The book The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity by Gulnaz Sharafutdinova is a valuable contribution to the literature on post-Soviet Russian politics, as well as to identity studies. Scholars of international relations largely succeeded in demonstrating the relevance of national identities for foreign affairs. However, there are not so many works exploring their effects for domestic political regimes. Sharafutdinova explains Putin’s lasting popular support by his contribution to the “sense of national identity and collective purpose that Russian citizens relate and value” (19–20). She relies on the social identity theory that posits a sense of belonging, pride, and self-esteem, provided to individuals by their respective groups, as an important driver of social behavior. According to Sharafutdinova, Putin’s leadership rested upon a crafty exploitation of group emotions associated with “two central pillars of the Soviet collective identity, including a sense of exceptionalism … and a sense of a foreign threat to the state and its people” (18). Such manipulations were facilitated by using the state-controlled media to broadcast the proper messages, on the one hand, and “the contextual variables” that made the Russian population sensitive to them, on the other (35). Among such variables, the author particularly emphasizes “the Russian citizen’s collective experience of the Soviet collapse and the ensuing transition” (35). Of course, this is not the first work exploring the political outcomes of the national identity construction in Russia (e.g., Morozov Reference Morozov2009) or pointing to the contrast between the hardships of the early years of Russia’s post-Soviet transition and the so-called stability associated with Putin’s rule as a source of his long-lasting popularity (e.g., Matovski Reference Matovski2018). Yet, The Red Mirror makes a valuable contribution to the discussion about the evolution of the Russian political regime by scrutinizing the emotional mechanisms of Putin’s leadership and revealing some technologies of their activation.

According to the author’s argument, the largely disregarded but important pillar of Putin’s popularity is his “emotional intelligence,” which revealed itself in his constructing and utilizing the collectively shared emotional “hot buttons” (36) linked to the traumatic experience of the 1990s. Putin turned “shame and humiliation, derived from the painful experience of the transition in the 1990s” into “pride and patriotism” by skillfully pushing these “hot buttons” (18). The book provides a comprehensive analysis of various communicative practices that constructed the experience of the 1990s as a collective trauma. The analysis of interviews, films, popular books, TV talk shows, and Putin’s speeches during the 2000s to 2010s is supplemented by observations derived from four focus group interviews. By means of such a comprehensive approach, the author demonstrates how the negative vision of the 1990s was promoted and used for legitimization of Putin’s authority. In my opinion, this is the most interesting part of the book. It illuminates important, but till now largely disregarded, issues that definitely deserve further reflection. So, I would like to raise some issues for a discussion using the opportunity of this symposium .

The first issue concerns the conceptualization of the 1990s as a collective trauma. The approach proposed in The Red Mirror looks rather promising. Still, it deserves some clarification. In her interpretation, Sharafutdinova relies on the theory of cultural trauma that considers collective trauma as “a socially mediated attribution” (Alexander Reference Alexander, Alexander, Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser and Sztompka2004, 8) and describes some mechanisms of its construction. In particular, Jeffrey Alexander and his coauthors provided a useful framework for the analysis of critical representations that were essential for constructing the master narrative of collective trauma. In particular, according to Alexander (Reference Alexander, Alexander, Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser and Sztompka2004, 12–15), such a master narrative involves four questions that need convincing answers. We can reveal some issues worth discussing by applying this tool to the case of likhie devianostye (“the dash” or “hard 1990s”).

1. A. What actually happened? In our case, the so-called attribution of pain seems clear, as far as the disorder, criminality, and impoverishment are typically connected to the collapse of the Soviet Union, even if the developments that led to these disasters started earlier.

2. B. What groups or persons were affected by this traumatizing pain? It is a less obvious question. On the one hand, the collapse of the Soviet Union had affected all Russian citizens in many ways, which makes it an appropriate nodal point for collective identity construction. On the other hand, as Sharafutdiniva reminds us, the actual experience of the 1990s differed across the society, and it had some positive aspects for really large groups (113). So, the question is why and how the 1990s had become “monochrome,” as described by Alexei Levinson (Reference Levinson2007, 503). Arguing that more positive perceptions of the 1990s were “sidelined by what became the dominant view of the 1990s” (113), because of its powerful propaganda in state-controlled media, is to capture only one part of the story. It does not explain why the frame of victimhood was readily interiorized by the majority of Russians. In contrast to the senses of exceptionalism and a foreign threat, it was not a “core idea that underpinned the sense of collectivity of the Soviet people” (9). To my mind, the acceptance of the frame of victimhood was a result of a dramatic identity shift that was facilitated, on the one hand, by the disillusionment in the post-Soviet transition, and on the other hand, by the need for a shared identity in the context of social and political fragmentation. Such fragmentation was not typical for Soviet society and was perceived as a dislocation. So, by expressing a compassion to the difficult experience of his compatriots, which was distinctive for his first electoral campaign (Malinova Reference Malinova2020a, 6–7), Putin attributed significance to their conditions. According to Chiara Bottici and Benoît Challand (Reference Bottici and Challand2006, 320), providing “significance to the political conditions and experiences of a social group” is crucial for political myths. If so, the victimhood frame became not just a way to depict the recent past in a specific way, but it evolved into a political myth that had a huge potential for consolidating a fragmented society. It also explains why the positive aspects of the 1990s were easily sidelined. A myth is a story in which people strongly believe, even if they know that it is not entirely accurate.

3. C. To what extent do the members of the audience for trauma representations identify with the immediately victimized group? Looking at the recent surveys, to a great extent. However, such a perception shaped up over time. According to Levinson’s (Reference Levinson2007) cross-temporal analysis based on Levada’s VCIOM’s surveys (Russian Public Opinion Research Center), the qualification of this decade as terribly hard times took shape retrospectively. In the 1990s, surveys registered greater dispersion between positive and negative attitudes toward ongoing social transformation than in the mid-2000s, when negative assessments of the 1990s became prevalent (Levinson Reference Levinson2007). It signaled the undoubted success of Kremlin-propagated victimhood politics.

4. D. Who is responsible for the trauma? Who is the perpetrator and the antagonist? This question has no single and definitive answer. In her analysis of Putin’s Pryamaia Liniia conferences, Sharafutdinova found that responsibility for the troubles of the 1990s was imposed on different actors, ranging from international terrorism and outsiders who wanted to weaken Russia to particular individuals (124). According to my own research, the Communists blamed the Russian authorities (including Putin), the oligarchs, and the West for these troubles. The conservatives and National Patriots accused Yeltsin and Russia’s foreign enemies. Finally, the Liberals explained the dislocation by the problems inherited from the Soviet Union, political impediments for proper reforms, and the wrong approach to reforms (Malinova Reference Malinova2019; Reference Malinova2020b). So, in the Russian political discourse, one could find a broad range of answers to the question concerning responsibility. As a matter of fact, it facilitated the construction of collective trauma as people with different political views could appropriate the myth of likhie devianostye for the version corresponding to their preferences.

To finish with the issue of conceptualization, I would express some doubts concerning the interpretation of the 1990s as a chosen trauma, proposed in The Red Mirror. Taking into account the terminological conventions developed in memory studies, I think that this concept would be more useful for explaining prioritization of some historical events over others than for the recent past that appears to be an individual and communicative “memory” rather than “history.” Such a past is not a matter of somebody’s choice; it is just there and needs to be somehow framed. Of course, its framing is a matter of a symbolic struggle that could result in a confrontation between several master narratives or in the domination of one of them. Sharafutdinova importantly points out that in the 2000s the Russian political elites had the alternative option of representing the so-called new economic miracle as a long-expected result of the painful reforms. But they preferred to emphasize the contrast between the 1990s and the 2000s to consolidate Putin’s image as the collective savior (8, 109). Framing the 1990s as a collective trauma was definitely a collective choice of the elites that had important consequences for the Russian polity. However, prioritizing the 1990s as a key theme for identity politics hardly was a matter of somebody’s choice. In my opinion, it makes the notion of a chosen trauma a little bit misleading in this context.

The second issue that I would like to raise for the discussion is the dynamics and chronology of the described processes. On several occasions, the author of The Red Mirror fairly remarked that identity politics initiated by the Kremlin under Putin’s leadership evolved over time. In 2000–2007, it aimed at a consolidation of a “political super-majority” (21) that included both the winners and the losers of the reforms. From 2012 until the present, it was reoriented toward the “conservative values” (21), which suggested that the liberal minority was no longer a part of the pro-Putin majority. Of course, there were four years of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency that are beyond the scope of the book’s analysis. Still, it remains unclear whether the representation of the 1990s as a collective trauma was an unchangeable and permanent element of this politics over all these years. In chapter 5, the author analyzes the materials that relate to both the 2000s and 2010s without organizing them in a chronological order—that is, the focus groups in Kazan and Samara were conducted in 2016, Putin’s Pryamaia Liniia conferences from 2001–2017 were analyzed, and the discussion of media discourses and films refers mostly to the mid-2000s. Thus, the analysis presented in the book covers a significant period of time. Is it possible to reconstruct the chronology of building up the narrative of the 1990s as a collective trauma in Putin’s discourse, on the one hand, and in the mass media and entertainment industry, on the other? It seems important, as it could be helpful for understanding the roles of various actors. Sharafutdinova credibly argues that the victimhood frame was not invented by the Kremlin, as it “built on the public resonance of the wider cultural production that presented the 1990s with the excess of violence and misery” (131). However, most analysis of cultural production in the book refers to the mid-2000s and the 2010s.

According to my research, based on qualitative content analysis of the whole corpus of speeches of the Russian presidents from 2000 to 2018, Putin most actively mentioned the 1990s during his first presidential term, which was quite natural as the recent past is a typical reference point in political rhetoric. However, he also quite often recalled that period during his second and third terms. Remarkably, a large part of his statements about the 1990s were negative (43 percent in 2000–2004; 45 percent in 2004–2008; 48 percent in 2012–2018), and only few were positive (18 percent in 2000–2004; 16 percent in 2004–2008; 11 percent in 2012–2018) (Malinova Reference Malinova2020a). So, distancing from the unpopular predecessor (though not a direct critique of him personally) was a distinctive part of Putin’s communicative strategy. Sharafutdinova attributes the invention of this strategy to Gleb Pavlovsky (113–114). However, generating political support by criticizing Yeltsin was rather popular around that time. During the 1999 electoral campaign to the State Duma, not only the Communists, who constantly blamed Yeltsin for destroying Russia, but even the centrist Fatherland – All Russia party exploited the failures of the 1990s to bolster their promises (Colton and McFaul Reference Colton and McFaul2003).

Based on Levinson’s analysis (2007), we can argue that constructing the 1990s as a collective trauma took place in the very beginning of the 2000s, and by the mid-2000s this master narrative was widely shared. There is interesting research of Anastasija Bonch-Osmolovskaia (Reference Bonch-Osmolovskaia2018), based on content analysis of the Russian National Corpus database about the usage of epithets for a description of various decades. She revealed that the cliché likhie devianosvye appeared around 2005 and quickly proliferated. As a result, it largely displaced alternative characteristics of the decade, at least in the mass media. Apparently, this shift in the language reflected a fixation of the new consolidating myth.

Taking this into account, it would be interesting to check if the political discourse actually surpassed the media and entertainment industry in constructing the 1990s as a collective trauma or whether it was a joint development. I believe the latter is more plausible; however, I have no proof.

The third issue I would like to propose for a discussion goes beyond the conceptualization of the 1990s. It deals with the main argument of the book, according to which Putin’s leadership was successful because of his ability to activate “two core ideas that underpinned the sense of collectivity of the Soviet people”—“the sense of Soviet exceptionalism and the role played by external conflict and the image of an enemy in consolidating the Soviet nation” (9). The author convincingly demonstrates both the centrality of these two core ideas for the late Soviet period and their activation, particularly in the 2010s. However, it leaves open the question about other core ideas of the Soviet collectivity, in particular about the sense of justice that involved a complicated perception of equality. At the normative level, the late Soviet society was egalitarian; however, it was conducted by complex rules of stratification at the behavioral level. Such a complicated sense of justice definitely played some role in raising Yeltsin’s popularity in the late 1980s. It was important for constructing the collective trauma of the 1990s, as well as for popular support of Putin’s struggle against the oligarchs. However, Putin hardly could be called an egalitarian, and his elaboration of this “core” idea is not that consistent. I wonder why some core ideas appeared to be effective “emotional hot points,” while others could be “activated” irregularly, ignored, or even violated.

As a small remark, I would challenge the author’s claim that among many post-Soviet and postcommunist countries, Russia was the only one who represented the 1990s as “such a ‘chosen trauma’” and used to consolidate and unify the nation around this frame of national victimhood in the 1990s (131). Of course, framing this experience varied across the countries, and probably what Piotr Sztompka called the postcommunist “trauma of victory” (Reference Sztompka, Alexander, Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser and Sztompka2004, 171–191) is not the same as the frame of victimhood described by Sharafutdinova. Yet, we actually need more comparative research on postcommunist memory and identity politics to definitively state it.

Finally, I would like to ask the author what Russian term she would use for Russia’s Insecure Identity in the title of her book, if it were published in Russian. In the text, Sharafutdinova uses various terms to describe the subject of this identity, such as “the Russian nation and Russian society” (4), “Russian citizens” (18), “Russian community as a political entity” (106), and more. I fully understand the difficulty with choosing terms, and to my mind, it is an indicator of the unresolved problems with the identity construction. The terminological difficulty concerns not only the interplay between rossijskaia and russkaia that is often remarked on by foreigners. It also reveals itself in the fact that the term nation, and even citizens, could be irrelevant in some contexts as far as there is no consensus whether “Russian community as a political entity” (106) is a nation and whether citizenship is a proper criterion of belonging. To escape this difficulty, I myself sometimes describe this identity as post-Soviet Russian, which definitely confirms the validity of the main idea in The Red Mirror.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the editors of Nationalities Papers for inviting me to take part in this book symposium. Reading The Red Mirror was really exciting. I look forward to further discussion.