The Real in its extreme violence as the price to be paid for peeling off the deceptive layers of reality.¹

Portable video cameras became widely accessible in the 1980s, making children born in the 1990s the first generation whose childhoods were extensively documented on video. In Russia, this period coincided with profound political, cultural, and economic change. My father bought a Sony camcorder with his salary as a captain in the Russian Navy, creating a family archive that later became the basis of my project.

I began working with this footage shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, seeking to establish a cross-generational dialogue. The resulting film-essay, Crimean Childhood Around 2000, follows the experiences of a child growing up at the intersection of Russian and Ukrainian cultural identities. Through this perspective, it explores the hidden narratives that shape contemporary Russian propaganda.

Following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I was fortunate enough to be reunited with my old art tutors—art collective Chto Delat?. 

March 26, 2022.
As it happened, on that day, many people gathered together in one place. Chto Delat? have always had an incredible gift for bringing together very different people. We sat at a huge table at HKW and tried, together, to talk through and articulate the trauma we were all experiencing at that moment. At one point, Oxana Timofeeva remarked that her experiences, particularly in her relationship with her mother, reminded her of a scene that Slavoj Žižek uses to illustrate ideological rupture in Welcome to the Desert of the Real.

Žižek uses Morpheus’s famous line from the film The Matrix, when Keanu Reeves’s character awakens in “real reality” and sees a desert landscape littered with burnt-out ruins—what remains of Chicago after a global war. With this scene, Žižek illustrates the moment of climax in which familiar symbolic reality collapses, exposing the terrifying nakedness of real existence.² Following February 24, 2022, it became clear that the historical trauma experienced by many Russians is primarily linked to the collapse of their ideological reality and the exposure of the very desert of the Real.

Generation “П”

The generation that had already lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union had experienced a similar ideological rupture before. Timofeeva herself describes it as follows:

When I was at school, there was a breakdown. [...] In the summer, there were large-scale political events—the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and we found ourselves in ‘Russia,’ in a completely different state. We went on vacation in the spring, and at school we were still pioneers and walked around with red badges and ties. We sang the anthem of the Soviet Union, and we were taught that Lenin was great; the revolution had liberated mankind and nations [...]. Then we came back to school and there were no more badges and ties, and the same history teachers told us that Lenin was a bloodthirsty madman, a sick man who only craved blood (for some reason there was not so much focus on Stalin as on Lenin) and that Bolshevism was a terrible thing, communism was a terrible thing. And that now we would live in a new democratic country, which was now called Russia. There was no Soviet Union anymore.³

The fact is that ideology was an important part of the Soviet state, since one of the ideas behind this new socialist project was precisely the creation of a universal ideological space. Propaganda, meanwhile, was a vital tool in achieving this goal. Therefore, at a very early stage in the formation of the Soviet state (in 1920) the Department for Agitation and Propaganda was established, later known as Agitprop. This department existed until the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the Stalin era, propaganda shifted its focus from educating the masses toward promoting a total⁴ theological worldview in which Stalin was assigned the role of  “the demiurge.” Underlying this ideological discourse was the goal of  “Communism,”⁵ whereas the real aim of propaganda was to reinforce the narrative of the Communist party’s unconditional righteousness and the state’s all-encompassing power.

Boris Groys describes how, following Joseph Stalin’s death, the ideological reality of the Soviet citizen began to crumble and deteriorate, and how this subsequently manifested itself in anti-utopian and post-ideological forms of art, such as the works of Dmitry Bulatov.⁶ The late Soviet ideological shift is incisively analysed by Alexei Yurchak in Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Yurchak describes the ideological breakdown that occurred after Stalin’s death through Lefort’s Paradox:

To fulfill its political function of reproducing power, the ideological discourse must claim to represent an ‘objective truth’ that exists outside of it[...]. This inherent contradiction of any version of modern ideology, argues Lefort, can be concealed only by the figure of the ‘master,’ who, by being presented as standing outside ideological discourse and possessing external knowledge of the objective truth, temporarily conceals the contradiction by allowing it ‘to appear through himself.’⁷

After Stalin’s death, amid de-Stalinisation and the collapse of the cult of personality, the authoritative figure (master) was lost, while the ideological landscape remained largely unchanged. This produced a widening gap between lived reality and official ideology, leading to an ideological crisis. As a result, discourse and ritual came to matter more than meaning, and ideology assumed a largely performative character.⁸

Yurchak highlights the paradox that, despite the performative nature of late Soviet ideology, the collapse of the Union was unexpected and painful for the entire last Soviet generation. The reaction to this ideological collapse was a profound crisis of subjectivity among the post-Soviet individuals. Indeed, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, political strategists and figures⁹ were tasked with the major project of forging an identity and a new ideological landscape for Russia, a country that had never existed in that form before.

One of the most pressing demands of the elites during this period was the development of a new model of national identity and official culture. Groys captured this need particularly well, even devoting an entire book of essays to the subject: Die Erfindung Russlands (trans.: The Invention of Russia). Groys writes: “In today’s Russia, people find themselves, in a sense, in the midst of a vast void from which they must create or invent something—a task that is beyond human capabilities.”¹⁰ 

Groys refers to Russia’s previous historical experience and asserts that such a historical necessity is not arising in the country for the first time. At the heart of this new self-identity lies an old cultural principle. Groys writes:

Throughout its history, Russia has unequivocally defined itself in relation to the West [...]. However, ‘in relation to the West’ here by no means implies ‘through self-identification with the West’. Rather, Russia constantly sees itself in a wholly conscious opposition to the West, whilst utilising certain elements of Western culture itself for this purpose. The fact is that Russia has no cultural tradition that would be ‘other’ [...] Rather, Russian culture repeatedly reinvents itself as ‘other’ in relation to the West, by adopting, assimilating and transforming oppositional, alternative currents within Western culture itself—which form an integral part of that culture—and then directing them against the West as a whole.”¹¹

Groys identifies one of the key borrowings as the idea of communism, which originally emerged as a Western alternative political and economic discourse. Russia appropriated this discourse, universalised it, and thereby positioned itself in active opposition to Western capitalist projects. However, this borrowing proved paradoxical, since “By establishing the communist ideal within its own borders, Russia has asserted the same imperialist claim as Western, capitalist, economic imperialism.”¹² Groys writes: “Russia seeks both connection with and opposition to the West; it adopts Western ways in order to better oppose them—and at the same time, it falls in love with Western dreams in order to make them its own.”¹³

Another key element of contemporary Russian identity is, paradoxically, postcolonial rhetoric—the claim that the West has long oppressed the rest of the world, while Russia, inheriting the Soviet mission, stands in opposition to this expansion and offers an alternative. Historically, Russia has occupied a distinctive colonial position.

“Orientalist constructs in this case turn out not only to be more complex but also to be built on the principle of double mirror reflections, on the copying of Western Orientalism with a slight deviation and, necessarily, with a carefully hidden, often unconscious feeling that Russia itself is a form of a mystical and mythical Orient for the West. As a result, both mirrors—the one turned towards the colonies and the one turned by Europe towards Russia itself—appear to be distorting mirrors that create a specific, unstable sensibility among Russian intellectuals, writers and artists. This can be defined as a balancing act between the role of object and that of subject in an epistemic and existential sense.”¹⁴

The post-Soviet postcolonial theorist Madina Tlostanova argues that thanks to this distinctive feature of the Russian context, Russia has managed to develop its own type of colonialism, which encompasses simultaneously the subjectivities of both the coloniser and the colonised. Despite its postcolonial mission, broadcast to the whole world, Russia demonstrates striking hypocrisy: for it itself operates within a colonial logic in relation to its former non-Western ‘colonies,’ such as the countries of Central Asia.¹⁵ 

So, on what, then, has this new cultural identity of Russia begun to be built? Apart from the ideas absorbed from post-colonial discourse and neo-colonialism, globalism, Western capitalist and economic imperialism, the free market, façade democratic systems, as well as the revived narratives and ideas of the Russian Empire? Paradoxically, it was the upheaval of the 1990s that brought nationalism to post-Soviet Russia. 

Unified national identity, which, in the classical Western sense, was absent in the Soviet Union: in its place, there was Soviet patriotism. In Soviet ideology, nationalism was regarded as a relic of the past, unproductive for the construction of proletarian internationalism.¹⁶ One of the most important features of Russian national identity, as Groys himself writes, was “non-identity.”¹⁷ Therefore, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian elites also faced the need to formulate a certain performative nationalism in order to project it to the West.¹⁸ As in another novel by Viktor Pelevin, Babylon (rus.: Generation “П”)¹⁹ Babylen Tatarsky, a representative of the first generation of Russian marketing experts, receives a commission to develop a Russian idea from the criminal Vovchik (Wee Vova), with the aim of promoting it to the Western market. It was through this paradoxical process that a new Russian national idea began to take shape in the late 1990s.

While radical Russian nationalism was initially alien to the Russian context, Vladislav Surkov (“the Kremlin’s grey cardinal”) helped popularise nationalist rhetoric in the early 2000s as a tool of social consolidation around the Kremlin, especially among the intelligentsia and youth. An important project of Surkov’s was the creation of various loyalist youth movements of a pro-government and nationalist nature, the best known of which is the Nashi movement.²⁰ Although the movement was initially presented as anti-fascist, ultimately, only those who opposed the authorities were labelled as such. 

A distinctive feature of Nashi, in contrast to far-right organisations, was that it was founded on a form of pro-government “state nationalism” centred on patriotism and support for the ruling authorities, later extended to the wider population. Despite its new forms, it retained a core loyalty to the state inherited from Soviet patriotism. And this new nationalism serves, first and foremost, to preserve Putin’s Eternal State, for at the heart of its rhetoric lies precisely “trust” in the current political authorities,²¹ which determines one’s belonging to the nation (the entire opposition are being labelled either foreign agents or a fifth column).

What lay at the heart of this new ideological landscape that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union was a blend of cynicism, postmodern irony, and linguistic play. Radical scepticism often slipped into conspiracy theories, while the phrase “the truth is not so clear-cut” came to be used to deflect criticism. The very notion of truth was undermined and replaced by formulations such as “we do not know the whole truth.” Ideological pluralism and critical tools were increasingly instrumentalised in accordance with the interests of political and economic elites. Consequently, ideas and theoretical frameworks could easily be inverted or reinterpreted to serve the interests of those in power.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the modernist naivety (namely, the belief in a better, universal future) of my parents’ generation (or as Pilevin called it “Generation П”²²) gave way to cynicism. A common response to political and social change was straightforward apoliticism and a capitalist fixation on accumulation, alongside a desire to stabilise a small but firmly personal world. Generation П relinquished its political agency in exchange for stability, perceived security, capitalist freedom, and comfort.²³

Žižek (along with Peter Sloterdijk) identifies cynicism as one of the key phenomena of contemporary ideology, in which the subject of ideology (the cynical subject) is aware of the distance between the ideological mask and social reality, yet nevertheless continues to act as if the mask were true. As Žižek puts it: “Оne knows the falsehood very well, one is well aware of a particular interest hidden behind an ideological universality, but still one does not renounce it.”²⁴ Similarly, in contemporary Russia, the ideological subject, while recognising the constructed nature of official ideology, submits to the disciplinary apparatus in exchange for stability and the preservation of order, thereby securing a space for economic freedom.

Fully Identifying Oneself with the Fantasy

The year of my birth coincided with the first presidential elections in the Russian Federation.²⁵ But beyond that, it also coincided with the beginning of the formation of the national and cultural narratives of a country emerging from a socialist past into a capitalist future. I grew up alongside the ideology and new national identity of the Russian state project, which began as a democratic and capitalist paradise but ultimately slipped into ordinary Nashism.

Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology is known for demonstrating that ideology constitutes a material practice that shapes the fabric of our reality.²⁶ Althusser argued that power relies on ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) (a system of institutions such as schools, the church, the family and the media) which shape values and “natural” conceptions of the world. In doing so, they encourage people to voluntarily submit to the dominant ideology, ensuring the reproduction of the capitalist system and the stability of power. Althusser demonstrated how ideological narratives are readily accepted as self-evident truths. However, according to Žižek, ideology is revealed during moments of major social upheaval (he cites 9/11 and the sinking of the Titanic as examples²⁷). Žižek writes: “One can thus categorically assert the existence of ideology qua generative matrix that regulates the relationship between visible and non-visible, between imaginable and non-imaginable, as well as the changes in this relationship.”²⁸ 

At the heart of Althusser’s understanding of ideology lies the concept of the subject, where ideology is only “by the subject and for subjects.”²⁹ According to Althusser, ISAs function as the mechanism through which individuals are subjectivised, acquiring name and autonomy alongside recognition of rules and forms of subordination. Ideology thus represents the imaginary positioning of individuals as subjects within it. It “acts” or “functions” by “recruiting” subjects among individuals.

According to Althusser, a critique of ideology “is an ideological idea par excellence.”³⁰ However, Slavoj Žižek has developed a framework for ideological critique, building on Althusser’s theory and incorporating Lacanian psychoanalysis. Its aim is not only to expose the structures that form the subject, but also to change “the repressive libidinal structure.”³¹ Žižek writes:

In our daily existence, we are immersed in ‘reality’ (structured and supported by the fantasy), and this immersion is disturbed by symptoms which bear witness to the fact that another, repressed, level of our psyche resists this immersion. To ‘traverse the fantasy’ therefore, paradoxically, means fully identifying oneself with the fantasy—namely, with the fantasy which structures the excess that resists our immersion in daily reality.³²

According to Žižek, ideological critique primarily involves recognising oneself as a subject of ideology. He argues that critique should reveal how ideology shapes our experience rather than merely analysing its content. Therefore, we can conclude that ideological critique requires a personal dimension—one that involves “identifying with the fantasy” by examining how this “fantasy” permeates all spheres of life, including language, imagination, everyday life and childhood.³³

Analysing the potential of art for ideological critique within the framework of Althusser’s theory, Robert Pfaller notes that art (like science) has the potential to establish a distance from ideology: “art ‘makes us perceive,’ ‘makes us feel’ or ‘see’ ideology, ‘from the inside.’”³⁴ The distinctive feature of art lies precisely in the fact that it “deals with ideology on ideology’s own ground.”³⁵ The distinguishing characteristic of art is its capacity to transcend ideology “from within,” this “means that art is able to destroy an existing ideology and replace it with a new one. Art can establish a new imaginary relationship of individuals toward their real conditions of existence.”³⁶

In other words, art not only enables ideological critique but can also produce new meanings and reconfigure the conditions through which subjects engage with reality. It can both expose the gap between the Real and our experience and generate alternative ideological constructs that elude state-enforced ideology.

After the outbreak of the war, I was able to experience how the rapture between the Real and its symbolisation feels, and how ideology itself becomes visible. Observing the development of propaganda narratives, I discovered their echoes within my own judgements and thoughts, despite previously believing that I possessed autonomy. It became important for me to understand how I identify with ‘my’ state and how this state has shaped my subjectivity and perception. 

I decided to start by examining my experience of growing up in Russian society, as well as analysing relationships within my family. This became the central theme of my film-essay. I aimed to understand how broader historical, political, and propagandistic narratives shaped our reality, permeated my childhood, and became embedded in our everyday life as a family. My goal was to make visible the structures that shaped my worldview and to critically distance myself from them. In order to achieve this, I immersed myself in this ideological discourse—this ‘fantasy’—so that I could ultimately expose it.

Footnotes

1. Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates, London: Verso, 2007, pp. 6–7. ↑

2. Ibid., p. 15. ↑

3. Oksana Timofeeva, “❋❋❋ ❋❋❋❋❋.,” Umbau Journal, May 4, 2022, https://umbau.hfg-karlsruhe.de/posts/oxana-timofeeva-in-conversation-with-anastasiia-bergalievich, accessed June 4, 2026. ↑

4. In The Total Art of Stalinism, Boris Groys writes about the total nature of Stalin’s project. He argues that Stalin succeeded in creating a total work of art based on the Soviet project. At the same time, Groys maintains that Stalin’s project was a direct continuation of the avant-garde movement and its characteristic universalist utopianism. ↑

5. Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 117. ↑

6. Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 81–84. ↑

7. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, p. 10. ↑

8. Ibid., pp. 24–26. ↑

9. Key figures include Vladislav Surkov, Vyacheslav Volodin, Sergei Kirienko and Vladimir Medinsky, as well as political scientists and advisers such as Gleb Pavlovsky (formerly), Alexei Chesnakov and Andrei Ignatiev. ↑

10. Boris Groys, Die Erfindung Rußlands, Berlin: Hanser, 1995, p. 7. “So stehen die Menschen im heutigen Rußland in gewissem Sinne inmitten des großen Nichts, aus dem sie etwas schaffen oder erdichten müssen – keine den menschlichen Kräften angemessene Aufgabe.” (translated by the author). ↑

11. Ibid.,p. 8. “Dabei definiert sich Rußland während seiner ganzen Geschichte doch eindeutig in Bezug auf den Westen – der gelegentliche Verweis auf den Osten dient eigentlich mehr der romantischen Selbststilisierung. ‘In Bezug auf den Westen’ bedeutet hier aber keineswegs ‘durch die Selbstidentifikation mit dem Westen.’ Vielmehr versteht sich Rußland ständig in einer durchaus bewußten Opposition zum Westen, wobei es dafür bestimmte Elemente der westlichen Kultur selbst verwendet. Rußland hat nämlich keine kulturelle Tradition, die in dem Sinne ‘anders’ wäre, daß sie aus anderen Elementen als die westliche bestünde, wie etwa die chinesische oder die indische Kultur. Vielmehr erfindet sich die russische Kultur immer wieder neu als ‘andere’ des Westens, indem sie oppositionelle, alternative Strömungen der westlichen Kultur selbst, die einen integralen Teil dieser Kultur bilden, übernimmt, aneignet, transformiert – und dann gegen den Westen als Ganzes richtet. (translated by the author). ↑

12. Ibid.,  p. 9. “Indem Rußland das kommunistische Ideal auf seinem Staatsgebiet territorialisiert hat, hat es den gleichen imperialistischen Anspruch erhoben wie der westliche, kapitalistische, ökonomische Imperialismus” (translated by the author). ↑

13. Ibid., pp. 10–11. “Rußland sucht gleichzeitig Verbindung und Opposition zum Westen, es übernimmt das Westliche, um es besser zu bekämpfen – und gleichzeitig verliebt es sich in die westlichen Träume, um sie zu den eigenen zu machen.” (translated by the author). ↑

14. Madina Tlostanova, “The Janus-Faced Empire Distorting Orientalist Discourses: Gender, Race and Religion in the Russian/(Post)Soviet Constructions of the “Orient,” Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise, vol. 2 (2008): p. 1. ↑

15. Ibid. ↑

16. So-called “bourgeois nationalism” was even a repressive charge which, in the early stages of Stalin’s rule, helped him to eliminate national elites and led to mass repression on ethnic grounds. ↑

17. Boris Groys, “V Ozhidanii Russkoi Kul'turnoi Identichnosti (trans.: In anticipation of a Russian cultural identity),” Критическая Масса, no. 1 (2003), trans. Katarina Wenzl, Центр гуманитарных технологий, May 15, 2007, https://gtmarket.ru/library/articles/2627, accessed June 1, 2026. ↑

18. Boris Groys, Die Erfindung Rußlands, pp. 19–36. ↑

19. Victor Pelevin, Babylon, trans. Andrew Bromfield, London: Faber & Faber, 1999. ↑

20. The emblem of Nashi is a red banner with two diagonal white stripes (resembling the St Andrew’ flag). In an interview with the newspaper Novye Izvestia, Yakemenko (the movement’s founder) explained: “Our flag resembles the St Andrew’s flag. Red is the colour of our historical past, white is the colour of the future.” ↑

21. Vladislav Surkov, “Dolgoye Gosudarstvo Putina (trans.: Putin’s Eternal State),” Независимая газета, November 2, 2019). https://www.ng.ru/ideas/2019-02-11/5_7503_surkov.html, accessed June 1, 2026. ↑

22. Where “П” stands for either “Pepsi”, “PR” or simply “Пиздец” (trans.: fucked up). ↑

23. Despite Russia’s seemingly anti-Western trajectory, it only took an explicitly anti-Western turn after 2014. Prior to that, the country had pursued a largely pro-Western course; for instance, negotiations on a visa-free regime with the European Union continued until 2014. However, our generation was raised amidst this polarity. On the one hand, there was the totalitarian state apparatus, and on the other, we were brought up with liberal and democratic values. This naturally led to a conflict between our value system and political reality. Following the ideological collapse of 2022, many people realised what kind of political system we truly live in. This generational divide has given rise to significant conflict, as it became evident that our parents’ generation had become accustomed to ideological distortion and lived in a different ideological reality. ↑

24. Slavoj Žižek, “The Sublime Object of Ideology,” in The Essential Žižek, London: Verso, 2008, p. 26. ↑

25. It is believed that these elections were decisive for Russia’s subsequent development. It soon became clear that Boris Yeltsin, who had won the election, was unable to govern the country due to ill health, which led to the seizure of power by the so-called Family (Yeltsin’s) and subsequently to Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. ↑

26. Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Jacques Bidet, and G. M. Goshgarian, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, London: Verso, 2014. ↑

27. Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real!, p. 15. ↑

28. Slavoj Žižek, “The Spectre of Ideology,” in Mapping Ideology, ed. Slavoj Žižek, London: Verso, 2000, p. 1. ↑

29. Robert Pfaller, “The Efficiency of Ideology and the Possibilities of Art: An Althusserian Account,” Stasis 4, no. 1 (2016): p. 43. https://doi.org/10.33280/2310-3817-2016-4-2-40-67. ↑

30. Žižek, “The Sublime Object of Ideology,” p. xxiv. ↑

31. Ibid., p. xxvii. ↑

32. Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real!, p. 17. ↑

33. In this regard, I believe that Walter Benjamin’s famous text Berlin Childhood around 1900 possesses great ideological-critical potential, which, unfortunately, was not realised, as Benjamin slipped into a Proustian-style nostalgia. However, the idea that an analysis of the reality of childhood might have a socio-cultural dimension, as Benjamin asserts, was one of my main inspirations for the project. ↑

34.  Pfaller, “The Efficiency of Ideology and the Possibilities of Art, p. 51. ↑

35. Ibid. ↑

36. Ibid. ↑