‘It’s impossible for the system not to change’ While waging war on Ukraine, the Russian state has intensified its already tight control over the Internet, press, and opposition at home. Meanwhile, the anti-war opposition has resorted to what are essentially guerilla tactics. Many politicians, journalists, and activists were forced to leave the country to avoid being thrown in jail under Article 207.3 — a new law that criminalizes the spread of “fake news” about the actions of the Russian armed forces. Against this backdrop, contemporary Russian society is frequently compared to the late Soviet Union. To put these comparisons in context, Meduza turned to anthropologist Alexei Yurchak, the author of Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, a well-known study on the last decades of the USSR.
One main mechanism of the Soviet person’s psyche described in your book is “being vnye.”In theory, “being vnye” provides resistance to authoritative discourse, to propaganda. Until February 24, 2022, many Russian citizens felt propaganda wasn’t effective, insofar as it’s too crude. Why weren’t Russians protected by this former Soviet experience of “being vnye”?
The idea you’ve just described is more suitable to concepts like escapism or internal emigration. “Being vnye” isn’t really about that. The overwhelming majority of Soviet people continued to study in schools, work in Soviet enterprises, and live like completely normal Soviet people. But, at the same time, most practiced to some degree the principle of “being vnye” — that is, while taking part in the system’s institutions, practices, rituals, and political statements, they interpreted these into their lives slightly differently than the state intended. Thus, during the late Soviet period, most Soviet people lived simultaneously inside and outside the political system. This doesn’t mean they didn’t care about Soviet ideology, or that they experienced it only as white noise. Not at all. Many socialist values, declared in the state’s political rhetoric, were shared in principle by many: for example, contempt for money and material gain.
Russian citizens from the “creative class” often “catch” each other cooperating with the state: Who received which grants? Why did the Ministry of Culture appear as a sponsor in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film credits? And so on. Many have attempted to do something worthy within the system, and many have succeeded. Have all those who’ve worked with state institutions practiced “being vnye” to some degree?
Actually, the ideology of the state [over the last twenty years] has not been so one-sided. There have been many ways to think about what Russia is, including some perfectly commensurate with state rhetoric or financed by the state. And there have been various people within the state who could take a more liberal stance on this — in the fields of arts and education. If you consider the academic world, which I’m closer to, relatively independent excellent universities have existed for many years — for instance, the European University at Saint Petersburg, or the Higher School of Economics. A bunch of periodicals have appeared, good publishing houses [have opened], [as well as] new bookstores and platforms for public lectures. To some degree, these spaces may be seen as functioning on the principle of “being vnye”: the state supports them in one way or another, and at times directly subsidizes them.
Thus, [the state] contributed to the emergence of new meanings, practices, and attitudes that didn’t always align with state ideology….
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/05/10/it-s-impossible-for-the-system-not-to-change
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