Narratives about the Soviet past in the discourse of the Russian non-parliamentary opposition (example of Alexei Navalny’s texts)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the discourse of the Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny. The purpose of the study is to understand how one of the leaders of the Russian non-parliamentary opposition uses narratives about the Soviet past. The analysis shows that the arsenal of such narratives in Navalny's discourse is quite broad and includes references to events, actors, and realia from all main periods of the Soviet history. The whole variety of ways of using the narratives about the Soviet past in Navalny's discourse can be generalized to four typical discursive templates: (1) “analogy with the Soviet”, (2) “inheriting the Soviet”, (3) “stealing the Soviet”, (4) “(mis)commemorating the Soviet”. The “analogy with the Soviet” and “inheriting the Soviet” templates are used by Navalny in his strategies of negative representation of certain contemporary Russian political events, actors, institutions, and practices (in particular the ones having to do with political repressions and state propaganda). The application of the “stealing the Soviet” template is almost entirely limited to the texts that negatively represent Russian “oligarchs”. The “(mis)commemorating the Soviet” template is applied in the texts that promote (or condemn) certain commemorative practices. In general, in his discourse Navalny often effectively applies the discursive strategies that allow him to use the narratives about the Soviet past, but, at the same time, he is rarely seeks to actively construct such narratives himself.

1. Беседа с Ю.С. Степановым 2002 года / [Беседовали Ю.С. Степанов, М.В. Ильин] // МЕТОД: Московский ежегодник трудов из обществоведческих дисциплин. 2012. Вып. 3. C. 379-396. EDN: PJUAHX

2. Касьянов Г. Единый учебник истории ЕС и своя правда Восточной Европы // Carnegie Moscow Center. 2018. Режим доступа: https://carnegie.ru/commentary/75960 (дата посещения: 20.08.2020).

3. Малинова О.Ю. Официальный исторический нарратив как элемент политики идентичности в России: от 1990-х к 2010-м годам // Полис. Политические исследования. 2016. № 6. C. 139-158. DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2016.06.10 EDN: UQTBHT

4. Малинова О.Ю. Неудобный юбилей: итоги переосмысления "мифа основания" СССР в официальном историческом нарративе РФ // Политическая наука. 2017. № 3. С. 13-40. EDN: ZRCDUH

5. Малинова О.Ю. Кто и как формирует официальный исторический нарратив: Анализ российских практик // Полития: Анализ. Хроника. Прогноз. 2019. № 3(94). C. 103-126. DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2019-94-3-103-126 EDN: GIXZGM

6. Фадеева Л.А., Плотников Д.С. Опыт мировых войн в политике идентичности и выстраивании стратегии безопасности // Региональные стратегии международной безопасности: Россия, ЕС, Ближний Восток. М.: Научный консультант. C. 213-238.

7. Фомин И.В. Политические исследования в трансдисциплинарной перспективе: возможности семиотического инструментария // Политическая наука. 2015. № 2. C. 8-25. EDN: UMJPUN

8. Chaisty P., Whitefield S. Putin's Nationalism Problem // Ukraine and Russia: people, politics, propaganda and perspectives / A. Pikulicka-Wilczewska, R. Sakwa (eds.). Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing, 2016. P. 157-163.

9. Engström M. Contemporary Russian messianism and new Russian foreign policy // Contemporary Security Policy. 2014. N 3 (35). P. 356-379. DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2014.965888

10. Hill F., Gaddy C. Putin and the Uses of History // The National Interest. 2012. N 117. P. 21-31. EDN: WRSDIL

11. Hodge B., Kress G.R. Social semiotics. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell, 1988. 285 p.

12. Kuzio T. Russian and Ukrainian elites: A comparative study of different identities and alternative transitions // Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 2018. Vol. 51, N 4. P. 337-347. DOI: 10.1016/j.postcomstud.2018.10.001 EDN: WVFIPG

13. Malinova O. Political Uses of the Great Patriotic War in Post-Soviet Russia from Yeltsin to Putin // War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017. P. 43-70. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-66523-8_2

14. Malinova O. Constructing the "Usable Past": the Evolution of the Official Historical Narrative in Post-Soviet Russia // Cultural and political imaginaries in Putin's Russia / N. Bernsand, B. Törnquist Plewa (eds). Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018. P. 85-104. (Eurasian studies library: history, societies & cultures in Eurasia; Vol. 11).

15. Reisigl M., Wodak R. Discourse and discrimination. London; New York: Routledge, 2001. 298 p.

16. Shevtsova L. Forward to the Past in Russia // Journal of Democracy. 2015. Vol. 26, N 2. P. 22-36. DOI: 10.1353/jod.2015.0028 EDN: UFSIQH

17. Khapaeva D. Triumphant memory of the perpetrators: Putin's politics of re-Stalinization // Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 2016. Vol. 1, N 49. P. 61-73. DOI: 10.1016/j.postcomstud.2015.12.007 EDN: WUJNLJ