The aim of this workshop is an interdisciplinary reflection on the changes that have taken place in Russian political language against the backdrop of the trends observed in other political traditions, primarily in France and Germany.

Argument

Since the early 2000s, the political language used by Russian politicians, civil servants, and state media has undergone significant changes, reflecting the regime’s gradual transformation from a fragile democracy to a full-fledged autocratic regime. Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine accelerated and radicalised these processes, leading to the resemantisation of old terms and the formation of new groups of concepts, such as those in the field of biopolitics.

Some of them (‘democracy’, ‘liberalism’, ‘sovereignty’) have a long history in various traditions but still possess significant specific features in the Russian public sphere. Other concepts (such as ‘fake news’) have recently been popularised in other traditions and subsequently borrowed by Russian media and officials. A significant number of key concepts (‘state-civilization’, ‘pentabasis’, ‘passionarity’, ‘[social] braces’, ‘Z’) is unique, as they either have their origins in the Russian intellectual tradition of previous periods or were recently invented in connection with new phenomena of Russian political life. They must be studied not only in the light of political transformations in Russia during the last 20 years, but also against the backdrop of the Russian, Soviet, and early post-Soviet intellectual legacy. Furthermore, this analysis should include a comparison to other predominantly Western traditions, which have had the greatest impact on the development of contemporary Russian political concepts.

An in-depth examination of these heterogeneous concepts, their origins, and their uses – distinct in Russia compared to France or Germany – requires a multidisciplinary approach and the use of a variety of analytical methods. This approach is based on (1) a historical and genealogical analysis of the origins of the concepts, (2) a comparative analysis to identify the specific features they take on in Russia in relation to interpretations from other political traditions, particularly in France and Germany, and (3) epistemological and sociological tools that help circumscribe the field of their use in Russian politics.

The workshop is the first stage of a wider research programme. To explore all political concepts, their relationships, influence, and appropriation in Germany and France (particularly in extreme right-wing circles and the mainstream media), we assembled a group of Franco-German experts specialising in complementary fields (cultural studies, sociology, political science, philosophy, literature, and linguistics). The advantage of this project lies in its ability to bring together researchers from different fields of human and social sciences, who work on both theoretical (ideological) and empirical aspects of Russian politics and belong to different (German and French) scientific ‘cultures’ of political concept analysis. The participation of young researchers and doctoral students fosters more lasting collaborations between Germany and France.

The research conducted by the German team in the history of concepts and political philosophy will complement the work of the French team in the field of political practices in contemporary Russian society. The French team’s sociologists and political scientists will focus more on the influence of isolationist concepts of emergency and state of exception on social dynamics since the 2000s. The German team’s conceptual historians and specialists in Russian culture will focus on the concepts’ origins and their semantic transformation over the past 20 years. The Franco-German cross-disciplinary approaches in discourse analysis and rhetoric will also enable a comparative analysis of the concepts by tracking their circulation in the French and German media.

The workshop addresses several questions:

- What are the origins of the key concepts of the official Russian political language?

- What are the reasons for and key stages in their transformation?

- To what extent do they reflect social and political changes?

- Are there networks of concepts (for example, belonging to conservative or biopolitical rhetoric)?

- How are these concepts related to Russian political practice?

- How are they instrumentalised in Russian political propaganda inside and outside the country and relayed in other countries (most importantly in France and Germany)?

Program

November 29

(Sciences Po, salle G.009, 1 Place Saint-Thomas d’Aquin 75007 Paris)  

• 09:45 – Ioulia Podoroga, Alexey Zhavoronkov: Greetings and Introduction  

Session 1: Chair Ioulia Podoroga

• 10:00-10:45 – Kathy Rousselet (CERI, Sciences Po Paris): “Traditional Values in Putin’s Russia”
• 10:45-11:30 – Ingrid Schierle (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen), “‘Russia forever’. The Concept of Patriotism in Contemporary Russian Politics”

11:30-12:00 – coffee break

• 12:00-12:45 – Alexey Zhavoronkov (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, IPHI): "A Two-faced Janus: The Concept of Extremism in Russian and German Political Discourse"

12:45-14:30 – lunch break

Session 2: Chair Carole Sigman

• 14:30-15:15 – Anastasia Skachilova-Napoli (EPHE, IPHI), “Interpreting ‘Nation’ Within the Ideological Framework of Putin’s Regime”
• 15:15-16:00 – Gilles Favarel-Garrigues (CERI, Sciences Po Paris), “The Power Vertical and the Dictatorship of Law in Russian Official Discourse"

16:00-16:30 – coffee break 

• 16:30-17:15 – Alexander Libman (Freie Universität Berlin), “Economic Freedom and Fair Competition in the Political Language of Vladimir Putin” (via ZOOM)
• 17:15-18:00 – Boris Ginzburg (Freie Universität Berlin), “The Conceptual Evolution of Russia’s Non-Systemic Opposition within the Kremlin's Authoritarian Political Discourse” (via ZOOM)

November 30

(Campus Condorcet, Salle 100, Centre de colloque, Place du Front populaire, Aubervilliers) 

Session 3: Chair Alexey Zhavoronkov

• 10:00-10:45 – Sergei Akopov (Freie Universität Berlin, IPHI): “‘Sovereignty’ and ‘Motherland’: From Biopolitical Concepts to Russian Master Narrative”
• 10:45-11:30 – Françoise Daucé (CERCEC, EHESS), “Turning ‘Civil Society’ into a Concept of War: The Russian Paradox »

11:30-12:00 – coffee break

• 12:00-12:45 – Ioulia Podoroga (CERCEC, Eur’Orbem, IPHI), “The Rhetorics of Double Standards in Russian and French Official Discourse”

12:45-14:30 – lunch break

Session 4: Chair Kathy Rousselet 

• 14:30-15:15 – Olga Tikhomorova (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), “Liberals without Liberalism. The History of Concept in the Post-Soviet Russia”.
• 15:15-16:00 – Andrey Logutov (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, IPHI), “The Traditional Internet: Ideology and the Form of Media in Contemporary Russia”

16:00-16:30 – coffee break 

16:30-17:15 - Yulia Sineokaya (HIPHIMO, CREE INALCO, IPHI), “New Russian Ideology: Russia as a State-Civilization”

Inscriptions

• Please register online.

Scientific Coordinators

• Kathy Rousselet (CERI, Sciences Po),
•  Ioulia Podoroga (CERCEC, Eur’Orbem, IPHI), 
• Carole Sigman (CERCEC, CNRS), 
• Alexey Zhavoronkov (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, IPHI)