Russia and Europe: Biopolitical and Geopolitical entanglements

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RUSSIA AND EUROPE:

BIOPOLITICAL AND GEOPOLITICAL

ENTANGLEMENTS

MA Thesis in European Studies

Graduate School for Humanities

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Student: Thesis Supervisor:

Mariateresa Signorile Mw. Prof. Dr. L.A. Bialasiewicz

12192597 Second Supervisor:

Dhr. Dr. R.J. de Bruin

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ABSTRACT

In the last fifteen years, it has been attested in Russia the development and spreading of a new form of Russian identity strictly related to a new conservative ideology that has been defined as ‘Russian Conservatism’. This new ideology has cleverly mixed traditional conservative values, xenophobic attitudes with Orthodox religious norms and myths from the ‘glorious Soviet past’, reframing the identity of modern Russians. The essence of Russian Conservatism relies on its intrinsic opposition to the West, to its values, norms, habits and cultural roots.The way to strengthen the distinction between Russia and the West stands on the ability of the Russian state to develop and use a series of information tools which are helpful to spread anti-European narratives and ideas and that are necessary to keep control over citizens.In this regard, the most powerful tool to influence domestic public opinion is the use of state-aligned TV channels, journals and social media disinformation campaigns which, through a smart use of mystified narratives about real events or brand-new stories, enact negative images of the European countries and of their relative sensitive issues and values, such as immigration, multiculturalism, democracy, equality, sexual freedom and tolerance. The present study focuses on this phenomenon and it has to be intended as a discursive analysis of key processes and causes that determine the deployment of Russia’s biopolitical strategy, both towards domestic and international public spheres, and as an examination of the modalities in which this strategy is implemented, with particular attention to the Russian attempts at influencing and shaping the European public sphere through the cooperation and support provided to the European far-Right parties and conservative organizations.

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INTRODUCTION

Traditionally, Russia’s foreign policy has overtly exerted its power tools and geopolitical interests through territorial expansions (such as the 2014 annexation of Crimea), the so-called ‘borderization’ techniques (such as the slow and progressive appropriation of parts of Georgian territory) and official support to separatists in post-Soviet countries (such as in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine). However, contemporary post-Soviet Russia has recently adopted new tools and discursive strategies to influence the public sphere, which are in fact targeted at influencing domestic public opinion above all, but also increasingly Europe’s democratic discursive arena. This approach to foreign and security relations has been initially defined as ‘soft power’, a non-military geopolitical concept that relies on attraction as a valid instrument to shape ideational and discursive realities but, as Makarychev (2018) has highlighted, it has developed over time into what could be defined as a specific form of ‘biopolitical power’, a concept that will be explained later on in this thesis. According to Makarychev (2018) and other scholars, it is through the use of this non-military and non-violent power that Russia attempts re-shape political and social discourses in accordance with the rules of its own ideational framework and codes of representation (Dubrovskaya & Kozhemyakin, 2017).

Indeed, the use of discursive power can be defined as the way to exert power over the public’s opinions and attitudes to current political and social issues (van Dijk, 1993) and the primary intention of this technique is to provide a news text, a discourse or a visual material which can be perceived by the reader, listener or viewer as incontrovertible truth, thus influencing and shaping the audience’s social cognition (van Dijk, 1988). Therefore, as Luhmann (2000) stated, the mass media produce an autonomous reality dissociated from ‘the real world’ and they are capable of creating a reality where they represent ‘public arenas’ in which fundamental public issues are constantly and collectively defined and redefined (cfr. Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988). Furthermore, Hall (cfr. 1997) has defined representation as ‘an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of signs and images which stand for or represent things’. In this sense, this is what Russia has been developing in the last fifteen years through the use of means of information, such as social media, TV channels, journals and official institutional speech. Russia has created a discursive reality that through a proper misrepresentation of facts or a whole creation of artificial narratives has shaped and built the new modern Russian identity. This mechanism can be inserted in a wider process of nation-building that Russia has been facing since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the

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consequent need of a new image, identity and political ideology. Indeed, the Soviet morality and ideology were destroyed in the 1990s. The lack of a post-Soviet Russian identity and a new set of moral values and ideas, combined with decades of shortages and high levels of consumption of the elites, a great unequal income distribution, society fragmentation and high levels of social tensions were creating a new generation of deluded non-patriotic citizens that were encouraging the spreading of Western liberal norms, values and habits. However, with Vladimir Putin’s first mandate and particularly with his second mandate as President of the Russian Federation, Russia’s political, economic and social situation started to change. Indeed, it has been slowly developing and spreading a new form of Russian identity strictly related to a new conservative ideology that is defined as ‘Russian Conservatism’. This new ideology has cleverly mixed traditional conservative values, xenophobic attitudes with Orthodox religious norms and myths from the ‘glorious Soviet past’, reframing the identity of modern Russians.

The essence of Russian Conservatism relies on its intrinsic opposition to the West, to its values, norms, habits and cultural roots. The idea of a ‘Big Other’ is instrumental to the construction of a proper modern Russian identity that necessitates an opposite, a deviation from the morally accepted norm, a negative other, which in the Russian discourse is embodied in the liberal emancipatory Europe (Makarychev, 2018). The way to strengthen the distinction between Russia and the West stands on the ability of the Russian state to develop and use a series of information tools which are helpful to spread anti-European narratives and ideas and they are necessary to keep control over citizens. These tools are represented by social media, blogs, journals, TV channels and radio broadcasts. The most powerful tool to influence domestic public opinion is the use of state-aligned TV channels, journals and social media disinformation campaigns which through a smart use of mystified narratives about real events or brand-new stories enact negative images of the European countries and of their relative sensitive issues and values, such as immigration, multiculturalism, democracy, equality, sexual freedom and tolerance. The important role of media and journals has determined an extensive effort to gain control over the major Russian mass media as a first objective of Putin’s authoritarian regime to be built during his presidency. During his multiple presidential mandates, the Russian government has adopted various means to silence (sometimes even through murders of journalists) and/or to marginalize independent voices and alternative sources of information that have gradually resulted in the cultural hegemony of the ruling elites over the majority of population (Shekhovtsov, 2018). During the period 2004-2012, Putin’s second mandate, various forms of repression and murders of journalists were still taking place, but at the same time, due to these violent practices, the media started

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developing self-censorship skills (Gessen, 2005). In the following years, even though the number of repressions towards the media has been decreasing, the approach of media to information has stabilized itself on conformism to the state-based narratives through “both opportunism and routinized willingness to accept unquestioningly the usual practices or standards, which were originally imposed through coercion” (Schimpfossl & Yablokov, 2014). Therefore, the role of the Russian media has become pivotal in consolidating Putin’s regime, diffusing news and opinions aligned with the ideology of the regime. They have had the effect of (re)orientating people’s perceptions on their ‘own’ national narratives (Feklyunina, 2016).

This process of construction, adaptation and spreading of Russian Conservative’s values, norms and point of view has also concerned and it is still concerning the European public sphere in the way Russian disinformation campaigns, especially through the use of social media and foreign versions of Russian TV channels like RT and Sputnik, are able to hijack user’s attention, manipulating their perceptions and opinions, also engaging prominent Western political figures, political parties and organizations. Russia’s disinformation campaign has intervened in multiple occasions, both in the EU and US, in order to emphasize and accentuate Western issues and problems. RT and Sputnik, in fact, continue to skillfully capitalize on existing divisions and frustrations in Western societies (Bertrand, 2016; Gorenberg, 2016; Michel, 2017; Michel & Pottier, 2017; Saletan & Carter, 2017; Yablokov, 2015). Indeed, social media have been used as platforms for social and political support on key and sensitive European issues, such as the refugee crisis, Brexit or the recent European elections 2019. Russia’s propaganda machine has overtly supported Brexiters during the period anticipating the Referendum of 2016, wishing for other European countries to leave the European Union in the future; it has also supported far-right ‘Front National’ party leader Marine Le Pen during the France presidential election campaign in 2017 and last but not least, Russian propaganda has emphasized the refugee crisis since 2015 on, fabricating a whole set of fake news and narratives about the emergence of refugees and migrants in Europe and the threat of possible infiltrations of criminals and terrorists among those migrants in order to mobilize both domestic and foreign public opinion. This is what happened with the famous scandal of Lisa, an invented 13-year-old girl of Russian origin who had been allegedly raped by immigrants in Germany. The purpose of spreading such a fake news lied in convincing Germans and Russians living in Germany to blame the German Chancellor Angel Merkel for the flux of immigrants entering the country and thus, to undermine their trust and support to the German government and divide German public opinion (Makarychev, 2018; Karlsen, 2019). The issue of Russian meddling into Europe’s affairs represents a

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serious and rising tendency that in a long-standing perspective could succeed in undermining and weakening European democratic processes and dividing the public opinion on key issues that pertain to the core values and perspectives of the European project and its development. Even though this study avoids any form of alarmism and conspiratorial discourse, it should be considered, as previously mentioned, that available academic research has attested actions aimed at exaggerating the scale of social issues in the EU, at spreading fake news, conspiratorial theories, and at supporting and funding extremist and conservative organizations and parties in order to serve the Russian government’s cause in different European countries.

The present study focuses on this phenomenon and it has to be intended as a discursive analysis of key processes and causes that determine the deployment of Russia’s biopolitical strategy both towards domestic and international public spheres and as an examination of the modalities in which this strategy is implemented. The analysis evolves on different levels, providing, in the first chapter, the examination of peculiar domestic social features and developments in Russian modern identity discourse and domestic politics that represent the implementation of the biopolitical project of Russian Conservatism (Makarychev, 2018). Indeed, available research suggests that this project aims at the (re)making of Russian identity on a specific set of conservative norms, rejecting any deviation from these fixed norms and relies on the Russian State as the ultimate source of truth. This pre-defined Russian identity that gets rid of any opponent view and any form of ‘Otherness’ would be then provided and assimilated by Russians through a series of mechanisms and techniques that constantly display an intrinsic civilizational distance between Russia and the West (Chebankova, 2016). This process of biopolitical regulation and representation is also strengthened through the active involvement of various social actors, such as the Russian economic and political elites, Russian intellectuals, Russian Orthodox Church and state-aligned journalists. In fact, the second chapter draws attention to the modes and practices adopted by the Russian regime to secure Conservatism at home, relying on the idea of Russian civilizational alternativism and opposition to the West, and to how it is spread abroad, influencing and dividing the European public sphere through the involvement of extreme political fringes of European society that voluntarily serve the Russian cause. The third and last chapter of this work attempts at providing an empirical analysis of the discursive practices adopted by Russian propaganda by means of journal articles, TV programmes and institutional discourses, interviews, and meetings, both domestically and internationally. The analysis presented in this thesis thus draws upon a range of different articles and institutional discourses, focusing in particular on news articles released during the

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peak in the refugee crisis in Europe in 2015-2016. In carrying out the analysis of news sources, this study draws upon the theoretical and methodological contributions of critical discourse analysis (see van Dijk 1993,1988) that examines the news media as a distinct form of discourse, and that establishes a link between concrete language use and the abstract notion of the ‘public mind’. Critical discourse analysis approaches highlight, indeed, the ways in which dominant media discourses influence the social cognition of the population. Thus, through the use of discursive power, socially shared mental representations (that is, the public’s perceptions and attitudes to current affairs) can be influenced and shaped (van Dijk, 1993). By involving persuasive content features, which means involving discursive strategies that encourage the reader to accept the text as truth, news discourse becomes a pivotal instrument to determine the reader’s social cognition (van Dijk, 1988). The ultimate goal of discursive techniques is, in fact, the construction of an alternative reality in the epistemological sense, as the process of ‘building a cognizable world, an object ontology, by means of various linguistic tools’ (Lektorsky, 2008). Accordingly, the analysis provided here tries to uncover and discuss the presence of discursive structures that lead to such a powerful control of public opinion in Russia and that, increasingly, also aim at shaping the European public sphere.

While aiming to contribute to this discussion with new empirical evidence, the research presented in this thesis is, necessarily, limited in scope, due to the impossibility of collecting and examining every text provided to Russian and European audiences. For the purposes of the thesis research, it was necessary to restrict the analysis to a set of specific primary and secondary sources. The first are a select set of President Putin’s 2017/2018 institutional interviews, accessible on the website of the ‘official internet resources of the President of Russia’, examined together with press and academic reports on Russian propaganda. The analysis then turns its attention to a variety of news articles, carefully selected among news articles accessible online, released by various Russian newspapers both in English and Russian languages in the period 2015-2018 (the Russian language sources have been directly translated by myself). This analysis is supplemented and supported by other similar analyses by some of the leading contemporary scholars of Russian biopolitics and its representational and ideational framework and methodology. In the conclusions of the thesis, a brief discussion is provided of the plausible future developments of Russian propaganda, and the possible impact that it could have on the European democratic arena – as well as on the use that European political and societal actors could make of the Russian support they received before the European elections held in May 2019.

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CHAPTER 1 RUSSIAN CONSERVATISM AND

SHIFTING DOMESTIC ATTITUDES

Historically, Russia’s attitude towards immigrants and refugees has been contradictory. On the one hand, Russia has been developing policies to attract migrants from the so-called CIS countries (Commonwealth of Independent States), the former Soviet Union countries which, after gaining the independence, started experiencing impoverishment, inequality, high rates of unemployment, deterioration of living standards and political instability (cfr. Hoang, 2015). These policies were aimed at attracting labour force for the national economy, as Russia needed additional workers to fill some market sectors. On the other hand, Russia’s policies expressed overt anti-immigrant public sentiments through official public statements, legal procedural implementations, and a hard control of human movements in and out of the country, with the support of public national concern about national security, employment rates for nationals and national cultural heritage and identity. Indeed, these contrasting approaches have been alternating during the decades, as refugee management development reveals, shifting from 1990’s soft laws of immigration control which were applied by the Federal Migration Service (FMS) in accordance with humanitarian assistance needs of refugees and displaced people, to a hard immigration control and policing since the early 2000s. These hard laws and policies provided legal permit to conduct random documents’ check on foreigners in public areas or private spaces, also giving regional authorities a considerable level of discretion and power (Hoang, 2015; Gorodzeisky, Glikman & Maskileyson, 2015).

1.1 | Russian Conservatism and post-Soviet governmentality

This attitude, that has been termed ‘Russian Conservatism’, is a unique Russian conservative ideology and it can be explained through the analysis of various factors which have contributed and determined a new closure in the context of immigration and refugees management. Firstly, the constant remarking upon national security as a primary objective of national policies has been made by anti-immigration supporters to justify the need to harden Russia’s immigration and asylum laws and procedures (Heusala, 2018). The spreading of such a mentality has been possible because it lied upon the idea that increasing immigration rates would have affected economic opportunity for nationals,

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therefore they would have had the consequence of enhancing social instability and human displacement from the country (Ivakhnyuk, 2009). Secondly, the recent conflict in the Crimea region (Eastern Ukraine) has brought to Russia more than 1 million Ukrainians during the period 2014-2015. This has extensively widened the Ukrainian migrant population in Russia which has been followed by other major groups of migrants from the CIS countries, such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (Bessudnov, 2016). As regards refugees, the Syrian conflict has brought new mass of asylum seekers at the Russian borders, thus creating new social discomforts in Russian society. In addition, this new generation of migrants, specifically from Central Asia and the Caucasus, has lower levels of education and knowledge of Russian language than the previous ones. They carry out low-paid and unskilled jobs, in sectors as industry, construction, agriculture, and retail sales (Chudinovskikh and Denisenko, 2017; Denisenko, 2017; Vishnevskiy, 2011).

These social changes have accelerated the development of Conservatism in Russian identity. This way of thinking relies on the state as a bringer of truth and on an idealization of the concept of ‘national identity’ whose essence is represented by the idea of ‘Russia’s moral superiority over the West’ (Makarychev, 2018). It has been constructed by the sense of insecurity and loss, that citizens experienced after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which has allowed the affirmation of an autocratic government in the name of national security and defense from potential foreign aggression (Hoang, 2015). It emphasizes the ‘Glorious past’ of Tsarist and Soviet era and of the Great Patriotic War, as well as the belonging to the Orthodox community. But, this re-evaluation of the past should not be confused with a simple nostalgic movement that does not provide any valuable solution for the future. Russian Conservatist project, on the contrary, has a long-standing projection in the future. It breaks with the past, by adopting some of its transcendental values to bring them to the future (Leont’yev, 2010a; Mezhuyev in Malofeyev et al., 2010). It attempts at rebuilding tradition in a new form, as a way to resurrect from the economic deprivation, moral decay and suffering of the early post-Soviet era. Indeed, Conservatism aims at creating and providing a positive and modern truly Russian identity. In order to do so, it relies on the idea of a strong state as the perfect container of socio-political and ethical values which can ensure the creation and development of such a project through the retention of security, territorial integrity, stability, development and modernization of Russia (Remizov, 2010). This project is deeply funded on the idea of alternativism of Russia.

Indeed, it affirms the idea that the new national elite should create and convey a new set of values for Russia, in direct contrast to the neoliberal global objectives carried out by the West. This has become increasingly central to this ideology when the financial

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crisis of 2008 hit the economic and financial stability of Russia and its ruling business elite engaged itself in sustaining Russia’s national interests and securing the geopolitical position and geostrategic interests of the country in the international arena through which they could have gained domestic stability and development (Khazin, 2013). The way to achieve its geostrategic interests abroad is primarily based on the importance of defending its natural and political borders at home or even expand them to the post-Soviet countries. The protection of its borders has always been central in Russian history, and it has mainly depended on its unique geopolitical and domestic fears and myths (Chebankova, 2016). These fears have always been fueled by a real or contrived perceptions of enmity and rivalry around a specific entity, in a good vs. evil typical struggle (McCormick, 1997; Adorno and Horkheimer, 1999; Sorel, 1999). In this sense, Russia has constantly perceived herself as living in a state of danger due to her struggle to influence the Eurasian space which is contended and threatened by European politics and values and the Westernized global system that is also capable of weakening Russia’s governance, territory and position in the international arena. This emphatic perception has been favoured by Russia’s unique geographic position, her vast landmass full of natural resources. The whole history of Russia is based on and driven by these perceptions, thus leading to its conservative project and the further consolidation of its statehood.

In the contemporary period, this conservative ideology has pushed for the consolidation of the state to restore its former leading position in the world. The consolidation of the state is realized through the creation and spreading of several myths which help the mastering of the project by mobilizing the opinions, values and sense of collective security of Russian civil society (Chebankova, 2016). In the present time, these myths have to be conveyed by the use of technology and means of collective information in order to be effectively adopted as incontrovertible truths. Consequently, Russia’s conservative ideology is strongly convinced that the highest expression of post-modern politics stands on the need to conduct information wars to dominate the interpretation of history and current international affairs. Thus, myths conveyed by one side of the globe struggle with myths of the other side and so, it is created a complex variety of myths, interpretations and political narratives that compose the segmented reality in which we all live in (Lyotard, 1984; McCormick, 1997; Dugin, 2009; Wagner, 2012). In Russia, these myths represent the antidote to its innate condition of uncertainty, a mental way to stabilize the country’s position in a fixed geopolitical sphere and give explanation to the intricate geopolitical division of the world, providing a well-defined identity that can ideologically sustain and combat this division to achieve a dominant geopolitical vision (Chebankova, 2016).

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For this reason, Russian Conservatism emphasizes the need for maintaining a strong Russian identity, its historical, cultural and ideological individuality to ensure a stable development of the country, both domestically and internationally. The desire to mobilize Russian civil society on the myth of alternativism has been constantly evident in Russia’s historical attempt at affirming herself as a political counterpart for the West. Political distinction is defined through the use of the myth of geostrategic competition and struggle of values and ideas. This mythic constructions are employed as tools for political-cultural manipulation, domination, political rivalry and implementation of forced life choices for the civil society (Sorel, 1999; Le Bon, 2002). Russia’s conservative project, despite proclaiming itself as an alternative and establishing the enmity factor as fundamental in its project, attempts at finding a way to create a sort of dialogue with its ‘counterpart’ Europe, entering the European political arena and shaping European identity from the inside, thus avoiding any potential military conflict or civil war. In this sense, Russia constantly tries to balance her contradictory attitudes towards European identity and values. Russian conservatives believe that Russia has to drive and inspire the world to a newer and fairer distribution of international power and create an alliance with those who share the same view and values against the spread of a neoliberal morality that presumes the superiority of the civilized West (Shevchenko, 2009; Wagner, 2012; Ilyashenko, Kobyakov, and Averyanov, 2014; Smirnov, 2014). It intends to reconstruct a myth that could avoid the spread and dominance of the rapid and globalized Euro-centric civilization and its whole set of values that promotes worldwide (Chebankova, 2016).

Indeed, Putin in 2013 expressed concern about the spreading of western post-modern values that, according to him, are determining a rapid development in the definition of stable identities, as gender, family and nation and are increasingly pressing the mainly conservative beliefs of the majority of Russians. The main image presented by the Conservatives is that Russia works to defend the country’s silent majority, while the western liberalist ideologies only defend minorities. This also explains Russian conservatives’ engagement in defending the preservation of different cultures, nationalities, civilizations and religions and emphasizing the positivity of the various local ways of living, ethical norms and political systems against what is, on the contrary, the global imposition of western universalist liberal views, values and political form which instead tries to dissolve authentic cultures into its own. The conservative project rejects the universalization of global life and looks positively at the European continent as a complexity of a plurality of distinct traditions and cultures (Chebankova, 2016). However, as Shevchenko (2014) has pointed out, this ideology insists on the idea that, precisely because Europe’s spiritual existence consists in a multitude of different peoples

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and cultures, sooner or later Europeans will reject those universalist claims of the European Union bureaucracy as conservatives do.

1.2 | Nationalism, xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments

This conservative project is in close connection to the present Russian form of xenophobic/defensive nationalism that finds its motives in the need to defend the borders of the nation state and of imperialist/expansionist view that aims at the dominance of Russian political and cultural values in the region. It is a sort of imperialist nationalism that tries to extend itself beyond national borders, influencing Russia’s neighbourhood, the so-called ‘post-Soviet region’. Indeed, it manifests itself through the post-Soviet reintegration project attempt, the ‘Eurasian Union’, and the concept of ‘Russian world’,

Russkiy Mir, as a multinational Russian-speaking community that identifies in Russian

values and Orthodox faith (Menkiszak, 2014). In this way, Russian imperial nationalism is deeply bonded to Russian conservatism in the way it looks at Western politics as geopolitically and culturally opposite to its own, and in its desire to restore the cultural, political and ideational dominance of Russia on its near abroad. The annexation of Crimea represents the imposition of the Russian power in the Russian-speaking world. This event has consequently reinforced the imperial idea, further fueling the xenophobic nationalist group that generally focused on anti-immigrant action. In this regard, there is a widespread tendency to believe that traditional Russian values, identity and traditions, such as the belonging to the Orthodox community, are constantly jeopardized by the arrival of non-Russian peoples that bring deviant, negative and ‘alien’ traditions, values and beliefs in the country without adapting to the national habits and culture (Kholmogorov, 2012). On the one hand, these xenophobic and nationalist tendencies have gradually started to turn to the state as the contributor to the ‘invasion’ of immigrants in the country, due to a few of government policies undertaken by the state to regulate immigration and to limit some popular nationalist movements.

On the other hand, the government has overtly manipulated these xenophobic tendencies and groups, increasingly directing them against immigrants, instead of taking responsibility for the social frustration of the population. Consequently, immigrants have been strongly pointed by Russians for representing the evil of the country, those who steal their jobs and threaten their fellow citizens. This started to cause higher levels of social conflict and violence (Gudkov, 2013). The Russian government has constantly employed imperialist/nationalist views and a smart use of anti-immigrants sentiments to channel social discontent against immigrants, but also avoided that any nationalist group could

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gain influence, by using their same strategy, thus achieving even further consensus. Indeed, as Tslostanova (2012) has pointed out, the Russian state has extensively used these ‘nostalgic, imperial and nationalist myths’ to racialize internal and external enemies and activate biopolitical mechanisms that discipline and control the population dividing it in subgroups that have different accessibility to the benefits of the state and are distinguished on the basis of language, health, body nature and economic status (Chari and Verdery, 2009). This has been defined as the ‘new racism’ that has been created through well-built imaginaries of cultural differences and the threat of the ‘Other’ (Blaut, 1992).

Xenophobia in Russia has different facets, which primarily regard aspects of ethnicity, immigration, religion or citizenship. Hostility towards immigrants is particularly prominent and relies on different sociopolitical and economic fears, such as the scary imaginary that an invasion of migrants of different ethnicities could result in losing identity and social stability. These fears have formed during a period, the decade after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, in which Russian identity was experiencing the very first deep crisis from the beginning of the Century. There were happening dramatic discomforts in the Russian political, socioeconomic and administrative systems (Gudkov, 2005; Pain, 2007; Malinova, 2010). During this intense and difficult period of identity formation, the social discomfort derived from transformation and instability has produced the spreading of negative sentiments towards foreigners and minority groups of individuals in Russian society (Pain, 2007; Warhola and Lehning, 2007). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the strong resentment towards the ‘others’ in Russia increased even further, fueled by new restrictive immigration policies, a established and re-constructed sense and feeling of the ‘strong state’ and of national pride encouraged by charismatic political figures, and due to a transformation in the ethnic and social composition of the immigrant groups entering the country (Gudkov, 2005,2006; Pain, 2007; Shlapentokh, 2007; Byzov, 2012).

These structural transformations in Russian society, accompanied by a dramatic re-elaboration of the national identity, economic instability and a nationalistic pressuring rhetoric, have provided to the majoritarian Russian ethnic group the reasons and justifications for a sense of collective vulnerability that have had a pivotal role in the anti-immigrant orientation (Breslauer, 2009; Smith, 2012; Blakkisrud, 2016; Gorodzeisky and Gilkman, 2017). Immigration and immigrants themselves are perceived as members of out-group populations in terms of socio-economic resources and ethnic/cultural identity that, having insufficient resources, would be more likely involved in competition with socio-economic vulnerable Russian natives to gain these resources and attempt at

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establishing their own cultural and ethnic traditions and visions in the country (Raijman and Semyonov, 2004; Semyonov et al., 2004; Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2009; Castles, De Haas, and Miller, 2013; Gorodzeisky and Richards, 2016; Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2016). In addition, religion plays an important role in the anti-immigrant attitudes of Russian population, because in fact, Eastern Orthodoxy is perceived more as a cultural identity component rather than religious (Warhola and Lehning, 2007) and this, on the one hand is the motive for Eastern Orthodox individuals to oppose solely immigrants that are ethnically and racially different. On the other hand, the Eastern Orthodox church is interested in enhancing ethnic Russian national identity, thus using anti-immigrant sentiments to strengthen cultural homogeneity and national identity (Shnirelman, 2012).

The rise of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments during the period between 2006-2016 has been determined by increased social inequality in Russian society, which has been further manipulated by the Russian government to transfer the attention of the population from societal issues to cultural/ethnic issues (Kingsbury, 2017). Indeed, Putin himself, during his 2012 election campaign, though stating that Russia was a multi-ethnic country, has constantly and overtly called Russian people as ‘Russkii’, a term with a well-known ethnic connotation and has voluntary avoided to use the term ‘Rossiiskii’ that has a more evident civic significance, defining all ethnic groups present within the borders of the country. In this way, he highlighted the dominance of Russian culture in the country’s identity and defined ethnic Russians as a nation-building group, devoted to the civilization of the country (Torbakov, 2015). The endorsement of the President to such a strong ethnic identity perceptions has thus justified the population’s belief of an existential threat to the ‘identity community’ (Waever et al., 1993) and on the need to find a way for ‘the identity group to survive’ (Theiler, 2003). Migration therefore became an existential threat to the community and the need for migration securitization has become a primary objective in Russian political agenda. Xenophobia and migrantophobia are spread through the activism of ethnic actors. Indeed, everyday political racist rhetoric is expressed by party ideology and party programs and activity, accompanied by the institutional racism that characterizes Russia’s social and political institutions, such as schools, army, religious organizations, health care, social assistance and official racist government legislation and statements (Zinchenko and Loginova, 2011).

Everyday racism is also supported by Russian mass-media. Indeed, as Hutchings and Tolz (2015) have underlined, Russian tv programs have constantly provided an imaginary of Russia facing the long-standing Soviet heritage of ethnic particularism, disaggregated civil society and increased tendency to isolationist ethnonationalism. All

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the issues that migrants face are emphasized by mass-media, journals and official governments statements and political discourse, depicting them as diseased and criminal, thus transferring these perceptions into cultural imaginations (Round and Kuznetsova, 2016). Generally, overt Russian ethnonationalism became systematic since President Putin’s re-election in 2012 and has been included and has strengthened negative discourse towards Islam and migrants in mass-media (Tolz, 2017). In national media and government’s reports, irregular migration has been related to national issues of organized crime, shadow economy, social disaggregation, low and/or dangerous social and housing conditions and an increased economic and organizational weight on public infrastructure of the country (Hoang, 2015). These are the official justifications for a reinforcement of protectionist immigration regime in the country, on the basis of interests of national security and priorities (Heusala, 2018). This security strategy has gradually created an image of the external world that looks at increased political confrontation and overture as a possible threat to Russia’s national interests and practical activity, such as territorial integrity, national consensus and Russian identity and culture. Indeed, Russian ideas of sovereignty have been dominant in its legal framework and discourse, thus increasing the tendency to centralization and verticalization of power trajectory (Antonov, 2014; Muravyeva, 2015).

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CHAPTER 2 THE USES OF RUSSIA’S BIOPOLITICAL POWER

IN EUROPE

The analysis of Russian Conservatism has to start from the notion of ‘biopolitics’, as the political application of regulatory mechanisms aimed at disciplining and constraining human bodies (cfr. Makarychev and Medvedev, 2015). In this regard, biopolitics represents a partly soft technology of power and governance that permeates certain fundamental human living spaces, such as health, sexuality, sanitation or birth rate (Finlayson, 2010). It is used to define and regulate human life through the application of specific political mechanisms that exert power and ensure security (Dillon & Lobo-Guerrero, 2008). The first to analyze and define the idea of political control of human behaviour has been Michel Foucault with his concept of ‘biopower’, believed as a new technology of power that could suit better the modern nation states and capitalist ideal. The idea of using such a sophisticated model of power derives from the acceptance in modern societies that humans are biologically and de facto a specie and, as any other species, their behavior can be studied and allow forms of political strategies of power. Human life becomes a public political affair, directly interested by governmental policies of the state which have the power to regulate and control it. Biopolitical power can be exerted through the action of various societal actors, such as activists, social agents, educators, religious groups, scientists, medical staff and many other fundamental figures in modern societies. They all contribute to the biopolitical deployment by the state of diverse disciplinary mechanisms and institutional bodies to regulate the life of the population (Foucault, 2003; 2009).

2.1 | The Russian biopolitical project and its political imaginations

Foucault’s idea has been then extended and further developed by Giorgio Agamben, who used Carl Schmitt’s concept of ‘state of exception’, as the ability of the sovereign to transcend the rule of law for the sake of the nation (Schmitt, 1985), in order to state that biopolitics is an exceptional form of governance that rules by exclusion to gain and increase its control on issues that have never been its competence, such as the citizens’ biological life itself. Agamben argues that is not a product of modernity but the natural

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quality of politics itself (Agamben, 1998). He highlighted the negative aspect of biopolitics, as a form of submission of human bodies to the sovereign power that acts as a mechanism of exclusion, that in the most extreme case (see Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s URSS) brings to repressive regulations that include ideas of racial or class clearing and/or suppression of ‘deviant’ sexual activity. This negative quality and use of biopolitics depends also on the nature of the political regime that is in force; indeed, in modern Russia it can be observed a series of practices that express a biopolitical logic, intentionally devoted to the disciplining, constraining and monitoring of the population (Butler, 2004). Domestically, this logic is reflected in Russian Conservatism, which wishes for a return to cultural traditionalism to oppose to the Western liberal ideology of tolerance of minorities and all those human categories and behaviors considered as a deviation from ‘the norm’ (Chebotareva, 2015). This means that Russian Conservatism refuses to legitimize any liberal opponent and creates and affirms an ‘essentialist, reductionist and primordialist version of Russian identity’ (Makarychev, 2018), that rejects any exception to the norm and relies on the State as the last and incontrovertible source of truth, allowing it to be represented and legitimized through an ideological framework rather than a legal framework which basically displays a presumed moral superiority of Russia over the West.

The project of moral superiority and biopolitical normalization is realized through a series of policies that bring the state into its citizens’ life, such as with national demographic plans to consolidate the role of families in Russian society and increase the birth rate, augmented securitization of normal social practices that would be matter of private interest, as a series of bans on products imported from a few foreign countries, or the public negative portrayal of immigrants as the ‘Others’ of the country which brings issues of hygiene and illnesses into the country (Kolesnichenko, 2005). Furthermore, biopolitical regulation and representation is visible in the public image of President Putin which is constantly represented as a healthy and strong man, whose athletic body has been constantly displayed as a sort of political ritual in which his body becomes the political body of the nation (Agamben, 1998). Thus, it is demanded the same healthy lifestyle from the young citizens, controlling their drug consumption rates, dress code and sexual activity. In this regard, there is an official public tendency to suppress minorities (ethnic, sexual or political) in order to realize the biopolitical attempt to turn the society into a social and normative homogeneous community. This is reflected in the fervor with which Russian law and discourse is devoted to anti-gay, anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant issues and that provides a clear idea of how much the state intends to reject any deviation from the norm, from the traditional social roles in society (Riabova & Riabov, 2013).

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For this reason, Russia has been associated and defined by concepts as global ‘biopolitical machine’ (Hardt and Negri, 2000), and ‘society of control’ (Balibar, 2004; Deleuze, 1992). Russian society and identity discourse have been totally colonized by biopolitics, as corporal and sexual issues are now primary in the political agenda. Indeed, it should be remembered the recent ‘Yakovlev bill’ that forbids foreigners to adopt Russian children and it also decriminalizes domestic violence in order to ‘strengthen families’. In addition, Russian biopolitics is characterized by firm religious reference, a strict migration policy and a new identity based on a strong feeling of citizenship belonging that relies on the idea of a ‘biopolitical community’ rather than on the adherence to the laws of the state (Makarychev, 2018). This Russian biopolitical project is developed through precise conservative ideas and values and an intense political militancy against the Western liberal values and biopolitical ideas. These Russian values and ideas are represented by an imperial, totalizing biopolitical model that relies on an intense religious mythological component and it is summarized and expressed by anti-gay laws and propaganda, anti-abortion discourses, strict rules in educational contests (dress code, morally acceptable behavior, compulsory fitness activity and tests etc.), a strong family concept provided by the state, emphasized and hegemonic masculinity and the idea of social cleaning of the collective community of the state to get rid of the ‘Other’, the various and numerous elements, bodies, values and ideas that threaten the authentic Russian identity, political and territorial sovereignty. The idea of the ‘Other’ and the racist discourse are useful to intensify and justify the violence of the state in an historical period in which biopower forms are prevailing due to the decline of the logic of sovereignty. In this way, a biopolitical logic of racism represents a valid means to enhance violence on the basis of the need for survival within a hostile climate, but also to orientate it on a more positive goal, that is the preservation and improvement of a specific race through the territorial disappearance and elimination of the lives of other ‘races’ that are potentially dangerous for it (Prozorov, 2014).

Nevertheless, scholars and scientists have never argued the existence of any objective connection between the geographic location of a territorial entity and its geopolitical and biopolitical culture. Thus, a state’s geopolitical and biopolitical culture is only made up through foundational myths and governing power structures, and it has nothing to do with the geographical location and/or connotation of a state (Mann, 1986). What substantially matters in the construction of a geopolitical framework of a state is the combination of different competing power structures that constantly struggle to prevail on one another and what in the end succeed in prevailing on the others, it represents and drives the foreign politics of the state and becomes the subject of primary

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importance in the political arena. Indeed, there have been identified three main power structures: ideological power structures that create cultural and civilizational discourses; economic power structures that push for modernization and accumulation-centric discourses and security power structures that are created around a series of threats to the state, useful to use insecurity and instability as means to strengthen the role and power of the state itself (Toal, 2017). These power structures together form a geopolitical vision for the state and as they are constantly competing, they can create divisions, but at the same time these structures provide shared myths, norms and discourse. Myths are fundamental to create the sense of community and shared destiny for the nation and indeed, who does not share those myths is not thus considered part of the community (Schöpflin, 2000). In this regard, Russia, with its numerous myths, shared norms and securitization discourses and practices, has always been considered not as a nation-state, but more as an imperialist power that constantly attempts at assaulting its neighbouring countries. This is due to the conception, intrinsic in Russian Conservatism, that on the basis of its role as great power and former imperial center, Russia has the responsibility to ensure order, stability and protection for weaker states beyond its new borders (Toal, 2017).

This idea can provide the motives that lay behind the 2014’s annexation of Crimea. Indeed, when Crimea has been annexed, the event has been directly depicted as an historical Russian territory that has been brought back to the motherland. This has represented the first step of a new geopolitical imaginary defined as ‘Novorossiya’, the project of unifying the post-Soviet area with Russian heritage, restoring Russia’s imperial borders (Meek, 1993). For a long time, before the annexation of Crimea, the Russian government has exerted its soft power towards the Ukrainian government by emphasizing and promoting the idea of the Russian world, the ‘Russkii Mir’. This idea has been used and spread all over the Russian near abroad as a way to influence and shape the former Soviet territories, promoting Russian language and culture in the near abroad and constructing an idea of Russia as a distinct civilizational space with specific and ambitious goals of geopolitical influence. Indeed, in the last seven years, after the re-election of President Putin in 2012, the concept of Russia as a distinct civilization has been further fueled and enriched with religious and conservative connotations, as a fortress against the immoral and liberal Western civilization and values. As Laruelle (2015) has pointed out, the “inflection of the Russian World does not call into question the independence of Russia’s neighbors per se, but rather their geopolitical orientations”. Therefore, the concept of Russia’s distinction is produced and transmitted through soft power means, in order to avoid something that could have had hard power consequences

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instead, as the threat represented by the Euromaidan protests, a rebellion and request for closer ties and geopolitical orientation towards the West, and specifically towards the European Union. These protests were endangering Russia’s ability to hold Ukraine into the Eurasian Union and thus into a Russia-centered ally. Thus, it was fundamental, by annexing Crimea, to shift from an intellectual model of foreign policy practice, that generally pertains great-power geopolitics, to a revisionist imperial geopolitics. This has been perceived as a victory of revisionist geopolitics in Russian geopolitical culture and a further spur to pursue the unified Russia’s project.

2.2 | Russian intellectuals and their role in Russia’s propaganda machine

Conservative Russian geopolitical thinker, Alexander Dugin, for instance, has viewed

Novorossiya as a positive territories unification process that would expand Russian

territory into a new ‘Large Russia’ (Bol’shaya Rossiya), representing, in this way, the Eurasian reference point, the great Eurasian power, distinct and opposed to the West. This new geopolitical imaginary has gradually, softly and constantly occupied post-Soviet spaces, especially in the Ukrainian case, and it has involved every means necessary to expand and save the position of Russia into this space. Indeed, in 2015 a well-known Russian newspaper as Novaya Gazeta presented a memo, which apparently had been presented at the Kremlin when the Euromaidan protests erupted, in which protesters are presented through conspiratorial images, as they “from all appearances were controlled not so much by the oligarchic groups (in Ukraine) but to a significant extent by Polish and British intelligence services”. In addition, it was stated that the European Union and the United States were aiming at the disintegration of Ukraine and the crisis period could have been used to reach geopolitical opportunity to annex Ukrainian territories, such as Crimea (Toal, 2017). The conspiratorial connotation of these hypothetic evaluations and interpretations of political events lead the analysis of Russian biopolitical power to the importance that new means and technologies to mobilize people’s support, convictions, expectations and understanding have in post-Soviet Russia. These imaginaries, myths, conspiratorial visions are applied and spread, both domestically and internationally, as a way of creating a policy of weaponization of information and propaganda (Van Herpen, 2016) that represent high priorities for the Kremlin (Beliy, 2017).

Dugin’s popularity, both domestically and internationally, has certainly increased anti-Western conspiracy popularity in Russia and in those Russia’s sympathizing fringes in the European countries. Indeed, Dugin has been one of the few post-Soviet intellectuals

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that has extensively figured in Western scholarship, and whose work, theories and ideas have been analysed by scholars interested in right-wing ideologies and Russian intellectual history (Shenfield, 2001; Bassin and Aksenov, 2003; Laruelle, 2008; Shnirel’man, 2015; Clover, 2016). Even ‘Foreign Affairs’ has defined him as the ‘global thinker – 2014’ for being the mind behind the plan of separating Crimea and the Donbass regions from Ukraine (Foreign Affairs, 2014). He has been engaged in Russian politics for decades and after the perestroika period, he decided to travel to Western European countries to participate into events of groups forming the European New Right, thus forging closer relationships with the leaders of this movement (Shenfield, 2001). Therefore, these contacts brought his conspiratorial thoughts into the West, as he became also famous among the European New Right and neo-fascist writers of the time (Shekhovtsov, 2015; Clover, 2016). Another powerful way to spread his theories was the use of two platforms: his publishing house, Arctogeia and a think tank called ‘The Centre for Special Meta-Strategic Studies’ (Umland, 2010). Furthermore, his ability to develop discourses where different topics, ideas and fields, such as politics, history, international relations and popular cultural issues, as the mysterious world of secret societies, were mixed together, made him one of the most well-known prominent figures on radio, television and in popular magazines in the 1990s (Yablokov, 2018). Apart from being a popular commentator, he established himself as prolific scholar, starting with the publication in 1997 of his book ‘Osnovy geopolitiki’ (The foundations of Geopolitics) and the teaching role he had at General Staff Academy (Umland, 2007; Clover, 2016). In his book, he perpetrates the idea of the eternal battle between ‘The Land’ and ‘The Sea’ and in one of his former books (Konspirologiia-Conspirology), he presented his personal view and explanation about the global popularity of conspiratorial theories, justifying and validating them as part of the ancient human perception of the world that is still present in modern times because it connects modern people with their ancestors (Dugin, 2005).

In this way, through his own personal validation of global conspiracies as a prominent Russian scholar, he thus validates his own conspiratorial theories. Indeed, in his conspiratorial view, there is a clear idea of an anti-Russian plan. But, for him, Russia is a Christian country instead, which will save the world from the Apocalypse (Dugin, 2004). Surprisingly, unlike other Russian public conspirationists, he believes in the existence of the ‘axis of the Eurasian civilization’, represented by the powers of the Land (Russia and its ally Western Europe) and the powers of the Sea, represented by the USA. So, Western Europe is considered a Russia’s ally in competing US hegemony. Dugin’s conspiratorial theories have had a determinant role on Russian anti-Western discourse and they were easily spread through popular television talk shows and programmes. As

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when in the 2000s, Mikhail Leont’ev, a well-known Russian pro-Kremlin journalist, vice-president of Russia’s biggest oil company and member of Dugin’s Eurasian movement, made Dugin get access to tv shows whose broadcasts were overtly state-aligned channels (Clover, 2016). Dugin presence gradually replaced that of liberal sympathizing journalists and commentators who have been silently but constantly removed by the Kremlin. Dugin’s main work, ‘Foundations’ has been perceived as a highly persuasive academic work, but as Yablokov (2018) pointed out, it attempted de facto at creating a scientific-sounding framework for an anti-Western vision that could justify and explain the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991. Dugin used Western conspiracy theories to develop in Russia a series of narratives about threats to Russia from the West, thus being able to establish them as the mainstream political thought.

Another fundamental intellectual figure in Russian public space, that provides specific interpretations of history to pursue the nation-building objective, is Nataliia Narochnitskaia. She participates in discussions in famous tv programmes and publishes books that emphasize the bravery of Russian citizens that in War times have saved the world from a tragic destiny and that still struggle to render the world a better place, through the application and following of Russian Conservatist’s values. Her credibility relies on her academic status and successful career as diplomat in 1980s and Duma deputy in the 2000s that she constantly emphasizes in order to strengthen her statements. Narochnitskaia’s main argument is based on the idea that Russian glorious past and geopolitical position in the world should be restored to reaffirm the greatness of the nation. She believes that the Russian nation is different from other countries in what she defines as its spiritual life, interethnic tolerance and social justice (Chernov, 2013). She affirms that Russia has the highest moral standards and level of tolerance towards people of different cultures and races (Popov, 2007). Her view is permeated by comparisons of the Russian nation with other countries, specifically with Europe and the USA, whose political and spiritual accomplishments are obsolete if equated to Russian ones. This may be, according to her, the reason for the West to try to undermine Russia (Yablokov, 2018). She firmly believes that the nation state represents God’s present for the people to help them in developing morally and patriotically (Chernov, 2013). On the contrary, she states that supranational institutions, such as the EU and the UN have been created by the Freemasonry to pursue global domination through the constant erosion of the borders between nations (Narochnitskaia, 2003). Western cosmopolitan societies have constructed artificial concepts, as for example the idea of political correctness, which do not specifically require citizens to love their own country (Chernov, 2013). While in

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Russian society every cultural and traditional aspect symbolizes Russian identity and attachment to the nation. Indeed, she believes that religion, the Orthodox Christianity plays a pivotal role in defining Russian national culture and it helps citizens not to be obsessed with the pursuit of wealth, and it creates a peaceful and integrated society of different ethnic and religious groups within only one country. In Narochnitskaia and Dugin’s perspectives the combination of anti-globalist conspiracy theories, the goal of a new-built World Order and a sort of former Soviet anti-Western propaganda has been fundamental to build the current conspiracy propaganda (Yablokov, 2018).

Like Dugin and Narochnitskaia, Maksim Shevchenko, one of the most prominent figures in the anti-Western conspiracy discourse, has been fundamental in defining and shaping the new Russian identity. Indeed, he has always described Russia as a great world power that, during Imperial and Soviet times, has been able to transform and bring European cultural and administrative procedures to new territories. Evidence of this, according to him, is the fact that ethnic Russians have been used in this transformative process as a ‘frame for the nation’ (kostiak natsii) (Larson & Shevchenko, 2010). He believes that Russian identity and nation can survive and maintain the distance and independency from the West only if Russian different ethnic groups live harmoniously together and thus, he offers a theoretical framework that could help the national cohesion of Russian Federation using the idea of territorial unity. This, in his view, is the way to maintain Russian greatness and so, Russia’s superiority over Europe is represented by the ability of Russians to include different ‘civilizations’ in one nation, providing social justice and interethnic tolerance (Yablokov, 2018). Due to these conceptions, in Russia he is considered an expert on interethnic issues and he is thus approached by several media to provide his opinion and spread his knowledge whenever an interethnic conflict erupts. In this way, he is always able to promote and provide a conspiratorial reading of every event to citizens and shape public perceptions of the conflict’s causes and gain further consensus for his ideas. Furthermore, he has been active in 2012 Putin’s presidential campaign and supported the Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobianin, during his campaign in 2013 (Azar, 2013), even though the mayor’s campaign was built on anti-migrant narratives, also with statements against the North Caucasus (Arkhipov and Kravchenko, 2013) that Shevchenko instead admires for its roots that come from ancient civilizations and that for him, it is part of the Russian nation (Shevchenko, 2013). In Shevchenko’s view, Putin’s regime represents the attended return to independent decision-making in both domestic and foreign policy, which is bringing the nation to its former greatness and economic stability (Yablokov, 2018). He has always described the West as intrinsically corrupted, due to its citizens’ neoliberal views that made him define

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them as ‘criminals in nature’. He has always perceived and emphasized Russia and the West (as a single hostile entity) as two opposite entities, as if ‘Western people belong to a different humanoid race from us’ (Hutchings & Tolz, 2015). So, for him, Russia is forced to defend herself from these Western neoliberal corrupted views that are based exclusively on consumption and sexual promiscuity, whereas Russia can and has to rely on her traditional values that will save the whole world (Yablokov, 2018).

2.3 | Russian propaganda and its effects on the European public sphere

Russian intellectuals’ overt criticism of the West has been instrumental to present a positive image of Russia both domestically and internationally. They have mastered the image of a great multi-ethnic nation that is resisting the West’s pressures to gain control over the world and the Russian territories and resources. These public intellectuals have become influential in Russia through the publishing of numerous books and the participation to numerous programmes of mainstream media, particularly those controlled by the state. Since the 1990s, when there has been a crisis in national self-identification, Russian ruling elite realized that the state would have been saved by the construction and implementation of ‘the intellectual mechanism which would help generate Russian power (vlast’)’ (Chudodeev, 2012) and started to use anti-Western conspiracy in order to enhance internal social cohesion. In this project, public intellectuals have constantly gained more power and have entered Russian political hierarchy, representing a necessary tool to produce knowledge for the state. Therefore, it can be argued that the Foucauldian combination of power and knowledge perfectly explains on the one hand, the dependence of public intellectuals on the power of the institutions of the state and on the other hand, the dependence of Russian political elite on producers of specific knowledge that is fundamental to provide intellectual support to the political regime (Yablokov, 2018). Russian political regime has been successful in creating a favourable political support and discourse for the Kremlin, using these public intellectuals and their conceptual products as pro-Kremlin think tanks or foundations that praised Putin’s presidency and criticized his adversaries. Russian intellectuals have smartly spread anti-Western conspiracy theories through the media, claiming that what they were presenting was the ‘genuine’ and truthful explanation of the causes and consequences of domestic and international events. Media themselves have gradually become exclusively controlled by state, providing public intellectuals a powerful instrument to construct and spread populist conspiratorial concepts in the most effective and immediate way. At the

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same time, public intellectuals have reached the rank of fundamental producers of conspiratorial discourse in order to establish what, in Foucault’s theory, has been defined as a specific ‘regime of truth’ (Foucault, 1975). Each of them has contributed to the spreading of a conspiratorial image of the West to enhance social cohesion and strengthen Russian ruling elite’s control over the country. Their opposition to the Kremlin is sometimes overtly stated and it is used as a way to create an ‘Other’ within the country, indeed, none of them has ever openly affirmed to be affiliated with the political regime. What they have instead emphasized was their support to the powerful figure of President Putin as the single political leader of the country. In this sense, all the anti-Western conspiracy theories have served as clever populist tools to legitimize the authoritarian role of President Putin and delegitimize his adversaries (Yablokov, 2018).

However, the spreading of Russia’s intellectual and political communicative power is not always and necessarily based on providing a positive and attractive image of Russia or on spreading anti-Western conspiracy theories; but it is rather based on emphasizing and accentuating Western issues and problems (Sanovich, 2019), especially those regarding the European Union (such as the refugee crisis, Brexit, etc.) and interfering in the European political arena trying to undermine the key concepts of mainstream discourses. Nevertheless, even though, for instance, Russian propaganda machine has supported Brexit as a means to weaken EU’s power, Russia-UK relations did not improve after the referendum. Furthermore, Russia overtly supported Marine Le Pen during the presidential election campaign in France in 2016, but after the election of President Macron, Russia has now to deal with a French President that openly targeted an important tv channel like ‘Russia Today’ as a source of misinformation. Many important actors in Moscow political arena have cheered the victory of Donald Trump in the presidential campaign in the US, even though after his election, Russia-US bilateral relations became tense with the sanctions approved by the US Congress in 2017. In addition, Russian TV channels have fabricated a fake story for German audiences about a 13-year-old girl of Russian origin, ‘our Lisa’, who had been raped by immigrants, trying to convince Russians in Germany to blame the government of Angel Markel that let a flux of immigrants to enter the country. This event has however further damaged relations between Germany and Russia, as Germany has considered this as an unfriendly interference in its domestic affairs (Makarychev, 2018; Karlsen, 2019).

By the way, what seems to be crucial is the manifested media conformism and adaptation to the ‘usual practices or standards, which were originally imposed through coercion’ (Schimpfossl & Yablokov, 2014). Indeed, rather than waiting for the Kremlin

Russia and Europe: Biopolitical and Geopolitical entanglements