Vera Tolz | The University of Manchester (original) (raw)

Papers by Vera Tolz

The last volume in this annual series chronicles the developments that led up to the abortive Aug... more The last volume in this annual series chronicles the developments that led up to the abortive August coup, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Post-Soviet Affairs

This article offers a qualitative analysis of how, by adopting identity-related discourses whose ... more This article offers a qualitative analysis of how, by adopting identity-related discourses whose meanings resonate within a given culture, Russian state propaganda strives to bolster “the truth status” of its Ukraine war claims. These discourses, we argue, have long historical lineages and thus are expected to be familiar to audiences. We identify three such discourses common in many contexts but with specific resonances in Russia, those of colonialism/decolonization, imperialism, and the imaginary West. The article demonstrates that these same discourses also inform war-related coverage in Russophone oppositional media. Russian state-affiliated and oppositional actors further share “floating signifiers,” particularly “the Russian people,” “historical Russia,” “the Russian world,” “Ukraine,” “fascism/Nazism,” and “genocide,” while according them radically different meanings. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of studying how state propaganda works at the level of discourses, and the acutely dialogical processes by which disinformation and counter-disinformation efforts are produced and consumed.

Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television

Russian Journal of Communication, 2013

reforms’ replace their personal life stories. This group of papers on hybrid autobiographies of t... more reforms’ replace their personal life stories. This group of papers on hybrid autobiographies of the nineteenth century was conceptually joined by the paper on the text written in the twentieth century, Sof’ja Tolstaja’s ‘My Life’, where the autobiography gives way to the memoirs of the author’s great husband (Roberta de Giorgi, Udine University). A quite representative corpus of papers dealt with autobiographical and biographical forms in twentieth-century Russia. A number of conference contributors discussed the pre-revolutionary period of Russian autobiography: journalists’ memoirs (Natal’ja Rodigina, Novosibirsk University, and Tat’jana Saburova, Omsk University); the combination of verbal and visual means as a ‘space of memory’ for symbolist and realist writers (Aleksej Cholikov, Lomonosov State University, Moscow); and the particularity of life-writing practices by Andrey Bely as a multi-dimensional autobiographer (Oleg Kling, Lomonosov State University, Moscow), as a serial autobiographer (Maria Levina-Parker, the Sorbonne), and as an autofictional writer (Claudia Criveller, Padova University). Hybrid genres, such as fictional memoirs or memorialistic fiction and the combination of autobiographical subjectivity with ‘social request’, in Russian prose of the 1920s–1930s, were examined by Francesca Lazzarin (Padova University) and Patrizia Deotto (Trieste University). Tolstoy’s autobiographical devices as projected onto RAPP aesthetics and socialist realism were discussed by Evgenij Dobrenko (Sheffield University). Exploration of the memoirs of the epoch of Stalin’s repressions was provided in the papers on the writings by escapees from Soviet camps (Andrea Gullotta, University ‘Ca’ Foscari’ of Venice) and on Vasilij Grossman (Pietro Tosco, Verona University). Il’ja Kukulin (the Higher School of Economics, Moscow) presented and analysed the highly innovative montage-like principles of autobiographical writing by Pavel Ulitin when compared with European and American experiments in autobiography. Particular international aspects of the ‘space of memory’ were addressed by Massimo Tria (Venice University) as illustrated by memoirs of Russian émigrés in Prague.

Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television, 2015

The Invention of Race, 2014

Nationalities Papers, 2017

This article analyzes official discourse of the nation during Vladimir Putin's third presiden... more This article analyzes official discourse of the nation during Vladimir Putin's third presidency, as reflected in Russian television coverage of Islam and migration. It argues that the replacement of earlier deliberately ambiguous definitions of Russian nationhood with clearly framed exclusive visions reflects the change in the regime's legitimation strategy from one based on economic performance to one based on its security record. In this context, the systematic promotion of Russian ethnonationalism for the purpose of achieving the regime's general stability began not at the time of Crimea's annexation, as it is often assumed, but at the time of Putin's reelection amidst public protests in 2012. The goal of representing the authorities as attentive to public grievances in a society where opinion polls register high levels of xenophobia has prompted state-controlled broadcasters to use ethnoracial definitions of the nation that they had previously avoided. The me...

In Nicolas Bancel Thomas David Et Dominic Thomas Editor L Invention De La Race Des Representations Scientifiques Aux Exhibitions Populaires Paris Editions La Decouverte 2014 P 147 164, 2014

The Demise of the USSR, 1995

The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, 2015