RCIN and OZwRCIN projects

Object

Title: Cruel Speech: Russia’s Atrocity Rhetoric During its War on Ukraine

Creator:

Ries, Nancy

Date issued/created:

2023

Resource type:

Text

Publisher:

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences

Place of publishing:

Warsaw

Description:

24 cm

Type of object:

Journal/Article

Abstract:

This paper interrogates the official purveyance of exterminist rhetoric in Russia’s war on Ukraine, with a particular focus on state media discourse. Over decades, the Putin regime has constructed an overarching system of intertwined narratives about Ukraine, centred on historical and geopolitical fables and exhortations to violence, and conveyed via repetitive tropes and tones of speech. These are ritualistic semi-scripted televised discussions (“agitainment”) featuring state officials, hack journalists, and prowar scholars. This elaborate discursive spectacle models a sadistic affect and seems designed to crush empathy towards Ukrainian civilians and among Russia’s own citizens. Anthropological and critical discursive approaches to the circulation of utterance suggest avenues for analysing the impacts, obvious and subtle, of these rhetorical and aesthetic devices in the context of terror directed both internationally and domestically.

References:

Agalalova, Zhanna. 2022. “Making Putin Great Again and Again.” Lecture at Maastricht University, 13 September 2022. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/10/07/putin-confronted-by-kremlin-insider-over-ukraine-us-intelreportedly-tells-biden-a79016
Alyukov, Maxim. 2022. “Propaganda, Authoritarianism and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” Nature Human Behavior 6 (6): 763–765.
Arutunyan, Anna. 2022. Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers, and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine. London: Hurst and Co.
Balakhanova, Iuliia. 2022. “Lish’ by byla voina: rasskaz o tom, kak Rossiiskie vlasti gotovili detei k napadeniiu na Ukrainu.” (“If only there could be a war: a story of how the Russian authorities prepared children for an attack on Ukraine.”) Proekt, 18 March 2022, https://www.proekt. media/narrative/uchebniki-istorii-propaganda/
Berman, Paul. 2022. “The Intellectual Catastrophe of Vladimir Putin.” Foreign Policy, 13 March 2022. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/13/putin-russia-war-ukraine-rhetoric-history/
Borenstein, Eliot. 2008. Overkill: sex and violence in contemporary Russian popular culture. Cornell University Press.
Borenstein, Eliot. 2020. “Plots against Russia: Conspiracy, Sincerity, and Propaganda.” Culture and Theory, Volume 193: 170–183.
Brusylovska, Olga, and Iryna Maksymenko. 2022. “Analysis of the Media Discourse on the 2022 War in Ukraine: The Case of Russia.” Regional Science Policy & Practice. September. https://doi.org/10.1111/rsp3.12579
Burtin, Shura. 2022. “Voiti vo mrak I nashchupat’ v nem liudei: Pochemu rossiane podderzhivaiut voinu?” [“Enter the darkness and find people in it: Why do Russians support the war?”] Meduza, 24 April 2022. https://meduza.io/feature/2022/04/24/voyti-vo-mrak-i-naschupat-v-nem-lyudey
Clover, Charles. 2016. Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism. Yale University Press.
Davis, Julia. 2014. “Russian Media Monitor.” https://www.youtube.com/@russianmediamonitor/featured (accessed 20.07.2023)
Dudko, Oksana. 2022. A Conceptual Limbo of Genocide: Russian Rhetoric, Mass Atrocities in Ukraine, and the Current Definition’s Limits. Canadian Slavonic Papers. 64:2-3, 133–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.2022.2106691
Ellyatt, Holly. 2022. Putin’s Supporters Call for the Liquidation of Ukraine as ‘Genocidal Rhetoric’ Swells. “CNBC,” 25 November 2022. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/25/putins-supporters-call-for-the-extermination-of-ukraine.html
Etkind, Alexander. 2022. “Ukraine, Russia, and Genocide of Minor Differences.” Journal of Genocide Research, 1–19.
Feierstein, Daniel. 2014. Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganizing Society under the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press.
Fusiek, Dawid. 2022. “Putin’s Great Patriotic War: Russia’s Securitization of the West and Humiliation Narratives Surrounding the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine.” Hapsc Policy Briefs Series, 3(1), 105–113. https://doi.org/10.12681/hapscpbs.30999
Garner, Ian. 2022. “‘We’ve Got to Kill Them’: Responses to Bucha on Russian Social Media Groups.” Journal of Genocide Research 1-8. DOI:1080/14623528.2022.2074020
Gorham, Michael S. 2014. After Newspeak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Hemment, Julie. 2022. “Satirical Strikes and Deadpanning Diplomats: Stiob as Geopolitical Performance in Russia–US relations.” PoLar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2022, 45 (2): 201–223.
Hirsch, Francine. 2022. “‘De-Ukrainianization’ is Genocide—Biden Was Right to Sound the Alarm.” The Hill. 14 April 2022. https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3267060-de-ukrainization-is-genocide-biden-was-right-to-sound-thealarm/
Hoskins, Andrew and Pavel Shchelin. 2023. “The War Feed: Digital War in Plain Sight.” American Behavioral Scientist 67(3): 355–463.
Humphrey, Michael. 2013. The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation: From Terror to Trauma. London and New York: Routledge.
Khislavski, Grigori. 2022. “Weaponizing History: Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Role of Historical Narratives.” Journal of Applied History 4 (1-2): 102–125.
Klemperer, Victor. [1947] 2006. The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist’s Notebook. Translated from the German by Martin Brady. London and New York: Continuum.
Knott, Eleanor. 2022. “Existential Nationalism: Russia’s War against Ukraine.” Nations and Nationalism 2022: 1-8.
Kucher, Stanislav. 2022. “Putin’s Propagandists Have a New Message About Ukraine: If We don’t Win, We’ll All be Tried for War Crimes.” Grid. 6 December 2022. https://www.grid.news/story/global/2022/12/06/putins-propagandists-have-anew-message-about-ukraine-if-we-dont-win-well-all-be-tried-for-war-crimes/
Ledeneva, Alena. 2013. Can Russia Modernise? Sistema, Power Networks, and Informal Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Magun, Artemy. 2022. “A Return of Barbarism”. Studies in East European Thought 74 (4): 483–492.
Mbembe, Achille. 2003. “Necropolitics.” Public culture 15 (1): 11–40.
McGlynn, Jade. 2020. “United by History: Government Appropriation of Everyday Nationalism during Vladimir Putin’s Third Term.” Nationalities Papers 48 (6): 1069–1085.
Moses, A. Dirk. 2022. “The Ukraine Genocide Debate Reveals the Limits of International Law.” Lawfare, 16 May 2022. https://www.lawfareblog.com/ukraine-genocide-debate-reveals-limits-international-law
Müller, Martin. 2009. Making Great Power Identities in Russia: An Ethnographic Discourse Analysis of Education at a Russian Elite University. Zürich: LIT Verlag.
New Lines Institute. 2022. “An Independent Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine and the Duty to Prevent.” May 2022. https://newlinesinstitute.org/russia/an-independent-legal-analysis-of-therussian-federations-breaches-of-the-genocide-convention-in-ukraine-and-theduty-to-prevent/
New Lines Institute. 2023. “The Russian Federation’s Escalating Commission of Genocide in Ukraine: A Legal Analysis.” July 2023. https://newlinesinstitute.org/genocide/the-russian-federations-escalating-commission-of-genocide-in-ukraine-a-legal-analysis/
Nikiforova, Viktoriya 2022. “How to Heal Ukrainians from Stockholm Syndrome.” RIA Novosti, 2 March, 2022. https://ria.ru/20220302/ukraina-1775974455.html
Orlova, Katya. 2022. “Stench of War: From Moderates and Liberals to Hatred of Everything Alive: This Is How Russian Politicians Are Growing Their Political Capital by Using War in Ukraine.” Novaya Gazeta Europe, 1 July 2022. https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2022/07/01/stench-of-war
Oushakine, Serguei. 2000. “In the State of Post-Soviet Aphasia: Symbolic Development in Contemporary Russia.” Europe-Asia Studies 52 (6): 991–1016.
Petryna, Adriana. 2023. “De‐Occupation as Planetary Politics: On The Russian War in Ukraine.” American Ethnologist 50 (1): 10-18. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13140
Pidkuĭmukha, Liudmyla. 2021. “History as a Weapon: Second World War Imagery in the Ongoing Russian–Ukrainian Cyberwar.” Cognitive Studies| Études cognitives 21: 1–14.
President of Russia 2021 “Article on the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, 12 July 2021. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
President of Russia. 2022. “Address by the President of Russia, 21 February 2022”. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/70565
Pupcenoks, Juris and Graig R. Klein. 2022a. “First Georgia, Then Ukraine: How Russian Propaganda Justifies Invasions.” Ethics and International Affairs, 9 March 2022. https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/online-exclusives/first-georgia-then-ukraine-how-russian-propaganda-justifies-invasions#footnote-6
Pupcenoks, Juris and Graig R. Klein. 2022b. “Using Lies and Disinformation, Putin and His Team Have Been Building the Case for a Ukraine Invasion for Fourteen Years.” The Conversation, 5 April 2022. https://theconversation.com/usinglies-and-disinformation-putin-and-his-team-have-been-building-the-case-for-aukraine-invasion-for-14-years-179335
Ratnikova, Valeriia. 2022. “Maternaiia chastushka s nekrofil’skim ottenkom: antropolog ob’iasnila, otkuda Putin vzial frazu ‘terpi, moia krasavitsa’” (“An obscene ditty with a necrophiliac tinge: an anthropologist explains where Putin got the phrase ‘be patient, my beauty’”). TV Rain, 8 February 2022. https://tvrain.tv/teleshow/here_and_now/maternaja_chastushka_s_nekrofilskim_ottenkom-547420/
Ries, Nancy. 1997. Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation During Perestroika. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Ries, Nancy. 2002a. “‘Honest Bandits’ and ‘Warped People’: Russian Narratives about Money, Corruption, and Moral Decay.” In Ethnography in Unstable Places edited by Carol J. Greenhouse, Elisabeth Mertz, and Kay B. Warren, 276–315.
Durham: Duke University Press. Ries, Nancy. 2002b. “Anthropology and the Everyday, from Comfort to Terror. New Literary History 33 (4): 725-742.
Ries, Nancy. 2016. “The Broken Nuclear Taboo.” Lecture at University of Edinburgh. https://www.academia.edu/72545486/The_Broken_Nuclear_Taboo
Ries, Nancy. 2022. “Under Cover of War: The Kremlin’s Fascist Project.” Today’s Totalitarianism, August 2022. https://www.todaystotalitarianism.com/under-cover-of-war
Roudakova, Natalia. 2017. Losing Pravda: Ethics and The Press in Post-Truth Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ryazanova-Clarke, Lara. 2016. “Linguistic Violence in Contemporary Russian Public Discourses.” Zeitschrift für Slawistik 61 (1): 3–28.
Saprykin, Yuri 2022. “Revizia zlya” [The Revision of Evil]. Kommersant. 16 December 2022. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5721611?fbclid=IwAR28LWpb1B93SjhEnAavhHytCL8iEZvUT91tRhAghLTUS9gP9_ jCKlauYjw
Schevchenko, Olga. 2009. Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Serebryakov, Artem. 2022. “On the Distorted Structure of Russian Guilt.” Studies in East European Thought 74 (4): 585–592.
Sergeitsev, Timofei. 2022. “Chto Rossiia dolzhna sdelat’ s Ukrainoi.” RIA Novosti, 3 April 2022. https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html. Translation to English by Mariia Kravchenko appeared in Medium on 4 April 2022. https://medium.com/@kravchenko_mm/what-should-russia-do-with-ukraine-translation-of-a-propaganda-article-by-a-russian-journalist-a3e92e3cb64
Serwer, Adam. 2022. The Cruelty Is the Point: Why Trump’s America Endures. One World.
Shekhovtsov, Anton. 2022. “A Short History of Putin’s Media War.” Voxeurop (English). https://voxeurop.eu/en/russia-history-putin-media-war/
Shestopalova, Alona. 2023. “Constructing Nazis on Political Demand: Agenda-Setting and Framing in Russian State-Controlled TV Coverage of the Euromaidan, Annexation of Crimea and the War in Donbas.” Central European Journal of International and Security Studies 17 (2): 112–137. https://www.cejiss.org/constructing-nazis-on-political-demand-agenda-setting-and-framing-in-russianstate-controlled-tv-coverage-of-the-euromaidan-annexation-of-crimea-and-thewar-in-donbas
Shevchenko, Olga. 2009. Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Shtrykov, Sergei. 2022. “Ressentiment, War, and the Anthropologist’s Silence.” Cultural Anthropology Hotspots: Russia’s War on Ukraine. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/ressentiment-war-and-the-anthropologists-silence” https://culanth.org/fieldsights/ressentiment-war-and-the-anthropologists-silence
Stănescu, Georgiana. 2022. “Ukraine conflict: the challenge of informational war.” Social Sciences and Education Research Review 9 (1): 146–148.
Stephenson, Svetlana. 2022. “We Invite You to Die: Kremlin Necropolitics as the Foundation of War.” Novaya Gazeta Europe. 24 June 2022. https://novayagazeta. eu/articles/2022/06/24/we-invite-you-to-die
Sumlenny, Sergej. 2022. “Comrade Hitler and Other Russian Fantasies.” Center for European Policy Analysis, 17 June 2022. https://cepa.org/article/comrade-hitler- and-other-russian-fantasies/
Tolz, Vera and Yuri Teper. 2018. “Broadcasting Agitainment: A New Media Strategy of Putin’s Third Presidency.” Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (4): 213-227. DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2018.1459023
Umland, Andreas. 2007. “Alexander Dugin, the Issue of Post-Soviet Fascism, and Russian Political Discourse Today.” Russian Analytical Digest 14 (07): 2–5.
Urban, Michael 2010. Cultures of Power in Post-Communist Russia: An Analysis of Elite Political Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vartanova, Elena and Sergei Smirnov. 2010. “Contemporary Structure of the Russian Media Industry.” In Russian Mass Media and Changing Values edited by Arja Rosenholm, Kaarle Nordenstreng and Elena Trubina, 21–40. London and New York: Routledge.
Vishnevetskaia, Marina. 2014. Slovar’ peremen 2014. Moscow, Tri Kvadrata.
Volkov, Vadim. 2002. Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wanner, Catherine and Valentyna Pavlenko. 2023. “Cultivating an Empathic Impulse in Wartime Ukraine.” In Conversations on Empathy edited by F. Mezzenzana and D. Peluso, 135–153. London and New York: Routledge.
Wijermars, Marìëlle and Katja Lehtisaari, eds. 2020. Freedom of Expression in Russia’s New Mediascape. London and New York: Routledge.
Wieviorka, Michel. 2022. “Russia in Ukraine: The Social Sciences, War, and Democracy.” Violence: An International Journal, 3(1): 11–22.
Wodak, Ruth. 2014. “Critical discourse analysis.” In The Routledge companion to English studies edited by Constant Leung and Brian V. Street, 302-316. London and New York: Routledge.
Wood, Elizabeth A. 2016. “Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18 (3): 329-350. DOI: 10.1080/14616742.2015.1125649
Yampolsky, Mikhail. 2022. “Regime of Imperial Paranoia: War in the Age of Empty Rhetoric.” Re:Russia December 26, 2022. https://re-russia.net/en/expertise/043/
Yampolsky, Mikhail. 2014. “Novinka sezona: ‘natsional-predateli’” (“Novelty of the Season: ‘National-traitors’”). Novoe vremya, 9, 24 March 2014. https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/80877
Zvereva, Vera. 2012. Setevye razgovory: Kyl’turnye kommunikatsii v Runete. Bergen: Slavica Bergensia 10.
Zvereva, Vera. 2020. “State Propaganda and Popular Culture in the Russian-Speaking Internet.” In Freedom of Expression in Russia’s New Mediasphere edited by Mariëlle Wijermars and Katja Lehtisaari, 225–247. London and New York: Routledge.

Relation:

Ethnologia Polona

Volume:

44

Start page:

105

End page:

135

Detailed Resource Type:

Article

Format:

application/octet-stream

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:240384 ; 0137-4079 ; eISSN 2719-6976 ; doi:10.23858/ethp.2023.44.3420

Source:

IAiE PAN, call no. P 366 ; IAiE PAN, call no. P 367 ; IAiE PAN, call no. P 368 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY-NC-ND 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Access:

Open

×

Citation

Citation style:

This page uses 'cookies'. More information