Abstract
In Russia, conspiracy theories (CTs) have long been an important feature of popular beliefs and ideologies. The monograph by Ilya Yablokov is the first attempt of fundamental research on post-Soviet Russia’s CTs.
The book consists of seven chapters that largely represent evolution of pro-governmental conspiracy theorizing efforts since 2000s. The first chapter is devoted to history of conspiracy theorizing in Russia; the second, to the role of some public intellectuals in producing and disseminating CTs; the third, to conspiracy narratives about the collapse of the USSR; the fourth, to governmental efforts to construct national identity narratives; the fifth and the sixth chapters, to utilizing CTs against NGOs, independent business people and against active oppositionists during 2007 and 2012 electoral campaigns. The final, seventh chapter, is devoted to conspiracy theorizing during the ongoing Ukrainian crisis.
The author represents pro-governmental conspiracy theorizing as power-related practices aimed to legitimize Putin’s regime and justify the leader’s protracted stay in power while delegitimizing and othering opponents and disempowering foreign criticism. The mentioned chapters can be considered as cases covering various dimensions of pro-governmental conspiracy theorizing: political technology, geopolitical worldviews, historical nostalgy, cohesive narrative for the Russian multiethnic and multi-religious society, and marginalization of political opponents (not only pro-Western liberals but also radical Russian nationalists and anti-Russian militant Islamists) as the ‘fifth column’ allegedly used by the United States and its allies to weaken, subdue or destroy Russia. The author argues that the regime skillfully managed to represent itself as the only real force able to defend Russia.
While Yablokov’s conceptual approach looks viable and innovative, at least several following problems should be discussed.
First, the title may give a wrong impression of that the book covers the entire range of post-Soviet Russia’s CTs while actually it focuses just on some of pro-governmental conspiracy narratives (no clear disclaimer is provided). A wide range of CTs, produced by non-governmental actors are not considered, as well as CTs about non-Western ‘conspiractors’ (e.g. China).
Second, representing CTs largely just as power narratives and practices looks somewhat reductionist, as other known psychological, cultural, historical, social and other explanations are paid little attention. Ironically, the 2010 Matthew Grey’s book on CTs in the Arab world was mentioned by Yablokov (p. 2), but Grey’s argument that only the combination of the mentioned factors can explain pervasiveness of CTs was not considered. At least, the author could pay more attention to personal mind-sets of those Russian influential officials (including Putin himself) who are related to powerful security services well-known for their conspiracist corporate mentality. In this light, Yablokov’s argument that ‘the people who genuinely hold conspirational views rarely become serious decision-makers in the Kremlin hierarchy’ (p. 193) looks to be problematic.
Third, the author doesn’t deal with issues of conceptual validity and value of CTs. CTs are not necessarily wrong and pathologic, as real conspiracies do happen and most of us sometimes do resort to ‘conspiracy explanations’. While doing research on CTs, one should be well-aware about potential political bias: CTs produced by ‘sympathetic’ and ‘unsympathetic’ actors are often treated unequally (the author himself is not particularly critical towards anti-governmental CTs-like narratives; see pp. 115, 194). As these issues are not dealt properly, this may ironically provide some reason for framing the book’s narrative as ‘a conspiracy theory about utilizing CT by the Putin’s regime’.
Fourth, the empirical analysis contains some factual mistakes and inaccuracies and fails to conceptualize some important phenomena. The historical analysis of the first chapter seems to be the weakest part. It starts history of Russian CTs from the late eighteenth century, while at least in the sixteenth century, Ivan IV routinely used xenophobic CTs for justifying repressions. In this chapter, the author also fails to consider properly historical suspicions towards non-Orthodox foreigners and anti-German conspiracy panic during the First World War. Despite being an instructive case of employing CTs for national cohesion and marginalizing opponents, Stalinist political repressions are discussed with little reference to conceptual framework. Surprisingly, the author makes evident factual mistakes in the seventh chapter, referring to the ‘parliamentary campaign of 2015’ (actually, elections were held in September 2016) and ‘presidential campaign of 2016’ (elections were held in March 2018) (p. 183).
Overall, the monograph seems to be important analysis of rhetorical ways in which the Putin’s regime managed to rally supporters and marginalize dissenters. Still, the book has some problems with conceptualizing CTs, conclusiveness of some specific arguments and factual accuracy. This criticism doesn’t prevent me from arguing that Yablokov’s monograph is a valuable contribution to research on contemporary Russian politics and a good departure point for further relevant research.
