Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on his Telegram channel about the strikes on Russian oil depots and Wildberries warehouses that they were "bringing the war home", i.e. to Russia. It is difficult to dispute this statement – today, apparently, even those Russians who until recently lived stubbornly ignoring reality and considering the so-called special military operation to be some distant conflict, felt that the "operation" had reached them.
The war came to the Russians, but did not reach them
Social networks, including Instagram, which is declared "extremist" in Russia, were filled with videos in which people complain, express bewilderment, disappointment, and doubt. But practically never - indignation or, God forbid, anger. And certainly not indignation against one's own government, which four and a half years ago launched a large-scale war against a neighboring country. A war that caused an incredible amount of destruction and misery - including what is happening today on Russian territory.
I spent several hours studying these videos: for all the variety of characters, intonations and language, they all seem to be united by one thing - detachment from context. The gasoline crisis, the warehouse fires and the "attacks" on Russian territory seem to have no background. Or almost none.
Blocking the media is not the reason
One of the most telling things for me was the video recorded by a young man from Krasnodar. Sitting behind the wheel of his car, which is clearly not cheap, he says that his children have not slept all night, that there was a bomb attack next door, and that the Wildberries warehouse is currently on fire not far away.
"This is slowly starting to stress me out", he says. "Two governments can't agree on anything" Can Vladimir Vladimirovich really not put an end to this somehow?" And he continues: "Why are civilians suffering and why are companies suffering? Well, damn it, you military, figure it out among yourselves."
This clip is especially curious because the young man is wearing Meta"s "smart glasses". This modern device has a variety of technologies built into it, including, for example, an AI assistant. Owning and working with such a high-tech device undoubtedly implies orientation on the Internet and the ability to use various tools, including those that allow bypassing blocked sites.
In other words, this video was not shot by a helpless person who only has access to official Russian television. He is not a person cut off from information and forced to listen to propaganda without a choice. But at the same time, his understanding of what is happening does not seem to include the bombed Mariupol and Kharkov, as well as the numerous strikes on residential buildings and hospitals in Ukraine. For him, the war seems to have begun very recently, when it affected him personally.
"What horror!" Shall we change the channel?
Unlike many of my colleagues who, like me, observe what is happening in Russia from across the border and, based on such clips and reactions, draw conclusions about the "infantile" and "closed" of Russians, I, to be honest, do not see anything specifically Russian in this. The instinct for self-preservation, focusing only on oneself and loved ones, the reluctance to draw attention to the unpleasant, and even more so to the tragic, the interpretation of facts in accordance with one's own views and beliefs - these are universal human traits that are not determined by geographical location.
This is what the American philosopher and writer Susan Sontag wrote about in her famous work "To See the Pain of Others", dedicated to how we perceive the horrific images of wars and human suffering in general that appear in the media. This text is 23 years old - it was created before social networks became the main source of information, and long before the introduction of artificial intelligence. But despite this, it seems as if it was written yesterday. Sontag writes that trust in information is ideologically conditioned - evidence of cruelty that contradicts the audience's educated beliefs is "invariably dismissed as staged, fabricated (…) or, yes, such a thing happened, but the enemy did it himself".
But even if the information about cruelty, crimes, and suffering is reliable, it is inherent in people to push away thoughts of the misfortune of others, even if they can easily be put in their place. Among the many examples, Sontag mentions her conversation with a resident of Sarajevo in 1993. This woman told her that at the very beginning of the war in Yugoslavia, seeing a city being destroyed three hundred kilometers from her home, she thought: "What horror". And changed the channel.
Human weaknesses in the service of propaganda
Can we say with confidence that we would not act in the same way? Every authoritarian government takes advantage of this human weakness. People tend to distance themselves from the terrible, to ignore it until the harm affects them personally.
In Russia, however, the very concept of harm and even suffering is traditionally blurred, muffled. What in many countries is considered an "extreme" situation is seen in Russia as something "tolerable". Today's propaganda uses this to its full potential, without taking into account its own ideological consistency.
For example, recently the so-called journalist Margarita Simonyan, commenting on the gasoline crisis on Vladimir Solovyov's show, stated that those who are dissatisfied have probably completely forgotten themselves. Have they forgotten how life was in the nineties? "No gas? Well, I still remember how food was distributed with coupons… well, nothing, we managed".
Author: Anna Narinskaya