The Empowered Russian*
The Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) is often used to explain police-citizen (protestors) interaction and suggests that conflicts break out when the police assume that all protestors have one identity. So the Police do not realise that a crowd of protestors may be made up of sympathisers, activists, opposers, potential lawbreakers, curious passers-by, but assume they are all troublemakers and adopt one strategy — often one of containment rather than negotiation.
When this happens, the identity of the crowd undergoes a psychosocial transformation and the different identities (sympathisers, activists, opposers, lawbreakers, curious passers-by) see themselves as one, which then leads them to become empowered and therefore strong enough to put up a resistance, even if futile, against the police (outgroup).
Why is this theory relevant to the case of Russia?
It is relevant because unfortunately, we (the rest of the world) have now become the police and assume Putin to be the prototypical Russian, that all Russians are Putin. This has made us overlook the fact that Russia has a population of more than 144 million people and is a very diverse country with diverse cultures and identities. That even at the time of writing, there are Russians in jail for speaking out against the war — that there are others too afraid to speak out while some families have lost their relatives in the war, there are also some Russians at the border helping Ukrainians and people of colour, while many more are living in shame and guilt because of the invasion of Ukraine.
Recent trends, however, has tended to ask for every Russian to be punished, we’ve gone to the extent of asking mass-produced affordable foods — no matter what we think about their nutritional value — like McDonalds and KFC to leave Russia, conveniently ignoring that these places are more likely to be patronised by ordinary Russians than Putin and his oligarchs. Coursera has removed Russian institutions from their platform and also no longer allows Russians to complete a course except to audit, the academic world has also sought to cancel Russian researchers, some of whom have even criticised the war. We are ostracising Russians and punishing them for the actions of a group of people who are too powerful for them to control or for us to punish. We have made ordinary citizens scapegoats because they are an easy target.
What should we expect?
In my opinion and based on ESIM, the majority of Russians are going to accept the identity we have given them and act accordingly. It’s only a matter of time before they leave the streets of Moscow, St Petersburg and Novgorod and go back home. It’s only a matter of time before they support Putin, because we would have left them no other choice. It’s only a matter of time before they forget about the invasion of Ukraine and begin to think about their survival. It’s only a matter of time before we do not matter to them and before they dehumanise us too. When that happens, it will be too late for us to express concern, too late for us to try to help build their courage to fight tyranny, too late for us to encourage them to think about democracy, too late for anything.
A psychosocial response would have occurred and they would have become empowered, empowered to protect their families, their children, their spouses, their livelihoods and their country. Their priority would be in creating Russian institutions that would withstand Western sanctions, they would have no time to consider the advantages of democracy and free speech as they would have seen how that led to their ostracization and dehumanisation.
The loss would be ours, the loss of brilliant minds, beautiful hearts, excellent literature, brave and resilient people who have had a tough history with many wars but who have also contributed to the world in many positive ways.
Finally, we would have undone a lot of work that we have been doing in many areas of activism because we would essentially be stating that it is okay to attack or hate people because of a protected characteristic -their identity in this case.
*This piece uses the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) to explain attitude to Russians and how that can affect their reaction to the war in Ukraine and their response to it.