Anne Le Huérou

Where Does the Motherland Begin? Private and Public Dimensions of Contemporary Russian Patriotism in Schools and Youth Organisations: A View from the Field

Relying primarily on field research in the Siberian city of Omsk, this essay analyses a variety of ways in which state patriotic terminology is used by individuals and groups through the study of organisations and activities that deploy the patriotic label, such as schools, museums, youth clubs, and summer camps. Analysis based on field work suggests that although patriotism includes a basic consensus about the homeland, a clue to the success of the concept is its capacity to be appropriated, distorted, or embedded in diverse understandings and practices. Easily ‘captured’ by different actors according to their needs and goals, patriotism also appears to be deeply rooted in the personal and the private. Everyday patriotism is thus far from being reduced to its top-down or official dimension. While patriotism is a tool that officials efficiently use to promote their political goals, it is also a symbolic resource that Russian society uses in its attempts to reformulate a new collective identity.Relying primarily on field research in the Siberian city of Omsk, this essay analyses a variety of ways in which state patriotic terminology is used by individuals and groups through the study of organisations and activities that deploy the patriotic label, such as schools, museums, youth clubs, and summer camps. Analysis based on field work suggests that although patriotism includes a basic consensus about the homeland, a clue to the success of the concept is its capacity to be appropriated, distorted, or embedded in diverse understandings and practices. Easily ‘captured’ by different actors according to their needs and goals, patriotism also appears to be deeply rooted in the personal and the private. Everyday patriotism is thus far from being reduced to its top-down or official dimension. While patriotism is a tool that officials efficiently use to promote their political goals, it is also a symbolic resource that Russian society uses in its attempts to reformulate a new collective identity.

A “Chechen Syndrome”? Russian Veterans of the Chechen War and the Transposition of War Violence to Society

This chapter is a study of Russian veterans after the Chechen conflict and the trajectories both of demobilized soldiers and policemen returning to their previous law enforcement functions. The authors explore the hypothesis that the war experience is transposed into episodes of postwar violence. They also bring in related elements, such as prewar experiences in institutions where brutality is common (army, police) and government policies implicitly or explicitly authorizing violence.

Russia’s War in Chechnya: The Discourse of Counterterrorism and the Legitimation of Violence

In September 1999, Russian troops, purportedly responding to warlord Shamil Basayev’s incursion into the neighboring republic of Dagestan, moved into Chechnya. From the outset, the “second” Chechen war1 was marked by extreme violence, most of which was directed at civilians. Grozny, the capital, sustained five months of heavy bombardment, while the inhabitants took shelter in cellars or risked their lives attempting to flee the city.2 Accounts of summary executions, arbitrary arrests and torture in “filtration camps” began to appear as soon as Russian forces entered Grozny in February 2000; these activities were so widespread and systematic that talk of war crimes and crimes against humanity was not unwarranted.3 Despite the so-called “normalization” process that began in 2003, the violations continued; the “Chechenization” of the conflict has done little more than gradually transfer responsibility from federal troops to pro-Russian militias led by Chechnya’s strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov.4