Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia

Much of the literature on post-Soviet ideology interprets ideology as the content of state-sponsored doctrines or measures it via persistent strands in public opinion. This paper relies on a different notion: we think of societal and state perspectives as engaged with each other in a contentious dialogue that is constitutive of ideology. With this dialogic conception of ideology, this paper provides a map of Russia's ideological terrain through an analysis of the debates surrounding Andrey Zvyagintsev's 2014 film Leviathan. We show that the film and the debates it provoked engaged with state-sponsored narratives and highlight three key themes of ideational contestation in contemporary Russian politics: authority, agency, and authenticity. An examination of these ideational battles in which provocative and resonant societal critiques challenge dominant narratives provides an original account of ideology in contemporary Russia. It also speaks to debates on civil society that have increasingly become interested in ideational politics.

The statement and title for my article [1], "I don't give a shit where I spit my phlegm", is part of the lyrics to the song "People Hate Me" by the band Tribe 8, which is -as will be explained later on -an excellent example of queer-feminist politics of a punk rock band. This article focuses on queerfeminist punk -also known as queercore, homocore or dykecoremusic, its lyrics as well as performances and sound. It focuses on punk music as a form of queer-feminist activism and agency.

The article investigates areas of knowledge production in contemporary queer-feminist punk countercultures in/from the US and draws a connection from countercultural accounts to academic anti-social queer theory. Based on the thesis that queer-feminist punk-countercultures, bands, musicians, writers and organizers-can be understood as a political movement, their productions-lyrics, writing, sound and performances-will be seen as a form of queer-feminist activism and agency. The main argument developed in the article is that queer-feminist punk countercultural agents do not only engage with queer and feminist politics, as well as academic theory, but also produce queer-feminist political theory-a more or less coherent set of ideas to analyze, explain and counter oppressive social structures, as well as explicit and open violence and oppression.

This article analyses some of the recent solidarity projects in support of the Russian feminist activist group Pussy Riot within the global North/West. It will be shown that the described solidarity projects follow and reproduce ideas of tolerance that produce 'Westerness' as progressive and 'Easterness' as backward. At the heart of such processes of the reproduction of this power imbalanced East/West dichotomy lies the ascription of a feminist punk identity to the Russian art and activist collective. This political countercultural-however 'North/Western-identity and reference to the international queer-feminist punk and/or riot grrrl movement, which emerged within the US and North/Western Europe during the 1990s, will be further examined. It will be argued that such discourses subsume Pussy Riot within North/Westerm meanings and ignores important aspects of the Russian feminist collective's activism and art. Furthermore, the well meant support by queer-feminist activists risks becoming a strategy of prolonging North/Western hegemony.

This article critically discusses solidarity actions in support of Pussy Riot within the global North/West, arguing that most solidarity projects within popular culture as well as within the queer-feminist counterculture are based on a lopsided interpretation of Pussy Riot as Russian version of Riot Grrrl feminists. This onedimensional interpretation of the performance art group as Riot Grrrl-identities further leads to labelling their performance at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral as anti-religious. Within this framework the group's negotiation of Orthodox religion within their song lyrics, performances as well as statements is ignored, supporting the binary construction of The North/West as progressive -tolerant and secular -and Russia as backward -dogmatic and fundamentalist religious. We attempt to complicate the view on Pussy Riot's performances and reread them within the Russian context, highlighting several political statements that got lost in North/Western translations. The focus of the analysis concentrates on the 'Punk Prayerr', its mimicry of religious language and references to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as the local public critical discourses.

The article investigates the relationship between the Russian performance and media art group Pussy Riot and the US-based Riot Grrrl movement. It analyzes the references made between the contemporary Russian group and the US past made in newspaper as well as through solidarity activities by activists, musicians, journalists, politicians, and academic analysts. It argues that the characterization of Pussy Riot as feminist punks or Riot Grrrls within public discourses is an oversimplification of their very complex performances and references to other protest movements and forms. Moreover, it produced incomplete assumptions about the group’s politics. The text analyzes examples of US-based solidarity statements and actions in popular culture, discussing problems of cultural incorporation. It argues that through processes of incorporation and misinterpretation, public discourses produced a notion of Russia as outright “backward” and “authoritarian,” and most importantly oppositional to the western world and its values. Following scholars such as Hanna Hacker, Joanna Mizielińska, Robert Kulpa, and Agata Stasinska, the article tries to decentralize the Western perspective on Pussy Riot. It offers an alternative and nuanced reading of their references to the historic Riot Grrrl movement, including accounts by some of their members published in Russian media.

This article investigates visual, bodily, and cultural representations of Russian women in public media and takes the TV character 'Red' from the popular American TV show Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) as an example. The central points of discussion are the figure's racialisation and culturalisation. This article analyses how Red's body, mindset, and character are produced as Russian against the background of contemporary new Cold War discourses. It argues that Red is staged as a racialised Russian other, through the emphasis on her gendered heterosexual body, within a sexually and racially diverse group of imprisoned Americans in the show. Moreover, her presentation within such a diverse group also serves to present or confirm the US nation as liberal, sexually diverse, and modern by contrasting it with Red's strongly gendered and heterosexual body, which appears old-fashioned and from the past (also depicted as the Russian present). Referring to recent literature on the exotification and othering of Eastern European and Russian women as well as works on ethnicity and whiteness in the USA, this article is situated at the intersection of considerations of the specific racialisation of Eastern female bodies and queer and feminist discourses.

This essay analyses the recent focus on Russian human rights violations in Anglophone media, scrutinising the ideological agenda of the visual politics which strategically foreground victimised bodies of Russian dissidents. Notwithstanding the importance of a critique on human rights violations, the article points to the unwanted but very real side effects the current mediatisations of violence have, from structural victimisation and the creation of 'gay martyrs' to the resignification of the West as progressive and 'gay' and Russia as backward and heterosexual. A close reading of popular press photographs of wounded Russian gay youth and the textual context -arguably representative for the Western media focus on the 'Eastern' violation of human rights between 2012 and 2014 -serves to illustrate how an image of Russian nation and Russian state politics is forged within Anglophone media discourses meant to reinforce the positive identity of the self-same by evoking pity, empathy and a responsible helpful attitude toward the endangered othered. The essay argues that Anglophone media's focus on the vulnerability of Russian LGBTIQ+ bodies, consciously or unconsciously, reduces the subjects to this vulnerability, confirming feelings of moral superiority within the enlightened audience. The study highlights the important role that Russia's vulnerable citizens play not only in the construction of values such as 'tolerance' and 'acceptance' and evaluations like 'progressive' and 'modern' , but also in perceptions of the nation and its people and the reaffirmation of the dualistic divide between 'The East' and 'The West' .