Читать книгу The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin's Russia I - Ivo Mijnssen - Страница 9

A study of Nashi is inevitably also a study of the official political sphere[6] in Russia. Since I, like many others, argue that Nashi is a government project, it is necessary to analyze the political background of the regime that created Nashi. This chapter therefore contextualizes the emergence and consolidation of the Putin regime in Russia. I argue that Nashi’s worldviews and values are part of a broader project during Vladimir Putin’s first two terms: the stabilization of Russia’s political system and the articulation of an official, government-sponsored political identity.

This book analyzes the process of political stabilization primarily on a discursive level, through the concepts of dislocation and hegemony developed by Ernesto Laclau und Chantal Mouffe (Laclau and Mouffe 2001). The notion of securitization (Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998) is another key concept for understanding Russian politics before and under Putin. A special section of this chapter provides an introduction into Russian youth politics.

Possibly the most striking feature of this process has been Putin’s skillful use of symbolic politics, analyzed in the chapter’s final section. His government has placed strong emphasis on historical continuity. The commemoration of the Great Patriotic War has been at the center of efforts to foster pride in Russian culture and Russian statehood. Analysis of the official war narrative reveals how this commemoration has served Putin’s project.

This chapter thus serves two purposes. On one hand, it introduces the theoretical and methodological framework of this book. On the other, it applies the theoretical framework to analyze changes in Russia’s political identity since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the politics of history as it relates to the commemoration of the Great Patriotic War.