As a part of my political science background and interest in critical theory, I study various expressions of hegemony in Russia, i.e. its multiple ideological discourses.

I started with a discourse of non-participation. It’s about an enormous amount of work that the state does to educate people not to participate by themselves and leave ‘social change’ to those in power. This analysis evidently shows how Russian people lack essential experiences of democratic praxis, while the mere idea of participation is fully represented through the state. Thus, going against the state does not make much sense to them, the state authorities ‘are’ the power itself. In the paper, I analyzed the most widespread social studies textbook, how news covered protests and annual conferences with Putin to see how the discourse of non-participation is propagated and normalized.

Currently, I am working on the analysis of the normalization strategies of the Russian invasion to Ukraine.