In another article for the Dictionary of War on PostPravda.Info, Nikolai Karpitsky explains what propaganda is and introduces key concepts – manipulation, falsehood, and indoctrination – that help explain how it operates during the Russian–Ukrainian war.
In another article in the “Dictionary of War” on PostPravda.Info, Nikolai Karpitsky examines the concept of guilt. Are all Russians guilty of the war? Can we speak of collective guilt, or can guilt only be personal? How does a sense of collective guilt arise?
How differently do Ukrainians and Russians relate to their own countries? Why, despite changes in regimes and ideological systems in Russia, does one thing remain constant – continuous military expansion? What is it in the structure of Russia’s imperial consciousness that prevents it from living peacefully with its neighbors? These questions are addressed by Nikolai Karpitsky in the article “Russian Imperial Consciousness”.
What is responsibility, and how is a feeling of responsibility connected to recognizing a person as a free citizen rather than a serf or a slave? Why do some Russians acknowledge collective responsibility for the war, while others are outraged that responsibility for crimes of the regime – crimes in which they were not personally involved – is being attributed to them?
One of the mistakes made by the Russian authorities, who expected to gain the support of the local population after invading Ukraine, stems from their failure to understand Ukrainian identity and the fact that identity cannot be imposed as an ideological construct.
The aggressive political myth used to justify war – not only against Ukraine but against the entire Western civilization – penetrates much deeper into the public consciousness than Kremlin propaganda, disinformation, or fake news.
If Soviet ideology was monolithic, the current ideology of the Russian authorities appears loose, combining seemingly incompatible elements – for example, the cultivation of the Soviet past alongside the idealization of Tsarist Russia. Nevertheless, Russian propaganda has shown significant success, attracting a wide range of political forces, sometimes even those hostiles to each other. This demonstrates that modern Russian ideology functions differently from the Soviet one
Will the Russian people have the right to self-determination after their defeat in the war, or will their fate be decided by a coalition of the victors? To answer this question, it is necessary to clarify the concept of “agency,” to which Nikolai Karpitsky has devoted another article in the Dictionary of War on PostPravda.Info.
