In Moscow's Shadows In Moscow's Shadows 243: Who Controls The Story In Russia?
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Apr 5, 2026 A tour through how narratives become battlegrounds in and around Russia. Street art, online trolling, and fantasy fandom are shown as arenas for control and resistance. Ethnographies from the Donbas reveal everyday survival under occupation. Accounts of occupation policies and militia politics unpack how power is delegated and stories are remade.
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Graffiti Becomes A Battleground For Public Meaning
- Graffiti is a contested public-text that both resists and is co-opted by state and corporate power in post-Soviet cities.
- Alexis Lerner's fieldwork shows street art shifts from revolutionary aesthetics to institutionalized, commercialized murals that still allow anonymous, subversive repurposing.
Hitler Moustaches Turn Official Murals Into Protest
- Mark Galeotti recounts an official mural of Donbass 'heroes' in Moscow that had Hitler moustaches added to every face.
- This simple defacement repurposed state art into a subversive political statement visible to passersby.
Putinism Uses And Delegitimizes The Internet Simultaneously
- The Russian state treats the internet as both a tool to shape narratives and as a denigrated space it claims is rotten and untrustworthy.
- Michael Gorham maps 'thin' witty elite trolling versus 'thick' crude provocations and how the Kremlin outsources influence to paid networks like IRA-style actors.
