Affect, Power, and Resistance: Pro-War Russian State Propaganda and how Russians Respond to It

Affect, Power, and Resistance: Pro-War Russian State Propaganda and how Russians Respond to It

Introduction

In this paper I will consider the Russian government’s propaganda about the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Russian people’s susceptibility and opposition to the state’s narratives through Affect Theory. I will first define Affect Theory and briefly consider its applications in the field of Anthropology. I will discuss its connection to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and to how the Russian government uses affect to position Ukraine. For this, I will consider Brian Massumi’s work on threat and connect it to power as outlined by Michel Foucault. Then, I will outline the Russian government’s propaganda about Ukraine and will identify narratives of threat within it. I will consider how these narratives become accepted and embodied by a portion of the Russian population, first by returning to Massumi, then by looking at the work of Baruch Spinoza, and then by outlining the current reality of life under Putin’s regime. After this, I will look at stories about the portion of the Russian population that has remained in Russia, but opposes the war in Ukraine, and at their various “quiet protests”, which I will position as resistance to the state’s affect, as well as their own attempts to create affect toward themselves and others. To consider how the Russian people accept and resist propaganda, I will use stories published on independent Russian, European, and American media sources. I will discuss how Affect Theory, power, and resistance intersect in contemporary Russian society as it lives through its complicity in the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Affect Theory 

In their article titled Introduction: Toward an Anthropology of Affect and Evocative Ethnography, authors Ian Skoggard and Alisse Waterston discuss the origins of the shift to Affect Theory in the field of Anthropology. They explain that “Affect theory has the promise to bridge the conceptual dualisms that have plagued the social sciences, such as those between mind and body, self and other, private and public, personal and political, and agency and structure (Skoggard and Waterston, 110-111). In defining affect, the authors consider both individual affect as disposition, as well as collective affect, experienced on a large scale across groups. They explain that  “Affect is something deeply interior but that also has outward manifestations. … The principles of collective affect may not be equivalent to those applied to individuals. Yet collectivities can and do have affect” (Skoggard and Waterston, 112). Affect, therefore, is felt both individually and collectively, and can be experienced both consciously and unconsciously. The authors add that “affect as noun and verb has as much to do with senses and sensibilities of the collective unconscious and conscious and the body writ large—the body politic, the social and the cultural—as it does with an individual’s mind, body, and emotion” (Skoggard and Waterston, 112), highlighting this duality. 

In the article Affect Theory and the Empirical, author Danilyn Rutherford presents a review of the use of Affect Theory in the field of Anthropology. She writes that “[c]ultural anthropologists and other scholars have used the term affect in a range of senses. The social theorist and philosopher Brian Massumi (2002) follows Gilles Deleuze and Baruch Spinoza in defining affect as a felt bodily intensity, the feeling of having a feeling, a potential that emerges in the gap between movement and rest. Affect is measurable in experiments that register unconscious responses to stimuli and potential perceptions that a subject may or may not perceive” (Rutherford, 286). Massumi’s definition provides a helpful separation of affect from emotion and focuses on utilizing affect to develop knowledge about “forces that move people, forces that attract, repel, and provoke” (Rutherford, 286), essentially focusing on the consequences of affect and on how it provokes actions. In this view, affect is inseparable from power, as collective affect can be mobilized to influence large groups of people. Rutherford explains that “[w]e need to think about power to understand affect and how it is aroused and channeled into proper pathways through discourses of control and containment” (290), and this is particularly applicable in Putin’s Russia.

In Putin’s Russia, the affect that is produced by the state works through narrative and knowledge production and the enforcement of those narratives. As Michel Foucault notes in the chapter titled The Body of the Condemned of his book Discipline and Punish, “power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations” (Foucault, 27). The Russian government manipulates knowledge production about its historical relationship with Ukraine and its current invasion of it, therefore justifying its aggression, and prohibits any alternative narrative. The Russian citizens who embody the official state narrative come to justify it and transmit it to others, thereby fulfilling part of the state’s efforts. As Foucault explains, “power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who 'do not have it'; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them; it exerts pressure upon them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the grip it has on them” (Foucault, 27). He thus demonstrates that power relations are not made up solely of the power-having state and the power-lacking citizenry. Rather, the state and its citizens enter into a complex dynamic of power relations in which some citizens become part of the power apparatus by enforcing the state’s narratives onto others. This could not be more true in Putin’s Russia, where many anti-war Russians are scared to speak out against the war for fear of getting reported by their fellow citizens to the police (Vaganov), as reported by Anton Vaganov in the independent Russian media Meduza. A key aspect of the narratives produced by the Russian government, and why these narratives are so effective (and affective) is threat - positioning Ukraine as threatening to the Russian people. 

In his chapter titled The Future Birth of the Affective Fact: The Political Ontology of Threat, author Brian Massumi discusses threat and argues that “[t]hreat is from the future” (Massumi, 53), because it causes people to act on assumptions about things that have not occurred yet. Massumi writes that “[w]hat is not actually real can be felt into being. Threat does have an actual mode of existence: fear, as foreshadowing. Threat has an impending reality in the present. This actual reality is affective” (Massumi, 54). He argues that the strength of threat’s affect on the present causes people to act because of its potentiality and concludes that “[i]f we feel a threat, there was a threat. Threat is affectively selfcausing” (Massumi, 54). When discussing the United States’ invasion of Iraq, Massumi concludes that the US government’s narrative justified it through arguing that “[t]he invasion was right because in the past there was a future threat” (Massumi, 53). Similarly, Russian state propaganda partially justified its 2022 invasion of Ukraine through a fabrication of threat to the Russian state and its population.

Russian State Propaganda

In their article Truth with a Z: Disinformation, War in Ukraine, and Russia’s Contradictory Discourse of Imperial Identity, authors Vera Tolz and Stephen Hutchings analyze Russian state propaganda, considering statements made by Vladimir Putin and his political advisors, three main state-run media channels, and op-eds in RIA Novosti (RIA News), a Russian state-owned domestic news agency. The authors identify “three recurring ideational-identitarian discourses common to many contexts but with specific resonances in Russia: those of colonialism/de-colonization; imperialism (associated here with the terms ‘historical Russia’ [istoricheskaya Rossiya] and ‘the Russian World’ [russkii mir]); and the imaginary West (articulated in the form of kollektivnyi Zapad and linked to the term ‘[neo-]liberal order’)” (Tolz and Hutchings, 351-352). Of these, the de-colonization narrative and the narrative associated with the imaginary West bear threatening motifs. The authors add that “[t]he narratives often revolve around notions of ‘the [Russian] people’ and ‘Ukraine,’ which serve as floating signifiers linked relationally to specific meanings, and with reference to two further relationally interpreted concepts — ‘fascism/Nazism’ and ‘genocide’” (Tolz and Hutchings, 352). Ironically, though Russia has historically colonized Ukraine (Durand, 2022; Sviezhentsev, 2023; Szeptycki, 2011), the “decolonization” narrative is subverted by the Russian state propaganda so that “the idea of invading Ukraine is depicted as a defensive act designed to prevent a Western-inspired attack on Russia” (Tolz and Hutchings, 352). The decolonization narrative merges with the narrative about the imaginary West to perpetuate the false idea that the West is seeking to colonize Ukraine with the eventual goal of attacking Russia from Ukrainian soil. Tolz and Hutchings explain that with the invasion, “Russia is claimed to be liberating Ukraine from Western colonialism, a narrative foregrounded in Putin’s pre-war speech when he wondered whether Ukrainians understood that ‘their country has been . . . reduced to the level of a [Western] colony with a puppet government’” (Tolz and Hutchings, 353). Simultaneously, the Ukrainian government members were positioned as Nazis also posing a threat to Russia. “The “fascism/Nazism” accusation referencing Nazi Germany’s genocidal practices represents a particularly powerful form of othering in the Russian context, given the legacy of the Second World War that Putin’s government turned into post-Soviet Russia’s key foundation myth two decades ago” (Tolz and Hutchings, 359), the authors explain. Thus, the simultaneous narratives of the Ukrainian government perpetuating a Nazi regime and of the imaginary West having colonial aims for Ukraine with the goal of eventually invading Russia allowed the Russian state to position Ukraine as a threat, thereby justifying the 2022 invasion.

In her article War in Ukraine: Russian Propaganda Themes, author Dana Ionela Druga identifies nine themes among the Russian state propaganda messages. Druga categorizes them as such: “(1) the theme of the nuclear attack ̶ Zaporizhia power plant; (2) the theme of Nazism and fascism; (3) the theme of military aggression; (4) the issue of Russian values and legality (referendum); (5) the theme of lost sovereignty and imperialism; (6) the theme of staged attacks and massacres; (7) the theme of global conspiracy and the West; (8) the theme of food crisis/insecurity; (9) the theme of Russian minority and Russophobia” (Druga, 87). Several of these themes bear explicitly colonial and imperial characteristics, but others help perpetuate the notion of the Ukrainian state as threatening to Russia, which then allows the Russian government to justify its subsequent invasion. For example, because “Nazism and fascism are used by the Russian Federation to accuse Ukraine of being ruled by Nazi leaders” (Druga, 88), Ukraine is positioned as an inherent threat to the Russian population that will inevitably eventually affect it. In equating the Ukrainian government to Nazis, the Russian government labels them as threatening and thereby justifies any potential military action against them. “The fascist label has been attached to the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian soldiers by Russian media since 2014. ... Through Russian propaganda messages, Ukraine is repeatedly referred to as a Nazi country and as using symbols of Nazism” (Druga, 88), Druga adds. The narrative of the Russian minority acts in a similar way and positions Russians as under threat from Ukraine and its powerful allies who conspire against Russia. “Against the backdrop of protecting the Russian minority, Russian propaganda actively promotes messages justifying its aggressive military actions, including the invasion of Ukraine, or accusing other states of violating human rights and the Russian-speaking minority” (Druga, 90-91), writes Druga. Though this narrative inherently conflicts with the one concerning the need to rebuild the historical Russian empire - depending on whether it is a domestic or an international audience that is being addressed - it is nevertheless effective in positioning Russia as under threat and thereby justifying its aggression against Ukraine.

The EUvsDisinfo, a task force comprised of “a team of experts with a background mainly in communications, journalism, social sciences and Russian studies” (EUvsDisinfo), tackles misinformation perpetuated by the Russian government. 40% of all of their disinformation cases are about Ukraine (EUvsDisinfo), demonstrating just how regularly the Russian state perpetuates anti-Ukrainian misinformation and propaganda. The task force also tracks trends in the propaganda narratives, and identified three narratives in the period directly leading up to the full-scale invasion. Prior to Russia amassing an unprecedented amount of troops on the Ukrainian border, the state narrative was that “The US will start a war in Ukraine when NATO is ready and use Ukraine to launch an attack against Russia” (EUvsDisinfo). This narrative resonates with the general positioning of the imaginary West as an impending threat that will act through Ukraine onto Russia. After this narrative, the Russian state perpetuated a narrative that “Ukraine is a colony with a puppet regime. It has no sustainable statehood” (EUvsDisinfo). The puppet regime, in this case, is doubly susceptible to Nazi regimes and, again, to the control of the West, both of which are threatening to Russia. Then, right before the start of the invasion, the main narrative of the Russian state propaganda was that “Russia is conducting a limited military operation, in self-defence, to ‘de-nazify Ukraine’. It is not an occupation of Ukraine. Russia is ready to negotiate. Ukraine must hold elections for a new government” (EUvsDisinfo). The focus on Ukraine’s supposed Nazi regime and on acting from a position of self-defence further entrenched Ukraine as a threatening entity to Russia and justified the invasion as necessary. 

The impact of the Russian government’s propaganda messages are exceedingly effective due to their nature and the specific demographic of the Russian citizenry. Massumi explains that “[p]reemptive power washes back from the battlefield onto the domestic front … . On the domestic front, its would-have/could-have logic takes a specific form associated with public security procedures involving the signaling of alert. The alert, set off at the slightest sign of potential threat, triggers immediate action” (Massumi, 57). Due to the narratives around the supposed threat from Ukraine being positioned as existential to the Russian people, all actions taken against it are immediately seen as justified. Moreover, the action is inherently impune to future developments that may expose the propaganda messaging as false, because “[t]he preemptive actions taken in response to the threat are still logically and politically correct if they were commensurate with the urgency of the threat, if not with the urgency of the actual situation. They will still have been justified even if the information proves objectively imprecise and there was no actual danger” (Massumi, 59). Therefore, the actions taken by the Russian government, as explained through propaganda messaging to its citizenry, will always have been justified and will shape-shift to fit any convenient narrative. 

The Russian citizenry is also particularly susceptible to being influenced by some propaganda narratives because of the specific resonances they have with the Russian people. As Tolz and Hutchings explain in regard to the “imaginary West” narrative, “representations of a Western proxy war on Russia conducted via Ukraine resonated with Russian audiences perturbed by sanctions and the exclusion of Russian cultural and sports organizations and individuals from international forums” (Tolz and Hutchings, 356). The alienation that is inherent in being subject to an invasion from the imaginary and supposedly unified West manifests itself in the exclusion that results from sanctions that themselves result from the attack on Ukraine. This self-enforcing loop resonates with Massumi’s observations of threat as “affectively self-causing” (Massumi, 54), and is extremely effective in perpetuating the justifications for the ongoing war. Furthermore, as Druga explains, “[t]he global conspiracy theme is an inherent element of the Russian propaganda system, having a negative impact on critical thinking skills by undermining the public’s trust in objective information, leading to low resilience to propaganda” (Druga, 90). The Russian government’s propaganda narratives thus work to increase feelings of mistrust and alienation, which in turn lead to an increased receptiveness of the government’s messaging. Eventually, many Russian people begin to voice support for the war or to make excuses for it, which manifests as repeating propaganda narratives or positioning themselves as indifferent and powerless (Important Stories), as explained in Important Stories, an independent Russian investigative journalism website, citing a study conducted by the Laboratory of Public Sociology. This behaviour feels to them as a conscious political choice (Important Stories), but, according to philosopher Baruch Spinoza, is actually a kind of succumbing to affect. 

Spinoza, in his book titled Ethics, explains that “each man’s actions are shaped by his emotion; and those who furthermore are a prey to conflicting emotions know not what they want, while those who are free from emotion are driven to this or that course by a slight impulse” (Spinoza, 107). Russians who are confronted by fabricated feelings of alienation and exclusion and simultaneously see at least part of their country’s brutal attack on another country, are easily driven to make justifications for these brutalities. Some navigate this contradiction by explicitly positioning themselves as powerless - a 52 year-old university instructor told the Laboratory of Public Sociology that the war “can’t be influenced by us, nor by the Ukrainians. … I don’t like anything that’s going on there [in Ukraine]! But that doesn’t change anything” (Important Stories). She therefore explicitly positions herself as powerless in terms of having any influence on the war. A 42 year-old IT specialist, after being asked his opinion on the war, said that “this is what’s happening. … There is always shooting and murder somewhere on Earth” (Important Stories), thereby excusing the war in Ukraine as a regular and inevitable occurrence. Many people navigate their contradicting emotions by choosing to opt out of the situation altogether to avoid confronting it. “I don’t understand politics”, as spoken by a 40 year-old museum worker (Important Stories), is a very common refrain. Finally, there is a refusal to acknowledge that the government may be making wrong decisions, as exemplified by a 21 year-old university student, who says “I think that it really could not be any other way. I mean, are they all fools up there [in the government]? Really, I think they know what they are doing. Definitely”. (Important Stories). The affect of the Russian government’s propaganda thus becomes embodied by people who come to internalize its narratives.

Life in Russia

This affect is further reinforced through countless pro-war and pro-government posters and advertisements that are prevalent throughout Russian cities and become unavoidable. Large pictures of Russian soldiers with slogans like “glory to the Russian heroes” cover bus stops (VOA News), the letter “Z” - a symbol initiated by the Russian government to indicate support for the war - is plastered on posters around the city (Institute for War and Peace Reporting), and posters with pictures of soldiers and captions of “the task will be completed” tower over pedestrians as they go about their days (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty). School children are made to write letters of gratitude to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine and engage in embodied support for the Russian army in school activities, such as being made to form the letter “Z” with their bodies and pose for pictures (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty). Russian state pro-war propaganda infiltrates every aspect of the Russian citizenry’s life and largely becomes embodied by a portion of the population. Effectively, it forms a dynamic similar to Foucault’s Panopticon, in which there is induced “a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (Foucault, 201), and which is achieved by ever-present government pro-war symbols and imagery and the policing of some citizens by others, as well as the state itself. This dynamic, in contemporary Russia, facilitates what Foucault describes as “a functional mechanism that must improve the exercise of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion for a society to come” (Foucault, 209).

Furthermore, Putin’s Russia operates under a highly authoritative regime and opposition to the government is extremely dangerous. When it comes to the war in Ukraine, “support for war in today’s Russia is a forcefully enforced norm (a normative demand), an absence of which can lead to social pressure and persecution” (Vaganov). Soon after the beginning of the invasion, Putin signed a law that explicitly prohibits anti-war dissent and punishes it with up to 15 years of imprisonment (Amnesty International). OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights project that tracks political persecutions and supports political prisoners, reports that 19,855 arrests of anti-war activists have been made since February 24th, 2022 at the time of writing (OVD-Info). Some high-profile cases of persecution for anti-war activism include artist Aleksandra Skochilenko, who, in November of 2023, was sentenced to seven years of prison for putting up five anti-war stickers in a supermarket (Vaganov) and journalist Maria Ponomarenko, who was sentenced to six years in prison for a Telegram post that covered Russia’s bombing of a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol that killed up to 600 people (Hinnant et al). Likewise, prominent opposition leaders including Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin are also serving prison sentences as high as 25 years (NPR) for voicing their support of Ukraine. Among Russians who have remained in Russia since the start of the invasion but oppose it, openly voicing opposition to it is all but impossible. Nevertheless, thousands of Russians have engaged in what are called “quiet protests” (The Insider). 

Russian Resistance

“In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limit it discovers in itself - a limit where minds meet and, in meeting, begin to exist. … 

In absurdist experience, suffering is individual. But from the moment when a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience. Therefore the first progressive step for a man overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe. The malady experienced by a single man becomes a mass plague. … 

I rebel - therefore we exist”.

The Rebel, Albert Camus

           Quiet protests are often isolated, small-scale acts that signal to oneself or to others that the person engaging in them disagrees with the government and stands with Ukraine. Though small, these acts help Russian citizens who disagree with the government to challenge the ever-present affect created by it and rebel against it, thereby preventing it from influencing them or others. These protests can be directed at others and attempt to influence the affect that they experience from the state. For example, a 32 year-old Russian citizen named Liza engaged in a quiet protest by holding up her phone, which read “no to war” while descending on an escalator to the metro, so that people ascending up from it, going in the opposite direction, fleetingly saw it and read what it said (The Insider). Liza describes this as a “very small, regular act. There isn’t anything heroic or difficult in it. But in the conditions that we live in, even these things are important. Lots of tiny protests compile into one big [protest]” (The Insider). Some Russians write anti-war and anti-government slogans such as “no to war”, “Putin is a war criminal”, and “why do you want war?” on Russian currency (The Insider). Due to the high circulation of these bills, these messages reach a high number of people, while keeping their creator entirely anonymous. Sergey, a Moscow resident, engaged in a quiet protest by turning off the lights in his apartment every night at the exact same time, for one minute, having coordinated that with a few people in an apartment building across the street from him (Meduza). Describing this, he says he “stands by the window for a minute, silently looking at the dark windows of my neighbours’ apartments” (Meduza) and that this made him feel less alone. Vsevolod, a Moscow resident, describes leaving anti-war messages in his apartment building’s elevator (Meduza), which is a very common anti-war act. Elena, a resident of a Moscow suburb, reports to Meduza that she regularly leaves anti-war graffiti in public places to show her support for Ukraine (Meduza). Countless anonymous anti-war posters and graffiti have been recorded around big cities like Moscow (Meduza). Some slogans are written in snow, and therefore disappear on their own, as opposed to graffiti, which stays indefinitely and needs to be removed, making it harder to persecute those who write them (Meduza). An unknown resident of Moscow replaced pictures of the map of the Moscow metro inside the trains with maps of the Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine) metro. Underneath the map, there was a paragraph reading that Kyiv residents are forced to spend every night inside metro stations to shield from continuous Russian missile bombardments. Such acts target Russians who are going about their days, inundated with the government’s pro-war messaging, and manage to break up these narratives by presenting an alternative message. 

Quiet protests can also manifest through actions entirely directed at oneself. In a public Zoom conference that was organized in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the days following his death, a person currently residing in Russia explained that she wears a Ukrainian flag pin every day underneath her top layer of clothing. This way, she explained, the flag is concealed from the outside world, leaving her protected against political persecution, but she still feels it on her body throughout the day, and it gives her reassurance. Immersed in pro-war messaging all throughout the city, wearing a Ukrainian flag pin in secret allows her to maintain her support for Ukraine and be less affected by the pro-war propaganda. Similarly, when talking about anti-war actions, a resident of Moscow reported to own a Ukrainian flag pin, and, despite feeling too scared to wear it in public, to get confidence just from having it at home. (Meduza) Maria, a Saint Petersburg resident, reports having woven a bracelet in the colours of the Ukrainian flag that she wears in secret (Meduza). A Ekaterinburg resident identified only as “O.” reports learning the Ukrainian language and positions this as an “inner expression of solidarity” (Meduza) with the Ukrainian people. Such acts, directed entirely inward, toward the actors themselves, manage to reduce the amount to which they are affected by the government’s pro-war propaganda and work as resistance against it. They allow the people engaging in them to alter the affect that they are made to experience, and instead leave them with feelings of solidarity and empowerment. 

Conclusion

Affect Theory, the conceptualization of threat, and their intersection with power mechanisms provide a useful framework for the analysis of contemporary Russia, characterized by propaganda, conquests of territories, and fear. Analyzing Russian state propaganda through the lens of affect can supplement our understanding of its effects on the Russian population, which in part bases its actions on the threat that is communicated through the propaganda narratives. Together with the consideration of power, which is ever-present in contemporary Russian society and wielded by the state and Russian citizens themselves, Affect Theory allows for a personal, embodied sense of life under Vladimir Putin’s authoritative rule. The consideration of agency and resistance within this system can shed light on the manipulation of affect by various actors as they navigate a society they fundamentally disagree with, but have varying degrees of fear associated with resisting it. The “quiet protests”, directed at others or only at oneself, emerge as affect-targeting tools that help protect anti-war Russian citizens against the state’s oppressive affect. With them, anti-war Russians are able to chip away at the apparently absolute power of the Russian government, perhaps setting a trajectory for its eventual collapse.

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