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“Orange Plague”: World War II and the Symbolic Politics of Pro-state Mobilization in Putin’s Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2019

Matthew Luxmoore
Matthew Luxmoore*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: mjluxmoore@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article examines the symbolic politics of three pro-state movements that emerged from the “preventive counterrevolution” launched by the Kremlin in response to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. In 2005, youth movement Nashi played upon war memory at its rallies and branded the opposition “fascist”; in 2012, the Anti-Orange Committee countered opposition protests with mass gatherings at Moscow’s war commemoration sites; in 2015, Antimaidan brought thousands onto Russia’s streets to denounce US-backed regime change and alleged neo-Nazism in Kiev. I show how evocation of the enemy image, through reference to the war experience, played a key role in the symbolism of the preventive counterrevolution. Interviews with activists in these movements discussing their symbolic politics reveal an opposing victim/victor narrative based on an interplay of two World War II myths—the “Great Victory” and the “fascist threat.” Moving beyond approaches that view the Soviet and Russian World War II cult as a triumphalist narrative of the Great Victory over fascism, I conclude that its threat component is an understudied element.

Keywords

AntimaidanNashisymbolic politicsGreat Patriotic WarWorld War II
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Special Issue 5: Special Issue on the Donbas Conflict , September 2019 , pp. 822 - 839
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019

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