Solomon Petrov and Veronika Travina in The Ideas Letter:
Today there are two popular images of Russian society. One, drawn by the Kremlin, presents a people united around the state, supporting the “special military operation,” demanding victory over Ukraine, and proclaiming the advent of a new era and a new world order. The other, deriving from the most radical part of the liberal class, depicts a fragmented and intimidated population mired in cowardly opportunism. Both images allude to totalitarianism, which is characterized by mobilization and atomization, bloodthirstiness and conformism.
Neither depiction is wholly accurate. Society in Russia is made up of different groups with different interests, values, and expectations. While many feel lost, disillusioned, and alienated by the war, others welcome the force of wartime change, imagining that they themselves are at the center of it. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Russian society today is that it includes groups of people who cannot be called supporters of the war but who have not lost themselves during this extraordinary time. Far from it: through the war, they have even found themselves by discovering a new civic agency.
More here.
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