The russian war in Ukraine has turned Russian society into the subject of heated political discussion and much speculation. Does ‘society’ support Vladimir Putin and his war? Does ‘society’ share the KremlinS 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 fainthearted opportunism.
Both images allude to totalitarianism characterised by mobilisation and atomisation, bloodthirstiness and conformism. Neither is wholly accurate.
Rather,society in Russia is made up of diffrent 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 unusual 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 have benefited from both the Kremlin’s new economic policy and the withdrawal of Western companies from the Russian market. they have told 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 challenging times rather than abandon it entirely. These 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.
The nationalist middle class opposes the liberal pro-Western view that it is little more than a cowed population, but it is also not a violently mobilised people demanding absolute victory over the enemy while promoting the Kremlin’s imperial ideology. The unexpected conclusion of PS Lab’s sociological research is that we are not dealing with a right-wing radicalisation of## cultural responses
What is the culture of this emerging nationalist middle class?
the most pro-war and ideologically charged part of the cultural establishment is urging the state to invest as much as possible in ultra-patriotic and imperialistic art. But while the establishment demands movies and books that push an aggressive agenda, the actual popular demand for it is very small. For artists, the conclusion is clear: to appeal to the masses, one shoudl try to reduce the degree of hard patriotism, while preserving and humanising the soft patriotic component.
Experiments in this direction can be seen in the Russian comedy-drama TV series, The Frist Issuewhich was released in 2024. The main character is a famous writer who experienced great success ten years ago, but today leads a life full of debt and degradation. Unexpectedly, he’s offered the post of editor-in-chief of a glossy magazine owned by someone from the West. Will he be able to save the magazine on his own?
The new editor believes the magazine must respond to the spirit of the times, tho what exactly that consists of is not quite clear. What is clear, though, is that several developments open up new possibilities for the magazine: the war (which always remains off-screen), the rejection of liberal, pro-Western dogmas, and the growth of a novel patriotism.He proposes to make the publication “about ordinary people” and struggles with the staff, advertisers, and investors to make it a reality. After many twists and turns, the first issue of the magazine is a success: patriotism and sovereignty win!
True, the show’s heroes turn out to be migrants and sex workers, people who do not represent decent society for a large number of Russians, to put it mildly. Much else is uncertain. The viewer doesn’t see or understand why exactly the new format of the magazine is so beloved by its usual middle-class audience. The series is filled with nods towards a changing society (at one point, the protagonist mysteriously says, “Its 2024, you know” – meaning that the past liberal era is over).But what these political and ideological changes actually are remains unknown. The show’s primary evil, though, is not the absent Western bosses or the pro-Western fem-queer youth on the editorial staff. It’s the amoral characters from criminal and business circles with roofs in the Kremlin and the Lubyanka (the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Services, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB), who are engaged in scams in the spirit of the 1990s.
Regardless of the show’s many mysteries and contradictions, it’s an interesting attempt to meet the demand for a new patriotism in mass art. It surely won’t be the last.
Intellectuals going deep
Some people who are regarded as serious intellectuals decided to remain in russia after the war began.
Like the middle-class participants in our sociological interviews,they do not support the war or the Kremlin’s imperial ideology,yet they feel a sense of connection to the changes taking place in the country,which they frame not as strictly political but existentially significant.They see both good and bad in the changes, but as producers of contemporary culture, they respond first and foremost to the existential dimension of these changes in their art and work.
Alexander Ivanov, the editor-in-chief of Ad Marginem, an independent book publisher, put it succinctly: “The point is that there are two possible types of behaviour: to stay or to leave.” There are many different reasons why individual Russians took a particular path. For those who left, it was a visceral reaction to the authorities that made the decision to start the war, as well as an opportunity to realize a long-planned emigration. The reasons for staying are also intricate. It could be a sense of duty to stick with the motherland, or a more practical reason, such as a desire not to
Staying put: How Russian Artists Navigate War and Repression
The exodus of Russian intellectuals and artists following February 24th, 2022, has sparked debate, notably within feminist and queer circles – a question that strongly reflects the divide between those who remained and those who left.
Building a feminist and queer discourse is undeniably difficult while facing harassment and repression from the far right.Yet,efforts may mirror the early 1990s,framing queerness as a challenge to liberal-bourgeois norms. critiquing the global claims within feminist and queer discourse – claims often used to justify Western interventions – could prove valuable. Alternatively,some argue,echoing 1990s thinking,that self-preservation in a conservative country like Russia necessitates avoiding public portrayal and open political struggle for the queer community. A private life, this reasoning suggests, possesses its own depth and freedom.
Those who stayed in russia often share common priorities and declarations.They frequently romanticise the war as a world-altering event, while remaining silent about its concrete, catastrophic effects – a silence justified by security concerns.They often attempt to navigate a middle ground between emigrants and right-wing extremists, often dismissing news in favor of artistic commitment.
A simpler form of patriotic depoliticisation involves integrating contemporary art with ethnic traditionalism. The exhibition, SWOYASI: The Way of Contemporary Russian Art (“SWO” stands for Special Military Operation), held earlier this year at the Historical Museum near Red Square, exemplified this. Beyond the name’s allusion, the show focused on Russia’s ethnonational heritage and its artistic interpretations, conceptualised through the popular notion of the ‘cultural code‘ – inherited cultural characteristics, images, and ideas. Central to this code is the image of the traditional house (room) as a microcosm of the cosmos. Engagement with ethnonational heritage and its modern interpretations is a socially approved, potentially even demanded, project of the soft-patriotic middle class.
Regarding the ethnonational component of exhibitions like SWOYASI, PS Lab’s findings reveal a stronger demand for a nationalist project – defined by clear pre-February 24th borders, a common identity, and a government focused on domestic economic issues – than for an explicitly pro-war, imperial project.
Eclecticism instead of radicalism?
Alongside the ethnonational trend, which reinforces the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, projects present contemporary Russian culture in a spirit of ‘traditionalism without borders’.
An example is the exhibition The Dark Thaw, staged by the Voznesensky Centre in Moscow at the beginning of this year. The title references the period following Joseph stalin’s death in 1953 and lasting through the early 1960s. The exhibition portrays the mystical underground of the 1960s as the counterpoint to the Thaw’s mainstream, characterized by shining humanism and progress.
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