Yusupova M. Between and : ‘Masculine’ Choice in Post-Soviet Russia. In: Attwood L; Schimpfossl E; Yusupova M, ed. Gender and Choice after . Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp.187-215.

Copyright:

This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319736600

Date deposited:

18/05/2018

Embargo release date:

26 April 2021

Newcastle University ePrints - eprint.ncl.ac.uk

Book chapter accepted for publication by Palgrave Macmillan in Attwood, Schimpfossl and Yusupova eds., Gender and Choice After Socialism (Forthcoming, 2018).

Marina Yusupova

‘Between Militarism and Antimilitarism: “Masculine” Choice in Post-Soviet Russia.’

This chapter looks into two paradoxes of the post-Soviet Russian gender order and post-Soviet Russian masculinities. The first paradox is a large-scale, well documented structural contradiction which has persisted throughout the entire post-Soviet period of Russian history: despite the fact that military service remains a constitutional duty of male citizens in Russia, only a minority of men in the draft pool end up serving in the armed forces. The second paradox, commonly known but underexplored, relates to the symbolic dimensions of gender relations in Russia. I addressed this issue in my relatively small-scale qualitative research project on contemporary Russian masculinities: I found that despite harsh criticism of the contemporary Russian army and personal unwillingness to serve in the military, only a small number of the research participants expressed consistent antimilitary sentiments and/or considered military service as unnecessary and pointless. My research also showed that the military and militarism remain a crucially important gendered terrain on which Russian masculinities are contested and achieved. This is evident even in the context of a severe crisis of the national military, and even for men who have no experience of military service.

This chapter explores the nature of both paradoxes by means of an analysis of in-depth biographical interviews with forty Russian men of different ages, highly different social backgrounds and residing in two different socio-political contexts (interviewed between January 2013 – September 2015). These men took part in a larger study about performances of Russian masculinities, which explored how masculinity is defined, experienced and negotiated by men living in Russia on the one hand, and in the UK on the other.1

The chapter specifically looks at the militarised performances of masculinity among the younger research participants – those in their twenties, thirties and forties - because these men had reached the legal age for military service and, consequently, had to choose whether or not to

1 Marina Yusupova, Shifting Masculine Terrains: Russian Men in Russia and the UK, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Manchester, 2016. 1 serve in the army during the post-Soviet era.2 This chapter defines militarised performances of masculinity as personal narratives which relate to the military, as well as other references and individual self-representations that portray a man as, above all, a defender of the family, women, children and the elderly. Also falling into the category of militarised performances of masculinity are narratives that in one way or another express the idea that half of the population (men) are by definition warriors and defenders, while the other half (women) are in need of protection.3

I am particularly keen to explore the narratives relating to the issue of mandatory military service in Russia. I see the rapidly changing attitude toward mandatory military service and the consistently high level of not only as an indicator of the change in societal-military relations, but as a sign that contemporary Russia might be moving toward what Martin Shaw labelled ‘post-military’ society.4 Shaw’s thesis, when applied to Putin’s Russia with its strong and internationally visible re-militarisation trend might seem like a doubtful hypothesis. However, my data, as well as research on societal-military relations by other scholars in the post- Soviet context, clearly demonstrate support for this theory.5 I address this point in the second part of the article, after providing an overview of the contradictory processes of demilitarisation and remilitarisation that have taken place in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Overall, the chapter aims to accomplish two goals. Firstly, it considers militarised performances of Russian masculinities against the backdrop of major changes in post-Soviet Russian society after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Secondly, building on scholarship in feminist International Relations and pro-feminist Masculinities Studies, the current work problematises a

2 31 out of 40 research participants were in their 20-s, 30-s and 40-s when I interviewed them. Only five of them had served in the military. 3 Among the 40 people I interviewed, three were professional military men, four had served two years in the Russian army (this was before 2008, when the term or service was reduced to one year), one had served two years in the Armed Forces of Turkmenistan and another had served one year in the Estonian army. Nine research participants were enrolled in a reserve officer-training program while at university (‘voennaya kafedra’), which qualified them for exemption from actual conscript service. While this university course usually includes two or four weeks of military training it cannot be compared with the actual experience of serving in the military. Thus I do not count these respondents as people who have been involved in actual military service. 4 Martin Shaw puts forward a convincing argument that while preoccupation with and military institutions had been a distinctive feature of domestic, regional, and international politics in the twentieth century, in the post Cold War era the role of the military is in decisive retreat. Martin Shaw, Post-Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization and War at the end of the Twentieth Century, London: Polity Press, 1991. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the USA, Shaw himself noted that the ‘post-military society’ notion had to be revisited; however, his work still stands as key scholarship in the field of militarism studies. Martin Shaw, ‘Risk-transfer militarism and the legitimacy of war after Iraq’, 2004, available online: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/shaw.php?articleid=3054 , accessed 12 August 2017. 5 See, for example, Stephen Webber and Jennifer G. Mathers (eds), Military and Society in Post-Soviet Russia, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.

2 seemingly ‘natural’ connection between the military and manliness and looks at the individual engagements with militarism and antimilitarism as a personal choice and a deliberate masculinity construction strategy. Before I proceed to these goals, however, I will comment on my conceptualisation of masculinity and the theory of gender performativity.

Masculinity as a Performance

Defining masculinity is never an easy task for researchers and analysts. If we think about masculinity on the most basic level, as something that makes a man a man, then the term could be related to identity, practices, social relations, social structures, body, style, performance, and so on. Since the current work is based on the analysis of life story interviews, it is largely limited to the study of discursive aspects of gender identities and gender relations, meaning that I could only analyse discourses of masculinity; I was not able to explore practices, nor the continuities and discontinuities between practices and discourses. For the purpose of the analysis I undertake in this chapter, it is important to stress two elements of my theoretical approach to the topic.

The first is my understanding of the process of identity construction. One of my underlying assumptions is that identities ‘arise from the narrativisation of the self’.6 Biographical narratives allow us to see how individuals construct their identities and reflexively examine their lives. In the process of telling a life story (for example, recounting events and experiences, attributing causality to these events and experiences, reflecting upon important decisions, comparing and contrasting different perspectives and points of view), people rely on cultural norms and models, social expectations and conventions, regional and state histories that are familiar to them. In doing so, they favour certain cultural models over others and discursively navigate between different norms, models and histories in order to interpret the world and make sense of their place in it.7

As the topic of the current research suggests, during the interviews I paid particular attention to gender related and masculinity related narratives. I was aiming to grasp the individual gender project of each respondent, as reflected in his life story, and to trace the making and unmaking of masculinity during the interview interaction. This point leads to another crucial theoretical basis

6 Stuart Hall, ‘Introduction’, in: Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), pp.1–17.

7 Edna Lomsky-Feder and Tamar Rapoport, ‘Juggling Models of Masculinity: Russian-Jewish Immigrants in the Israeli Army’, Sociological Inquiry, no 73, vol. 1, 2003, pp.114-137. 3 of the current work – the conceptualisation of gender as something that people ‘do’ rather than as a somehow ‘natural’ or psychological set of traits and characteristics, which ‘expresses’ or ‘manifests’ itself through male and female bodies.

The most prominent theorists of gender relations share this understanding of gender, though there is some variation in their approaches. For example, West and Zimmerman wrote that gender is ‘the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category’,8 meaning that individual people are expected to act either like women or like men. Their interactionist approach to gender demonstrates that masculinity and femininity are accomplished through day-to-day interactions. If some people are not ‘doing gender’ correctly, others hold them accountable for this.9 Raewyn Connell understands masculinity and femininity as a configuration of practices and discourses that symbolise what it means to be a man or a woman in a given culture at a given historical period.10 American philosopher and queer theorist Judith Butler pushes the ‘gender as a doing’ argument even further and draws attention to how gender is performatively constituted.

According to Butler, identities are constituted as the effect of the repeated citation of cultural signs and conventions associated with gender and sexuality. In her seminal work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, drawing on the queer practices of drag, cross- dressing, and butch-femme, Butler develops a conception of gender as performatively constituted.11 She argues that ‘gender is not a noun,’ but ‘is always a doing’.12 People produce gender though their everyday actions. When people repeatedly act ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ they actually create these identity categories themselves (categories from which ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ practices are usually assumed to emerge). Butler states that gender is created through repeated reference to or invocation of gendered norms. If a person is not repeatedly citing gendered cultural norms, he or she then risks not being recognised as a culturally intelligible subject. At the same time, gender is done by repeated repudiation of the ‘constitutive outside’, which includes everything that is excluded from a socially recognisable gender category.13 Thus, doing gender, in part, consists of the continual iteration and repudiation of ‘the Other,’ a process

8 Candace West and Don Zimmerman, ‘Doing Gender’, Gender & Society, no 1, vol. 2, 1987, p. 127.

9 Candace West and Don Zimmerman, ‘Doing Gender’, Gender & Society, no 1, vol. 2, 1987, pp. 125-151. 10 R.W. Connell, Masculinities, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. R.W. Connell, The men and the boys, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 11 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge, 1990.

12 Butler, Gender Trouble, pp. 24-25. 13 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 3.

4 that Butler calls ‘abjection.’ This plays a crucial role in creating a gendered subject. By constantly naming and repudiating some individuals or groups, or aspects of identity, appearance and behaviour on the grounds that they are not ‘normal’ or not culturally ‘intelligible,’ people affirm their own identities and constitute binary distinctions.14 So, according to Butler, gender is an interactional accomplishment, a discursive construction and a performance.

Blending the theoretical insights from sociological research on men and masculinities and feminist and queer theories, I conceptualise masculinity as a performance and a social practice, which is organised in relation to the structure of gender relations and is constantly produced and reproduced through discursive processes. I show how certain configurations of practice are asserted as masculine and how they work to (re)produce gendered relations of power and inequality. Because of the intense identity work that occurs during the life story interview, this is a particularly fruitful site for illuminating this process, as well as the continual iteration and repudiation of ‘the Other,’ including the drawing of symbolic boundaries between the masculine self and the non- or less- masculine others.

Within the context of my research, conversations about the military and militarism were one of the main grounds where individual masculinities were established and contested, where gender hierarchies were straightforwardly produced and where the lack of military experience was explicitly or implicitly perceived as a lack of respectable masculinity. However, this finding alone does not make Russian men and masculinities unique in any way. The image of the soldier-hero is ‘one of the most durable and powerful forms of idealized masculinity within Western cultural traditions since the time of the Ancient Greeks’.15 As in many other world cultures, in the Russian cultural tradition, ‘man is a defender’ is the ‘right answer’ to a question about meaning of masculinity and a link that is culturally cultivated. That said, this image has a special significance in all militarist societies, and those living in the shadow of a great militarist past.

Living in the Shadow of the Military Superpower

Marina: I wanted to ask you about the army. You mentioned that your parents bribed you out of the army without even asking.

14 Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 171. 15 Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire, and the Imagining of Masculinities. London: Routledge, 1994, p. 1. 5 Vitalii (29 years, Russia): Ninety per cent of parents in our country do so, because our army is deeply damaged. They vulgarised it, made it corrupt and venal. Some terrible perversions and abuse are taking place there now ... There is a very large number of suicides in the army. No one can stand it. [If a guy kills himself] they say that he made the supreme sacrifice or that it’s his own fault, he drowned or something. But when they bring the [bodies] back, they are beaten black and blue; [you can say] they were tortured, beaten, killed. The army doesn’t give military education now, and the soldiers are forced to dig trenches, work somewhere at the country mansions of the top military officials. No one is actually serving. In this army, they aren’t serving our country, but officers. There's no point in going there, you know? But I regret that I didn’t drive a tank, didn’t shoot a machine gun like a man, like an apprentice, like soldiers do with the gloves off, you know?.... Had I had an opportunity, a real chance to go, I wouldn’t dodge it. My parents tried to threaten me: ‘We'll send you to the army’ - they said. I said: ‘I'll go there.’ I wasn’t afraid to go. It’s just my parents could afford [to bribe me out of] it and no one asked me. All the parents of my university mates did the same. I’m sorry, but I’m not the only one here, I’m not the black sheep, my whole generation didn’t serve in the army. My entire social circle, 90% of it didn’t serve in the army. It’s beneath [normal people] to go there now…The Great Russian Army is gone a long time ago. These [militarist] traditions will have to be restored all over again.

This rather emotional narrative represents a large part of the data I collected in Russia and the UK and combines three themes, which are vitally important for understanding the changing nature of militarism in Russia. The first theme concerns a whole range of acute problems inherent to post-Soviet military institutions in Russia. Vitalii directly addresses the main problems of the Russian army, deriving among other things from its severe underfunding and a high level of corruption: the terrible living conditions for conscripts, poor food and health services, dedovshchina16 (army hazing and bullying) and the employment of conscripts in the so-called ‘grey labour’.17 Vitalii rightfully points to the fact that these problems lie at the heart of

16 Dedovshchina is ‘a seniority-based culture of “hazing” rights that cut across class and ethnic boundaries, enlisting senior conscripts to keep newcomers in line by bullying and beating, while promising the victims eventual access to the same privileges in return for acquiescence.’ Mark Galeotti, Afghanistan, the Soviet Union's Last War, London, England: Frank Cass, 1995, p. 33. 17 The International Labour Organisation uses the term ‘grey labour’ to refer to the employment of conscripts in mandatory legal or semi-legal work, for example, in construction or agriculture for which conscripts are paid very small salaries or work for the private benefit of individual military commanders. See Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Pallavi Rai, Forced Labour: Definitions, Indicators and Measurement, 2004. Available at: 6 a uniquely post-Soviet social trend - a massive draft evasion. This was a marginal phenomenon in Soviet society, but quickly gathered pace after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus the second theme is that of personal choice (made by conscript-age men or members of their families) as to whether or not to undergo military service, although it remains a constitutional duty of male citizens in Russia. This choice is almost ubiquitously portrayed as rational and well-thought through, and the actual process of finding a way out of mandatory military service is often a well-planned strategy which starts years before the prospective conscript turns 18.18 The third theme makes the discussions of the contemporary Russian army and stories about evading the military service so highly emotionally coloured: I call it ‘militaristic fantasies’.

My personal impression is that military service is a sore subject for many men. Sometimes, after being asked ‘Have you ever been in the army?’, even informants who generally gave laconic answers to my questions would start on a long vehement speech about the Russian military, world , global conspiracy, and, in one case, how much of a man he had felt when he had protected a girl in the 5th form. There was a great deal of abstract reasoning about external threats to the family and the state, stories about childhood dreams of becoming a soldier, references to literature about the Great Patriotic War and fantasies about heroic deeds, as well as regrets, excuses and contemplation of the alternative life paths they had taken, starting with the words ‘if I had gone to the army’ or ‘if I had not gone to the army’. The emotional colouring of these narratives was either overly positive or strictly negative; it was very rarely measured and detached. The overall content of the militaristic or defender narratives was full of categorical judgments and was generally riddled with contradictions.

Even though the English translation of the quote above partially erases the colourful language used by Vitalii, a 29-year-old photographer, to explain why he did not serve in the army, the reader can still sense that this topic is a sore subject for him and, perhaps more importantly, can see Vitalii’s clearly perceived sense of connection between military service and masculinity. He regrets that he ‘didn’t drive a tank, didn’t shoot a machine gun like a man’; he tries to justify his parents’ choice of bribing him out of the service by means of a graphic depiction of the current

http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---declaration/documents/publication/wcms_081991.pdf , accessed 12 August 2017. A number of my respondents used the phrase ‘to build country mansions for generals’.

18 An example of this could be the parents’ strategy of collecting actual and fabricated medical documents over a period of several years testifying to a chronic illness, which makes their son exempt from military service on medical grounds. 7 state of the Russian army, but made it clear that he was not able to choose himself because his parents did not even consult him on the matter.19

In order to understand the intensity of such narratives, which paradoxically combine bright militaristic fantasies with personal stories of evading the draft, we have to recognise that Vitalii and the other men of his generation (born in the USSR but coming of age in the post-Soviet time) have been growing up, making their life choices and forming their masculine identities in the shadow of the military superpower and its enormous cultural legacy. This intensive nostalgia for the formerly great Russian/Soviet army and clearly militarised performances of masculinity should be understood against the backdrop of the specific role the military used to play in Soviet Russia.

Militarised Socialism and Militarised Masculinity20

The Soviet Union was a militarist country with a strong militarist ideology. When it was not at war, it was actively preparing for war. The Soviet state was not designed for peaceful life; it existed as a mobilised regime from the first days of its inception.21 After the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945),22 despite enormous material and human losses (allegedly 26.6 million died), the Red Army acquired the status of an invincible and legendary defender of the Motherland. Post- war emphasis on military-patriotic education and the emergence of the cult of the Great Patriotic War in the 1960s established the Soviet Army as an eminent pillar of statehood and a guarantor of .23 At the same time, the significance of the military went well beyond the defence of the

19 In fact there is some cause to doubt his supposed lack of choice. Had Vitalii really wanted to serve, he would have been able to do so. The military service in Russia remains mandatory for all male citizens age 18-27. However, there are exceptions to this rule, which include medical reasons, full time student status, and family situation where the draftee is a single parent or sole carer for a disabled relative, or has more than one child. 20 ‘Militarised socialism’ is the term I borrow from Michael Mann. Michael Mann, ‘The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism’, New Left Review, I(162), pp. 35-50. 21 The Soviet Union took shape against the backdrop of World War One, in which it experienced shameful defeat, and the Civil War (1917-1922). Furthermore, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Second World War. The emergence of superpower rivalry between the United States and the USSR further intensified the ideology of militarism and the practical importance of the military for the Soviet regime. The arms race, which emerged as a result of this rivalry, determined the subordination of the Soviet economy to the military and heavy industry. The Soviet economy was overwhelmingly oriented towards military and heavy industry production. The best minds of the country (physicists, chemists and mathematicians) were also working for the war. Their intellectual energy was focused on bombs and other weapons development. In addition to international factors, the Soviet regime was mobilised against internal ‘enemies of the state.’ Suspicion and conspiracy theories were important political mechanisms, while militarism gradually became one of the most important sources of legitimacy of the state . Maya Eichler, Militarizing Men: Gender, , and War in Post-Soviet Russia, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2012. 22 The period of Russian involvement in World War Two (1941-45) is commonly referred to in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. 23 Roger R. Reese, The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991, London: Routledge, 2000. Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia, New 8 country. The militarism of the Soviet state shaped the economy, educational system and culture, as well as Soviet gender relations and notions of masculinity and femininity. The post-war years were a time when military service, obligatory for all able-bodied men in the USSR, was promoted as a sacred duty of Soviet citizenship and the main school of masculinity. The dominance of the militarised masculinity model and militarised notions of patriotism in the Soviet Union ‘derived from the perceived military threat from capitalist enemies, which in turn made the male role of a soldier a primary element in the new masculine identity’.24

The majority of boys born in the post-war USSR grew up listening to wartime stories and patriotic war songs, reading about war heroes at home and at school, watching Soviet films about the war and dreaming that one day they would be warriors and defenders themselves. A massive part of the mainstream Soviet culture was about war, heroism and defence of the glorious motherland. Since one of the hallmarks of Soviet militarism was the merging of military and civilian spheres, most Soviet boys grew up knowing that one day they would be soldiers themselves.25

In the late Soviet years the Soviet military experienced a huge loss of prestige due to the unpopular war in Afghanistan, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost and activism on the part of soldiers’ mothers, all of which brought to public attention the abuse and horrible conditions conscripts faced during their service. ‘[I]n the final years of the Soviet Union, the prominent place of the armed forces in society and the militarized gender roles prescribed by the state were called into question.’26 Although the post-Soviet transformations and particularly the transition to the market economy led to an even greater deterioration in the relationship between the military and society, the legacy of Soviet militarism, as my data shows, is still very much alive.

Yet as shown by my own data and by other research on the relationship between the military and society in post-Soviet Russia, patriotic education and mandatory military service have rather a different significance and outcomes for masculinity formation in, on the one hand, the ‘classless’ Soviet Union with its centrally and high job security, and on the other, in post-

York, NY: Basic Books, 1994. Ellen Jones, Red Army and Society: A Sociology of the Soviet Military. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985. 24 Thomas G. Schrand,’Socialism in One Gender: Masculine Values in the Stalin ’, in Barbara Evens Clements, Rebecca Friedman and Dan Healey (eds), Russian Masculinities in History and Culture (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002), p. 203. 25 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 17. Apart from the purely ideological benefits, military service ‘qualified male recruits for educational opportunities, improved eligibility for Party membership, and training and connections for careers both within the armed forces and in the civilian economy.’ Schrand, Socialism in One Gender, p. 204. 26 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 2. 9 Soviet Russia with its market economy, lack of social guarantees and growing economic class divide.27 Despite many continuities between the Soviet and post-Soviet army, my respondents regard them as two completely different social institutions: the Soviet army is seen as a social lever,28 a place where ordinary men became heroes and where masculinity is forged, while the post-Soviet army is portrayed as a corrupt and dangerous place, a waste of time and a regrettable inevitability for the poor.29

Demilitarisation and Remiltarisation of Post-Soviet Russia30

The story of the Russian military since 1991 is a complex one. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has witnessed contradictory and parallel processes of demilitarisation and remilitarisation. In this part of the chapter, I consider the evolving role of the ideology of militarism in the context of post-Soviet transformations.

As discussed above, in the Soviet Union the military was considered a key pillar of the state, masculinity and society. In the late Soviet period, however, the eminent public image of the Soviet army began to be eroded. Growing public awareness of dedovshchina and the unclear purpose of the ten-year Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989) made people reconsider the idea of serving in the military as the civic duty of all men important for their masculine socialisation. Draft evasion started to gather pace. ‘The final years of the Soviet Union were also accompanied by military retreats – from Afghanistan, Eastern Europe, and parts of the former Soviet republics – and the humiliation of having “lost” the Cold War. Thus the late Soviet state period was characterised by a partial demilitarisation of state and society.’31

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 exacerbated the military crisis and reinforced demilitarisation on every level: that of the state, the military, society, and the individual. The

27 See Eichler, Militarizing Men. Rebecca Kay, Men in contemporary Russia. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006. Stephen L. Webber and Alina Zilberman, ‘The citizenship dimension of the society-military interface’, in in Stephen L. Webber and Jennifer G. Mathers (eds), Military and Society in Post-Soviet Russia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 159-206. 28 For example, Pavel, a retired colonel, said that the main reason why he signed a contract with the military after university was the opportunity to earn better money and receive a flat from the state in a shorter period of time. Vasilii, a former military doctor, explained his decision to work within the Soviet military by reference to the overall prestige and value military men enjoyed in Soviet society. 29 That being said, the military still remains a path towards upward social mobility among the people from rural areas and from disadvantaged and unskilled backgrounds. As a result, it is often people in the lowest socioeconomic groups who are conscripted. 30 Militarisation and militarism are highly contested notions. See, for example, Stanislav Andreski, Military Organization and Society, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968; Kjell Skjelsback, ‘Militarism, its dimensions and corollaries: an attempt at conceptual clarification’, Journal of Peace Research, no 16, vol. 3, 1979, pp. 213-229. 31 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 33. 10 ideological crisis of the military that started in the 1980s, and public awareness of the systemic violence and humiliation conscripts were exposed to, were supplemented in the early post-Soviet years with a severely reduced state military budget, highly unpopular Chechen wars32 and the transition to , which created new notions of masculinity. The new understanding of masculinity was tied to financial success in the market economy, and entered into conflict with the patriotic, militarised masculinity of the Soviet times. The breakdown of the Soviet social contract on which men’s soldiering rested and the failure of the post-Soviet state ‘to back up men’s militarization with tangible rewards, whether for ideological or economic reasons’,33 radically undermined individual Russian men’s willingness both to serve, and to define military service as a key institution for developing their masculine identities.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, military service remained a constitutional duty of Russian men. However, if in the 1970s the Soviet state drafted 70 to 85 per cent of draft-age men,34 during the first one and a half decades of its existence the new Russian state was only able to call up for military service about 10 to 30 per cent of men in the draft pool.35 The rest avoided conscription through legal or illegal means.

The rapidly growing social stratification, which was an effect of the transition to a market economy, had another serious impact on conscription in Russia. Since men from relatively privileged backgrounds can buy their way out of the army or get a draft deferment as university students, the majority of conscripts in post-Soviet Russia ‘come from the most disadvantaged, least affluent parts of society’.36 Thus, military service in post-Soviet Russia became ‘increasingly tied to a marginal masculinity differentiated by class’.37 Another significant effect of the transition to a market economy was the disassociation of militarised masculinity from patriotism. The growing social inequalities have increased tension between patriotism and , with the former increasingly giving way to the latter.38

32 Due to greater press freedom during the first Chechen war (1994-1996), information about inadequate military preparation and untrained conscripts sent into battle was widely publicised. 33 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 140. 34 Jones, Red Army and Society, pp. 56-57. 35 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 59. 36 Human Rights Watch, The Wrongs of Passage: Inhuman and Degrading Treatment of New Recruits in the Russian Armed Forces, 2004, p. 7. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/russia1004/russia1004.pdf accessed 24 October 2016.

37 Eichler, Militarizing Men, pp. 71-72. 38 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 80. 11 This situation with the military and patriotism has become a matter of concern for the political leadership since Vladimir Putin came to power. A renewed ideological call for a revival of military might, independence and (key masculine features in traditional cultures) was supposed to restore national pride and re-establish the link between masculinity and patriotism. As Ryabova and Ryabov explain, ‘[r]eviving national dignity was Vladimir Putin’s trademark since as early as his prime ministerial appointment in September 1999. Already then he went on record as saying: “Russia may rise from her knees and fetch a good blow.”’39 Subsequently, the task of rehabilitation of national ‘manliness’ and remasculinisation of Russia’s image becomes a core component of the new nation building project and one of the main legitimation strategies of Putin’s political regime.40 In the context of the late 1990s, when many people became disillusioned with capitalism, liberal democracy and the West, the promise of strong leadership and masculinised-militarised protection was something that many Russians craved.41 The second Chechen war and the fear of terrorists helped to justify the need for the revival of militarism.

Apart from a powerful ideological call for patriotic militarism, the state’s efforts to promote militaristic sentiments relied on such initiatives as the return of basic military training to secondary schools,42 tighter control over media coverage of military related topics43 and state sponsorship of patriotic war films.44 The content of political propaganda, which aimed to convince the population that Putin’s Russia has occupied a prominent place in the world order as a military power, proved to be appealing to the population at the abstract-symbolic level – or, at

39 Tat’yana Ryabova and Oleg Ryabov, ‘The Real Man of Politics in Russia (On Gender Discourse As a Resource for the Authority)’, Social Sciences, 42(3), 2011, p. 66. 40 Oleg Riabov and Tat’yana Riabova, ‘The Remasculinization of Russia?’, Problems of Post-Communism, 61(2), 2014, pp.23-35; Valerie Sperling, Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

41 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 49. 42 This was one of the first policy initiatives made by the newly elected President Putin in 1999. Postanovleniya Pravitel’stva RF no. 1441 ‘O podgotovke grazhdan RF k voennoi sluzhbe,’ signed 31 December 1999. See also Postanovlenie Pravitel’stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 16.02.2001 no. 122, ‘O gosudarstvennoi programme “Patrioticheskoe vospitanie grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii na 2001-2005 gody”’. 43 For example, there was a considerable difference in the media coverage of the first Chechen war, which often highlighted the image of unheroic and undertrained conscript soldiers sent into battle to their doom, and the second Chechen war, where such image was far less visible. Eichler, Militarizing Men. 44 For example, Gillespie’s analysis of post-Soviet war films shows that films of the first post-Soviet decade were ‘thoughtful and provocative… and provide a sad commentary on the disempowerment of the State, once a mighty global player’. However, since Vladimir Putin came to presidency war films acquired a pronounced emphasis on Russian military prowess and the virtue of patriotism, with the ‘self-doubting male [of the films of the 1990s]… replaced by testosterone-fuelled competing masculinities.’ David Gillespie, ‘Confronting : the ambivalence of war in post-Soviet films’, in Stephen L. Webber and Jennifer G. Mathers (eds), Military and Society in Post-Soviet Russia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 86 and 89. 12 least, may resonate with it to a certain extent.45 However, continuous and unsuccessful attempts on the part of the state to conscript young men into military service demonstrate that on the discrete-personal level, attempts at the remilitarisation of young men in Russia have been met with strong social resistance. A militarised patriotic spirit and self-sacrificing love of the Motherland often remain at the level of an ‘empty signifier’.46 Both statistics and the personal accounts of my interviewees show that post-Soviet Russian men often support patriotic militarism in word, but not in deed.

Despite the fact that a renewed state ideology of militarised patriotism contributed to Putin’s personal popularity and was partially successful in making militarism one of the sources of legitimacy of the new Russian state, the material challenges that continue to weaken the military forces have not been resolved. The Putin regime also failed to reassess the ideological component of military service. Overall, the rhetoric of renewed militarised patriotism relies almost entirely on the ideals of the Soviet era.47 Young men are still exhorted to do their ‘patriotic duty.’ The only reward which is offered to them for fulfilling this ‘duty’ is that after military service they will have become ‘real men’. As Webber and Zilberman explain, ‘those who seek to evade service are castigated for their failure to demonstrate patriotism and loyalty to the nation’.48 The high level of draft evasion testifies to the fact that such messages do not resonate with their intended audience, draft-age men and their families. Furthermore, the notions of patriotic, self-sacrificing, militarised masculinity in Russia remain in sharp contrast contradiction with a masculinity informed by capitalist notions of individualism.

The militaristic state propaganda of the Putin regime seems to ignore the fact that Russian society has changed enormously since Soviet times. In Post-Soviet Russia, neoliberal ideology, which holds that people’s wellbeing, as well as that of their family, overwhelmingly depends on their own choices and actions, has firmly replaced the Soviet state ideology of collective good and self-sacrifice for a better future. In this context, the sacrifice of vital personal resources such as time, energy, health and even life, as required by military service, is now seen as merely redundant. As one of the respondents told me, time and health are far more valuable resources in

45 Fond ‘Obshchestvennoe Mnenie’, V. Putin: reiting, otnoshenie, otsenki raboty. Indikatory otnosheniya k glave gosudarstva, 8 October 2017. Available at: http://fom.ru/Politika/10946 , accessed 10 October 2017. 46 Stephen L. Webber, ‘Introduction: the society-military interface in Russia’, in Stephen L. Webber and Jennifer G. Mathers (eds), Military and Society in Post-Soviet Russia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 26.

47 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 84. 48 Webber and Zilberman, ‘The citizenship dimension of the society-military interface’, p. 176. 13 the present day than money. His family had enough money to bribe him out of the military service, and it was a rational investment in his life project.

My respondents placed their individual needs far above the demands of the state and its military institutions. In what follows, I apply Webber and Zilberman’s approach to an analysis of the militarisation process on two different levels: the abstract-symbolic level and the discrete- personal level.49 I show that the respondents appear to choose militarisation on the abstract- symbolic level because it helps them to construct traditional masculinity. However, on the discrete-personal level they rely on individualistic capitalist rationality in making their ‘lifestyle choices,’ assessing and negotiating risks found in encounters with the state, and choosing not to serve in the army, thus seemingly adopting an anti-militaristic stance.

Accomplishing Masculinity: Heroic Fantasies and Individual Choice

Alexei (28 years old, Russia): A man in my understanding must definitely be a warrior. He must be in control. A man, a real man, should go next to his woman, and if someone pesters [her], he should just beat the shit out of him. If you can’t protect, you’re not a man, that’s it. Even more so if it concerns your family. You must do it. This is your number one duty... In a dangerous situation, when there is a threat to your family and a man runs away, abandons them to their own fate, then definitely he’s not a man. I don’t know the feeling of fear when something threatens my family, my mother, for example... I'm fuelled by adrenaline so much that I'm starting to shake. At such a moment, there’s absolutely no fear.

M: You are 28 already, beyond the conscription age. Did you get a call to military service? Did you need to go to the army?

Alexei: I never had any problem with this. I didn’t go anywhere and they didn’t come to get me. We sold our flat and moved to another area when I was in the ninth grade.50 Either my documents got lost or something else... Once they [recruitment officers] knocked on my door. I said I wouldn’t open the door. They said they’d

49 Webber and Zilberman, ‘The citizenship dimension of the society-military interface’. 50 The ninth grade children in Russia are approximately 14 years old. 14 catch me on the street. I said: "Well, we’ll talk when you catch and now I want to sleep, goodbye." That was it.

M: Would you go to the army to defend the Motherland, if there was a war?

A: 100%, I’ll be among the first volunteers! I’d go without question, without a moment of hesitation because I think it's the highest purpose of a man, when you can die for your Motherland or for your loved ones. It's always easier to become a hero [at war]. All you have to do is to be courageous and die heroically. That’s it – you’re a hero. In normal life, it’s more difficult to gain social status and recognition than at war.

Although put in particularly radical terms in Alexei’s case, this kind of example of militarised performance of masculinity is common within my data.51 My NVivo code ‘man-defender’ emerged as the largest within the data. Militarised performances of masculinity and heroic fantasies appear in almost half of the interviews, but looms larger and more vividly in the data collected in Russia. Taken as a whole, Russian men interviewed in Britain are much less invested in this idea and the corresponding performance of masculinity. For 17 respondents (12 in Russia and five in the UK) ‘defender’ is either a key performance strategy or the central notion of masculinity. 15 people intensely advocated this idea, while one informant in Russia and one in the UK passionately rejected it. Several other people interviewed in the UK attempted to challenge this idea but did so either in vague or contradictory ways.

Interestingly, the fact that the majority of defenders’ in my interview pool had chosen to evade the draft did not embarrass them. Most of the people I interviewed were strictly against obligatory military service.

Anatolii (32 years old, Russia): I think it’s time to stop conscription now. What does it have to do with manhood when a person is being forced into the army? It makes the whole system ugly, there is nothing about being a man here.

M: Well, as they say, the army makes a man out of a boy.

51 I used NVivo software for qualitative data organisation and analysis to undertake the thematic coding of my data. 15 A: Well, it used to, perhaps, in the past. But now I don’t know. I think [this expression now] has turned into meaningless words. A lot of these proverbial phrases no longer mean anything in modern life.

Anatolii, like many other respondents who have not served in the military, rejected the notion of compulsory military service as a foundation of masculinity and stated that the military as a primary institution of male socialisation is a relic of the past. He admitted that he bribed his way out of mandatory military service; however, he quickly added:

Well, actually, of course, [I remember] when buildings were being blown up [by terrorists], all these things - well, I don’t rule out this [military service] possibility for myself completely. I’m not a pacifist at all. And when I learned about these explosions and Beslan in 2004,52 it made a really strong impression on me. I can say that I empathised greatly. It seemed to me that we had to do something. Let’s all go fight [the terrorists], rub them out, so that it never happens again.

Alexei and Anatolii are of the same generation but there is an enormous class divide between them. Anatolii is a middle-class, educated, well-travelled and highly ambitious professional who actively mobilises the material and symbolic resources of his family, while Alexei is an under- educated, unemployed ‘street lad’ with a working-class background and a petty criminal past who comes from a troubled family. Since Alexei lacks any real form of valuable social capital in terms of profession, occupation, education and social status, his ‘masculine capital’ (del Aquila, 2013) which he sees as fundamentally tied to militarised masculinity becomes increasingly important for his self-representation and his sense of self-respect. Anatolii, in contrast, has multiple means to construct a respectful social identity. However, despite plentiful available resources for accomplishing masculinity, Anatolii also turns to militarism.

Neither Anatolii, nor Alexei see any contradiction between their militarist and anti-militarist sentiments. Both are against obligatory draft but at the same time use militarism to fulfil a

52 Anatolii is referring to the Beslan school siege when over 1100 people were captured as hostages in a school in North Ossetia. 334 people died and more than 800 wounded. The two Chechen wars, the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999, the Nord Ost theatre siege in 2002, the Beslan school tragedy in 2004 and some other high profile terrorist acts created a widespread fear of terrorism in Russia. As Eichler writes, this provided a particularly favourable context for Putin to play his tough and militarised masculinity card. The fear of terrorism helped to justify violent measures against Chechen separatists during the second Chechen war (1999-2009), centralisation of the state at the expense of democratic freedoms and a revival of Russia’s military might. Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 48-50.

16 narrative function of performing masculinity.53 Interestingly, Alexei turned to militarism in order to construct a rather brutal and traditional masculinity, while Anatolii carefully balanced militarist and antimilitarist positions in a way that helped him to construct the progressive, ‘civilised’ masculinity of a man who embraces capitalist values, including the value of the professionalisation and commercialisation of military service. Anatolii rejected the notion of man as defender but at the same time signalled that he was not a pacifist and would be prepared to fight if there was a ‘real’ threat to the country. His position accords with another particular argument that kept recurring in my interviews: respondents stated that while they did not want to undertake military service for its own sake, they would be willing to fight in a ‘real’ war like the Great Patriotic War.

In light of all the negativity surrounding military service in post-Soviet Russia and the fact that the majority of my respondents had never served in the military, had no plans to do so and were harshly critical of the current state of the Russian army, the fact that they still found militarism appealling seems illogical. None of the respondents said that the military was no longer a necessary institution. It may be a waste of time for them personally, but in theory we all need armies. Moreover, many men claimed that if the situation required them to defend, they would be defenders. In other words, there is a considerable discrepancy between views expressed at the level of abstraction and the real actions of the research participants.

The respondents stated that military institutions were important, and they passionately engaged with militarised performances of masculinity. However, it is clear that that they would not choose the military over other values such as career, family and personal well being. In Webber and Zilberman’s words, at the abstract-symbolic level militarism and patriotism in Russia hold a great appeal; however, at the discrete-personal level both come low down among the priorities of individual people.54 Webber’s research on societal perceptions of citizenship and security in Russia, Germany and the UK also revealed that in the majority of cases there was a cognitive gap in the respondents’ understanding of the military component of citizenship.55

53 Tanja Petrović, ‘Contested Normality: Negotiating Masculinity in Narratives of Service in the Yugoslav People’s Army’, in Daniela Koleva, (ed.), Negotiating Normality: Everyday Life in Socialist Institutions (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012), pp. 83-102.

54 Webber and Zilberman, ‘The citizenship dimension of the society-military interface’, p. 181. 55 Stephen L. Webber and Kerry Longhurst, ‘Youth perceptions of security and citizenship in Russia, Germany and the United Kingdom’, Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project no. L 134 25 1045, 1998-2002. Research outputs available at: http://www.researchcatalogue.esrc.ac.uk/grants/L134251045/read , accessed 23 July 2017. 17 Yurii’s case brings in an important angle to the discussion of this cognitive gap between using militarism as a symbol and living out militarist views and values. A 34-year-old financial expert living in the UK, he was the only respondent who really wanted to undertake military service, though he had not been able to. He had graduated from high school in Lithuania, which does not have military conscription; he applied to the contract army, but was not accepted. This is how he explained his reasons for wanting to serve:

Yurii: I wanted to train myself as a man. To serve in the army is also an integral part of being a man. It’s not about shooting someone, but about facing difficulties, living in a tent, exercising constantly, it’s about a new social environment, dedovshchina (bullying) - you must go through all of this. You can build up a character there.

M: So you see the army as a strict regime training camp? 56

Yurii: Yes, yes. It’s also free of charge, and you even get paid there.

M: You seem to be very focused on your career and at the same time you want to go to the army. I heard that many people, on the contrary, want to dodge the draft, believe that today [the army] is a waste of time.

Yurii: Well, I don’t think so. For your career, it doesn’t really matter if you start two years earlier or two years later. [The army] can do you more good than harm in your life, because there you’ll harden your character, and this will be useful for you [because] your career then will go faster. You’ll start later, but attain a high place faster.

Yurii did not want to shoot anybody, defend any country or commit any act of self-sacrifice. During the three hours in which I interviewed him it became clear that he was very much invested in and oriented towards his career in finance. His personal masculinity project is best described as ‘professional man’. His desire to serve in the military had nothing to do with the concepts of ‘sacred duty’ or ‘militarised patriotism’. All he wanted was to become physically stronger, sturdier and more emotionally resilient. Military service for him was a place that would

56 Here it was me who introduced the concept of army as an intensive sport camp, but in other cases it was the interviewees who used this description. 18 benefit him personally. He imagined that after military service he would be fitter, more prepared for any type of situation, more disciplined, tougher, and more experienced in life. In other words he would be more of a man. It is noteworthy that he saw military skills as easily transferable to other areas of life and made direct links between militarised masculinity on the one hand, and personal gain and professional growth on the other.

During the late Soviet period, military service was seen as consisting of three main components: a ‘deeply patriotic act’, a ‘sacred duty’ and a ‘masculine rite of passage’. When we turn to the post-Soviet context, the first two components disappear completely from the narratives of the research participants. In the post-Soviet context nobody sees military service as a duty or expression of patriotism. The third component of this formula remains in place, however. Men who have never been in the army continue to imagine military service as a masculine rite of passage. Yet it should be noted that this is a different rite of passage. From a universal obligation it has become an optional sports camp where individual men can update their individual masculine skills.

If we take my interviewees’ accounts at face value, we could argue that due to the strong legacy of the militarism of the Soviet period it is still not entirely socially acceptable for Russian men to speak out against the military and conscription. To reject the military would not only undermine their masculinity but also their love for their country. Furthermore, for those living in immigration, the notion of loyalty to their motherland is already problematised, and questioning the Russian army implies the additional risk of being seen as unmanly. However, if we dig deeper, we see that militarism as an ideology, and many militarist practices, ‘are far less the result of amorphous tradition or culture than they are the product of particular—traceable— individual decisions’.57

Concluding Remarks: The Changing Nature of Militarism and Gender Inequality

Militarization never is simply about joining a military. It is a far more subtle process… Militarization is a step-by-step process by which a person or a thing gradually comes to be controlled by the military or comes to depend for its well- being on militaristic ideas. The more militarization transforms an individual or a society, the more that individual or society comes to imagine military needs and

57 Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000, p. 34.

19 militaristic presumptions to be not only valuable but also normal. Militarization, that is, involves cultural as well as institutional, ideological, and economic transformations.58

In my concluding remarks I would like to narrow my points down to two lines of analysis and argumentation: the changing nature of militarism in Russia, and militarism as one of the main pillars of gender inequality. While I mostly focused on the former, I see the latter as one of the ultimate reasons why militarist and patriarchal thinking have such stubborn longevity, and are able to transform and adapt to changing social conditions.

The performances of militarised masculinities within my data shed light on the unfolding of history. They show how the collapse of the Soviet Union and consequent political and social transformation changed one army into another. The institution once designed to forge collective masculinity is being radically redefined and seen in relation to the needs of the individual actor and consumer, who carefully plans his life path in order to ensure a better position in society. While physical stamina and emotional toughness continue to be valuable and desirable masculine qualities and the army is seen as a place where one can obtain these qualities, the personal sacrifice involved in the military service in post-Soviet Russia is considered to be irrational.

The redefinition of the place of the military in society is by no means unique to post-Soviet Russia. Demilitarisation is a worldwide trend. While we have to be cautious about applying Martin Shaw’s post-military society thesis,59 it is hard to deny that the societal-military relationship has changed dramatically across the world. Shaw points to almost universal downsizing of militaries, strong resistance to military conscription throughout Western countries and an increasing societal demand for transparency and accountability of military institutions as evidence of ‘post-military citizenship’.60 Militarism is not disappearing, but it is changing. As I show above, post-Soviet Russia is firmly a part of this Western world trend.

As in some other countries, militarism in Russia seems to be retreating and expanding simultaneously. Militarism still holds appeal at the rhetorical level and the contemporary

58 Enloe, Maneuvers, pp. 2-3. 59 Shaw, Post-Military Society. Military conflicts since 1991 when Shaw’s work was published as well as a rise of terrorist threat around the world ‘mean that the military sphere will undoubtedly remain a core feature of Western and other societies for the foreseeable future.’ Webber, Introduction, p. 7. 60 Shaw, Post-Military Society. 20 political elites effectively use this to legitimise their rule.61 Furthermore, on the 31st of August 2017, the day I am finishing the writing of this chapter, I learn from my news feed that the latest assessment of different nations’ military capabilities names Russia as the world’s second most powerful country after the United States.62 The numbers look impressive. Total aircraft strength is 3,794; armoured fighting vehicles, 31,298; military budget, $44,600,000,000; total military personnel, 3,371,027. These numbers, however, do not tell us the other part of the story, that of the enormous change in societal-military relations since Soviet times, of the shrinking significance of militarist values in post-Soviet mass culture, and of the sharp neoliberal twist in young people’s thinking.

My data shows that post-Soviet Russian men willingly engage in non-participatory militarism. In his work on the contradictions in contemporary militarism, Michael Mann likens public interest in the national use of armed forces to a ‘spectator sport’.63 We can say that today the Russian citizen-soldier is turning into a militarised citizen-spectator.64 As I have shown, individual people can support militarism on the abstract-symbolic level but refuse to engage in any militarist practices on the discrete-personal level. This means that the non-participatory militarism does not necessarily lead to participatory militaristic practices. What does engagement in non-participatory militarism do for my respondents? As with any investigative work, I am driven by the search for motives. As a sociologist who studies the workings of culture and history, I analyse taken-for-granted personal truths and knowledge to reveal the ways in which they reflect unspoken norms of power, privilege, and social hierarchies. Individual and collective motives often lie in these realms.

My data analysis reveals that militarism holds such a powerful appeal at the rhetorical level among the respondents because the military remains an important gendered terrain on which masculinity is contested and achieved. We cannot approach and understand the changing nature of militarism without gender analysis because the link between masculinity and the military has crucial importance for the reproduction of unequal gender relations. This is because militarism is based on the logic which separates people into strong men and weak women, protectors and those who are in need of protection. Militarism is based on a particular thinking which portrays men as inherently militaristic and women as naturally peaceful. In other words, it relies on

61 For example, it is done by glorifying the image of the Great Patriotic War and the Soviet wartime achievements for the promotion of patriotic sentiments and nostalgia for Russia’s military might. 62 The Global Firepower list, 2017 Military Strength Ranking. Available at: https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp , accessed 31 August 2017. 63 Mann, ‘The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism’. 64 Eichler, Militarizing Men, p. 80. 21 notions of both masculinity and femininity.65 Militarism also depends on certain unsupportable generalisations about men and women. These generalisations help to organise people’s understanding of the world and provide a rationale for action, and this enables men as a group to retain their dominant position in the world. Militarist thinking is thus one of the main foundations of patriarchy. If we remove the gendered component of militarist logic (strong men defending weak women and other vulnerable groups in society), militarism as an ideology will have to be entirely reinvented.

As Iris Marion Young famously argued: an exposition of the gendered logic of the masculine role of protector in relation to women and children illuminates the meaning and effective appeal of a security state that wages war abroad and expects obedience and loyalty at home. In this patriarchal logic, the role of the masculine protector puts those protected, paradigmatically women and children, in a subordinate position of dependence and obedience. To the extent that citizens of a democratic state allow their leaders to adopt a stance of protectors toward them, these citizens come to occupy a subordinate status like that of women in the patriarchal household.66

Young’s focus of analysis is on how the logic of masculinist protection helps to legitimise the political leadership and justify the waging of war and anti-democratic actions in the USA. While this analysis is more than relevant for understanding the developments of the political regime in Putin’s Russia, it is important to remember that militarisation and demilitarisation processes ultimately depend on the individual as much as they do on the state.

Even though Russia is ‘a country in which military and warfare have played a huge part in the development of nation and society, and in which the symbolic importance of the military institution is still very much evident today’,67 I argue that militarised performances of masculinity should not be seen as a passive working of tradition and culture, but as a masculinity construction strategy in which the respondents engage wittingly or unwittingly. A personal choice/strategy framework, as applied to the analysis of militarised performances of masculinity, highlights the fact that these performances are aimed at the construction of a particular form of masculinity which benefits from gender inequality. By investing their energy into the continuous

65 Eichler, Militarizing Men; Enloe, Maneuvers; Iris Marion Young, ‘The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29(1), 2003, pp.1-25.

66 Young, ‘The Logic of Masculinist Protection’, p. 2. 67 Webber, ‘Introduction’, p. 16. 22 reinforcement of a seemingly ‘natural’ connection between the military and manliness, the respondents strive for a higher social status and symbolic power.

In times when Russia shows signs of moving towards post-military citizenship, when individual men can actually choose whether to build their sense of worth and self-esteem on paternalistic attitudes towards women and non-militarised men, adherence to the symbolic-abstract celebration of militarism, which privileges masculinity, cannot be interpreted as the passive workings of custom and the Soviet legacy; it should be seen as a political act. The individual choice and decision on the part of men with no military experience to employ militarism as a basis for their masculine identity keeps patriarchy alive and sustains society’s militarisation.

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