Online USSR

Daria Khlevnyuk

Subproject 4 focuses on the links between conspiratorial readings of the Soviet past in Russia. It deals with the so-called ‘old left’ communities that should be distinguished from both institutionalized leftist Russian parties, specifically the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and the 'new left', who see themselves as comrades in arms with European left movements invested in multiculturalism, tolerance, and minority rights. Unlike the latter, the ‘old left’ dispute the progressive left values, are conservative, and focused on the Soviet past(Nikiporets et al. 2016). The ‘old left’ is a disorganized, not institutionalized community, visible primarily on the internet

This subproject analyzes their memory politics as well as their present-day social and political demands. It engages with the ‘old left’ as a community comparable to ‘marginal’ groups in other societies, such as the German neo-Nazis (Adaire 2019; Levi&Rothberg2018), European right-wing movements (Pető 2017), and American Confederate fans(Domby 2020). All such communities are rooted in discontent with their current position in society and search for a source of pride in their country’s past. They create alternativeconspiratorial narratives and antagonistic mnemonic perspectives (Bull&Hansen 2016), rooted in nostalgia for the ‘stigmatized’ past. As it turns out, these communities have been understudied. Consequently, their active backlash against civil rights movements, against the decommissioning of monuments, and their sudden reappropriation of the confederate flag came as a surprise to many. Instead of ignoring such ‘marginal’ groups that resist the frameof “cosmopolitan memory” (Levy&Sznaider 2006) and its specific take on human rights, this project proposes to study them in detail. as Also, rather than treating them as uniquely European or American, the project situates them among nostalgic communities in other societies, including the so-called Russian 'old left'.

Here, two focal points are crucial. First, the marginal character of these movements is supported by their conspiratorial readings of the past. Therefore, analyzing the roots, narrative structures, and main features of these conspiracy-based interpretations is crucial tounderstanding the meanings and agendas of such communities. Second, the study of such groups is specifically urgent in the context of the current war. The prospect of reuniting the USSR, which for these communities means the political integration of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus is now obviously transforming. While their restorative hopes are increasingly in crisis, it is important to analyze how these communities adapt their past- and future-oriented visions to this evolving situation.

The internet is one of the main sites where non-institutionalized ‘old left’ communities gather, and this project specifically researches their activities on the most popular Russian social media platforms: Vkontakte, Instagram, and Odnoklassniki. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, the project studies their memory politics, their specific brand of nostalgia, their conspiratorial narratives, and the changes these interpretive and mnemonic practices undergo with the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Image: Sticker pack for Telegram and VK ‘Agent KGB’ by Valerii Matyukhin.

Works Cited

Adaire, Esther. “‘This Other Germany, the Dark One’: Post-Wall Memory Politics Surrounding the Neo-Nazi Riots in Rostock and Hoyerswerda,” German Politics and Society, vol. 37, no. 4, 2019, pp. 43–57.

Bull, Anna and Hans Hansen. “On Agonistic Memory.” Memory Studies, vol. 9, no. 4, 2016, pp. 390–404.

Domby, Adam. The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory. University of Virginia Press, 2020.

Levi, Neil and Michael Rothberg. “Memory Studies in a Moment of Danger: Fascism, Postfascism, and the Contemporary Political Imaginary.” Memory Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, 2018, pp. 355–67.

Levy, Daniel, and Natan Sznaider. The Holocaust and memory in the global age. Temple University Press, 2006.

Nikiporets, Galina et al. Internet and Ideological Movements in Russia. NLO, 2016.

Pető, Andrea. “Revisionist Histories, ‘Future Memories’: Far-Right Memorialization Practices in Hungary.” European Politics and Society, vol. 18, no. 1, 2017, pp. 41–51.