(iPoster) Responses of Russian Ideological Strands to State Rhetoric on Ethnonationalism

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Religion and Politics & Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries (Post-Soviet)
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries (Post-Soviet)

Abstract

Building on accounts of Russia as an informational autocracy, this study tests the expectation that regime messaging on ethnicity mirrors domestic ideological demand. Instead, I show that it substantially differs from all major domestic ideological groupings – including social conservatives with whom the regime is often identified.

I draw on my previous research which established a growing context-dependent gap in rhetoric on ethnic nationalism in sources such as state-owned talk shows and television news. I summarize this gap as “ethnonationalism for them, multinationality for us”. The regime has increasingly mirrored radical right rhetoric when discussing racialized minorities in Western Europe and North America. This approach has become dramatically more common following the Black Lives Matter protests, remaining a major staple by mid-2024. However, regime media coverage of ethnicity within Russia has remained not only moderate in substance but also lacking prominence. Even a major terrorist attack by a group of Tajik nationals affiliated with the Islamic State did not lead to a rise in anti-Central Asian or Islamophobic rhetoric on television shows.

This paper shifts the analytic focus from regime output to its reception by ideological groupings. It compares rhetoric from multiple ideological strands to identify how each of them reacts to the regime’s framing of ethnicity and “race”. Based on literature about Russian civil society and nationalist movements which identifies key actors, I distinguish the following eight clusters: social conservatives, pro-war military activists, pro-war nationalists, anti-migrant nationalists, anti-regime nationalists, systemic liberals, opposition liberals, and the left (socialist, anarchist or communist). Each cluster is represented by twenty Telegram channels belonging to non-anonymous authors, comprising a dataset with 2,968,524 posts, comments excluded. I quantitatively analyze the relative prevalence of terms and themes among strands of channels, such as “Tajik”, “black-skinned”, “migrant”, “gastarbeiter”, “transgender”, “feminism”, “multinationality”, and others. I compare these clusters against other datasets that include two more Telegram clusters with officials and media personalities, the transcripts of six major talk shows, television news, and official speeches (presidential and parliamentary). This approach is supplemented with a qualitative discussion of the context for the terms.

The analysis reveals a consistent misalignment: despite the granular distinctions in subtypes of nationalists, no major ideological cluster corresponds to the regime’s preferred configuration. All nationalist-adjacent currents including social conservatives and pro-war activists concentrate on domestic ethnonationalism. They direct it primarily against Central Asian immigrant groups, as well as against Chechens and other people from the Caucasus. At the same time, most nationalist strands also broadcast radical right rhetoric for foreign contexts, albeit at a lower rate than the talk shows. All right-wing strands are substantially more interested in ethnicity-related themes than socially conservative themes which preoccupy state-run media, such as LGBTQ+ topics. Thus, varied nationalist clusters repeatedly articulate demands the regime declines to satisfy in formal messaging – including in such incendiary media as the talk shows or even the Telegram channels of talk shows. Liberal and left-wing strands are unconvinced by the regime’s commitment to “multinationality” at home and emphasize its hostility to minorities abroad. Anti-regime nationalists reconfigure the regime’s relatively tolerant domestic stance on ethnicity into an anti-state frame.

These findings complicate the idea of Russia as an informational autocracy finely attuned to ideological demands or reflective of the domestic radical right, contributing to debates about authoritarian legitimation and ethnic nationalism.

Author

• Andrey Davydov, McGill University