Russia's Cultural Statecraft ed. by Tuomas Firsberg and Sirke Mäkinen (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Russia's Cultural Statecraft ed. by Tuomas Firsberg and Sirke Mäkinen Muireann Maguire Russia's Cultural Statecraft. Ed. by Tuomas Firsberg and Sirke Mäkinen. (Studies in Contemporary Russia) Routledge: New York and Abingdon. 2022. £29.95. xiv + 250 pp. ISBN 978–0–367–69436–4. This timely, wide-ranging collection surveys Russian cultural influence in the twenty-first century. In their Introduction, co-editors Tuomas Firsberg and Sirke Mäkinen argue plausibly that Joseph Nye's distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' power is ambiguous and over-used, since 'power' is not necessarily achieved by cultural influence; another common term, 'cultural diplomacy' (as used in another recent edited volume, Louise Hardiman's Courtly Gifts and Cultural Diplomacy: Art, Material Culture, and British-Russian Relations (Paderborn: Brill, 2023)), is confusingly adjacent to high-level ambassadorial exchanges. Therefore Firsberg and Mäkinen propose 'cultural statecraft' as an alternative term for cultural activity undertaken to further a given state's reputation or interests, without any guaranteed goal or outcome. The latter clarification is necessary because, as this volume testifies, there are few cultural fields or political zones where Russian cultural statecraft has in fact attained lasting success (with the possible exception of participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, which Mari Pajala and Dean Vuletic, in their chapter, call 'Russia's biggest success story in popular music as cultural diplomacy' (p. 179)). Even in regions where Russian aesthetic and educational opportunities were once eagerly accepted by students and other consumers, such as Africa, India, and Latin America, this influence has waned drastically since the fall of the Soviet Union. As statistics presented by Sirke Mäkinen in her separate essay 'Higher Education as a Tool for Cultural Statecraft' show, more than half of the international students attending Russian universities are citizens of former Soviet nations: student recruitment from Africa and the Middle East has plunged to single percentage points, while European and North American recruitment is fractional. This is because Russia's academic and scientific reputation no longer outweighs its widespread (and objectively accurate) perception as corrupt, inefficient, and monolingual. Under Vladimir Putin, the Russian state has actively attempted to recapture global hearts and minds through new (often hybridized) processes. In the new global knowledge hierarchy, the ability to sow misinformation—through, for example, the Kremlin's infamous troll farms—is more effective than teaching Tolstoy to farmers in Timbuktu could ever be. Firsberg and Mäkinen's Introduction examines key milestones in this transformation: the launch of the Russia Today (RT) television news channel in 2005; the creation of the Russkii Mir Foundation, dedicated to sponsoring Russian language-learning and Russophone culture across the globe, in 2007; Putin's speech in Munich the same year challenging American cultural hegemony; the [End Page 649] launch of various neutrally named state-funded think tanks in overseas locations; and a 2014 document by the Culture Minister Vladimir Tolstoy (descendant of Leo) locating most human activities under the aegis of his own ministry: '"[Culture] includes moral values, broader public education, youth policy issues, and the kinds of cities and villages we live in. We have tried to take an all-encompassing approach […]"' (cited on p. 8). These words ring grimly accurate in the light of the forcible Russification of captured Ukrainian territory today. The eleven essays in Russia's Cultural Statecraft are case studies of how Putin's government has used various cultural fields more or less (usually less) successfully to gain geopolitical sway. The authors draw on many of the same sources (Nye and other scholars on 'soft power'; Kremlin state media for the pro-Putin perspective) and use similar methodological approaches (data analysis, including interviews with key cultural agents and with focus groups). The volume benefits from well- integrated cross-referencing. Lina Klimenko's piece on contested Soviet Second World War monuments in Eastern Europe provides a fascinating counterpoint to the current Western debate over the legitimacy of statues to slavers and colonists; remarkably, none of the statues of Soviet soldiers and patriots she describes has been significantly vandalized since this book went to print. In '"Russian Literature Will Fix Everything"', Angelos Theocharis describes recent state-funded initiatives to...