The Dark Carnival: Bakhtin and Ideology in Wartime Russia

Abstract

In this article, I explain how ideology in Russia’s war against Ukraine has been formulated within specific genres and discourses that are reminiscent of the carnivalesque. Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of carnival has often been used to conceptualise forms of democratic resistance to authoritarianism. Yet alternative readings have always questioned this notion of carnival as liberation, and instead present the Bakhtinian carnival as a potential space and time of violent lawlessness and transgression. I use these contested readings to argue that ideology in Russia’s war is articulated and enacted through the carnivalesque, using forms of transgressive humor, grotesque imagery, and profane language. I use evidence from Russian social media channels, broadcast media, official discourse, and cultural production to support this Bakhtinian framing. The carnivalesque framing of wartime ideology enables Russia to mobilise and demobilise different parts of society simultaneously. It permits social distancing from the war for the Russian public, and enables the leadership to blur and obfuscate ideological tenets, while legitimising the creation of a space of exception in Ukraine, in which transgressive practices are normalised. In this way, carnival is a highly effective discursive mechanism for the transition during wartime to a more consolidated ideological regime in Russia.