Vortrag auf Englisch

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This PhD project investigates how officially sanctioned historical narratives are utilised in present-day Russia under Vladimir Putin to construct and stage hostility. The primary object of analysis is the “Russian Military Historical Society“ (RVIO), a Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organization (GONGO) that effectively simulates civil society while executing state memory politics. By combining historical inquiry with memory theory and media analysis, the project examines the “staging of enmity” across two levels: the institutional rise of the RVIO, and the analysis of digital propaganda. Case studies focus on YouTube series about “The Wild 90s” and the RVIO-journal “Ideology of the Future”. These sources reveal how the “Wild 90s” and the “Great Patriotic War” are reshaped to legitimise Russia’s war against Ukraine, producing and staging an “Ambivalent Enmity“ – characterised by simultaneous contradictions, such as framing Ukraine as both a “brother nation” and a “Nazi state.” The project thus contributes to understanding the performative dimensions of Russian authoritarianism in digital spaces and the development of its historical narratives.