Post-Colonial Nature of Russian Regional Politics: Familial Language of Imperial Legacy

• In Event: Gender and Decolonization: Perspectives from Social Movements and Governance in Russia and Beyond after the Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

The fact that contemporary Russian elites’ discourse disputes Ukrainian claims to sovereignty speaks volumes about the imperial nature of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Russian agents of propaganda often refer to the Ukrainian nation as a “brother nation” or a sub-included branch of Russians altogether. I problematize this phenomenon from a gendered post-colonial stance. Originally, post-colonial thought was born in the dialogue between the Global North and South and produced a set of descriptive practices that did not fully account for Russian colonialism. Yet, Russian self-reflexive post-colonial tradition is rather young and builds upon a different agenda than that of Western-trained scholars. My research is an attempt to contribute to the post-colonial debates around post-Soviet space and insert gendered images in the picture of Russian regional politics.
I analyze Russian power discourse and find that, like in Western colonialism, it constructed its ex-borderlands (such as Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Georgia) as the colonial “other.” However, Russian elites do not necessarily portray “the other” as an “inferior” but rather a gendered “junior” assigning to the peripheral countries the identities of an “elderly mother,” a “neglected son,” an “unruly mistress,” etc. Unlike European Empires that justified colonialism with the civilizing mission or bringing progress, Russians based their conquests on a model of hierarchical regional household. The construct of the colonial household imagines Russia in the role of the senior member naturally called to nurture, protect, discipline, and care for the entire familial unit. The allegory of the household is nothing innocuous as it is a method to legitimize the cruelty and bloodshed of imperial wars. While coding the discourse, I borrow terminology from psychoanalysis, as I account for emotional triggers embedded in the household ideology that engage the human psyche.

Author

• Galina Bogatova, Union College