“Crimea Is Ours!” Russian popular geopolitics in the new media age

Abstract

This article analyzes how the Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014 has been represented and discussed on social networks. It argues that the key metaphors and discursive strategies, which have been developed in the digital environment, have been prefigured in Russian geopolitical culture and popular imagination since Crimea’s first accession to Russia in 1783. The central geopolitical trope of Crimea as either a “metonymy” of the empire or its “alter ego” reverberates in today’s online discussions. Engaging with the debates on the political potential of the Russian “blogosphere,” the article comes to conclusions that Russian “digital geopolitics” tries to foster grass-roots activism but at the same time paradoxically disempowers them. The government’s project to mobilize people’s support of its policy in Ukraine lies at the core of this failure. Using geopolitical rhetoric and the tongue-in-cheek criticism of the Western liberal model, the state inhibits the development of people’s political subjectivity, undermines the belief in their ability to comprehend and influence the “great geopolitical game,” and nurtures the culture of corrosive irony toward any master-narrative, the Kremlin’s one included.

Keywords:

• digital geopolitics
• Russian geopolitical culture
• annexation of Crimea

Acknowledgement

The author thanks Mark Bassin and two anonymous reviewers of EGE for comments on a draft of this paper, as well as Sanna Turoma and Sirke Mäkinen for initiating this publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Aleksei Yurchak’s (2013, 10–11) interpretation of Claude Lefort.

2. On the Russian blogosphere, Etling et al. (2010).

3. Integrum Social Media search. Queries: крымнаш, “крым наш,” and #крымнаш (Crimea-is-ours, “Crimea is ours,” and #Crimea-is-ours). Geographical filters were used; the character of posts (positive, negative, and neutral) was identified manually.

4. Among other studies tracing the interconnections between new media and political activism, see Benkler (2006); Castells (2001).

5. Ironically, in the film, this was not a mother bear but a male grizzly, and the scene was set in British Columbia.

6. Integrum Social Media search. Keywords contextualizing “Crimea” are “Запад,” “Европа,” “НАТО,” “США,” and “Америка” (the West, Europe, NATO, the US, and America).

7. Integrum Social Media search. Query: the relative frequency of the words «крым наш» (Crimea is ours), and крымнаш (Crimea-is-ours).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supporter by Marie Curie Career Integration [grant number 334472].