Russia Refracted

https://www.theideasletter.org/essay/russia-refracted/




The Russian–Ukrainian war has turned Russian society into the subject of heated political discussion and much speculation. Does “society” support Putin and his war? Does “society” share the Kremlin’s imperialism? Are Russians simply conformists? Or are they resisting militarism on an everyday, rather than openly political, level? At bottom, the war raises an awful question: what kind of society would allow such a conflict to occur?

Today there are two popular images of Russian society. One, drawn by the Kremlin, presents a people united around the state, supporting the “special military operation,” demanding victory over Ukraine, and proclaiming the advent of a new era and a new world order. The other, deriving from the most radical part of the liberal class, depicts a fragmented and intimidated population mired in cowardly opportunism. Both images allude to totalitarianism, which is characterized by mobilization and atomization, bloodthirstiness and conformism.

Neither depiction is wholly accurate. Society in Russia is made up of different groups with different interests, values, and expectations. While many feel lost, disillusioned, and alienated by the war, others welcome the force of wartime change, imagining that they themselves are at the center of it. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Russian society today is that it includes groups of people who cannot be called supporters of the war but who have not lost themselves during this extraordinary time. Far from it: through the war, they have even found themselves by discovering a new civic agency.

Studies of Russian wartime society by the research groups Public Sociology Laboratory (PS Lab) and Alameda have made it possible to see how the middle-class beneficiaries of war are changing. Managers, IT workers, business owners, engineers, and creative workers who have benefited from both the Kremlin’s new economic policy and the withdrawal of Western companies from the Russian market tell sociologists how the war years are shaping how they see themselves. They’ve begun to think more about their homeland and to love it more dearly—they’ve decided to “be with their country,” as the phrase goes, in difficult times rather than abandon it entirely. These same people actively participate in pro-war civil society by making donations, contributing humanitarian aid to the front, and weaving camouflage nets for the military. This is a nationalist awakening of the conventional middle class.

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