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printPolitical Behavior in Modern Russia in the Light of the Ressentiment Concept
Kozlov D.V.,
Cand. Sci. (Hist.), Associate Professor, Center for Advanced Studies and Education, Irkutsk State University, dvk@home.isu.ru
elibrary_id: 211615 |
DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2017.01.08
Rubric: Russia Today
For citation:
Kozlov D.V. Political Behavior in Modern Russia in the Light of the Ressentiment Concept. – Polis. Political Studies. 2017. No. 1. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2017.01.08
Abstract
The article analyzes the phenomenon of mass political response to the Ukrainian crisis and the decline of Russian-American and Russian-European relations, as well as promotion of these events in the media in 2013‑2015. For many researchers it was the case to describe different patterns of mass behavior as one of conditions for the modern political process. The article discusses the concept of anomie and ressentiment, which allows to give a new interpretation of the crisis of modern Russian society and to describe this situation as a complex phenomenon that is associated with the previous historical development by path dependence logic. The article also examines the possibility of interpreting the crisis, taking into account its development in the framework of the consumerist society. As a result, we can conclude that the recent significant changes in Russian mass politics partly associated with the development of the politics of nostalgia, which in interaction with various practices of ressentiment fit fully into the logic of consumerist society and influence to the production of new important ideological and cultural goods for mass consumption. We can speak about the interesting type of possible political behavior of the individual or social group, which combines variety of values connected with the ideology of ressentiment, the illusion of participation in politics through consumerist consumption of media political product, the need for constant design of involvement`s feelings to the existing political regime by power and media through the implementation of the specific historical policy aimed to work with images of the past and their active consumption by the modern Russian society. These political orientations hardly fit into the traditional ideological and political schemes of the European society of modernity (liberalism, conservatism, left ideologies, etc.) and make possible a new approach to estimate as the ways of describing of the current political preferences of the Russian society as the dynamics of their possible changes in the future.
Keywords
Russia; ressentiment; trauma; consumerist society; political process; politics of nostalgia; crisis.
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Content No. 1, 2017
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Neklessa A.I.,
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Petukhov V.V.,
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