How Western information war inside Russia is giving birth to a new nation

A new Russian nation began to shape itself since 24 February, when the war with Ukraine started. That’s an idea authored by Andrew Polonsky, a writer and historian, in a column published yesterday. And Polonsky is probably right, for good or for bad.

Here I have to refer you to my previous publication here, where I’ve promised to give some insights into an information war waged inside Russian society. That war, of course, is been led by the West with an obvious and simple narrative. Namely, Ukraine is winning, Russia is losing and is going to crush, the whole world is shaming Russia which is engaged in atrocities against civilians, etc. You cannot block that kind of information, in fact, it is being amplified by Moscow’s official propaganda every day, with lively discussions to follow.

To note, ordinary Russians have an opportunity to check on all that, simply by calling friends and neighbours in Ukraine or Russia itself. So, the first reaction to that propaganda barrage was rage and dismay. We knew immediately that it was really the West that attacked us, with lies as one of the most effective weapons of war.

But no society is unanimous. So the first victim of that information war was a thin, but rather an influential layer of the Russian society, a part of our artistic and generally intellectual community, mostly Moscow-based, and very few business people afraid of sanctions.

These people have simply emigrated, since most of them, as we have discovered, had dual citizenship. Then there were typical young big-city dwellers who began to leave Russia in thousands, afraid of being drafted to the army. Soon they discovered that nobody is drafting anyone, and came back. Then, when Moscow really started the draft, they ran again, only to discover that it’s the experienced soldiers that are needed, so one may get back yet one more time.

That’s how we have discovered that the classic West-oriented liberals and democrats may have had no electoral chances for at least two decades, but they were, nevertheless, a serious part of our elites, and now they are not. What do you do, when a revered musician and poet, used to playing at stadiums, just cannot sell tickets for his next performance, if he previously said, publicly, anything along the lines of the mentioned Western narrative about the war? How did he expect the mother of a serviceman to listen to his songs, even if he only sings about love?

The recent draft, together with yet another outbound wave of the same young big-city hamsters who used to flee before, has led to many family dramas. My own friend called Olga, with long ties to Crimea and Donbass, now parts of Russia had been shocked by her son’s escape to Armenia to avoid the draft. And she changed her will, depriving the son of the right to inheritance of their family house.

So, the first drastic change that happened to Russia’s society, was the turbulence inside the elites and the escape of those in these elites, who thought themselves to be a part of a global world. And, no doubt, it was a result of information war against our country.

But then, other social forces woke up. They are the people who volunteered to go to war, and who demand a total and drastic change of the elites, as in cleansing them of national traitors. And they also demand things like high taxation of the rich, with nationalization of basic businesses.

In fact, these neo-communists have always been the real opposition to the current regime, but they have been balanced by the Russian Westerners. Now the balance is shaken. And we don’t even know exactly how powerful these forces are, since, up to now, they were hiding inside the so-called Putin majority of voters, reluctantly aligning themselves with the current authorities.

Going back to the column mentioned by Polonsky, there is yet another obvious fact mentioned there – that, by now, Russia has added about 8 million people to its population. These are the ones who used to be Eastern Ukrainians only a year ago. And they are more fierce Russian patriots than some folks living in Siberia or Vladimir region. It’s exactly like with Crimea in 2014, when the Crimeans proved to be more ardent Russian than other Russians were.

And, speaking of that new addition to our society, a lot of folks from these areas have paid by their lives or their blood for that new nation, shaping itself these days. They are national heroes, and they know how to handle weapons. The same relates to other Russian fighters in Ukraine, who have no patience with big-city boys running from the draft, or intellectuals lamenting the split with the West.

One more thing: The polls keep on saying that we have a 70-80 per cent majority who are supporting the war. But that is if you ask if starting it was fair and right. But only about 50 per cent are happy with the way the war is evolving. A lot of these people want Moscow to strike harder.

You might think that the West have been cunningly plotting exactly that re-shaping of Russia’s society, so as to sow the seeds of inner turbulence. But, to me, that idea looks too intricate and sophisticated. After all, the holy book of Western involvement in non-Western societies tells us that they try to build up local groups of support, to create powerful lobbies of Westerners of the East (or South, or whatever).

But the people who may dominate the new Russian society hate the West. Gone are all the generations of ex-Soviet citizens with their love-envy relationships with Europe or the US. For the new heroes of Russia, these Americans or Europeans are those who participated in killing their friends or family, or at least stood silent while the Ukrainians did it in 2014-2022. It’s hard to believe that this was what the West wanted to get.

The author is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well as for other publications.Views are personal.