‘War and Peace’ at the 1980 Moscow and 2014 Sochi Olympics: The Role of Hard and Soft Power in Russian Identity

Abstract

Russia’s (and the USSR’s) use of sports mega-events (SMEs) makes this BRICS country (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) not only an outlier among emerging states, but also among key SME hosts generally. Both the historic Moscow Olympics (1980) and the more recent hosting of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics provide evidence that Russia has, on both occasions, focussed on geopolitical priorities using hard power (military might) at the expense of soft power acquisition. Furthermore, both Olympics were, first and foremost, used to pursue domestic soft power goals. This, again, makes Russia an outlier in terms of the political use of SMEs by states in the literature on this subject. The 1980 Olympic Games, therefore, in terms of their potential to generate soft power and national unity, turned out to be a mis-used opportunity for Russia. To what extent is this specific to Russia and could the first Russian Olympics provide valuable insight into the modern-day hosting of SMEs by Russia (2014/2018)?     

Despicable Others: Animated Othering as Equipment for Living in the Era of Trump

This essay comparatively examines U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Mexican interculturality in the Despicable Me movie franchise. We argue that cultural transformations of the main protagonists – Russian Gru and Mexican El Macho – are politically significant cases of U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Mexican interculturality, reflected and constructed by popular culture in general, and by animated cartoons in particular. Conceptualizing and analyzing animation as “equipment for living,” we demonstrate how these cases serve as epistemological and pedagogical tools of confirming U.S.-dominant ideology, and discursively and visually constructing (Russian and Mexican) Others the way that they are currently understood and treated in (the non-fictional) U.S. society.     

“Immigrant” in Russian and French Print Media (Linguistic and Visual Composition Analyses)

This study addresses the representation of the linguistic and cultural type “immigrant” in French and Russian media discourse. Linguistic analysis of selected sources shows, on the one hand, signs of tolerance towards immigrants and, on the other hand, evidence of rejecting immigrants, which demonstrates the ambiguity of the matter and indirectly provokes conflicts. Visual composition analysis complements these results by revealing the following: the purpose of immigration – employment – is often socially rejected; immigrants’ sense of community is a specific cultural code in a host culture; and the cultural transfer of an “immigrant” into a different space creates uncertainty or ambiguity.