wall246861361_759. For another example see a tweet from 26 July 2014: schestandrey201: “@RT_russian As revenge against Russia (USSR) for ’45, germany and usa have cultivated fascism in baltic states and ukraine..”, https://twitter.com/schestandrey201/status/ 493033200189718528.



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post-war period, caricatures by the Kukryniksy group86 and other artists featuring propaganda images of “West German fascists” in cahoots with the American military occupy an important place in the “picture memory” (visual collective memory) of Russians.87 Meanwhile the US role as part of the anti-German coalition and one of the victors of the war is for the most part completely ignored.

Conspiracy theories reached their apogee after the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on 17 July 2014. The day after the disaster, Pervyi kanal reported that the Ukrainian military may have “confused” the Malaysian plane with Putin’s presidential plane, and that the two planes had crossed paths somewhere near Warsaw.88 Given the obvious absurdity of this theory even from a geographical point of view, it is surprising how persistently it was reported on Pervyi kanal and Rossiia 189 and later also in social media. The TV reports on the MH17 disaster strongly implied that the Ukrainian authorities bore responsibility for this event.90

On Twitter and VKontakte, discussion of the MH17 disaster resembled quite closely the official discourse in its more conspiratorial interpretations of the event. Users commented, for

86 The Kukryniksy were three Soviet caricaturists/cartoonists with a recognizable

style. Kukryniksy was a collective name derived from the combined names of the artists, Mikhail Kupriianov, Porfirii Krylov and Nikolai Sokolov. The three began drawing caricatures under the joint signature in 1924 and became especially famous for their anti-fascist posters during the Great Patriotic War.

87 The term “picture memory” was coined by Aby Warburg and further theorized in A. Efal, “Warburg’s ‘Pathos Formula’ in Psychoanalytic and Benjaminian Contexts”, Assaph-Studies in Art History 5 (2000): 221-238; and A. Vasil’ev, “‘Оsevoe vremia’ memory studies: rossiiskii sled”, Мezhdunarodnyi zhurnal issledovanii kul’tury 1 (6) (2012). A similar narrative linking fascism and the US was also present in the GDR; see for example Silke Satjukow and Rainer Gries (Hrsg), Unsere Feinde. Konstruktion des anderen im Sozialismus (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmBH, 2004).

88 “Veroiatnoi tsel’iu sbivshikh malaziiskii ‘Boing’ mog byt’ samolet Prezidenta Rossii”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 18 July 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/news/ world/263379.

89 “Sbityi lainer popal v zonu porazheniia ukrainskikh batarei”, Vesti, Rossiia 1, 18 July 2014, http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=1810148.

90 See for example “Minoborony RF predostavilo dannye ob”ektivnogo kontrolia, vyzyvaiushchie voprosy k Kievu”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 22 July 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/news/world/263643.



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example, that it was “taking too long for the black boxes to be decoded”,91 and that “the ukry [a pejorative term for “Ukrainians”] and the US will have to answer for the fallen Boeing”.92 The wildest conspiracy theory was offered by one of the then leaders of the DNR, Igor’ Strelkov, who speculated that the Boeing may have been carrying corpses, and that it was shot down by the Ukrainian military as part of a plot aimed at framing Russia and the militia (opolchentsy).93 This theory was widely circulated in Zhivoi Zhurnal and VKontakte, and also appeared in Komsomol’skaia pravda.94

Of course, any aviation disaster prompts a wave of online conspiracy-theorizing. What is distinctive about this case is its articulation with the “fascism” discourse. The following is a typical example of the response on Twitter:

Igor’ Vialov Unclear who’s to blame? Look for who profits! http://t.co/5v2KGTUIKO #Fascism #Zionism95 #Plane #Victims #Boeing #Ukraine #USA #Provocation #Buk.96

91 See for example, “Opublikovan predvaritel’nyi doklad o khode rassledovaniia

krusheniia ‘Boinga’ malaziiskikh avialinii”, Novosti, Pervyi kanal, 9 September 2014, http://www.1tv.ru/news/world/267274.

92 For example, this tweet from 18 July 2014: “Boeing controlled remotely? … http://t.co/scwsyaphCO #interesting #Ukraine #USA #technologies #fascism”, https://twitter.com/droid1964/status/490154775732707328.

93 “Strelkov: Nekotorye liudi v “Boinge” byli mertvy do padeniia”, VKontakte page, Molot Pravdy / Rossiia / Antimaidan, 19 July 2014, https://vk.com/wall-40199630_1627122?&offset=40.

94 V. Demchenko, “Rasstrel ‘Boinga’ nad Ukrainoi gotovili zaranee?”, Кomsomol’skaia pravda, 24 July 2014, http://www.kp.ru/daily/26260.3/3138309/.

95 The anti-Semitism motif was also present in many social media posts disseminating conspiratorial narratives about Ukraine. Here a common preoccupation was with uncovering the “real” (i.e. Jewish) surnames of Ukrainian politicians and accusing them of plotting against Ukraine and Russia. See for example bersun2001, “3rd KHAZAR KHANATE. Тriumvirate of yids: Poroshenko, Yatseniuk, Groisman”, Zhivoi Zhurnal post, 28 November 2014, http://bersun2001.livejournal.com/1185969.html.

96 Тweet from 18 July 2014, https://twitter.com/ArendaSite/status/49016766972364 3907.



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Here the influence of the discourse of “fascist atrocities” can clearly be discerned. According to this logic, the “fascist” Ukrainians will stop at nothing, not even the cold-blooded murder of people with no connection to the conflict. We might also note here a merging of the “Zionism” and “fascism” frames, most likely reflecting the collective memory of the Soviet-era representation of Israel as an imperialist and fascist state.97

In the Cyrillic segment of Zhivoi Zhurnal (ZhZh), as we might expect, the Ukrainian conflict is a highly divisive topic. Even a brief mention of Ukraine in a post can sometimes be sufficient to (albeit temporarily) elevate a blogger from obscurity into the ranks of the most popular ZhZh authors, perhaps partly because the “Kremlin-bots” pay such close attention to any discussion on this theme. Indeed, the so-called “Top ZhZh” ranking system,98 whereby the most popular posts are ranked on the basis of total number of views, surely serves to further polarize opinions amongst ZhZh users, since even users with no interest in the topic of Ukraine cannot avoid seeing it in their newsfeed. Nevertheless, the “top ZhZh” authors consistently represent a reasonably wide spectrum of opinions on the Ukrainian crisis, from Mal’gin’s strongly pro-Ukrainian position (lj avmalgin) and condemnation of the militia’s activities in South-East Ukraine (lj mi3ch, lj drugoi, lj dolboeb) through to “patriotism” (lj miss_tramell). The “patriotic” segment of the spectrum also ranges from support for Russia’s annexation of Crimea (lj fritzmorgen) to conspiracy theories about the Western colonization of Ukraine (lj colonelcassad, lj el-murid).

Some top ZhZh bloggers have tried to take a more objective position on the Ukrainian crisis by limiting their posts on the topic to photo-journalism accompanied only by brief commentary. These include reports from the Maidan by Artemii Lebedev (aka lj tema)99 and Il’ia Varlamov (aka lj zyalt)—the latter produced a series of photographic reports from Ukraine, including a chronology of the

97 On which see A. Umland, “Soviet Antisemitism after Stalin”, East European

Jewish Affairs 29, no. 1-2 (1999): 159-168. 98 See http://www.livejournal.com/ratings/users?country=cyr. 99 A. Lebedev, “Vsia pravda pro Maidan”, Zhivoi Zhurnal post, 20 December 2013,

http://tema.livejournal.com/1566988.html.



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Euromaidan and the presidential elections.100 But attempts at relatively “neutral” reporting on Ukraine of this kind likewise invariably prompted floods of intense and aggressive pro-Russian comments. Here, for example, are some typical comments on one of Il’ia Varlamov’s attempts at an “objective” post on the Maidan, from 23 February 2014:

lj bronfenb: gutter trash. Looks like you, Il’ia, are frightened to speak out against the Maidowns101—after all they might kill you ) Democrats)) lj prohogy_i: Right on... It’s not just a matter of “right sector”’s ambitions, chaos is also coming for Ukraine. Despotism. This is an inevitable component after the victory of any revolution lj display: First the west brings the fascists to power, later the west will

show the whole world that fascism is flourishing in Ukraine and Russia102

Visual Online Media: The Case of “Young Eurasia” Agitprop

Social media platforms like VKontakte are also used for circulating visual propaganda materials. In this section I examine some examples of “anti-Maidan” visual materials, circulated online by the organization “Young Eurasia” (“Molodaia Yevraziia”), and sharing in common a clear connection to the memory of the Great Patriotic War.

The “Young Eurasia” movement can be viewed as an example of a securitizing actor. Its members work in a pro-government, “anti-Maidan” direction, and play an active role in online discussions about the Ukrainian crisis. The organization’s headquarters are based at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), under the leadership of Yurii Kofner.103 While there are no firm data on the organization’s funding

100 Il’ia Varlamov’s blog posts featuring the “Ukraine” tag are collected here:

http://zyalt.livejournal.com/tag/Украина. 101 Maidaun is a neologism derived from “Maidan” and “Down’s syndrome”. 102 Comments on I. Varlamov, “Detali Maidana”, Zhivoi Zhurnal post, 23 February

2014, http://zyalt.livejournal.com/1008187.html. 103 Yurii Kofner was born in 1988 and has lived most of his life in Munich, in a

Soviet émigré family. He is a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of



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sources, the very fact of its existence within the walls of MGIMO indicates that the movement is tolerated by the Kremlin. Originally known as the “MGIMO Eurasian Club”, “Young Eurasia” essentially from the time of its creation in 2011 has dissociated itself from Dugin’s Eurasianist movement, but nevertheless adheres to a very similar ideological line based on anti-Americanism, “Gumilevism”, anti-Westernism and Orthodox Christianity.104

Prior to the crisis in Ukraine, “Young Eurasia”’s VKontakte page was mostly dominated by posts dealing with organizational matters such as the creation of new branches throughout the countries of the CIS, and by general phrases on the importance of a “non-Western” path for Russia. Since the crisis began, the page has been almost completely reoriented towards reporting and commenting on the armed struggle in Ukraine.105

International Relations (MGIMO), where he founded the “Eurasian Discussion Club”. By his own account he is a “German” and is “educating himself to become a Russian”; see http://yuriykofner30981.odnako.org.

104 “Molodaia Yevraziia”, http://yeurasia.org. 105 “Моlodaia Yevraziia” VKontakte page, http://vk.com/yeurasia. Yurii Kofner

himself is an extremely active presence in social media—he records video-addresses in broken Russian, and make daily posts appealing to members to join the “Slavic Regiment”, to make donations to aid the fight against the Ukrainian fascist regime, or to join demonstrations outside the American embassy.



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Image 1: “To Spite Our Enemies, To Make Mom Happy”. Source: “Molodaia Yevraziia” VKontakte page, http://vk.com/yeurasia.

In the first example (Image 1) the connection to the war memory takes the form of the “Motherland-Mother” statue from the memorial complex in Volgograd. Here the statue has decapitated the Statue of Liberty “to spite our enemies, to make mom happy”. Thus Mother Russia is conflated with the struggle against (and Victory over) fascism, which is in turn linked to anti-Americanism.



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Image 2: “Russian Spring! Let’s Bring Back the Real Ukraine!”. Source: “Molodaia Yevraziia” VKontakte page, http://vk.com/yeurasia.

Image 2 is obviously designed to resemble Great Patriotic War maps of the Nazi-Soviet confrontation, now “modernized”, with the arrows rendered in the colors of the St George’s ribbon. This black-and-orange striped ribbon is currently not only the single most prominent symbol of the memory of the Great Patriotic War, but also a marker of support for Russian aggression against Ukraine. During the Soviet era the St George’s ribbon featured on Victory Day greeting cards, for example, and on medals “For the Taking of Berlin”. In the mid 2000s the “Nashi” pro-Kremlin youth movement began actively promoting and distributing the St George’s ribbon with the aim of strengthening the memory of Victory in the war and thus the identity of Russia as a Great Power.106 In the context of the current Ukrainian events, the use of the St George’s ribbon online, in social media, has become increasingly politicized. The St George’s ribbon has been successfully re-purposed and monopolized by

106 I. Mijnssen, The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin’s Russia I. Back to our Future!

History, Modernity and Patriotism According to Nashi, 2005-2012 (Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society series) (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2012), 93.



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supporters of the annexation of South-East Ukraine to Russia.107 The ribbon came to be used here to lend legitimacy to Russian policy on Ukraine and to reinforce the notion of the current Ukrainian government as “fascist”, by referring back to the collective memory of the Soviet war-time struggle against fascism.108

Incidentally, the emergence of the black-and-orange St George’s ribbon as a key marker signifying a pro-Russian position also led to the invention of another meme: kolorady (Colorado potato beetles, whose black-and-orange stripes resemble the ribbon), a pejorative used to refer to supporters of the pro-Russian side. This term, which was reportedly coined by Russian oppositional Zhivoi Zhurnal blogger Andrei Mal’gin,109 essentially operates in the same way as the anti-Ukrainian labels discussed above—that is, it serves to dehumanize the Other, and to construct the Other as an existential threat. As Sam Keen has shown, references to insects are very commonly used in constructing enemy images.110 Beetles and other insects are of course generally viewed with disgust in European and more narrowly in Russian cultural space, and so this image of a Colorado beetle carries a strong negative association. The emergence of the term kolorady resonated broadly, prompting widespread outrage in the blogosphere, at least

107 For example, a tweet from 31 July 2014 г. DjRemond: “@bonallesan respect?

Who? The ones who are tearing St George’s ribbons and propagandizing fascism?”, https://twitter.com/DjRemond/status/494770904451518464.

108 For example, a tweet from 6 August 2014 г. SSadrieva54: “Fascism has passed. The Luhansk region has been fighting fascism for the last decade or so. We stretched out massive St George’s ribbons, we marched under them at rallies”, https://twitter.com/SSadrieva54/status/496967050829778944 (URL no longer active as of 23 March 2015; user’s account suspended; last accessed October 2014).

109 S. Apet’ian, “‘Vatniki’ i ‘ukropy’”, Segodnia.ru, 20 August 2014, http://www.seg odnia.ru/content/145538.

110 References to reptiles are also often used for this purpose; see S. Keen, Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1986), 9.



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in part because many viewed the term as an insult to the nation’s war memory.111

Image 3: Left panel: “A Smoker’s Ukrainian Patriotism: Nazism; Fascism; Banderitism; Westernism”. Right panel: “A Healthy Person’s Ukrainian Patriotism: Eurasianism; Slavophilism; and Memory of the Great Victory”. Source: “Molodaia Yevraziia” VKontakte page, http://vk.com/yeurasia.

Image 3 presents a series of binaries. Here we see that “memory of the Great Victory” features as the antonym of “Westernism”, while “Nazism” and “fascism” are the opposite of “Eurasianism”. The two sets of binaries in turn represent “good” and “evil”, a connection that is further underlined by the images and symbolism, with the left panel showing what appears to be a Russian flag that has been trampled upon, and the right dominated by the purple color of the Eurasianist flag.112 We might also note that in the contrast set up

111 See for example “Мatveichev: Мal’gina spasaet lish’ to, chto on ne zhivet v Rossii”,

Delovaia Gazeta “Vzgliad”, 8 April 2014, http://vz.ru/news/2014/4/8/681073.html. 112 Yurii Kofner describes the official Eurasianist color as representing a merging

of red (symbol of the “Roman-Byzantine empire”) and blue (the “Turkic-Mongol empire”). For more detail see the “Young Eurasia” website: http://yeurasia.org/2013/07/02/eurasian_flag/.



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here between the “diseased” and the “healthy”, “memory” is depicted as integral to the path of “health”.113

Conclusions

The article has shown the importance of collective memory for the process of securitization. In the context of the crisis in Ukraine, new and old Russian media have acted as transmitters for securitizing discourses that construct the Maidan protest movement and the Ukrainian military operation in the Donbass using categories of existential threat which in post-Soviet space are closely linked to the powerful and highly emotionally charged collective memory of the Great Patriotic War. The Euromaidan has been branded fascist, and the Ukrainian “Anti-Terrorist Operation” has been depicted as a series of brutal and chaotic acts of violence committed by “banderites” and “ukro-fascists” against the civilian (Russophone) population. This instrumentalization of Russian war memory appears to have been remarkably successful in stigmatizing and demonizing the Ukrainian side in the conflict.

The article has also analyzed the interaction of “old” and “new” media. Despite the fact that television serves as a main source of news for the overwhelming majority of the Russian population, online media and social media in particular have become a supplementary arena for promotion of the discourse on fascism, which has served to facilitate further homogenization of public opinion on the Ukrainian crisis. Overall, social media data confirm the findings of sociological surveys indicating that the majority of Russians approve of the Russian policy on Ukraine.114 The data 113 A preoccupation with “healthy living” is shared by many nationalist

organizations; see for example the Dmitrii Demushkin’s VKontakte community “My Russkie!”, where popular posters call upon users to “Destroy the myth of Russian drunkenness, don’t get drunk, don’t smoke, don’t use drugs!”; http://vk.com/dry_aka_cyxou.

114 For example, according to Levada Center data, in October 2014, 58% of Russians approved of the involvement of Russian volunteer fighters in East Ukraine; “Ukrainskii krizis: uchastniki, peremirie, otsenki i ozhidaniia”, Levada-Tsentr, 16 October 2014, http://www.levada.ru/16-10-2014/ukrainskii-krizis-uchastniki-peremirie-otsenki-i-ozhidaniya.



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analyzed here enable us to speak about a strong emotional response to the narrative of fascism by Russian social media users, which, with the support of “old media”, often metastasized into conspirological discourse on social media. The materials gathered showed the transmedial nature of Russian information space—a factor which makes it easier for securitizing actors to promote particular discourses. Although a wide spectrum of opinion is present on social media, these data confirm that attitudes to the Ukrainian crisis are a key polarizing marker dividing contemporary Russian society.


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Memory, Media, and Securitization: Russian Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis

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Transcript of Memory, Media, and Securitization: Russian Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis