Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 8 – “Krymnash” [CrimeaOurs]
arose as a serious meme in March 2014, an expression of the patriotic pleasure
Russians felt in taking Crimea and demonstrating the power of their country. But
since then, it has become an ironic expression, one that recalls Soviet times,
and people use it as almost a throw-away line – “our toilets don’t work but
Krymnash!”
As a result, those who still believe
in its original meaning now insist on spelling it out in two words and
capitalizing both as “Krym Nash” [Crimea is Ours] in order to ensure that no
one misunderstands what they mean, according to Mikhail Suslov, a scholar at
the Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Research in Sweden.
In an interview published in Moscow’s
“Gazeta” newspaper yesterday, Suslov says that to the best of his information, “Krymnash”
“arose as a serious meme as an attempt at describing reality,” even before the
referendum there. “Crimea still was not ours,” he says, “but it must become so.”
It was first uses, he says, by two
rock musicians “not connected either with one another or with the political
establishment. They accounts allow one to assert that they were not Kremlin
bots and that this was private initiative.” But the meaning they gave it was
soon changed by Russians who used it.
“Literally a day after the referendum,
the meme was redefined in an ironic way,” Suslov says, “and today, more than 90
percent of the uses of this meme are ironic.” That doesn’t “destroy” the meme
but rather is “a means of expressing a point of view,” and it is typically a
negative one.
Thus, when the ruble falls, people say “on
the other hand, Crimea is ours.” And when the plumbing doesn’t work, they say
the same thing – a point of view that “does not correspond to polls where the
majority say they consider that it was necessary to unite Crimea” with the Russian
Federation.
Linking all problems to something the
leadership claims as a great success, the Uppsala-based scholar says, “is
returning us to the mentality of the late Soviet period.” And it is an
indication that in the minds of the population, “whatever happens in Russia, it
will all the same remain an unsuccessful state and life will be bad.”
This can be seen in online posts and in
the traditional media, Suslov says. “Ironically inclined users write ‘Krymnash;’
those who take it seriously now use ‘Krym nash. People who are for the
unification of Crimea write that the liberals have perverted a good term and
therefore one must write ‘Krym Nash,’ as two separate words and with capital
letters.”
“The problem with this meme,” he
continues, “is that it combines the concept of a great power with the concept
of geopolitical power. One can define a great power in hundreds of ways: it may
include the absence of corruption or good science, for example. But people who
seriously use this meme cannot be happy unless Russian can dictate its will to
its neighbors.”
In his interview, Suslov makes three other
key points. First, he suggests that
there has been a deterioration of the possibility of “civilized discussion”
because of the ways in which what he calls “the geopolitical style of thought”
has come to dominate Russian thinking in the wake of the Crimean annexation.
“In
a democratic state, the individual feels himself to be a participant in the
political process and considers that something depends on him. [But] if he
feels that geopolitical laws rule, then nothing depends on him since these laws
are larger and about civilization. Such an individual thinks he can only belong
to one or the other side but not take part in politics.”
Second, Suslov says, Moscow’s invocation of “the sacred”
with regard to the annexation of Crimea is fully understandable but is not
without problems. “Sacralization is one
of the means of legitimizing something,” but the problem is, for the Russian
Orthodox Church, what is sacred in Ukraine is in Kyiv not in Crimea.
And
third, Ukraine by its European choice has created a serious problems for
Russian thought, one that is captured by Rene Girard’s ideas about “the
monstrous double.” “In all ancient
cultures,” the French scholar observes, “there are fears” about something very
similar becoming something very different.
With
regard to Ukraine, Suslov says, “we see this fear in popular literature and
films. Now, Ukraine in mass consciousness is presented as a monstrous double
which has changed its nature.” That explains both the direction and the
intensity of Russian feelings about what is going on there.
.
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