: RUSSIAN SOFT POWER IN EUROPE FLEXIBLE ILLIBERALISM

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FLEXIBLE ILLIBERALISM

:

RUSSIAN SOFT POWER IN EUROPE

Master thesis

By Iaroslav Kozak

Student MA International Relations and International Organization University of Groningen

Address: The Hague, 2592 SE, Parelmoerhorst, 22 Telephone: 0627157807

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Nienke de Deugd

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I hereby declare that this thesis, "Flexible illiberalism: Russian soft power in Europeo', is my own work and my own effort ónd that it has not been accepted anywhere else for the award of any other degree

or

diploma. \Vhere sources

of

information have been used, they have been

acknowledged-Name: Iaroslav Kozak

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Introduction.

The concept of “power” has always played a significant role in the theory of international relations (IR). Consequently, analysis of power components and features has a long pedigree among IR scholars1. Thus when Joseph Nye for the first time introduced the term “soft power”, it was supposed to be a revolutionary concept to characterise power relations in the new, post-Cold War, era, frequently perceived by the general public and some policy-makers in terms of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”2_{. At that time soft power was presented as something quite} amorphous and benign, more or less passive, not channelled influence on other international actors3. Since then soft power defined as “getting others to want the outcomes that you want”4 has been traditionally studied and quantified using factors of attractiveness such as popular culture or cultural heritage. However, the precise mechanism of converting these resources into tangible political gains mostly remains unclear in such studies. For example, the detailed “Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States” goes at lengths to list US soft power resources in Japan and vice versa in great detail. However, ultimately the authors cannot establish a convincing link between the growing number of Japanese baseball players in the USA and the improved relations between the two countries. Writing about one of the most important aspects of soft power – public diplomacy – the authors have to acknowledge that “perhaps most difficult facet of public diplomacy is assessing its effectiveness”5_.

In this context it appears productive to look at soft power from a more empirical point of view, focusing on impact and mechanism of influence rather than soft power potential. The current international circumstances can provide rich material for such an empirically-oriented research. An especially interesting case in this regard is Russian soft power. The annexation of the Crimea in March 2014 and ensuing Russian support for separatists in Eastern Ukraine have signified not only a breaking point in international relations, but also meant a considerable strain on Russian foreign policy. A lot of comment and research has since been focused on the Russian willingness to challenge the international system through applying hard power6. In the context of this research it is interesting how Russia used its soft power to prepare, complement and defend its more forceful efforts and preserve gains acquired by means of hard power.

Thus the main research question of this work will be “To what extent is the Russian soft power employed to serve Russian interests in Europe?” This question will allow us to avoid concentrating solely on Russian soft power potential as the goal is to look at its realisation in practice. Limiting the research to the geographical Europe will ensure better focus on the area, which has proved to be in the foreground of Russian military and diplomatic efforts in 2014 – 2015: this will provide a better opportunity to study links between Russian foreign policy goals and Russian soft power. It is also critically important for studying Russian soft power that, according to the Russian leadership perception as well as from the Russian soft power point of view, geographical Europe can be schematically subdivided into post-Soviet countries or “near

1_{See: Baldwin, 2013.} 2_{Cox, 2006.}

3_{For example, in one of his early articles on this topic Nye goes at great lengths to demonstrate strength of} the American popular culture (Nye, 1990, p. 168), but he never actually gives any indication on how one must apply this newly-defined policy asset.

4_{Nye, 2003, p. 5.}

5_{Watanabe, McConnell (ed.), 2008, p. 218.}

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abroad” (the area which Russia positions as its “sphere of exclusive interests”)7_{and the rest of} Europe, which can also be named “Western Europe” for the purposes of this work. Therefore the chosen research question envisages three broad subquestions:

1) What is Russian soft power potential and what is the vision of the Russian ruling elite regarding its practical realisation? Answering this question will give us basic information about specifics of Russian approach to soft power and possible mechanisms whereby Russian soft power may be used to attain strategic goals of Russia.

2) How is Russian soft power employed in the post-Soviet space? The case of Russian soft power in Ukraine will be presented here: Ukraine has proved to be the most strategically important country in the Russian “near abroad”, it is also the biggest country of the region by population and the size of economy. Therefore it is reasonable to expect that Russian strategy here would be the most sophisticated including usage of soft power instruments.

3) How is Russian soft power employed in Western Europe? Here the case of Germany, which plays a crucial role in defining the EU stance towards Russia and is also the biggest economy in the EU, will be studied. The German past as a country divided between the NATO and the Warsaw Pact makes its case especially interesting in the light of this study.

The present work will be structured according to this scheme, which will also allow us to draw comparisons between Russian soft power strategies in different circumstances. It is important to see not only how Russian soft power resources differ from region to region, but also which methods Russia exploits in the realm of soft power to foster its strategic goals depending on variations in its starting position.

Apart from that, the chosen research question is bound to have significant academic relevance. First, in their research on soft power most scholars have been predominantly focused on the Western world or China; Russia has had in corresponding works a relatively secondary place if any at all. Therefore, at this point the academic community does not possess any extensive knowledge on Russian soft power instruments, besides a number of traditional stereotypes: measured usually against the Western backdrop, Russian soft power has been variously labelled as either not soft enough or not fully realised8_{. The second problem is that this} approach has also created a certain bias in the way scholars perceive soft power. From this point of view, giving more attention to non-Western variants of soft power, Russian in particular, might enrich our understanding of the concept itself. What also appears interesting in this regard is that in Russian academic circles the term “soft power” has acquired a markedly different meaning than in the West. Furthermore, from a less academic point of view, this work can shed light on one of the aspects of the Russian “hybrid war” against Ukraine and the West.

Methodologically this paper will be a qualitative case study heavily relying on the comparative method. Employing the comparative method with regard to two case studies in two countries with very different positions both with respect to Russian goals and soft power potential is called to enrich our understanding of soft power and the way it works.

Theoretical framework.

The term “soft power” was first introduced by Joseph Nye in 1990 in his book “Bound to Lead”9_{. This does not mean that soft power as such could not have existed before 1990 – and}

7_{This perception is widespread in academic (Potyomkina, Kavashnikov, 2007, p. 33) as well as in political} circles (then Russian President Medvedev as quoted in Kobzova, Popescu and Wilson, 2011).

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indeed Nye himself later wrote about soft power of the Soviet Union, for example10 – yet the date is still important to understand the concept. The early 1990s were the time of radical rethinking of the IR as a field of knowledge11_{. Consequently, concepts such as “soft power” were} prone to acquire strong normative overtones, regardless of the understanding attached to the term by Nye himself. Later he even had to warn explicitly against idealising soft power12. The present work will also try to contribute to the view that soft power is a tool whose usage might be ambivalent, sometimes more in the spirit of the “19thcentury” rather than of the “21st”. Seeing soft power as a means to worsen relations between the target country and the third party will be regarded in this research no less important than looking at soft power as a way to improve other countries’ opinion of yourself.

Unfortunately, at this point there is not so much theoretical literature on soft power. Thus Joseph Nye’s detailed “Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics” remains indispensable and will be extensively used in the theoretical framework of our study. Apart from defining soft power and showing its difference from hard power, in the book Nye goes on to list primary concepts associated with soft power such as soft power resources, methods of wielding soft power and opportunities connected with it. This work has given a serious push to soft power studies, which have since built on Nye’s theoretical premises specifying them, using them for empirical research or criticising and revising particular ideas of Nye13_.

Joseph Nye tried to make his book a general introduction to soft power, the mission that “Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics” has successfully accomplished despite being written from a distinctly American perspective. For example, Nye managed to formulate a pretty universal definition of soft power as “getting others to want the outcomes that you want”14_{. When it comes to soft power resources, Nye states that “a country’s soft power can} come from three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority)”15_{. However, for us it appears impractical to} separate political values and foreign policy: if a country “lives up” to its political values abroad, they are reflected in the country’s foreign policy. Besides, it is logical to surmise that knowledge of foreign audiences about internal policies of a given country largely depends on the information that they get and the manner in which the information is presented. Thus it would be productive to look at informational resources of soft power.

Jonathan McClory, the author of the British soft power ranking (2010), who in his classification builds on Nye’s categories and separates five big groups of soft power components: business / innovation, culture, government, diplomacy and education16, gives some more consideration to informational resources of a country. Thus, in his more detailed categorisation he mentions “reach of state-sponsored media” in the “Culture” subsection17. At the same time McClory’s rating, which, by the way, puts Russia on the last place of all countries ranked, does not take into account the country-specific nature of soft power. While Russian soft

10_{Nye, 2004, p. 73 – 75.}

11_{See, for example: Hopmann, 2003.} 12_{Nye, 2006.}

13_{Some quite broad nation-specific studies that came out soon after Nye, 2004 are: Watanabe, McConnell} (ed.), 2008; Kurlantzick, 2007; Ilgen (ed.), 2006.

14_{Nye, 2004, p. 5.} 15_{Nye, 2006.}

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power in the world may be quite weak, it is much stronger in Ukraine as this work will show. We would argue that “concentrated” soft power in strategically important countries is more useful than universal attraction of moderate proportion. Another problem with McClory’s soft power ranking is its Western normative basis: for example, he lists political freedom as one of soft power factors18. While, normally speaking, political freedom is indeed an important soft power component, it is a feature of liberal regimes while Russia increasingly presents itself as an illiberal international actor. It is therefore no wonder that when Russian researchers such as Olga Leonova try to look at Russian soft power using similar liberal culture-focused frameworks, they often have to concede that Russia is not doing well on those measures and ultimately have to propose a framework based more on Russian attractiveness in its “near abroad”19_.

Here we come to the more nation-specific and region-specific soft power. Russian soft power has not been studied in great detail so far but the existing studies have been able to demonstrate the particularities of Russian soft power to a quite significant degree. The difficulties of Joseph Nye’s approach to soft power are neatly summed up by James Sherr in his book “Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: Russia’s Influence Abroad”, which, despite its being focused on a broader “Russian influence” rather than Russian soft power as such, represents one of the most consistent attempts to deal with soft power of Russia. In particular, Sherr suggests that Nye’s vision of soft power suffers from a number of Western biases. First, Sherr notes that Western values, defined by Nye as one of powerful sources of soft power, are losing their dominance. Second, he questions Nye’s assumption that an international actor should necessarily appeal to universal values rather than parochial ones in order to ensure success of its soft power. Third, Sherr asserts that Russia in its foreign policy emphasises identities rather than values, thereby defying Nye’s focus on values. Besides, Sherr points out to two questions which need further analysis: first, the subject and object of soft power influence and, second, the status of economic influence and its place in relation to soft power should be better defined20.

Regarding the subject / object question, the present paper will generally adhere to the liberalist view on IR, which refuses to see the state as a unitary actor, even though the Russian state under Vladimir Putin has succeeded in attaining a high degree of control over the economy and eliminating opposition from positions of influence21. Additionally, on the object side of the problem we will try to enrich the understanding of soft power by introducing the marketing concept of “target audience”. This term will be used with a view to its purely practical utility therefore the vocabulary definition of target audience as “the intended group for which something is performed or marketed; the specific group to which advertising is directed”22_will suffice for our paper. A particularly interesting addition here would be the scheme of defining a business’s target audience (or target market), which can shed some light on reasoning employed by international actors in their choice of soft power message and target audience. A popular business magazine Inc. lays out the following essential steps of the strategy of defining a company’s target market:

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2) looking at other niches than those already exploited by the company’s competitors; 3) defining key benefits of a product provided by the company and customers that might be interested in the benefits23_.

Naturally, wielding soft power is starkly different from trying to sell a product. Nevertheless, the given algorithm allows us to see why Russia would go against universalist and pro-Western messages in its soft power policy. During Soviet times it possessed considerable soft power in the eyes of anti-establishment and revolutionary movements in the West and in non-aligned countries of the Third World24_{. Thus Russia has already acquired considerable} experience in catering to “customers” resentful to the dominant West-centred world order. Additionally, universalist, human rights and normative power niches have been long occupied by Western powers so Russia was doubly unlikely to achieve any comparable success there, especially in relation to Russian ambitions. Apart from that, it is easy to see why the conservative and anti-American Russia would appeal to conservatism and anti-Americanism in other countries as the only great power espousing these messages. It is also important to note that this paper is not the first to address target audience of Russian soft power and Russian propaganda – for instance, the recent paper “Beyond the Cold War of Words” of the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) looks at the general characteristics of the “near abroad” target audiences25_{. Yet while the HCSS looks at the populations of the countries as a whole, in} this work we aim to consider target audiences of particular ideological messages as possible explanations for the way Russian soft power works in given countries. Indeed, Russian soft power has already been characterised as “polarising”26_{, which by definition implies much bigger} success with some groups of target countries’ populations.

The second question posed by Sherr, the one about interrelationship between soft power and economic influence, is trickier to answer unambiguously. On the one hand – the point that is made clear by Nye at the very beginning – soft power should be distinguished from non-military power; for example, in Nye’s classification inducements (that is economic payoffs) belong to hard power as much as threats do27. This distinction is usually faithfully kept in subsequent research on soft power, and even among the Russian political establishment, which tends to hold a more muscular vision on foreign policy, there is an understanding that economic influence does not belong to the proper soft power inventory28. On the other hand, Sherr argues quite persuasively that in the Russian political tradition reliance on foreign economic influence and business lobbies abroad has always been so closely interwoven with “softer” tools such as propaganda and well-developed and all-penetrating networks of influence that it is very difficult to set them apart29. Therefore, the present paper will adopt a dual approach: as a rule, actors having direct and clear financial interest in supporting good relations between their country and Russia are not classified as ones affected by Russian soft power. At the same time, if there are reasons to believe that these actors play an important role in transmitting Russian soft power messages to relevant audiences, they will be included in our analysis. Such actors include, for instance, Ukrainian industrial lobbies representing branches that receive a considerable

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proportion of their income from trade with Russia and influencing their country’s public opinion in the direction favourable to Russia. Additionally, political parties and social movements, even if they might allegedly benefit financially from their Russian-friendly stance, will always be studied separately and more closely.

In addition to the above mentioned ideas, Sherr outlines several components of Russian soft power abroad, primarily the “Russian world” and the Russian Orthodox Church and states that Russian cultural resources are, in fact, used not so extensively. However, as Sherr is only marginally interested in Russian soft power as such, he makes little attempt to give a consolidated overview of it or to look at other possible elements of soft power.

Jana Kobzova, Nicu Popescu and Andrew Wilson in “Russia and EU’s Competitive Neighbourhood” look at another interesting aspect of Russian soft power touched upon briefly in the present paper, namely competition between soft powers of different actors in a given country / region. They also emphasise importance of ideas of multipolar world and Eurasian integration for Russian soft power in the near abroad. Another important contribution to the present research has been the idea that political networks play an important role in Russian soft power. This was well-illustrated by Agnia Grigas in her study of Russian influence in the Baltic countries30. As it has been mentioned above, in this paper we have enhanced her focus on political parties and business elites with addition of NGOs and quasi NGOs as another important element in the Russian soft power mix.

Additionally, taking into account the role of perception and presentation in promoting country’s political values, for the purpose of this paper it makes sense to look at the connection between soft power and propaganda. It is quite surprising that such an important topic as this has not received a comprehensive treatment in the literature. Thus the interrelationship between the two terms remains controversial and poorly understood not only in non-academic circles but also among scholars. Indeed, in many works on soft power, propaganda is a widely used term, but its precise meaning is very elusive.

So far there have been few attempts to place a concept of propaganda into a theory of soft power and clearly articulate its position there. And, even when such attempts are made, they usually fail to make significant progress. For instance, Jan Melissen trying to solve the problem of the relationship between propaganda and public diplomacy – another concept closely associated with soft power – admits that often even among practicing diplomats these concepts represent just different ways to frame the same notion. Indeed, one typical feature of propaganda as a concept is negative overtones that it has received over its long history of usage, in particular from the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda31. Therefore most writers including Joseph Nye confine themselves to noting that “propaganda is not the way”32_{and rejecting it out of hand; however,} this is not followed by an analysis of what actually the difference between old “propaganda” and new “soft power” is. This creates ample opportunities for international actors to variously label the same actions depending on which actor performs them.

However, the fact that propaganda is a relatively well-researched concept, present for a long time in academic debates, makes it a potentially useful tool to analyse soft power in general and Russian soft power in particular. Therefore, if only for establishing clear distinctions for the purpose of this paper, we will try to impose some notional boundaries between propaganda and

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soft power. As pointed out by Jan Melissen, propaganda can be differentiated by its one-way manner of communication and deliberate focus on narrowing minds of targeted publics33. The classic scholar of propaganda Edward Bernays defined propaganda as “a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of a public to an enterprise, idea, or group”34. Another eminent researcher, Jacques Ellul, in his book “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” gave propaganda the following definition: “A set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated into a system”35.

All the definitions in one way or another emphasise one feature of propaganda that casts it in relief against soft power: it is a deliberate and channelled activity. Propaganda is also tightly connected with and primarily focused on communication. Thus it appears productive to include propaganda into this work as one of the elements of our “informational resources” group. At the same time in this work we will not try to separate meticulously propaganda from public diplomacy as the both terms do not play here a prominent role.

Taking together all the available information, we have attempted to create a coherent framework that would satisfy the following conditions: 1) it should be able to describe soft power in operation rather than only soft power potential or soft power achievements; 2) it should take into account all the most essential components of soft power, however without going into too much detail and creating endless lists of cetegories; 3) it should sufficiently reflect the uniqueness of the Russian soft power and, at the same time, be flexible enough to be applied to different countries and different circumstances. Thus we propose the following scheme of soft power components:

1) Soft power potential (cultural resources, economic resources and historical resources) that cannot advance a country’s goals by itself but shapes a favourable (or unfavourable) background of soft power’s operation.

2) Soft power messages (ideological resources) are the essence of a country’s soft power. They give the soft power of the country its unique features and distinguish it from soft powers of other actors. These messages should be well-adjusted the political goals of the country and target audiences. Unlike cultural, economic or historical resources, soft power messages can be generally controlled by the state and changed relatively quickly depending on the circumstances.

3) Soft power infrastructure (informational resources and network resources such as political parties and civil society actors) is a collection of channels through which soft power messages are funnelled to foreign audiences. Soft power infrastructure ensures the subject country’s connection with its target audiences and the level of prominence of its ideological messages in the target country’s political discourse.

Further in this work the given framework will be used, first, regarding the general soft power capability of Russia and then it will be applied to Ukraine and Germany in our case studies. A rich “local” illustrative material from international, Russian, Ukrainian and German primary sources will then be used to test, concretise and enhance our theoretical framework.

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Chapter 1. Soft power. Russian way.

1.1. Special features of the Russian soft power potential.

According to the framework identified above, one can compose a general list of soft power resources and instruments in Russia’s possession, which collectively shape the Russian soft power potential. As this study goes, soft power potential will play a secondary role but analysing it can shed some light on the Russian soft power strategy as such. The important issue here is that of a choice: in accordance with the liberal theory of IR an international actor’s foreign policy is defined by preferences of its elite36. Therefore looking at how an available pool of resources in a certain sphere is used can provide valuable information about the international actor as a whole.

A good list of more general soft power resources of Russia is given by the Russian researcher Olga Leonova. In particular, she notes that Russia has a good outlook to become an independent civilizational pole with its special mentality and ideology. Apart from that she emphasises the vastness of Russian territory and beauty of Russian nature and the great Russian contribution to world culture and history. However, as it often happens with soft power potential, Leonova points out that Russian soft power is in a “latent state” now. Roughly the same conclusion is reached by Leonova regarding the economic side of Russian soft power: the Russian economic model is widely perceived in the world to be inefficient and highly dependent on export of hydrocarbons37. In the former USSR, however, Russia has a chance to realise its economic soft power potential much more fully as in comparison with other post-Soviet countries Russia has a high GDP per capita and a high pace of economic growth38. Economic resources of soft power are however difficult to pin down as the line between soft power use of economic resources and use of economic resources with political purposes (that is hard power) is in some cases exceptionally thin.

In any case, it is a mix of history and ideology that Russia emphasises in its soft power policy. Here it has a number of special national features. First, on the level of recognisability, the Russian place in the world and in international politics is a source of soft power in itself. Russia is the biggest country in the world by area, one of the most potent military actors and one of a handful of great power status claimants. This alone is sufficient to ensure recognisability of Russia among the widest circles of general audience. Russian long and eventful history as a global power striving to shape international relations according to its liking is also an important asset. The current Russian ideology also serves as a source of distinction for the Russian soft power. Of course, unlike the USSR, the Russian Federation does not have an official state ideology and in general its government can be characterised as rather ideologically fluid. At different periods in its short history the country proclaimed markedly different goals: from market development and entering the global community of nations as an equal partner to a special great power status and from possible European integration to creating an independent integrationist pole in Eurasia39. Not many of Russian domestic ideological constructs managed to last any significant period of time as most of terms such as Brezhnev’s “developed socialism”40_, Yeltsin’s “market reforms” and Putin’s “sovereign democracy” were pure reflections of their

36_{Moravcsik, 1997, p. 518.} 37_{Leonova, 2013, pp. 38 – 39.}

38_{GDP per capita (current US$), World Bank.} 39_{Sherr, 2013, pp. 42 – 64.}

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time designed as much in order to legitimise the contemporary regime as to lay out a vision of a future for Russia. At the moment the Russian national idea is as difficult to define as before and the search for it is going on. At the same time for analytical purposes of this paper it is expedient to list five key concepts that, with different degrees of prominence over time, shape the modern Russian ideological landscape and define Russia’s unique place in the global ideological landscape: 1) sovereign democracy; 2) traditional values; 3) Russian world; 4) multipolar world; and 5) Eurasian integration. These ideological concepts do not only define the course of Russian foreign and domestic policy but also serve as soft power messages, with the help of which Russia tries to present itself in the global arena. The importance of these messages for Russian soft power is overwhelming and they will be further analysed in one of the following sections.

Another aspect of ideology that has great importance for soft power is the fact that ideology defines the state’s vision not only on current events, but also its “official mythology”, the most cherished moments of its past. This paper will further look at how historical accomplishments of a country can be used “for export”, to increase the country’s prestige abroad or to oppose competing interpretations of history. Of course, not every historical achievement can produce soft power beyond the country’s borders (for example, in Russia multiple Russian victories in wars against Poland serve as one of important building blocks of the national myth and national pride whereas in Poland these wars still stir condemnation and painful memories41_). However Russia, even in its relatively recent history, has a good selection of events to choose from: from the revolution of 1917 to the decisive role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War to Soviet accomplishments in space exploration. The current Russian attitude to the Soviet past, especially to the communist ideology, which served as a backbone of Soviet soft power, is rather ambiguous. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union managed to build a considerable following in the Western radical left parties and networks of influence in countries of the Warsaw Pact; apart from that, former Soviet republics all had common past with Russia as a result of a long period of co-existence. Most of these states still have political groups attached to the Soviet past, in some of them there are sizeable Russian minorities as a legacy of Soviet times42 and all of the countries have strong economic links with Russia as a result of production chains created by Soviet government, which is especially critical for military industry43. Therefore, the common historic experience of Russia and other post-Soviet countries is still playing a significant role in Russian policy in the “near abroad”. As many of the new national republics in Eurasia still do not have a national consensus on their history and Russia itself is struggling with defining its attitude to the Soviet period, it is not surprising that politics of memory is playing a very important role in the former USSR. An important illustration of the extent to which the Russian government is involved in the politics of memory is creation in 2009 of the special President’s Commission on falsification of history, which among others includes officials from the President’s Administration, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and secret services. In practice, the main task of the Commission is to fight against attempts to re-interpret the Soviet vision of history44_.

One issue markedly stands out in the Soviet past for the purposes of Russian soft power. It is the Soviet participation in the Second World War, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. The great Soviet contribution to the victory over Nazism, the bloody fight profoundly touching

41_{Siddi, pp. 86 – 91.} 42_{De Jong et al, 2015, p. 24.}

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all peoples of the USSR and the global significance of the event create ample opportunities for its soft power application. Indeed, the victory over the Nazism continued to contribute positively to Soviet image abroad even after the European Left and wider publics got disillusioned with Soviet leadership45. After Russia emerged as an independent country and the communist ideology was repudiated, the victory in the Great Patriotic War remained to be an undisputable centrepiece of Russian national historical memory and Russian soft power. In the context of the present paper it is especially important that both Germany and Ukraine occupy two central places in Russian discourse on the Second World War whereas in turn the war occupies one of determining positions in the national discourses of these two countries.

Concerning Russian information support for its soft power, the Russian propaganda machine has recently gained much attention in the light of the conflict in Ukraine. Yet the aim of this paper is predominantly to show the role of Russian media in preparing favourable conditions for a pro-Russian movement in Ukraine rather than in the informational support during the conflict itself46. The development of the Russian propaganda apparatus as relevant for the purposes of this work will be covered in one the subsequent sections.

1.2. Soft power in Russian political and social discourse.

Apart from its purely academic significance, soft power as a concept has achieved a considerable popular following getting widely used in political and journalistic circles47. One aspect that particularly matters here is the “American origin” of the concept: for the first time “soft power” was used in the context of the USA preserving its position in the global arena and “Soft Power: the Means of Success in World Politics” as a defining book on the subject is written from a distinctly American standpoint. This fact alone was bound to influence the fate of soft power as a concept as it began to gain traction in Russian academic and political debates at the beginning of this century. A characteristic feature of this period is growing independence of Russian external and internal policy and gradually rising confrontation with the West. Consequently, attitudes to soft power could be best classified according to the two prevailing strains of Russian international relations establishment, both in politics and academia: a) pro-Western liberal wing; b) conservative, radical nationalist wing. This division reflects the contemporary Russian social reality better than the typical Western IR division between realists, liberals and radicals, especially as all discussions in Russia are now heavily influenced by the current confrontation between Russia and the West. At the same time it should be noted that some “liberals” (though clearly not all of them as it will be shown below) in this classification do roughly correspond to Western IR liberals while conservatives tend to identify with political realism. However this distinction plays a clearly secondary part in this case. Below each position will get a more detailed description.

Let us first look at the Russian conservative view on soft power as currently it seems to be gaining prominence in the Russian society. What makes the Russian radical nationalist view on soft power stand out is that its followers besides their perpetual anti-Americanism have two basic postulates that are not entirely in accord with each other. The first postulate is that soft power has very little value without serious hard power capabilities. As the influential publicist Mikhail

45_{Nye, 2004, p. 75.}

46_{More about Russian propaganda during the conflict see: Pukulicka-Wilczewska and Sakwa (ed.), 2015, pp.} 155 – 221.

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Leontyev puts it, “soft power … is projection of hard power. Without hard power … there can be only soft powerlessness”48_{. The second thesis in this train of thought is usually concluded with} seeing Western (especially American) soft power as almost all-powerful and able to achieve great results even without applying hard power. The same Leontyev in the same article goes on to say that at some point Russian elites were basically agents of Western influence in Russia while he does not make it clear how Western hard power led to this situation. Leontyev’s conclusion can also be considered typical for his type of thinkers: Russia should concentrate first and foremost on its hard power while soft power understood as predominantly propaganda may serve as a good auxiliary tool, which, however, should be primarily directed inside the country, to combat soft power of other states directed at Russia.

This vision is, of course, not shared by all nationalist intellectuals to the same degree: some components get emphasised more than others, something is not mentioned, but the bigger picture remains broadly the same. What is typical to more radical thinkers in this strand is that they are trying to identify a possible battleground where Russia could challenge Western soft power. For instance, such a notorious figure as Professor Alexandr Dugin duly stresses supposed dangers of Western soft power49, but he does not downplay the potential of Russian soft power to make difference. His grand vision of a Eurasian unity led by Russia was laid out quite long ago and without mention of soft power50_{, but in his later pronouncements Russian soft power was clearly} beginning to be seen as a crucial instrument of achieving Russian national goals. And even if these goals in Dugin’s own formulation (“building an empire”) do not require our comments here his view on Russian soft power message – conservative ideology, homophobia, anti-liberalism, religiosity – and its target audiences – conservative, religious circles in Europe – deserve more attention in our further analysis51_{. The same themes even in stronger terms are} expressed by Igor Pshenichnikov, an advisor to the director of the Russian Institute of Strategic Research, who in his speech on soft power in Serbia in 2014 characterised Western leaders and the Western society as a whole as diabolic and possessed by demons52. The fact that such pronouncements are published by a government-affiliated research institution does not only show their pertinence to our paper, but also demonstrate the intellectual level at which discussions on soft power are conducted in contemporary Russia and the place that serious research has in this discourse. It is also doubtless that these positions in somewhat moderated version get uploaded to the highest levels of the Russian political system as evidenced, for example, by Alexey Pushkov, the Chairman of Russian Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs, who curiously, apart from the traditional “Russia as the bulwark of heterosexual marriage” and anti-Americanism dressed as opposition to unipolar world, identifies two more factors in Russian soft power abroad – Western left-wing and peace movements and pro-Russian business lobbies53.

At the same time the more liberal wing in the Russian discourse on soft power is not entirely antithetic to the conservative one (which is understandable as the both claim to represent Russian national interests, however differently they are understood) and not completely synonymous to liberalism in IR or politics. Rather its typical features are acceptance of the

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Western theory of soft power and willingness to formulate an attractive idea of Russia according to the general premises of this theory. Publicists and scholars of this persuasion also make some attempts to criticise the conservative vision of Russian soft power, which is getting ever more prominent in the Russian society. This does not however automatically imply a pro-Western attitude or stark opposition to the government. For example, Andrey Tsygankov, a leading Russian IR scholar, shares the basic Russian aversion to the unipolar world and proposes to create a Russian school of IR as a soft power instrument to counter the prevailing American establishment realism and liberalism54_{. The already mentioned Olga Leonova does not have an} idealistic picture of soft power and quotes Tsygankov emphasising Russian rights to use hard power55. In general, it would be appropriate to say that the group named in this work “liberal” evinces a more academic and less populist approach to soft power. However, what constitutes perhaps the biggest difference between the two groups is that the exalted and divisive rhetoric of conservatives as well as typically imperial goals of the nationalist wing are conspicuously absent in liberal works. In contrast liberals are seeking soft power success recipes that are less controversial from the Western point of view. For example, Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of the influential Russian research journal “Russia in Global Affairs”, notes that the main prerequisite for a successful soft power is having an attractive model at home and denounces social conservatism as unable to provide such a model56_{. Leonova is more cautious in her} assessments but she also emphasises such factors as “beauty of Russian nature” and its “dramatic history”57_{, soft power instruments typically featuring in Western toolkits. The philosopher} Alexandr Rubtsov from his more radical liberal point of view puts soft power into the foreign policy inventory of a “postmodern” actor while Russia in his view is stuck with modernism and flaunting “traditional values”, which it has lost to a bigger extent than its competitors58_.

Thus, the opposition between the conservative and liberal camps on soft power lies in three main issues. The first one is understanding of the soft power generation mechanism: in the conservative’s vision soft power is a projection of hard power while in the liberal’s vision it primarily reflects an attractive social model. The second difference stems from the traditional Russian political point of contestation between anti-Western conservatives and largely pro-Western liberals. This opposition defines the ultimate purpose of power application (both soft and hard) in the eyes of representatives of the corresponding strands of opinion. And, finally, the third fundamental difference, which determines a soft power strategy, can be derived from the first two: while liberals seek to build Russian soft power as a result of modernising Russia itself, conservatives prefer emphasising aspects generally rejected by the dominant global liberal paradigm such as religiosity and traditionalism. Additionally, the absence of a clear line of division between the two aforementioned groups should be noted. Rather the proposed division between liberals and conservatives should be regarded as a continuum with the extreme and unambiguous positions existing on its far flanks and numerous mixed attitudes in between. A good case in point is the position of Sergey Karaganov, professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, who, despite sharing most basic postulates of the official Russian policy towards

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the West, chastises Russian government for its failure to modernise59 and its obsession with hard power60.

The Russian government does not have an unambiguous position on soft power itself. But its attitude is better pictured not within the defined continuum but above it: as it will be further seen, in pronouncements of the governmental officials as well as in concrete actions both liberal and conservative principles are combined, even though sometimes their compatibility is obviously problematic. This is the fact that makes analysis of Russian soft power especially difficult: juxtaposed against traditional Western criteria, shared by Russian liberals and featuring in public pronouncements of Russian officials, Russian record on soft power is bad. Russia is largely perceived negatively around the world and takes low positions in various soft power rankings61. At the same time, as this paper will argue, there are reasons to believe that Russian soft power has played an important role in Russian foreign policy over the recent years. Therefore the Russian soft power strategy cannot be understood using exclusively the liberal view on soft power. We will argue that Russian soft power should be researched using a double-track approach: it is most productive to analyse it having both Russian liberal and conservative understandings in mind as both of them are ingrained into Russian soft power strategy. Further we will deal with this phenomenon in more detail.

1.3. Five key ideological messages of Russian soft power.

Here we will see how the key concepts of the present Russian ideology have come to be, what significance they have from the soft power point of view and how they are connected with each other.

1) “Sovereign democracy” is the Russian vision of democracy, the concept usually attributed to the former deputy chief of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov. Crafted at the beginning of the 2000s to support the reversal of Russian liberal modernisation, “sovereign democracy” has already become a little obsolete for understanding the nature of the Russian political regime, but it still has explanative significance for the framework of the Russian soft power. To put it short, “sovereign democracy” has been the official self-identification of the political regime of Putin; from the practical point of view, it is an ideological tool to legitimise the regime at home and to dress it in respectable clothes abroad. Besides, its own brand of democracy could be “exported” by Russia to like-minded authoritarians in the post-Soviet space62_{. It has actually found its interested “buyers” even beyond the “near abroad” such as the} Hungarian prime-minister Viktor Orban63_{and Turkish president Recep Erdogan}64_{. It should be} noted however that sovereign democracy has played a bigger role in the Russian soft power strategy than just one of ideas promoted by Russia; its broader significance lies in the fact that Russian soft power has also developed according to the same principles as Russian democracy, which justifies the above mentioned double track approach to Russian soft power analysis adopted in this paper. Ostensibly accepting the Western vision of soft power and creating a

59_{Karaganov, 2014.}

60_{Karaganov as cited in Leonova, 2013, p.37.} 61_{Naumov, 2015.}

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number of façade institutions aimed at promotion of Russian culture, Russia has made its actual accent on different instruments in the same way as it filled the empty husk of sovereign democracy with an increasingly authoritarian regime. This same approach ensured that the government was able to combine both the liberal message of modernisation and the conservative message of traditionalism in its soft power strategy. The development of Russian “soft power infrastructure”, laid out in the following section, has in general conformed to this principle of double orientation.

2) “Traditional values”. For Russia, which is one of the world leaders in divorces65, abortions66 and alcoholism67 and which has suffered from a serious demographic crisis since the 1990s68, a sort of moral and spiritual revival was destined to be a popular idea. Even though the wider effects of “the religious revival” of the early nineties after the atheist Soviet period were sometimes overstated in the West69, its institutional implications were nevertheless serious. The Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate has risen to the position of a quasi-state church70 and was able to successfully lobby for initiatives such as the law on protection of the feelings of believers71. To justify its growing coalescing with Russian authorities the Moscow patriarchate started promoting an agenda of religious unity of Russia; such terms as “traditional values” and “spiritual ties” (духовные скрепы, dukhovniye skrepi) have gained traction in the Russian society as a result72.

In practice, in the sphere of legislation and state propaganda the Russian concept of traditional values has been almost entirely confined to the firm opposition to LGBT rights. This tactic, which appears to be originally conceived as a part of a bigger strategy to juxtapose Russia against Western democracies where acceptance of homosexuality is on the rise, has proven to be quite effective. Coupling Western values such as democracy and liberalism with what Russian officials, including Putin himself, identified as permissiveness and moral decay73 was aimed at protecting Russia against Western soft power influences. As the Russian society had been hostile to LGBT before the campaign marked by the law banning “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors”74_{, the authorities did not encounter any serious dissent}75_{. In general,} singling homosexuals out as a target of negative state propaganda is relatively unproblematic: homosexuals comprise a proportion of the population that is small enough not to pose a danger for the state, but big enough for the government to be able to play the rest of the population against them. Besides, the campaign was actively supported by the Orthodox Church and different conservative groups. The law banning “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations”

65_{UN Demographic Yearbook, 2012, p. 607 - 618; the data summarised by divorcescience (World Divorce} Statistics).

66_{World Abortion Policies 2013, UN.} 67_{Alcohol Consumption, WHO, 2014.} 68_{Eberstadt, 2009.}

69_{Sherr, 2013, p. 89; Rodkiewicz, Rogoża, 2015, p. 15.} 70_{Federal Law 136-FZ, 2013.}

71_{Samuel Huntington gives Russian religious revival as an example supporting his “clash of civilisations”} theory (2003, pp. 139 – 140, Russian edition). However, actual data shows superficiality of this phenomenon (see church-going statistics in Rodkiewicz, Rogoża, 2015, p. 24, footnote 12).

72_{Malinova, 2014.}

73_{Rodkiewicz, Rogoża, 2015, p. 10.} 74_{Federal Law 135-FZ, 2013.}

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(2013) was complemented by another measure limiting the list of countries whose citizens are able to adopt Russian orphans to states not permitting adoption by same-sex couples76; multiple bans on pride parades, a campaign of vilification on the Russian state TV77_{and a propaganda} campaign abroad were other elements of the Russian traditional values paradigm.

Soft power significance of the Russian state-sponsored anti-LGBT campaign lies in the fact that it began around the time Russia started positioning itself as “a conservative power in the world”78_{. On the one hand, this strategy allowed Russia to claim an ideological niche not} occupied and not claimed by any other great power. On the other hand, one of the problems related to choosing conservatism and traditionalism as soft power tools is the lack of international conservative ideological platform, present for example for socialism or liberalism. But with its accent on negative attitude to homosexuality, Russia acquired a message which can be successfully directed to a very broad conservative target audience all over the world, from American evangelicals to Iranian mullahs and, most importantly, to fellow conservatives in the former USSR and Western Europe79.

The three reasons behind the Russian emphasis on its opposition to LGBT rights outlined above – low cost of persecution, wide appeal in traditional societies and the desire to find a powerful antidote to soft power of the West – are further confirmed by the fact that no other “traditional values” initiative has gained comparable state support. For instance, recently when one of the key figures in the anti-LGBT campaign, the member of the parliament Yelena Mizulina, proposed to limit abortion rights, she received criticism from the highest echelons of the Russian political elite and the initiative effectively foundered80. Abortion unlike LGBT rights is not perceived in Russia as a uniquely Western concept and the cost of alienating women is higher for the Russian leadership so the instrumental “traditional values” campaign has been limited exclusively to opposition to LGBT rights so far.

3) “Russian world” (Русский мир, Russkiy mir) is a term referring to the broad community of “ethnic Russians, Russian speakers and people of the Russian culture”81_{. This} concept is a potent tool with double application: on the one hand, it intends to foster links between the Russian state and Russian minorities in the former Soviet Union, on the other hand, it is used as legitimisation of the “special role” of Russia in the area.

In fact “Russian world” as an intellectual concept is relatively young and its pedigree is quite liberal by Russian standards. The concept as such was formulated only in the late 1990s by Russian intellectuals Petr Schedrovitskiy, Sergey Gradirovskiy and Yefim Ostrovskiy. Originally “Russian world” was free of strong political overtones, but it turned into one of the important tools of Russian ideology after being appropriated by the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-2000s82. Concerns for Russian speakers in other post-Soviet countries were voiced either by some sections of Russian political elite or by the Russian government itself multiple times already in the nineties primarily with regard to the Baltic states and Ukraine: in particular, tours of Vice-President Rutskoy in the early 1990s to the Crimea and

76_{Brennan, 2014.} 77_{Ennis, 2014.}

78_{Rodkiewicz, Rogoża, 2015, pp. 19 – 22.} 79_{Ibid, p. 20.}

80_{Government is against the ban on free abortions, 2015, Novaya Gazeta.} 81_{About the Fund, Russkiy Mir Foundation.}

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Transnistria83, the Russian parliament’s resolutions regarding the status of the Crimea and Sevastopol84 and Russian involvement with Russian communities in Latvia and Estonia85 should be mentioned in this context. In the 2000s this Russian interest in “compatriots” was finally brought under the unified framework of the Russian world

The main reason behind the inclusion of the Russian world into the Russian soft power framework is the unusual circumstances in which Russia had to build its global appeal: the basic task that stood before the Russian government in the 1990s was preserving and renewing its soft power in independent states that had been ruled from Moscow just years ago. The situation when a former metropole was trying to preserve its influence in former colonies is not unique. For instance, after the French Empire was disestablished, France used soft power tools such as the Francophonie alongside more forceful instruments (military alliances, a currency union, informal networks of influence) to maintain its ties with its former colonies in Africa86. Yet the Russian situation is special due to special features of the historical Russian imperialism: first, most newly independent states directly border Russia; second, many of them have big Russian minorities. These circumstances made “the near abroad” an especially strategically important area for Russia and at the same time allowed Russia to employ a much broader strategy combining economic, ethnic, linguistic and religious methods. The special role of the Orthodox Church in the concept of the Russian world can be explained by the fact that the Moscow Patriarchate with its strict system of subordination presides over churches beyond the jurisdiction of the Russian state. As the Russian Orthodox Church began to get more visibility in the Russian political discourse, the “Russian world” also grew in prominence. In 2007 an eponymous foundation was established and vested with promoting Russian culture and in 2009 the most prominent ideologue of the Church and the big supporter of the Russian world Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev) was elected as the new leader (Patriarch) of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the following years he played an important role with regard to Ukraine, the activity which will be covered in some more detail in the next chapter87.

4) “Multipolar world”. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the bipolar Cold War IR system, Russia has been usually deeply resentful towards the American hegemony in world affairs. After a brief period of a generally pro-Western foreign policy in the early nineties, the Russian elite came to the conclusion that in the Western-dominated world it could not take a place that it was aiming at88. The Russian image in the West indeed improved89 as Russia changed its status from the main enemy to a new modernising country. But it was a rise in soft power potential rather than in real impact; Russia has rarely and inconsistently used this potential, and all attempts to cement the image of a modernising post-communist country were relinquished already in the early 2000s, after the initial “charm offensive” of Vladimir Putin in the West90. With the time it was becoming increasingly obvious that Russia felt much more comfortable in the traditional anti-Western role. The first turning point came in the 1990s when

83_{Kraus, Liebowitz, 1996, p. 305.}

84_{Resolution 2809-I, 1992; Resolution 5359-1, 1993.} 85_{Grigas, 2012, p. 5.}

86_{See: Martin, 1995.} 87_{Sherr, pp. 89 – 90.} 88_{Ibid, pp. 43 – 44.}

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the Russian government complained about Western disdain to its positions and especially during the war in Yugoslavia and the NATO campaign against Serbia in 1999 when Russia was vehemently critical of the NATO actions91_{. The NATO enlargement that began to gain pace} around that time was another complicating factor92. It was against this backdrop that Russia began to champion first multilateralism and adherence to international law and then multipolarity of international relations93. And, while in the 1990s the weakness of Russia itself and the absence of strong allies did not allow it to promote its alternative multipolar vision of IR with any consistency, in the new century a more pronounced opposition to American dominance was made possible by strengthening positions of Russia and a number of like-minded states and by unilateral interventionism of George W. Bush administration94.

This concurrence of favourable conditions led to Russia’s consolidating its position as the most vocal opponent of the unipolar world. In 2009 this opposition received its institutional contours as the BRIC group was established comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China (later joined by South Africa to become BRICS)95. Thus with its message of multipolarity Russia has been able to replace its Soviet slogan of “anti-imperialism”, which served as a powerful soft power instrument in Asia, Africa and Latin America96. At the same time Russia can successfully employ this same message in Europe where, especially in France and Germany, there was strong resentment towards American unilateralism in Iraq97_{and in the former Soviet Union where} anti-Americanism was consistently fostered during the Soviet times98.

5) “Eurasian integration” is the concept that embodies Russian views on how a world alternative to the world of unipolar American domination would function. With the Eurasian Economic Union, formally established on the first of January 2015, Russia is trying to create a new geo-economic pole that would play an independent role in a multipolar world99. The Union, despite its mixed record so far, is another important soft power tool of the present Russian ideology: in the West it serves to dress Russian claims for a sphere of influence as building a regional economic organisation while in the “near abroad” it is called to counter the EU soft power. Ultimately, Russia offered its neighbours a developmental alternative without cumbersome EU procedures and conditionality going against vested interests in the countries in question.

The concept of Eurasian integration is not new as integration in the post-Soviet space began right after the Soviet Union fell when the Commonwealth of Independent States was founded. However, there is a marked difference in the main principles of Eurasian integration in the nineties and in the second decade of this century. First of all, at the beginning the integration was largely nominal and was based on attempts to create an entity with as many member states as possible. This fact alone served to limit the potential of integration efforts as did the strengthening centrifugal forces in the former USSR. As a result in the nineties integration was

91_{Yeltsin warns of possible world war over Kosovo, 1999, CNN.} 92_{Sherr, 2013, p. 56, 61.}

93_{This rhetoric goes back to the 1990s: see Russian-Chinese Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and} the Establishment of a New International Order, adopted in Moscow on 23 April 1997.

94_{Sherr, 2013, p. 2, 4.}

95_{For more details see, for example: Chun, 2013.} 96_{Nye, 2004, p. 75.}

97_{See: Ben-Meir, 2003.}

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for Russian leadership primarily a tool to demonstrate successes of its foreign policy to the population and to foster personal contacts with leaders of its newly independent neighbours100. However, under Vladimir Putin, already with the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) launched in 2000 – 2003 Russia tried to use integration with more strategic goals in mind. The term “Eurasian” began to be used to highlight the future-directedness of the integration in contrast to “post-Soviet”, which unambiguously referred to the past101_{. Moreover, the circle of} participants was narrowed and a more concrete scheme of integration with corresponding deadlines was introduced. Nevertheless the EurAsEC, despite achieving more than previous attempts such as the CIS and the Union State of Russia and Belarus, ultimately proved to be inefficient102.

Nevertheless, the EurAsEC served as a basis from which the most coherent and effective post-Soviet integrationist organisation, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), grew. At the moment the EEU possesses a functioning common market and its institutions are working towards achieving a full economic union. Thus, despite a number of serious flaws in the current structure of the EEU and conflicts between its member states, it is still an organisation evincing a completely different level of integration than its predecessors. According to Alexander Libman and Evgeny Vinokurov, this achievement has been made possible mainly by two concurring circumstances: first, the financial crisis of 2007 – 2009 seriously damaged the Russian economy and persuaded the Russian leadership that negative effects of globalisation can be offset by economic regionalisation. At the same time, on the political side, Russia had grown increasingly worried about expansion of EU normative power into its perceived sphere of influence103. Therefore, in response to the European Neighbourhood Policy and Eastern Partnership of the EU and “colour revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, Russia needed its own integration project that would combine economic attractiveness and soft power. The absence of the EU-style conditionality and affinity of member states with Russia both in business circles and among the wider public represented additional advantages in comparison with a strict rule-based EU approach. Apart from competing with the EU in Eastern Europe, the EEU helps Russia in dressing its claims for a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space as regional economic integration; high level Russian officials have multiple times expressed their conviction that in their cherished scheme of a multipolar world Russia can preserve its relevance by becoming a centre of an influential economic union104.

Thus it can be seen that Russian soft power coveys a prominently conservative message that juxtaposes Russia against the West and creates a unique target audience where Russia has little competition. At the same time Russia is using some typical modernisation rhetoric such as the one of economic integration. This particular Russian approach is a result of a gradual and complex evolution process closely connected with the evolution of the current Russian political regime.

In general it can be observed that different components of Russian ideology, despite their diverse origins and development, have grown to form a coherent, if not an entirely consolidated, picture. The Russian vision of a multipolar world is supported by attempts at Eurasian

100_{Dragneva, Wolczuk, 2013, pp. 15 – 18.}

101_{Libman, Vinokurov, 2012, Eurasian integration, pp. 17 – 20; p. 201 – 202.} 102_{Libman, Vinokurov, 2012, Holding-Together Integration, pp. 44 – 47.} 103_{Ibid, p. 48.}

: RUSSIAN SOFT POWER IN EUROPE FLEXIBLE ILLIBERALISM

FLEXIBLE ILLIBERALISM

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