Political Posters: Demasculinizing Russian “Politics of Loneliness”

In the context of contemporary Russian sovereigntism and revanchism, loneliness emerges as gendered, masculine anxiety that fuels Russian nationalism in world politics. To support this argument and explore the Russian case, Sergei Akopov argues that while representations of the Russian nation are feminized, the Russian state appears masculinized. The study examines the alienation of femininity as depicted in Russian street posters photographed between 2021 and 2023, before and shortly after Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine. These posters are analyzed as "dialectical collages," which can be seen as a crucial step in preparing Russian society for war. Drawing on research conducted with Ekaterina Donskikh, Dr. Akopov also analyzes 29 videos of Vladimir Putin’s speeches to demonstrate how gendered humor is employed to address Russian masculine ontological insecurities and reinforce a heteronormative order in both foreign and domestic policy.

Deconstructing Russia's masculine politics of loneliness provides an opportunity to envision an alternative, less gender binary and more gender-fluid conceptualization of Russian identity in global politics. Furthermore, the study of anxieties surrounding loneliness offers new insights and empirical evidence to explain why different segments of Russian society—from elites and the atomized populace to the anti-war diaspora in exile—find themselves in diverse “tidal pools of loneliness” and “regimes of truth.”