← New Books Network
New Books Network
Katharina Wiedlack, "Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
00:40:39
Loading summary
Transcript21 lines
- [00:00]
Depop Advertiser
Last night you spent two hours deciding what to wear to the party this morning. It'll take you two minutes to list it on Depop and make your money back. Just grab your phone, snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. The sheer dress and platform heels you'll never wear again? There's a birthday girl searching for them right now. Your one and done look is about to pay for your next night out, or at least the ride home. Your style can make you cash Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together.
- [00:57]
New Books Network Announcer
Shop now@palmolive.com hey NBN listeners, we're running our 2026 New Books Network Audience Survey, and we'd love just a few minutes of your time. NBN has been bringing you in depth conversations with authors and scholars for over 15 years. We haven't done a comprehensive audience survey since 2022, and a lot has changed since then. It's time to hear from you again. Here's why we're asking. We want to understand who's listening, what subjects and podcasts you love most, and where you'd like to see us grow. Your responses help us tell NBN's story to the publishers, libraries and institutions we partner with. When we can show that our listeners are serious readers, lifelong learners, and heavy library users, it opens doors to new partnerships, better resources, and ultimately a stronger NBN for everyone. And one more thing. If you leave your email address at the end of the survey, you'll be entered to win a $100 gift card to bookshop.org, a chance to stock up on books while supporting independent bookstores at the same time. The survey takes just five minutes. Your answers are confidential and your email will never be shared. Head to newbooksnetwork.com to take the survey today. We really appreciate your support. Now go take the survey.
- [02:15]
Amber Nichol
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello listeners. Welcome back to New Books Network. I'm Amber Nichol, the host of the channel, and today we are chatting with Katarina Vidlock about her most recent publication, Under Western Vulnerable Minorities in the Russian State in the New Cold War Cultures, which came out recently on Academic Studies Press. Katarina Vidlock is an assistant professor of Anglophone Cultural Studies in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on Russian American relations in literature and culture, entangled imperialisms, queer feminist activism, disability, racialization, gender and sexuality. Katerina, welcome to the channel.
- [03:03]
Katarina Vidlock
Thanks for having me.
- [03:04]
Amber Nichol
Your book spends a lot of time looking at how Russia gets represented in pop culture. I wanted to start with a bigger question. Why do you think popular culture matters so much when it comes to geopolitics?
- [03:16]
Katarina Vidlock
I think popular culture is extremely important because we learn from popular culture about contexts and countries and people that we probably never meet or never visit. And we often learn that unconsciously or we connect that kind of knowledge to things that we learned in school or that we learn from news. Now most people have an awareness that popular culture is not representing the reality, but. But still we can understand resemblances and we can understand that what is represented in a movie, for example, when it's. When it says it features Russian people, that it connects to something that we assume is real. And so I think most people learn a lot about all of these other cultures, and especially about Russian from films or from TV shows, from books and so forth. And I think that's important to interrogate. And I think with Anglophone media it's especially important because there's such a huge market for Anglophone media because English is a lingua franca for so many people also outside of the US or Britain and other countries where English is the first language. Right. So a lot of people around the world understand English and therefore also consume Anglophone media. Then also, of course, there is a monopoly of Anglophone media in concerning streaming services and all of that stuff. And of course this is all very much connected not only with capitalism, but also with the legacy of the empires, right, the British empires and what they left behind. And. And the same could be said also for Russian media, Russian Russophone or Russian speaking media. It also has a huge monopoly in the world or a widespread reach in the world. And for me, it was really interesting also to. To understand how those two spheres come together or those two popular culture players come together.
- [05:25]
Amber Nichol
One of your primary arguments as you're digging deeply into these representations of Russian ness, many of them false inside of popular culture, is that Western media can sometimes unintentionally echo or reinforce Russian state messaging. How exactly does that happen and what are the patterns that you illuminate in your book?
- [05:46]
Katarina Vidlock
I think There are a lot of reasons that this happens, that Western media, and especially Anglophone media reinforces Russian state narratives. One of the reasons is for sure fear mongering or this kind of like spectacular production of an enemy, especially in the news media, especially Putin, but also Russia as the enemy state is very much produced as, yeah, the, the main enemy of the world. And this is, yeah, he's or Putin is produced as such to, to create this idea that there is an identifiable source for, for a lot of problems, for a lot of oppression, war and so forth. Right. And this idea can then be transferred to other problems in the world. For EX 2016, there was a lot of emphasis on Russian manipulation of the electoral system or rather of the promotion of certain candidates in social media and media in general. Right. And there, there were some occurrences of hacking and espionage and things like that. But how it was presented in the media was really as this idea that Putin is personally interfering into the election. And then when the election result went as it went and Trump became president, it was very much seen as Trump east maturing candidate, the candidate that is really putting himself. And, and I think that that was done to a certain degree to create this idea that Trump is the wrong candidate, he shouldn't be the president, and to create this idea that something is going really badly. And I think it was easier to be presented with Putin behind all of these things. So I'm saying that not to minimize things like espionage or, or hacking attacks or something like that. This is really problematic. Right. And one should look into that. But the way it was presented, it was very much presented as Russia doing this, deciding single handedly what's happening in the US for example, and why this supported Russian narratives is because it really supported this idea that Putin is the strong leader, the strong man that has this kind of influence. And I think that was on the one hand side, it was a huge exaggeration, right. But it also supported that idea that Russia is relevant in the world, that Russia is a player in the world that can influence things. And Putin is really somebody who needs to be reckoned with. Right. And, and that is just one example how this happened. But even in comedy, when people, for example, much earlier, around 2007, started mocking those photos that Russian media circulated where Putin was riding a horse without a shirt on or was swimming, and you could see how athletic he is, how potent he is. And so even when Western media took those photos and made fun of them, they still supported this idea that Putin is somebody that needs to be noticed, that he is admired in Russia and other contexts. And this idea of potent masculinity was still somehow supported, even in an ironic way. And I think that also supported Russian discourses that said, oh, look how obsessed the west is with our presidents. And when in 2013, the anti gay propaganda law was implemented in Russia, the world once again looked at Russia and reported about this really horrible law. But they also amplified the discourses around them, and there was a lot of attention on Russia once again. And that made a lot of the homophobic voices coming out of Russia much louder than they had initially been. And. And by doing that, of course, they created Western media, created attention for a problematic law, but they also created a lot of attention for the problematic ideologies and discourses behind that. And I think that also. And also the way how Western media did that, by scolding Russia or saying, oh, you're going in the wrong direction. You're backwards war. This is anti Western. They supported these ideas within Russia that, that were very noticeable before, but then I think that that amplified, got louder that said, yeah, we want to be. We don't want to be dictated by the west, what we have to do. And. And that supported, of course, these like, anti Western homophobic discourses, but also very. Yeah, everything that's called. It's known as traditional values. They became this, like, additional attractiveness, I think, because the west was scolding or was. Yeah. Pointing out that. That all of these discourses are regressive in the Western eyes. And. Yeah.
- [11:12]
Amber Nichol
So I want to drill down a little bit on what you just pointed out, which is quite a bit of, kind of overlapping phenomena. One of the things that really drew me in the text was the way that you addressed the. What you call the Russian LGBTQ martyrs. And I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how Western media in particular has helped create this idea and what purpose this kind of narrative serves for Western audiences and what gets left out of that larger story when we tap into this trope or enable this type of trope.
- [11:47]
Katarina Vidlock
Yeah, thank you for this question. I think what I identify as the Russian queer martyrs or gay martyrs is a good phenomenon to analyze when we, as an example, how these media processes worked and how, yeah, Western empathy or this idea of support supported problematic things, problematic discourses that came out of Russia and left out a lot of things. So what happened was that when this or around the time when the anti gay propaganda law was implemented in Russia, Western media started focusing much more on Russia than before and started noticing public violence in Public against gay men. For example. For example, in the context of St. Petersburg prides that were staged and were young men who protested in the street. Yeah. Were beaten or assaulted. And these occasions had been there before, occasionally. Although prides were never a big thing in Russia in the first place for various reasons. But Western media became. Started paying attention to those things because they looked familiar. Right. Because in the US at that time, pride was no longer something outrageous, it was something very familiar. It also had a history, a particular history in the US and other Western countries. And so it was something that drew attention from Western media, especially in this context, where there was already this law that everybody was criticizing rightfully and where there. These ideas circulated about Russia is violent against gay people, not only physically, but also through legal means and discourses. And. And the men that were violated in these events fit really nicely into the expectations of Western media. So they seem to be the embodiment of, or the champions of progress, modernity, development, everything that, yeah, Western media at that time connected with queer acceptance, gay inclusion and things like that. And they were seen as these, yeah, perfect, perfect subjects, but also perfect victims. And I call them, I call this process LGBT create, the creation of LGBT martyrs. And I argue that they were really seen as sacred bodies because then you don't have to critically interrogate them. So Western media didn't have to closely analyze what their actions really were in Saint Petersburg at this pride, for example, what the risks were that they willingly took. They could just present them as these innocent figures, so to speak, that. That were. That didn't provoke or. Or didn't produce the situations or co. Produce the situations that they were in. And I think that missed a lot of the strategies of people on the ground in St. Petersburg who very much knew what they were getting into. So it took away their agency to a lot of. To some degree. And it also completely missed the internal discussions in the queer communities and activist communities on the ground that were debating if this kind of visibility that we know from the west through prides and stuff like that, if that is even appropriate in the situation for Russia. So Western media didn't have to deal with all of these things because they automatically assumed that. That these queer subjects should be visible. Because in the west this was the strategy to. To get to some acceptance and inclusion. Yeah. So I hope I already answered a little bit what was missed. What I identified there was this logic of sameness, of recognizability that Western media, yeah, was driven by. And what I criticize about it is that it really supported white, male, mostly male, rather privileged Russian people and activists. And it projected ideas about LGBTIQ visibility and liberation and the identities that are connected to these ideas onto the Russian activists or the Russian people in general. And, and it focused only on those occurrences of violence that, that they're very. That were very visible and in the public or legally supported. And it missed a lot of other things that suppressed Russian LGBTs, but also they completely missed that Russian LGBTs were part and are still part of the society. And of course now it's getting, the space is getting smaller and smaller, but at that point in time, there was still a queer scene in Russia. There were people who gathered, who had lives. And this visibility that was created by the west really supported the homophobia that came from the Russian state and that came from the legislation. It drew the attention to this marginalized group. And I think that's was also part while why the spaces shrunk and why the state spawns at homophobia and transphobia. Yeah, was became such a core point in the Russian discourses, anti Western discourses.
- [17:50]
Amber Nichol
In every single chapter, you really take up this flattening of communities that is done via popular culture or of entities or personalities. And one of the big personalities that you take up is of course, Putin himself. One of your chapters actually asks, quote, is Putin a mad king? End quote. Why do you think Western media is so drawn to framing Putin through psychological explanations or exaggerated hyper masculine stereotypes like the one you talked about before the Putin on a horse or as I recently saw him, on a bear?
- [18:27]
Katarina Vidlock
I think one aspect that I already mentioned is because this kind of portrayal simplifies things very. Yeah, very much. And makes them easily identifiable and easy to communicate. This idea of Putin as the mad king also draws on ableist and patriarchal ideas and a repertoire that is just very quickly recognizable. Right? Yeah, it's easy to communicate. And I think in our today's media landscape, this is very much preferred because of how we now consume media. We don't have time, even in the news media, we don't have time anymore to go into details. Everything has to be really quick and preferably audio, visually supported. So I think simplification is one really important aspect here. But also this idea that if you have an authoritarian leader like Mad King, so you don't only excuse the madness by saying, yeah, it's just an individual that that kind of like psycho has a psychological problem, but you also identify an enemy that you could potentially remove easily. Right. Because if you would say, oh, it's not just one person It's a whole network. It's a system that has a long history. Then it would become much more difficult to find a solution. So it's not only about shifting blame, but I think it's also this psychological effect of you have the single person that you could potentially remove, Right. And, yeah, you identify a clear enemy and. And you become understandable to people. And I think why this is also so important, or to unpack in the case of Putin and Russia, is because Russia is an empire. And a lot of the things that happen, or all of them, basically have a lot to do with Russian imperialism and this idea of superiority. But we also have to understand that the US Is also an empire that is also interested in confirming Western superiority or US Superiority. And we see this very clearly what's happening right now in the US that this imperial influence is systemic and that individual people can draw on it, can activate or can lean on it or into it easily. So by seeing it on both sides, we have to complicate everything quite a lot and see how these two imperialisms are entangled. And that's really what I'm trying to do with my media analysis, just looking at media and understanding how media is involved in these processes and complicate what we see there.
- [21:32]
Amber Nichol
Arguably, my favorite chapter in the text was the chapter that talked about Pussy Riot, just because I've been enamored with them for some time. But I also enjoyed the fact that it really forced me to challenge some of my own assumptions about Pussy Riot in your argument. It shows up as a major symbol in the way that Western audiences understand Russian feminism. What does Western media want Pussy Riot to stand for, and why does Western media need it to stand for this so much?
- [22:02]
Katarina Vidlock
I think Pussy Riot drew the attention of Western media at that particular moment when they emerged, because they were spectacular. They were really noticeable. They stood out in this context. And the context in 2011, 2012, when they emerged, was that there. There was actually a lot going on in terms of protest in Russia. Right. It was the time that we now call the Snow Revolution, where many people, yeah, from different political angles, criticized the government, criticized Putin, were really against the changes in the legislation that allowed him to run again for president and so forth. So they were not an isolated phenomenon, but I think they stood out through their rather spectacular activism, and that this activism was also really leaning into the social media, audio, visual landscape. So it was also an activism that could be seen even retrospectively. Right. So I think that played also a really big role. Why their activism circulated so much and drew so much attention. On the one hand, side, they stood out, but on the other hand, I think they also offered something to. Especially to us pop culture or US onlookers, but more broadly, maybe to Westerners that was recognizable. And because they seem to represent the. Something that. That was part of the third wave feminism in the US Right, The Riot Girl, the punk rock activists that gave punk rock a feminist spin. And they were very much read as. As something that had been in us, a part of US Pop culture already in the past. And a lot of people in the US could relate to Pussy Riot or they thought they could relate to what they were doing. They thought they understood the forms that they were using. And I think to some degree, they were also right, because Pussy Riot, yeah, partly drew on those forms of Riot Girl and Punk Rob, but they connected it to a lot of other things that were much more rooted in Russian activism. And they were also emerging out of Vayner, this group of actionists in Moscow. And so I think Western media missed all of that. But it was also not that important because what they became because of the persecution and the really harsh sentence at that time for feminist activism again offered them up as ideal subjects of modernity. Yeah, Young, beautiful women that could be seen as standing for everything that the west represents. That there was also this idea of Western superiority, Right? And Pussy Riot were seen as these young women that wanted to be. That wanted to have a situation that is similar to the West. They wanted to have gender equality. They wanted to have the inclusion of gays and lesbians. So they became the model modern subjects. And at the same time, they were also. These figures were. Russia could again be criticized for moving backwards, for being cruel, for cracking down on activism and all of these things. And that these three women in particular, and also to some degree, Ekaterina Samusievic, that they were very well spoken and very educated. That also helped because, yeah, again, they were seen as these very enlightened figures that. That kind of stood against this very dark, authoritarian regime of Putin. And. And what was so interesting for me in the case of pussyrat was that not only news media became really in arm, in armor with them, but also the counterculture. And that was fascinating to me because I also did a lot of research into Riot Girl groups and punk. Punk groups in general and punk act activism. And I. I had never seen that those countercultures agreed so much with the mainstream culture. But in the case of Pussy Riot, it was, yeah, they really very much agreed on the perspectives. And. And I Think part of it was also because their culture, which was very much connected to the 1990s and early 2000s, all of a sudden became extremely relevant again. And then I think that that helped. And of course, everybody was outraged about the harsh sentencing of Pussy Riots. So there is no question about that, that the Russian authorities really also projected a lot onto Pussy Ride and made a case out of them to show how they cracked down on activism and on resistance and things like that. But again, it was this point of conjuncture of Western interests and Russian interests. Yeah. And I. I started analyzing how also pop culture, broader pop culture, like Madonna or the Chili Peppers, all of these, like really world famous people, took up Pussy Riot's case and started doing solidarity actions for them. And in doing so, producing a lot of very problematic discourses, especially Madonna, she produced very problematic discourses about how free the US Is and how everybody is free in the US and how she only realized when engaging with Pussy Riot that she was so lucky to live in the US and that is, of course, also really problematic because not everybody is free in the U.S. right. Racialized communities, indigenous communities have, yeah, have never been as free as a white affluent person. By looking at Pussy Riot and looking at Russia, all of these internal nuances and problematic things seem to disappear. And yeah, I was really interested in that because it seemed to. It seemed a very clear case for me of what poster decolonial scholars have called colonial a new. A kind of new colonial imperialism that is, that works in favor of queer communities or queer issues and of course, women and other marginalized groups, but does the same kind of exclusion or oppression to other people at its core, as
- [29:02]
Amber Nichol
you've illuminated through this discussion, your book really links cultural ideas about gender and sexuality to the politics of empire, and through that also to the politics of war. How do these cultural narratives help lay the groundwork for things like Russia's ideological justification of its war against Ukraine?
- [29:26]
Katarina Vidlock
To start answering your question, I have to say that I lean heavily on political scientists work and the work of people from Russian studies who have analyzed how the question of LGBTIQ rights and questions around feminism, but also, more broadly speaking, gender roles and sexuality, how they factor in the Russian political landscape and how the militarization of the Russian society that started quite a while ago needs those traditional gender roles. Traditional is the term that, of course, Russian media also prefers. I would say patriotism, patriarchal gender norms, misogynistic ideas. So militarized societies, and Russia is definitely one of them, needs these clear gender roles to legitimize a lot of violence, gender based violence that is also part of warfare and all of these things. So I can lean on my, my colleagues work really has yeah in the last 20 years really have analyzed how all of these ideas serve the militarization of Russia and this idea of Russia as this political player in the world as strong force that also the west has to reckon with. And how all of these ideas are also very much connected to an anti Western discourse that partly even understands Russia as these, this decolonial force that decolonizes other spheres from the Western influence. And so what I do, I look at how first of all media transports these ideas, but also how Western media and Russian media like co produce these ideas and where they support co construct each other. And so what I became really interested in is how debates about LGBTIQ rights and feminism became this important factor in, in the report in the Western reporting about the war in Ukraine. And I noticed that liberal Western media love to report on the queer Ukrainian tropes troops. I'm sorry that were there were there are some troops that, that use the green unicorn on the, on their uniforms to signify queer inclusion or gay inclusion. And Western media love these troops of course because they seem to signify that Ukraine is defending Western progress, Western values. And on the other hand Russia again becomes seen as this danger to Western values. And we could also see the. During the progression of the war, Ukraine also supported this idea idea by changing some of the laws and yeah, creating some very queer or yeah gay inclusion laws in terms of partnerships and things like that. But the, the idea that was created was that Ukraine is per se a Western sphere because it includes gays and lesbians and supports gays and lesbians and queer people in general. And of course that's not necessarily the truth. Right. Because Ukraine is also an increasingly militarizing society. And of course any militarizing society, and especially when it's at war, there is gender based violence. And we have a lot of sociological studies that show very clearly that situations of war always create gendered violence and amplify the yeah, patriarchal ideas of gender roles and things like that. And that we have women in the armed forces does not work against these ideas necessarily. And so we have a lot of things happening at the same time in Ukraine. But the Western idea is that Ukraine is defending queer inclusion and is a very homophile or queer friendly society and missing again all of these nuances. And at the same time creating this idea that Ukraine needs to be supported because Ukraine wants to be like the west and wants to defend the West. And I think this misses a lot of nuances, of course, but it also misses this idea that Ukraine is a sovereign state that defends itself on its own right and also defends itself from a long, historically supported Russian imperialism. And what these discourses also did is it also supports, again, this idea of white victims, and it creates these racialized ideas about the enemy. And I think the one instance, one event where this became really noticeable was when the reporting started, the Western reporting started about the bucha massacre in April 2022, and when these discourses that came out of Russia, this myth that ethnic Buryats had done these atrocities when they were taken up in the west, then for me, it became very clear how this idea of white Western superiority now also included Ukraine and how to mark the enemy, the enemy had to be additionally racialized. And the irony in that case, and that's my point that I want to make, was that these racist ideas came out of Russia and they were amplified by Western media. And of course, the Free Buryatia foundation and other groups coming partly from the west, but also from Russia, immediately started debunking this myth. But it was really stubborn. And as we know, it even reached the Pope, who amplified this idea and then connected it also to Chechens and said burials and Chechens to creating the most atrocious, heinous crimes and so forth. And yeah, and I think again, again dismissed not only Western imperialism, but it also missed the Russian imperialism that also has an interest in racializing its own other, the indigenous population that is historically suppressed. Right. Because Russia is a settler colonial state that oppresses and suppresses all kinds of minorities and wants to create also this idea of white superiority, Russian superiority. Right. I hope this was somehow clear, the point that I wanted to make. But I'm. I'm really interested in how all of these imperialisms come together and. And I try to. Yeah. Unpack them and make visible what exactly comes together here.
- [36:58]
Amber Nichol
We have taken up quite a bit of your time today, so I want to wrap up our interview with my traditional New Books Network closing question, which is, what are you working on now?
- [37:09]
Katarina Vidlock
Yeah, right now I try to again, focus on this intersection, this entanglement of Russian and American imperialism. But I look at the 19th century, and I'm very much interested in Alaska as one sphere where the Russian colonial rule was replaced by the American colonial rule and how this. This worked in the first place and what kind of remnants or leftovers of Russian imperialism and coloniality we can find in Alaska today and how it shapes people in the region. So that. That is one of the case studies, so to speak, Alaska, where I want to look at these entanglements, but I also want to look at other, what I call peripheral spaces. And by peripheral, I don't mean that they are not important. I think they're really important, but they are not at the center of US Self understanding or US culture. And so one of the other spaces is, for example, early women's rights activism and how US Women engaged with Russian. What was happening in Russia, Russian revolutionaries and Russian thought. And then the third area is how black intellectuals, already in the early 19th century, were interested in Russia and Russian society and partly visited Russia or spent longer times in Russia and how they were interested in, yeah, ways of. Or other ways of understanding race and racial relationship. And I think a lot that happened in the 19th century has still some echoes in today's culture. And I think this myth of Russia as a raceless society, just because it was not involved in the transatlantic slave trade, it resonates till today. And I try to unpack that and look into what it really means.
- [39:22]
Amber Nichol
All of this sounds amazing. I'm particularly interested in a piece that directly challenges Russia as a raceless society. So I will certainly be reading that once it comes out. But thank you so much for joining us on new books in Eastern Europe today.
- [39:38]
Katarina Vidlock
Katarina, thank you so much for having me. It was my pleasure.
- [39:41]
Amber Nichol
And for the listeners out there, if today's discussion piqued your interest, you can pick up a copy of Katerina Vigorak's Under Western Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in the New Cold War Cultures directly from Academic Studies Press, or you can order it from your local bookstore.