{"id":1764,"date":"2023-04-28T09:56:16","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T09:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2026-02-10T17:48:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T17:48:31","slug":"guerra-contrarrevolucionaria-contra-a-sociedade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/type-dossier\/counterrevolutionary-war-against-society\/","title":{"rendered":"IV \/ Guerra contr\u00e1ria (revolucion\u00e1ria) contra a sociedade"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-post-date has-small-font-size\"><time datetime=\"2023-04-28T09:56:16+00:00\">abril 28, 2023<\/time><\/div>\n\n\n<div style=\"height:18px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200b\u200bVolodymyr Ishchenko and Ilya Matveev debate the question of what kind of rationality stands behind Putin\u2019s decision to attack Ukraine. Is Russia\u2019s elite an ideologically-motivated political actor? \u200b\u200b\u200bIf so, is its ideology expressive of class interests (as Ishchenko argues) or in contrast with them (as Matveev claims)? \u200b\u200b&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200b\u200bI deal with a similar but distinct question. My argument concerns not motivations behind the Russian state\u2019s decision-making, but rather the social condition within which this state is becoming a radical political actor. Before 2011, the Russian state was a more prominent economic actor, retaining a monopoly of power over society through management and policing. \u200b\u200b\u200bHowever, after 2011 and especially after 2014, it faced problems that led it into political radicalisation, which, ultimately, brought about the decision to invade Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this essay, I ask the question: is the elite that backs Vladimir Putin a rational economic actor or is it a volitional political subject? This question has not only produced an academic debate, it also puzzles ordinary people in Russia and around the world, who once thought that the Russian elite was made up of \u2018crooks and thieves\u2019 (as Russian protesters have said), opportunist managers and administrators, but now recognise it as a group of ideological fanatics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The decision by the Russian authorities to intervene militarily in Ukraine was the result of a process of what I term the counter-politicisation of the Russian state, in response to the politicisation, sometimes revolutionary, of certain groups in Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is important to note that this counter-politicisation of the state in response to the politicisation of society took place not in the form of political dialogue or a struggle for hegemony, but through these political forces declaring themselves \u200bindependent and thus opposed to each other: the politicisation of social groups and of the state has occurred not through the logic of the creation of a common political space, but rather through the logic of mutual separation and exasperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Matveev, in his response to Ishchenko, correctly points out that: \u2018Putin\u2019s actions were also driven by the deep fear and mistrust of popular mobilisation. Putin\u2019s inability to comprehend the existence of power in the Arendtian sense, that is, collective social power, ultimately led him to rely on force \u2013 repression at home, military aggression abroad\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reactionary, counter-revolutionary character of Putin\u2019s war, as well as the \u2018detachment from reality\u2019 of the elite, living in an \u2018information bubble\u2019, have been noted by a number of experts. At the same time, as a rule, these same experts do not address certain key questions: what are the properties of the social structure in Russia and the post-Soviet countries that lead to this state of mutual isolation and exasperation? What is the role, not only of Putin\u2019s state, but also of the protest movements to which this state is responding? What kind of politicisation did both the contentious social groups (previously apolitical) and the state (previously managerial) \u200bundergo\u200b\u200b\u200b? To answer these questions, I will briefly examine the state of Russian apolitical society in the 2000s, its tumultuous \u200b\u2018\u200b\u200b\u200bhyperpoliticisation\u200b\u2019\u200b\u200b in the 2010s, and the state\u2019s counter-politicisation that made the war possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Depoliticisation and the crisis of hegemony<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Post-Soviet Russia has been widely regarded by scholars as a depoliticised society. Depolitici\u200bsation here means not just the political indifference of ordinary people. Indeed, sometimes people might have engaged in collective action, including volunteering, civic activism and even protest campaigns, without crossing the border into the realm of the political: a corrupt and tainted space associated with the state, political parties and oligarchs. At the same time, Putin\u2019s regime consciously avoided the political mobilisation of its own \u200bsupport, preferring\u200b\u200b \u200binstead to pacify various social groups by guaranteeing them autonomy of private life and economic stability.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bPolitical theorist Sergey Prozorov describes \u2018a mutual exclusion of the state and society from each other\u2019s respective domains, whereby formal politics and social life unfold at such a distance from each other that it is increasingly impossible to conceive of any possible relation between them\u200b\u2019.\u200b\u200b \u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Prozoroy, Putin\u2019s bureaucratic depoliticisation suspends the legitimacy of all political options (witness the decline of all ideological parties, from liberals to communists) without itself occupying a substantive ideological locus.\u200b \u200b \u200b\u200b\u200b&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200b\u200bIndeed, as the political scientist Vladimir Gelman points out, the \u2018formal politics\u2019 of the state was aimed at \u2018the economic performance of the regime\u2019 rather than at the establishment of a hegemonic rule.\u200b\u200b Thus, the depoliticisation of Putin\u2019s Russia resulted in the mutual exclusion of the social and the political, of the social movements and the state. This also gave \u200ba \u200bpredominantly economic and managerial character to state governance. In the 2010s, certain social groups in Russia opposed to the government then became increasingly politicised (although society-at-large did not), as did the Russian state in response. However, this politicisation and counter-politicisation did not overcome the logic of mutual exclusion. Instead, it reproduced and intensified this logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Protest and \u200bhyper\u200bpoliticisation&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine was partly a reaction to protest movements in post-\u200bSoviet countries, especially in Ukraine (2014), Belarus (2020), Kazakhstan (2021), and in Russia itself (2012-2021). It is necessary to analyse the specificities of these protests themselves in order to understand why the regime reacted to them by launching a war. In what follows\u200b,\u200b I will draw on the sociological research of the Public Sociology Laboratory, focusing on the Russian protests, on the ideology and political strategy\u200b of those involved. From 2011 to 2021\u200b,\u200b we carried out interviews, focus groups and ethnographic observations\u200b,\u200b communicating with Russian protesters and activists in different contexts.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In December 2011, a wave of huge rallies, marches\u200b and \u2018Occupy\u2019 camps began to emerge in Russia, triggered by widespread fraud during the 4 December Duma elections. At the time, there were no strong opposition parties, either within or outside Parliament able to prepare and organise protests of this magnitude. But, after social media platforms (such as Facebook and vkontakte.ru) were flooded by independent observers\u2019 reports of the fraud, and the ruling United Russia party\u2019s historically low results despite manipulating the polls, thousands of people\u200b \u200b\u2014\u200b \u200bmany of them youngsters participating in protests for the first time\u200b \u200b\u2014\u200b \u200btook to the streets. On the following Sunday, about 100\u200b,\u200b000 people gathered for an officially authorised rally in the centre of Moscow\u200b\u200b with smaller but still considerable rallies held in other major cities. The protest\u200be\u200b\u200brs\u2019 demands centred on fair elections, a rerun of the December vote, and the denunciation of corruption. Honesty and dignity were \u200bheld\u200b\u200b up as the animating values of the protests. The protesters, heterogeneous as they were, represented on average a richer and more educated strata of the Russian population.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On 6 May 2012, the police brutally dispersed the protest\u200be\u200b\u200brs\u200b,\u200b afte\u200br which\u200b\u200b\u200b many were accused of violence and were imprisoned. That same day, Putin declared victory in the presidential elections. To further complicate matters, the movement faced a severe internal crisis after it failed to propose a clear political program\u200bme\u200b and develop a strategic agenda. In the wake of these events, the protest\u200be\u200b\u200b\u200brs demobilised, at the same time as the state became more authoritarian and repressive. Since then, new protest campaigns have emerged almost every year, while new local anti-Putin activist groups, social movements, \u200band \u200bmunicipal deputies\u2019 campaigns have taken form.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The movement \u2018For Fair Elections\u2019 was characterised by what can be called \u2018the politics of the apolitical\u2019\u200b.\u200b The Russian protests constituted a movement that based its legitimacy on \u2018authentic\u2019 experience of the collective action itself.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The collective sentiment that those in power had abused the population by stealing the election, as well as the experience of unity in the streets, produced a new collective identity. This identity was self-referential, as it expressed not belonging to a class or commitment to a common political agenda or ideology, but rather the experience of togetherness, itself forged through the act of protesting. At the same time, it was a movement that had strong anti-political \u200bcharacteristics that built its image on an opposition between morally dignified protesters and immoral elites. This anti-political element was evident in that the protesters expressed their scepticism towards both the state and opposition parties and politicians. The leaders of the protest were journalists, bloggers, and cultural figures. However, the protest movement was able to move beyond anti-politics by giving birth to a new more politicised civil society.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200bIn our research we show that the protesters avoided articulation of any particular social demands and ideological preferences in favour of moral unity. Moreover, protesters positioned themselves in opposition not only to political elites\u200b,\u200b but also to \u2018politics\u2019 per se. The specificity of the Russian version of \u2018anti-politics\u2019 was that while in the West anti-politics has tended to challenge the basis of liberal democracy, the Russian protesters demanded fair elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Protestors did not use \u2018liberal political grammar\u200b\u2019\u200b,\u200b which, according to the French sociologist Laurent Thevenot, involves people coming together, communicating, and acting in concert via the articulation and taking into account of individual needs, objectified as a list of publicly available options (for example, competing political parties) to be chosen. Instead, they demonstrated the logic of \u2018affinity through common places\u2019 that presupposes a more silent means of uniting and acting in concert, based on the personal, emotional investments people have in what\u2019s common, which can be places (homes or parks), but also songs, pictures, and other such objects. \u200b\u200b\u200b&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200b\u200bThe theft of votes\u200b\u200b became a common complaint for Russian protesters. For example, this is how one of the protest\u200be\u200b\u200brs we interviewed answered the question of why he decided to attend the protest rallies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\">Yes, I believe that [fair elections] are important, because whatever the elections are like, they should be fair. They should not forget we are not fools. People have eyes and brains. We understand everything quite well, and they should not take us for fools. I\u2019m not sure we can shunt aside Putin, because he is backed by major financial organi\u200bs\u200b\u200bations. He\u2019s the head of state, what can you say? But, in fact, we could at least show them that we are not stupid louts, that we see the violations, that we know they are deceiving us. Why are they doing this? So yes, I support fair elections. What matters is that elections are held. Let people have their say. That is what matters to me: the right to vote (March 2012, St. Petersburg; male protestor with higher education qualifications, born in 1982).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this case, we see that the appeal to emotions is both subjectively significant and a legitimate argument for the protestor\u2019s involvement in the movement. Our informants told us they had been personally insulted by the manner in which the elections had been held. It was not a problem for the protesters that a vote for a party other than Putin\u2019s United Russia had not been tallied, but rather that each individual vote had not been counted, whatever party the person had voted for. One\u2019s vote was not deemed a means of expressing one\u2019s opinion or part of the machinery for maintaining the commonwealth, but as a personal belonging. Our interview subjects were first morally invested in voting. Then, after encountering proof that their votes had been stolen (in the form of videos published on YouTube), they became outraged:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\">Yeah, those videos showing violations [at polling stations]&#8230; are quite important. Those videos also influenced me. [I watched] literally a dozen of them, but they had a big impact on me. [Question: In what sense?] Well, you see they\u2019re deceiving you. And anger rises inside you: what the hell?! It\u2019s like you want change, you believe [in the process] and go to vote, you spend time going to the election, you spend two hours or so on it, and before that you spend a bunch of time figuring out whom to vote for, although there is no one to choose from (Interview continued).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Replete with moralising and personal complaints, such as \u2018My vote was stolen!\u2019 and \u2018Give me back my vote!\u2019, the expressions of the protesters pointed to the fact that votes were regarded as belonging to individuals, as material even. The protest space itself (together with the stolen votes) turned out to contribute to a sense of the common for participants in the rallies. Their shared identity based on the experience of togetherness was in many ways the result of personal attachment to this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200bThis political culture, or ideology, characterised protests not only in post-\u200bSoviet countries but also elsewhere during the so-called \u2018global wave\u2019 of uprisings from 2011-2014. As Sidney Tarrow wrote about the Occupy Wall Street movement, its legitimacy derived from an occurrence of co-presence experienced by participants during collective action. He defined this type of collective action as the \u2018we are here\u2019 movement: \u2018By their presence, they are saying only, \u200b\u201c\u200b\u200b\u200bRecognise us!\u200b\u201d \u200b\u200bIf Occupy Wall Street resembles any movement in recent American history, it would actually be the new women\u2019s movement of the 1970s (&#8230;) their foremost demand was for recognition of, and credit for, the gendered reality of everyday life.\u2019 \u200b\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their identity\u200b,\u200b based on the experience of co-presence\u200b,\u200b was developed not only in opposition to, but also \u2018in separation\u2019 from, the Russian authorities. One of the popular slogans of the Russian protesters addressed to those in power was \u200b\u2018\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bVy nas dazhe ne predstavliaete\u2019\u200b\u200b\u200b which simultaneously means \u2018You don\u2019t even represent us\u2019 and \u2018You can\u2019t even imagine us\u2019, indicating that the protesters opposed those in power not through the articulation of a political alternative but, rather, by celebration of their civic autonomy and moral virtue. At the same time, they sought to de\u200b\u200blegitimise Putin\u2019s regime by labelling it as immoral, corrupt and abusive.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The protests of 2011-2012 gave birth to a new anti-Putin civil society: local activist groups, the communities of municipal deputies and the movement in support of Alexei Navalny became civic laboratories in which the anti-Putin spirit inherited from the protests was combined with various forms of collective action at different levels, from local to national. As a result, the politicised language used to criticise the government which was formed during 2011-2012 simply became common sense language for the many civil society institutions. It has spread among many small activist collectives across Russia\u200b,\u200b all loosely connected to each other by their rhetoric and history. Denunciation of the regime, \u200band \u200ba demonstration of its faults became a central goal for the new oppositional and civic movements.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200bThe new civil society that emerged from the protests of 2011-2012 was curiously both anti-political and politicised. It was anti-political in \u200bthat it created\u200b\u200b realms of collective action autonomous from the state and parties, as well as often rejecting both the state and political parties as legitimate sites of action. And it was politicised because\u200b,\u200b unlike civic activism that existed in Russia before 2011 when activists focused on local agendas only\u200b,\u200b it now openly challenged the political regime. This civil society was autonomous from the state and in conflict with the state at the same time. \u200b\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200bThe Russian protests of 2011-2012\u200b,\u200b as well as the post-protest civil society\u200b,\u200b can be characterised by what political theorist Anton J\u00e4ger calls \u2018hyperpolitics\u2019. \u2018\u200bT\u200b\u200bhe mood of contemporary politics\u2019, J\u00e4ger writes, \u2018is one of incessant yet diffuse excitation\u2026 \u201cHyper\u201d indicates both a state of supersession and intensification: the elongation of a vowel that has already been vocali\u200bs\u200b\u200b\u200bed but does not yet spell out a new word.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is not simply about securing a sense of continuity with the preceding period of post-politics, which first split politics from policy, and whose division hyperpolitics widens rather than closes.\u2019 It was precisely in this manner that the protests of 2011-2012 in Russia led to the emergence of widespread democratic practices that, in turn, contributed to a crisis of political legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200bIn an article that I wrote with Ishchenko, entitled \u2018Post-Soviet vicious circle: revolution as a reproduction of a crisis of hegemony\u2019,\u202f we showed that the Euromaidan revolution possessed important similarities with the Russian protests in that it constituted an autonomous space of dignified civic action in opposition to corrupt and abusive authorities. Protesters were correct when they declared that those in power could not even have imagined them. Indeed, for political leaders such as Putin, the realm of popular collective action could never be authentic. Rather, it \u200brepresented a\u200b\u200b political threat to both Russian elites and the country itself manufactured by US elites.\u200b \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200bIn his text,\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b Ishchenko rightly argues that Putin conceived the protests and revolutions in the post-\u200b\u200bSoviet countries as a threat to the existing political and economic order. It was for this reason that Putin and his allies believed that in order to preserve Russian sovereignty\u200b,\u200b the protests must be actively neutralised. The task of suppressing the protests required the state to politicise itself and attack what are regarded as proxies of anti-Russian political forces\u200b \u200b\u2013 most notably the US. One of these proxies, according to Putin, is the Ukrainian state.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Counter-politicisation of the state&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bIn Russian and other post-S\u200boviet countries, the state responded to the protests with its own counter-politicisation through a conservative propaganda campaign. The so-called \u2018Crimean Spring\u2019 \u2013 the patriotic mobilisation that followed Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea in 2014 \u2013 was an important event during this process. However, this counter-politicisation reproduced the mutual exclusion of society and the state instead of bridging the gap between these spaces. Paradoxically, it relied on demobilisation instead of engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I reflect on this in an article written with \u200bMatveev:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\">The Kremlin\u2019s response to the protest movement turned out to be \u200b\u2018\u200b\u200bpoliticisation without mobilisation\u200b\u2019.\u200b\u200b\u200b It consisted of a crude media campaign to delegitimi\u200bs\u200b\u200b\u200be the protests in the eyes of the regime\u2019s supporters\u2026 The creative style of the protest rallies led by people with high levels of cultural capital was unfamiliar to the broader society. This fact was sophisticatedly exploited by the Kremlin, which turned the discrepancy between the protest movement\u2019s style and ordinary people\u2019s expectations into a kind of \u200b\u2018\u200b\u200b\u200bculture war\u200b\u2019\u2026 Nevertheless, even in the nationalist fervour of 2014, the regime stopped inches away from finally combining \u200b\u2018\u200b\u200bpoliticisation with mobilisation\u200b\u2019,\u200b\u200b \u200bthat is, creating its own loyalist street movement. The most striking mobilisation in support of the \u200b\u2018\u200b\u200bCrimean Spring\u200b\u2019\u200b\u200b \u200bhappened in the territory of Ukraine, not Russia. Indeed, it was the war in Eastern Ukraine that attracted newly politicised conservatives\u200b \u200b\u2014\u200b \u200bcombatants, volunteers, and other civic supporters. Within Russia itself, the regime still preferred tight top-down control of any mobilisation or street activity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Russian elite \u2013 to be precise\u200b,\u200b the narrow cadre of military leaders, bureaucrats and businesspeople around Putin \u2013 politically mobilised not its audiences but itself. In doing so, it became more concerned with political threats to its power, which it equated with threats to national sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bPutin\u2019s understanding of sovereignty reflects the counter-politicisation of the state and the Russian elite. In a recent speech he articulated his vision of sovereignty in the following terms: \u200b\u2018\u200bIn order to claim leadership, any country must ensure its sovereignty. Either the country is sovereign, or it is a colony.\u2019 Indeed, Putin has long propounded a concept of sovereignty that he now applies in relation to Ukraine. In a speech delivered on the eve of the war, he asked: \u2018Do the Ukrainians themselves understand that their country has been reduced to the level of a colony with a puppet regime? The government has lost its national character and is consistently working toward the complete dissolution of the country\u2019s sovereignty.\u2019&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Putin\u2019s denial of Ukraine\u2019s national sovereignty turns the reference \u200bto its \u2018complete dissolution\u2019\u200b\u200b into an ominous threat. But what is most interesting here is his denial of the sovereignty of the people of Ukraine. He thus denies the people the possibility of politicisation, the possibility of becoming a source of sovereignty. \u200b\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Putin speaks about sovereignty, he means absolute sovereignty, as understood by Jean Bodin\u200b,\u200b rather than the popular sovereignty privileged by modern theories of democracy. It is relevant to note the tension that exists between Putin\u2019s conception and that which is today dominant in political theory and in modern constitutions (including that of Russia), according to which sovereignty originates in the will of the people\u200b.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The politicisation of the state was occurring at the same time as a perceived threat posed by a practical realisation of the people\u2019s sovereignty through revolutionary protest in the post-Soviet countries. When people are depoliticised, the state\u2019s sovereign power can be exercised within a managerial mode of government.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before 2011,\u200b Putin\u2019s regime could retain \u200ba \u200bmonopoly of power without needing to politicise the state. However, after popular mobilisations openly challenged the regime\u2019s legitimacy, it started suppressing its political enemies, who were denied a space of dialogue in which a struggle for hegemony could develop.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Putin\u2019s embrace of absolute sovereignty precisely constituted the politicisation of the state itself, \u200band \u200bthis in turn required the deliberate exclusion of all popular groups. This demanded that the Russian state itself become a counter-revolutionary subject, making itself a source of constituent power. The 2019 Russian propaganda film The Salvation Union, about the Decembrists\u2019 uprising, is revealing. In the film, one of the Decembrists remarks to Emperor Nicholas I: \u2018We are the same. You and we have the right aims, but the ways are criminal.\u2019 In these words, one can see the equation of the state with the revolutionaries in the sense that the state produces constitutive (rather than constituted) power, power that creates law rather than obeys it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200bThe origins of popular sovereignty, in its modern conception, can be traced back to the decline of Medieval Europe and the opening of a space for the self-organisation of the people.\u200b \u200b\u200bFrom this moment on, as Russian sociologist Alexander Filippov notes, revolution is always possible, simply because the people have opportunity for association and action: \u2018Underneath the supposedly solid foundation is a boiling magma. And it\u2019s not boiling because someone is doing something wrong. It is not because of the things themselves, but because there, in the depths, is the primordial atomic cauldron of social and political life, from which new tongues of revolutionary flame can burst forth at any moment.\u2019 \u200b\u200b\u200b&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The energy of self-organisation in Russia and Ukraine promoted the people as an actual source of sovereignty.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This \u200brevolutionary spark was apparent in the slogans of the Russian protest movement: \u2018We are the power here\u2019 and \u2018You do not even imagine us\u200b\u200b\u2019\u200b.\u200b \u200b\u200bIt was no surprise, then, that Putin\u2019s political advisor Gleb Pavlovsky responded to a question about the government\u2019s position on the 2011-2012 protests with the following words: \u2018Imagine you\u2019re sitting there and all of a sudden a stool bites you in the ass. How would you feel about that? It can\u2019t be!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bOf course, there are other causes behind Putin\u2019s war against Ukraine and the American-led world order. However, the \u200bpopular politicisation in post-Soviet countries and the Russian state\u2019s counter-politicisation played an important role. The logic of mutual exclusion and hostility intensified a pre-existing political crisis in Russia \u2013 a crisis of legitimacy and crisis of hegemony. \u200b\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I have argued in my work with Ishchenko, both the rise of bonapartist authoritarianism and the mobilisation of popular discontent were \u2018deficient\u2019 reactions to the crisis of hegemony. And, in turn, they created the conditions for the extreme decision to go to war. Interestingly, new \u200bresearch\u200b conducted by the Public Sociology Laboratory shows that it is depolitici\u200bs\u200b\u200b\u200bation and alienation from the state, not sincere commitment, that stand behind the \u200b\u2018\u200b\u200b\u200bsupport\u200b\u2019\u200b\u200b \u200bof a large part of the Russian population for the war. Justifying the war, many of our informants have said that they are not experts in global politics, but that for this reason they trust that those in power have the knowledge to decide when it is appropriate to go to war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This alienation demonstrates the effectiveness of the Russian state\u2019s counter-politicisation. In the name of national sovereignty, Putin has undermined the sovereignty of the Russian people. And this has also allowed him to undermine the sovereignty of foreign populations deemed to pose a threat to his power. In this way, Putin\u2019s regime has self-organised and initiated its own (counter-)revolutionary war \u2013 against Russian society and, principally, against Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u200b\u200b\u200bVolodymyr Ishchenko and Ilya Matveev debate the question of what kind of rationality stands behind Putin\u2019s decision to attack Ukraine. Is Russia\u2019s elite an ideologically-motivated political actor? \u200b\u200b\u200bIf so, is its ideology expressive of class interests (as Ishchenko argues) or in contrast with them (as Matveev claims)? \u200b\u200b&nbsp; \u200b\u200b\u200bI deal with a similar but distinct [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"author-name":"Oleg Zhuravlev ","choose-language":"EN","wds_primary_category":8,"wds_primary_alameda-themes":0,"wds_primary_projects":0,"wds_primary_dynamic-publications-cat":0,"wds_primary_type-tax":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10,111],"alameda-themes":[],"projects":[],"dynamic-publications-cat":[65],"type-tax":[56],"class_list":["post-1764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-type-dossier","tag-dossier-part-i","tag-oleg-zhuravlev","dynamic-publications-cat-ukraine-dossier","type-tax-geopolitics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22092,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions\/22092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"alameda-themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/alameda-themes?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"projects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/projects?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"dynamic-publications-cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dynamic-publications-cat?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"type-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-tax?post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}