Earlier today, President of Russia Vladimir Putin gave his 2020/2021 wrap-up press-conference in Moscow, attended by 500+ journalists and commentators. Despite the length not being anything exceptionally short nor long, Putin managed to cover a breadth of materials, ranging from economic stabilities, inflation, and the job market, to lifespans, and corono-virus initiatives in the country, along with the pressing issue of vaccine mandates and rollouts.
Coverage by Gazetu.ru documented the entire press conference, whose mammoth size was one of the largest in quite sometime, especially since COVID first began back in the early parts of 2020. However, Gazetu pointed out that such olympic-sized press events are not something antithema to the Putinian regime, and have been held in such size since 2001 when Putin first embracing his Presidential status during his first term, a braggadocios quality that would remain an integral part of his identity up until the present day with his fourth term (soon to be five terms due to the recently added Constitutional amendments in the spring of this year). What's fascinating is that I theorize that length of such briefings may actually be a political statement in and of themselves, although I'd have to back such claims up with ample evidence. Gazetu notes that the longest press briefing was in 2008, the year before Medvedev would take over as President for a single term, and that lasted nearly 5 hours, I speculate as a statement of Putin's intrepidness of leading Russia abreast the ending of his second term in office [2004-2008]. But reported by Gazetu was a very specific chunk of the press conference, of which directly relates to my work on Russian Hip-Hop and its treatment within contemporary Russia, in conjunction with Nationalist discourses and the hot pursuit to delineate what the heck it means to be a Russian citizen.
I am including the entire quotation, as it shows that Putin is nor historically ignorant nor contemporaneously blind, and instead is using Russian history in a tactful, almost fear-mongering way in order to legitimize his plethora of recent acts of consolidatory maneuvering. I believe one of the most notorious "Putinisms" [a neologism that has caught on for some reason] revolves around how a true Russian shouldn't rejoice as the fall of the Soviet Union, nor wish for its return. This shows that Putin's Nationalism is a bricolage of elements that do not neatly fit together, but are purposefully ambiguous in order to retain the greatest amount of flexibility possible from one ideological teleology to the next.
“Russia cannot be defeated. It can only be destroyed from the inside. What was done safely during the First World War. More precisely, according to its results. And in the 90s, when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Who did it? Those who served other people's interests not related to the interests of the Russian and other peoples of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union." - Regnum
Why is this quotation important to consider when looking at the recent developments of Russian rap, really from 2018 onwards, and how they are pushing Russia's contemporary cultural life in not the moralist and upstanding constitution it desires, but instead an authoritarian and neo-Imperialist one instead? Simple...by reducing freedoms to subjectively-decided "harmful" content and materials unsuitable in spreading the authoritarian doxology of the ruling party, what happens is that it simply goes underground. What Putin understands, barely, is that censured content doesn't disappear, it simply hides.
As I prepare for a conference looking at the enigmatic nature of subcultures, countercultures, and the mainstream [or Academically called 'hegemony' referring to a power complex built on complacency and unification of ideals into a single stream], what becomes immediately apparent with the Russian government's adamant position on what's acceptable content for societal consumption and what is deemed worth of erasure, or as close as one can come, is that there are no rules. And what I mean by that is that the exception quite literally makes the rule, as Putin has shown himself to be easily swayed, or at least from the external perspective easily swayed, by boughts of National pride [a perfect example being Timati's 2015 birthday video, released on October 7th]. But on a more serious note, by retaining the aura of what I call "hidden politicalisms," such ambiguity built into the concoted fabric of the Russian constitution itself, Putin and the administrative organs connected to him are able to weaponize laws and regulations as the situation calls for them, using the liminality between interpretations to dictate the next course of action.
This kind of tactful unpositionality, although to call it "unpositional" is short-sighted, has been relatively unseen in the course of Russian history, and it's really only been under Putin that we have seen this technique exploited to its full potential. What that quotation I provided shows you is that Putin has done his homework, looking at the success and failures of the Russian state throughout time and adjusted his political moves and ideology in order to evade the common causes of national decay that has seemingly plagued Russia ever since the times of Muscovy [perhaps referring to The Times of Trouble onwards, although I'm sure it has started quite earlier, especially with Vladimir's adoption of Christianity in 988].
It's the first line that struck me and caused me to write this blog post, of which there are a myriad of points I wish to cover but I dare not in order to protract his post's overall narrative. When Putin writes, "From the inside," it made me readjust my thought process around the cancellations of rap concerts, the blocking of music videos, the investigations into artists, the weaponization of morality by family-first non-profits, and the empty promises of diplomacy by Duma affiliates. What Putin is most afraid of is not the West, but his own people. If there lies the spark of Russia's demise, it will be from the Nationalists, but not the correct kinds [Putin's own words] or what could be considered the outgrowth of "kvass nationalism" as coined by Vyazemsky in the 19th century to signify lazy and unscrupulous support of power. If Putin allows holes to be poked in the fabric of Russian society, by political advocates like Navalny, artists and creative types like Husky, Noize MC, and Allj, and pretty much anyone who delegitimizes the authority of the Kremlin and its conservative ideals for the future of the Russian state, then there is a threat of a neo-Bolshevik revolution, the complete and udder destabilization of the fabric of Russian society alla 1910s/1990s.
But it is the second-half of the quote that adds context to Putin's position. Supplied by Regnum.ru, the first sentence of his comments provides the "idee fix" I reference in the title.
“Who did it [destroyed Russian equilibrium]? Those who served other, other people's interests. Not connected with the interests of the Russian and other peoples of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation today,."
What can be said in this case? He points to the fact that the fall of the Soviet Union was not instigated by the Russian people, but by a Russian consciousness fed on the trappings of the West, without realizing that such reality WAS the will of the Russian people. I'll end with a final thought: I am not sure that Putin even knows what his own people want. A real "Father" of Russia Putin is not, neither is he their "Tsar." What Putin has become is the weaponizer of a skewed type of Nationalism akin to Nicholas Ist's daft notions of "Official Nationalism." He may be a student of history, yet he hasn't learned a thing about leadership.
A full transcript of the December 23rd conference in its entirety can be read here.
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