INTRODUCTION1

In the 1996 presidential election campaign, Russian President Boris Yeltsin asked the Russian people to reconstitute themselves as a democratic people with a Western orientation. Since his first election in 2000, current Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the Russian people to reconsider that identity and to reconstitute themselves once again as a powerful nation with interests distinct from those of the West. He has done this primarily through redefinition of the foundational terms of Western-style democracy, beginning with the term “democracy” itself.

It should be noted that when Putin took office, he inherited something of a mess. The Russian economy, never strong during the 1990s, was in shambles after the 1998 sovereign debt default and devaluation of the ruble. The political situation was uncertain, as Yeltsin—ill and increasingly vulnerable—faced threats of impeachment. The future of Russian democracy was unclear, in part because of the decision to tie it to the creation of a market economy; as a result, the economic situation in the country made the notion of democratic government unappealing.

Guided by the work of Zarefsky,2 Cox,3 Walton,4 and others, we focus primarily on arguments from/about/by definition and redefinition regarding “democracy” (and related terms such as “freedom”), the “state” (“strengthening the state”), and the “nation” (“the one-thousand-year history of the Russian nation”). We also examine use of selective and sublimated analogical arguments that invoke specific cultural memories for targeted cultural/national audiences, examples emotionally loaded for specific audiences, and other argumentative techniques that function similarly. These argumentative moves interact with and reinforce the definitional moves. Our study focuses on annual Presidential Addresses to the Federal Assembly through 2018, but also includes consideration of Crimea.

DEFINITIONAL ARGUMENT

Definition of the situation in which argument occurs shapes both the character of the arguments deployed and the interpretation given to those arguments by the audience.5 Examining malleable terms such as “democracy” and “nation” provides insight into the manner in which Putin has re-imagined the concepts of Russian nationality, borders, and history.

Definitional argumentation and definitions of situations function for audiences in the same manner that framing does for media consumers. Following Entman,6 Hollihan defines framing

as the ability to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them seem more significant than others in the news accounts. Framing, then, promotes a particular definition of a problem, offers an interpretation of likely causation, possibly suggests a moral evaluation, and perhaps recommends a certain policy to respond to the problem.7

In the early phases of Russia’s transition, we observe heavy use of argument about definition (e.g., Should Russian democracy be Western-style? Should it be uniquely derived from Russian history and culture?). Subsequently, this shifts toward argument by definition, in which the “key definitional move is simply stipulated, as if it were a natural step along the way of justifying some other claim.”8 The favored definition is thus taken as a given: the claim of an argument about definition becomes a premise for an argument by definition.

What this means in practical terms is that oppositional arguments about the favored definition are silenced. In Russia, definitional prerogative was claimed by and ultimately ceded to the government, moving definition from argumentative space to declarative space, allowing situations to be redefined literally in terms of the Kremlin’s visions and policies. As words become redefined “what is really being defined is not a term but a situation or frame of reference.”9 Given government control over Russian media, Putin’s definitions of words and situations often literally become media frames that reinforce these definitional shifts.

REDEFINITIONS OF “DEMOCRACY”

In this analysis of Putin’s Federal Assembly Addresses, we trace broad shifts in definitions of “democracy” over time and then examine messages that have distinct meanings for different cultural and national audiences, including oblique “dog whistles” to conservatives and ultra-nationalists. In his initial Address, in 2000, Putin delineated three relevant central objectives that would remain in some form major trajectories of his multiple presidencies: strengthening the “power vertical” of the Russian state and political organization; generating a “dictatorship of the Law”;10 and promoting Russian national unity through appeals to historical commonalities, experiences, and triumphs. Putin declares,

The authorities must be guided by the law and the single executive power vertical that is formed in accordance with it. . . . This is why we insist on a single dictatorship—the dictatorship of the Law.11

In 2001, Putin initiates his calls for freedom, civil rights, justice, and security for all Russians who now find themselves residents of Near Abroad nations, as Russians refer to the other fourteen countries that were previously part of the former Soviet Union. The vast majority of these people (or their parents) had been sent during Soviet days, when college graduates were assigned to far-flung locales under a mandatory relocation policy, not only to fill personnel vacancies in regional administrations, but also as an attempt to extend and maintain central control of areas in the periphery.

Another problem that it is my duty to mention here at this tribune is the defence of the rights and interests of Russians abroad, our compatriots in other countries. The hundreds of thousands of Russians living and working outside this country must be sure that Russia will not abandon them should they find themselves in a difficult situation. . . . No one should be allowed to apply a selective version of human rights and freedoms based on people’s passports.12

The ambiguity in these declarations is interesting. Putin hoped to convince Russians in the Near Abroad to migrate back to Russia proper. As a response to Russia’s demographic crisis, this was window-dressing, but his avowal to “protect” their “personal” and “human rights and freedoms”—their “dignity as humans and citizens”—is also a veiled threat aimed at Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and the Baltic States, as well as a warning to those nations that they were very much a part of what Putin would later identify as Russia’s sphere of strategic influence.

Throughout Putin’s multiple terms in office the post-collapse years of the 1990s have almost exclusively been depicted as years of hardship and struggle, chaos and instability, weakness and sacrifice. But from this collective sacrifice and struggle, he asserted, came the resolve to persevere:

In those difficult years, the people of Russia had to both uphold their state sovereignty and make an unerring choice in selecting a new vector of development in the thousand years of their history. . . . We had to find our own path in order to build a democratic, free and just society and state.13

The appeals to unity (non-disintegration) and to modern Russia as a continuation—a further “development”—of an historical Russia are evident here as both bedrock and trajectories for Russia’s “own path” to democracy, freedom, and justice. Later in the same Address Putin returns to the metaphor of Russia’s own path:

The democratic road we have chosen is independent in nature, a road along which we move ahead, all the while taking into account our own specific internal circumstances.14 (emphasis added)

A unique, special, “Russia’s own” road to democracy is of course per se a redefinition of democracy. This road remains open and adaptable as needed; that is, it functions as a license to redefine.15 Furthermore, Putin emphasizes that Russia (the state) will control how this road will be traveled:

Russia . . . will decide itself how best to ensure that the principles of freedom and democracy are realised here, taking into account our historic, geopolitical and other particularities. . . . As a sovereign nation, Russia can and will decide for itself the timeframe and conditions for its progress along this road.16

It appears that Putin is advocating a Soviet-style definition of freedom: “freedom from” rather than “freedom to.”17 In this case, “freedom from” dissent within society—what he defines as chaos.

“Freedom to” arises from the internal motivations of the individual; that is, motivations from within the agent can be expressed or made manifest by acts in the world. Individual actions (thoughts and expressions, as well as physical activities) arise from the unique basis of personal motives and intentions until they are constrained by forces external to the agent. Accordingly, “freedom to” is inalienable from the natural human condition. The focus is individual agency.

“Freedom from” stands in opposition to “freedom to”: because it must be provided (or granted) by something or someone external to the individual, and its focus is agency of that external force. “Freedom from” is a grant of protection from some danger or threat (e.g., foreign enemies, hunger, poverty, immorality, insidious political ideologies, cancer-causing chemicals, etc.). Or it can be just a sense or semblance of protection from such specific threats that nonetheless insulates against fears of such things. In contexts where dangers, threats, and fears arise from political, social, cultural, religious, or economic concerns (that is, from conditions created by humans), the external force with the agency to provide or grant protection must be some authority or power higher than the individual: a king, a dictator, a president, a tribal chief, a government.

Accordingly, “freedom from” is not inalienable from the human condition. Indeed, “freedom from” may well require the sacrifice of individual “freedoms to” for the empowerment of the higher power sufficient for it to provide, or at least to appear to provide, the promised protections—the threats that an individual or a society needs “freedom from.”18

Somewhat ironically, just as maximization of “freedom to” would minimize “freedom from,” so too would maximization of “freedom from” constrain and minimize “freedom to.” Or, to put this dialectical trade-off in slightly different terms, a hypertrophy of “freedom from” generates a corresponding atrophy of “freedom to.”19

From the outset, Putin’s discussion of Russia’s own path developed in the context of properly balancing stability and democracy, which he sees as oppositional:

But developing democratic procedures should not come at the cost of law and order, the stability that we worked so hard to achieve, or the continued pursuit of our chosen economic course.20

In Russian society, stability manifests itself as unity, the antipode of dissent, which of course is the hallmark of liberal democracy in the Western world.

As will be seen in later Presidential Addresses, Putin transforms “democracy” from a terminal value to an instrumental one, but as early as his first term, he begins to frame “freedom” in terms of its instrumentality: “I believe that creating a free society of free people in Russia is our most important task. But it is also the most difficult.”21 His elaboration of this is telling:

It is the most important task because people who are not free or independent are incapable of looking after themselves, their families, or their countries. It is the most difficult because freedom is not always valued and even more rarely used properly. Creative energy, enterprise, a sense of proportion and a will to victory cannot be introduced by decree, cannot be imported, and cannot be borrowed.22 (emphasis added)

The “proper use” of freedom automatically implies that free choices are or should be constrained: it would seem that the proper use of freedom would be participation in activities (e.g., enterprise, will to victory) that bring explicit benefits to the state (“looking after . . . their countries”).

Also in this context, Putin depicts the Russian democratic process as substantively, essentially, and necessarily a legal process consistent with law and order.23

But consistent development of democracy in Russia is possible only through legal means. All methods of fighting for national, religious and other interests that are outside the law contradict the very principles of democracy and the state will react to such methods firmly but within the law.24

The rub is that the state also defines (and redefines) what the law is. In 2005, Putin requested audience identification with the “deeper meaning” of democratic values as they are “translated into life.” In this instance, translation into life means that when forms of dissent have been declared illegal, suppression of that dissent is not only perfectly legal—it also preserves “democratic procedures” by protecting them from illegal disruption.25 Thus, in the name of democracy, all dissent must be confined within whatever channels and processes the governmental authority defines as legal at that moment. Recent beatings and arrests of close to 1,400 protesters in Moscow for the crime of not having a permit (which was denied) are a current, but routine, example of this process.26

The unique path and deeper meanings of Russian democracy began to take shape before the conclusion of Putin’s first term, when he tasked Vladislav Surkov to re-envision democracy in ways that would meld with the executive power vertical and the stability of that power structure. Although Putin rarely used the label, Surkov’s redefinition of democracy became known as “managed democracy” or, in a slightly later form, “sovereign democracy.” By around 2003, managed democracy took form. Wood,27 following Furman,28 termed this an “imitation” democracy. According to Ostrovsky:

On the face of it, Russia had all the trappings of democracy: it had political parties and elections. But most of the parties were controlled by the Kremlin, and the elections . . . turned into a mechanism for retaining power.29

Or, as one Russian political consultant noted:

Democracy is where the authorities arrange elections. Managed democracy is where the authorities arrange the elections and the result.30

Managed democracy prevailed through Putin’s second term and the Medvedev interregnum, until rigged parliamentary elections in December 2011 combined with Putin’s imminent return to the presidency led to the biggest public protests since the early 1990s and a decline in his popularity.

Putin’s defense of a unique path becomes more bellicose by 2012, as he rejects what he sees as interference from the West—and specifically from the United States—in Russia’s internal affairs. “Democracy is the only political choice for Russia,” he says in 2012, quickly adding,

I would like to stress that we share the universal democratic principles adopted worldwide. However, Russia's democracy means the power of the Russian people with their own traditions of self-rule and not the fulfilment of standards imposed on us from the outside. Democracy means compliance with and respect for laws, rules, and regulations.31 (emphasis added)

Although Putin at times calls for more civic engagement from citizens and cites citizen participation as a pillar of Russian democracy, it is important to recognize that generally these are calls for engagement at the local levels. It is nowhere more clear than in his 2013 Address in which he calls for citizens “to participate in managing their village or town, to deal with everyday issues that actually determine their quality of life.”32

After 2012, the tenor changes. Managed democracy is essentially discredited—its veil of legitimacy in Russia torn—because it did not prevent the 2011 protests. Discussions of democracy in Presidential Addresses practically disappear. By way of comparison, Yeltsin invoked the words democracy/democratic 136 times in six Presidential Addresses (1994–1999), and he also used freedom/free 167 times. In contrast, during Putin’s first two terms (2000–2007) he mentioned democracy/democratic 60 times, and in his most recent terms (2012–2019) only 17 times. Mentions of freedom/free dropped from 92 times (2000–2007) to 47 (2012–2019). Moreover, a great many of these references to “freedom” were directly concerned with economic freedoms, and many references to “democracy” were to managed democracy.

It is very easy to see expressions such as “managed democracy” as synecdochic, but that, we believe, would be a serious mistake. Putin is not using the name of a part for that of the whole. Rather, he is circumscribing and reducing the realm of the word “democracy” by trimming-off its disagreeable (and potentially chaotic) aspects such as public opposition, deliberation, and dissent, or uncontrolled legislative or electoral outcomes. “Managed democracy” (and later “sovereign democracy”) functions rhetorically as a metonym: it truncates, simplifies, often concretizes, and can come to stand in place of the broader, more abstract, and more complex term.33

Rather than democracy and freedom, Putin began to focus more on history, unity, and nationalism.

REDEFINITION OF “RUSSIA” IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

One important rhetorical move made by Putin has been to re-define “Russia” in terms of language, culture, and its millennium-long history dating back to the adoption of Orthodox Christianity by the Kievan Prince Vladimir in the year 988. This construction of the thousand-year history envisions a Russia unbound by geopolitical borders, state systems, ideological commitments, or time. It consists of a unified Russian people. The historical narrative redefines “Russia” and the Russian “nation” accordingly, encompassing land and people currently residing in different countries, including all the former republics of the Soviet Union, which now comprise the “Near Abroad.”

In 2005, referencing World War II, Putin remarked that victory over Nazi Germany was “not achieved through arms alone but was won also through the strong spirit of all the peoples who were united at that time within a single state.”34 Thus, Putin intertwines two crucial topics—history and unity—that remain constant through the present day. The narrative of Russian history promoted by Putin generally ends with the victory of the “united” “single state” that was the USSR—before the Russian Federation came into existence. For instance, a multimedia celebration of Russian history at the 2014 Sochi Olympics concluded with the WWII victory; similarly, a new multimedia exhibition in Moscow, also celebrating the history of Russia, ends with Khrushchev.35

Language is another constitutive element of national identity and unity, and Russia is no exception. The Russian language

not only preserves an entire layer of truly global achievements but is also the living space for the many millions of people in the Russian-speaking world,36 a community that goes far beyond Russia itself.37

Accordingly, history, culture, and language are elevated as the source of (common) values and identity in the Russian World, as the lodestar for charting Russia’s own path. In the 2007 Address, Putin had said

we must and we also will rest our endeavours upon the moral values that our people have forged over the more than 1,000 years of their history. Only in this case will we be able to set the right course of development for our country.38

Indeed, the annexation of Crimea is cast in the same mythical historicism in Putin’s 2015 Address:

Colleagues, we have repeatedly faced a historical choice of which road to take to further development. We crossed another milestone in 2014 when Crimea and Sevastopol were reunified with Russia. Russia declared a voce piena its status as a strong state with a millennium-long history and great traditions, as a nation consolidated by common values and common goals.39

It is unclear here whether it is the strong state or the nation with the millennium-long history.

By 2016, Putin suggests that Russia is prepared to defend its independent path.

We have to address all of these different matters in complicated and highly unusual conditions, which is not a unique event in our history. The people of Russia have shown convincingly once again that they can rise to the difficult challenges and protect and defend their national interests, sovereignty, and independent course.40

In 2018, Putin returns to this theme of Russian exceptionalism. He begins his speech with a general description of Russia’s “ability to develop and renew itself” (способность к развитию, к обновлению):

This unwavering forward-looking drive, coupled with traditions and values, ensured the continuity in the thousand-year-long history of our nation.41

This portrayal of a national “drive” based on history, moral values, traditions, and self-preserving continuity echoes formulations of Russian nationalism derived from Lev Gumilev’s work (a topic to which we will return). It is again worth noting that this depicts a mythic Russia, not any sustained sovereign state.

In his 2003 Address, Putin had made clear that the former Soviet republics are in Russia’s “sphere of strategic interests.”42 In phrasing these “guarantees for human rights” so broadly,43 Putin makes no distinction among Russians in Russia, former Soviet citizens living in the Near Abroad, and Russian speakers in the larger diaspora worldwide. The “nation” consists of a unified Russian people wherever they may live. Russians are, in Putin’s view, a “single people” united by “cultural, moral, and spiritual values”44 This redefinition creates ambiguities about Putin’s meanings and intentions, as well as interpretive opportunities for his multiple audiences—across Russia’s multiethnic peoples, the “Russian” as well as non-Russian citizens and their governments in the Near Abroad, plus the broader international community—to “hear” different things in the Presidential Addresses.45

DOG WHISTLES TO CONSERVATIVES AND ULTRA-NATIONALISTS

Starting with the shift away from discredited managed democracy in 2012, Putin turned to history and an understanding of nationalism, which is “more militant than the ‘strikingly pragmatic’ tone in his first term.”46 Much of this new orientation aligns with and was drawn from the writings of Russian ultranationalists.

For example, in the 2012 Federal Assembly speech, when discussing competition among nations, Putin says:

Who will take the lead and who will remain outsiders and inevitably lose their independence will depend not only on the economic potential, but primarily on the will of each nation, on its inner energy, which Lev Gumilev termed “passionarity”: the ability to move forward and to embrace change.47

Passionarnost' was coined by the Soviet-era historian Lev Gumilev, an exponent of nationalism and what came to be called Neo-Eurasianism. Drawing on Gumilev’s work, Clover describes “passionarity” as “a quantifiable measure of the mental and ideological energy at the disposal of a given nation at a given time.” By invoking Gumilev and passionarity, Putin was sending a clear—if “coded”—message. As Clover has written:

[A]lmost no one was paying attention to the most important thing in [this speech]. . . . [T]his odd word . . . meant little to the uninitiated; but to those familiar with the conservative theories of nationalism that have made dramatic inroads into Russian politics . . . , it indicated a lot. It was a classic Kremlin signal, what is known in US politics as a “dog whistle,” used to communicate to certain groups a message that only they could hear.48

Clover says Gumilev had become “the standard for a generation of hardliners in Russia,” and Putin was “sending a subtle signal . . . that new ideas had swept to power along with him.”49 With this move, Putin effectively initiates a re-definition (and intensification) of nationalism:

Instead of the polite, non-ideological civic patriotism of the previous two decades, Putin was extolling chest-thumping nationalism, the martial virtues of sacrifice, discipline, loyalty and valour.50

Indeed, Clover argues that the “new ideas” made themselves “clearer . . . in March 2014, when Russian soldiers quietly seized airports and transportation choke points across Crimea, starting a domino effect that would lead to war in Eastern Ukraine.”51 Thus, Putin issues a direct challenge to any former Soviet republics that reject Russia’s claim to a sphere of influence.52

Similarly, in his 2014 Crimea speech, Putin sends the ultranationalists another signal. According to Ostrovsky, Putin “repeated, almost verbatim, the words that twenty years earlier had been published [in 1992] in the nationalist newspaper Den’ by Igor Shafarevich, one of the ideologists of Russian nationalism.”53 The quotation in question from the 2014 Crimea speech lays the groundwork for the argument of a shared historical and cultural unity:

Everything in Crimea speaks of our shared history and pride. This is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptised. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilisation and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.54

It was, in a sense, an acknowledgement that the nationalist path was also now Putin’s path. Ostrovsky continues:

The true symbolism of the annexation of Crimea was that Putin was reversing the course of history and elevating Russians to their past imperial glory—something that the nationalists and Communists had been dreaming about ever since 1991.55

CONCLUSION

Early in Putin’s 2018 Presidential Address, he declares Russia’s victorious emergence from transition:

We have gone through major challenging transformations, and were able to overcome new and extremely complex economic and social challenges, preserved the unity of our country, built a democratic society and set it on the path to freedom and independence. We ensured sustainability and stability in almost all areas of life.56

The notion of being on a path to independence is odd: independence from whom? In the current context, “independence” seems to us to suggest Russia’s-own development path, independent of foreign models or influence. Within that parameter, Russia must “strengthen democratic institutions,” “expand freedom,” and be open to new initiatives. “We must take ownership of our destiny,” he concludes.57

Major goals are presented as having been achieved: unity, stability, democracy. These are terministic victories of favored definitions that are now simply assumed and that serve as premises moving forward (e.g., “a democratic society” by definition will have freedom) more than anything related to genuine democratic transformations of Russian society or governance.

Putin’s view of freedom as instrumental implies that freedom is not a natural state but one that must be worked toward and is achieved incrementally. More typically, we believe, freedom is a state that occurs when the yoke of oppression is thrown off, and it is the organization of government that must be developed. Fareed Zakaria argues that true revolutions begin from below.58 Putin reverses the normal process, making freedom a gift from the government. Despite his narrative, he does not see the Russian people as the source of state authority.

Nevertheless, this operationalization of Russian “democracy” reveals the definitional shifts that have occurred through incorporation of the “power vertical” and infusion of the mythologized historical narrative of a culturally, spiritually, and linguistically united Russian nation.

Whereas in 2012 Putin described centuries-old Russia as “a multi-ethnic nation, a civilisation-state,” by 2019 he restructures his historical narrative, tightening his depiction of Russian continuity over a thousand years by conflating the Russian nation of previous constructions with the current Russian state:

Colleagues, Russia has been and always will be a sovereign and independent state. This is a given. It will either be that, or will simply cease to exist. We must clearly understand this. Without sovereignty, Russia cannot be a state. Some countries can do this, but not Russia.59 (emphasis added)

In this way, Putin lumps the USSR and the Russian Federation together as one continuous state. Given that Russia’s 1990 Declaration of Sovereignty was a pivotal step toward the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is simply historically fanciful to suggest Russia itself “has been and always will be a sovereign and independent state.” This conflation of a trans-border nation and the state cannot be heard comfortably by those in the Near Abroad who do not identify themselves as Russians.

David Cratis Williams is recently retired Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Florida Atlantic University. His scholarship focuses on argumentation, rhetorical theory, and criticism; he is a recognized authority on Kenneth Burke. His work on Russian political discourse began during a meeting in Russia in January 1992. Marilyn J. Young is the Wayne C. Minnick Professor of Communication Emerita at Florida State University. Her research has focused on political argument with an emphasis on the development of political rhetoric and argument in the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia. She remains an active scholar in retirement. Michael K. Launer is Professor Emeritus of Russian at Florida State University. In 1987 he interpreted for the first group of Soviet scientists visiting the United States following the Chernobyl nuclear accident. A State Department certified technical interpreter, he supported Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy assistance programs through 2012.

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