Theorising resilience: Russia’s reaction to US and EU sanctions

ABSTRACT

This article analyses responses in the Russian media to the economic sanctions imposed in the wake of the annexation of Crimea. We look at the near-Kremlin figure Dmitry Kiselyov, explaining how elite actors employ persuasive tools in order to fashion and promote collective resilience not only as a value, but also as part of a quest for a post-Soviet identity. We show how resilience in the face of economic hardship is built and sustained, ensuring the continuity of the incumbent government. We further theorise on the underpinnings of constructing resilience, which ultimately strengthens national identity in the post-Soviet ideological vacuum.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• discourse analysis
• Russia
• sanctions
• media
• neoliberalism
• Russian foreign policy
• national identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Dr Andrei Guter-Sandu is a ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science. He has a PhD in International Political Economy and currently works on a project investigating how managerialist ideas and instruments of quantification change the manner in which public services are governed and controlled.

Dr Elizaveta Kuznetsova is a research fellow at the Centre for International Policy Analysis (CIPS) at City, University of London. Before completing her PhD in International Relations, she worked as a broadcast journalist in Russia and the United Kingdom. She holds degrees in journalism from Moscow State University and City, University of London. Elizaveta currently works on a project that explores Soviet roots in Russia's contemporary propaganda abroad, at Boston University.

Notes

1 Russian for the News of the Week.

2 In line with Fairclough (1995) we understand text in broad sense as a multiplicity of communicative forms (textual, visual and sound) that convey meaning.