The Breakdown of Empathy: How Putin-Era Russian Propagandists Advocate Indifference as a Civic Virtue

A Lecture by Professor Anna Brodsky-Krotkina (Washington and Lee University)

Respondent: Professor Boris Lanin (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

18 April 2024 @ 3-4:15

Lyons Hall 202

Free and open to the public

Sponsored by the Eastern, Slavic, and German Studies Department, East European and Eurasian Studies Program, and the Office of the Dean of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences

PROPAGANDA in the USSR aimed at subverting common sense, fostered obedience, instilled fear of punishment, and, most importantly, called the citizens to action—to work and fight for the Soviet state and the Communist future as a common goal. Propaganda in Putin’s Russia owes a great deal to its Soviet roots. Yet, it differs in important aspects. While Soviet propaganda glorified the future, its modern offspring glorifies the past. The main goal of Putin-era Russian propaganda is keeping the citizens passive and preventing the development of unity among the people.

ANNA BRODSKY-KROTKINA was born in Moscow and earned her undergraduate degree in Art History from Moscow State University. She received her Ph.D. in Russian literature from Yale University, and shortly after graduating, she began teaching at Washington and Lee University, where she is Professor and Chair of the program in East European and Russian Studies. For over a decade after graduating from Yale, Brodsky devoted herself to the study of Russian literature of the 20th century, exploring the interconnection between literary texts and the political and historical reality of the time. She has written about authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, Liudmila Petrushevskaya, and Sasha Sokolov. In the early 2000s, she shifted her focus to concentrate on the war in Chechnya and the rise of nationalism in Russia. Her work included analyses of Russian soldiers' war memoirs and war songs, as well as the plight of Chechen refugees in Europe. She has worked with the Chechen community in France, and has reported on conditions there. Since 2011, in addition to her teaching, Brodsky-Krotkina has focused on journalism. From 2011 to 2020, she was a regular contributor to the Moscow-based newspaper Nezavisimaia Gazeta.  Since then, she has written for one of the main Ukrainian newspapers, Dzerkalo Тyzhnia, covering topics ranging from American politics to Russian propaganda.

BORIS LANIN was born in Baku and graduated with honors from Baku Slavic University in 1983. After mandatory service in the Soviet Army, Lanin received his Candidate of Philology Degree from Moscow Pedagogical University in 1990. After obtaining his Doctor’s Degree in Philology in 1994, Lanin served as a visiting professor at the Kennan Institute and later at the Woodrow Wilson Center (Washington, DC), the Institutes for Advanced Studies in Paris, Warsaw, Hokkaido, Stanford, Kobe, Osaka, Waseda (Tokyo), and Saitama University, Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg, at the Swedish Kollegium at Uppsala. Boris Lanin served as Head of Literature and Professor at the Academy of Education of Russia, and Professor of Russian Literature at State Theatre Academy of Russia (GITIS), Moscow. His textbooks in literature from the 5th to the 11th grades were being widely used at secondary schools in the Russian Federation. More than a million of copies of them had been sold by 2023, when they were banned for the political reasons. Professor Lanin is the author of over a hundred articles and over twenty books. He is a member of Scientific Board of the Grossman Center in Torino, Italy, and a Member of the European Society for Utopian Studies.