NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Area Studies
Program in Political Science and World Politics

Ksenia Akchurina

BIOPOLITICAL TECHNOLOGIES IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN

POLITICS / БИОПОЛИТИЧЕСКИЕ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ
РОССИЙСКОЙ ПОЛИТИКЕ

Term paper in the field of study 41.03.04 “Political Science”

student of group No. 203 (educational program “Political Science and World Politics”)

Academic Supervisor
Doctor of Political Science, Professor
Akopov. S. V.

St. Petersburg 2022.

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Abstract
This paper is a review of the academic literature on biopolitical technologies in contemporary Russian
politics. The purpose of this paper is to analyze twenty academic sources on the topic and identify
research gaps. We divide the sources into two groups: literature on biopolitical technologies in Russian
domestic politics and literature on biopolitical technologies in Russian foreign policy. Sources
addressing both foreign and domestic politics are included in both groups. Within each group, we
identify the main areas of academic debate and conduct our analysis, identifying research gaps and
making proposals to fill them. As a result of our analysis, we conclude that insufficient attention has
been paid in the academic literature to the biopolitical strategies of Vladimir Putin’s fourth term, in
particular the practices of direct physical abuse against the bodies of “internal others”.

Данная работа представляет собой обзор академической литературы, затрагивающей тему

биополитических технологий в современной российской политике. Цель данной работы –
провести анализ двадцати академических источников по данной теме и выявить
исследовательские пробелы. Мы делим источники на две группы: литература по
биополитическим технологиям во внутренней политике России и литература по
биополитическим технологиям во внешней политике России. Источники, затрагивающие и
внешнюю и внутреннюю политику, включены в обе группы. Внутри каждой из групп мы
выделяем основные направления академических дискуссий, в рамках которых проводим анализ,
выявляем исследовательские пробелы и выносим предложения по их восполнению. В результате
проведенного анализа мы пришли к выводу, что в академической литературе уделяется
недостаточное внимание биополитическим стратегиям, характерным для четвертого срока
Владимира Путина, в частности, практикам прямого физического воздействия на тела
«внутренних других».
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Table of contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................ 4
1. Biopolitical technologies in domestic politics...................................................... 7
1.1 Constructing a nation through traditional family values ........................................................................... 7
1.2 Constructing a nation through leader’s body ........................................................................................... 9
1.3 Constructing a nation through internal others ....................................................................................... 12

2. Biopolitical technologies in foreign politics .......................................................16

2.1. Biopolitical technologies in relations with post-Soviet countries ........................................................... 16
2.2 Biopolitical technologies in Russian-Western relations .......................................................................... 18

Conclusion .................................................................................................................20
Bibliography..............................................................................................................21
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Introduction

The Russian government’s concern with corporality and sexuality has grown significantly over the past
decade, as evidenced by amendments to the Russian Constitution declaring children “the most important
priority of state policy in Russia”1 and enshrining the obligation of the state to “protect the institution of
marriage as the union of a man and a woman”2. The state regulatory mechanisms to which citizens’
bodies are exposed can be conceptualized as biopolitical technologies and considered in the context of
biopolitical research.

The concept of biopolitics was formulated by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his lecture
course “Society Must Be Defended”3, where he speaks of the “etatisation of the biological”. Foucault
defines biopolitics as “a new technique of power addressing the multiplicity of human bodies
constituting a global mass subject to the common processes of life”4, the main objects of which are
“birth, death, reproduction and disease”5. In another lecture course “The Birth of Biopolitics”6, he makes
the connection between the development of Western capitalism and the spread of biopolitical
technologies of power. According to the philosopher, under the conditions of the dominance of the
liberal economy, the maximization of power and governance itself are no longer an end in themselves;
their existence must be justified by rational reasons 7. The justification becomes the necessity of using
power technologies to increase the productive capacity of the population, which is the main provider of
labor, leading to the emergence of biopolitical tools to control the bodies of citizens 8.

An important contribution to the development of the theory of biopolitics was made by another famous
philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, who expanded its conceptual apparatus by introducing the category of
“homo sacer”, borrowed from Roman law, where it denoted “the formula for including human life in the
existing order through its exclusion (that is, through the ability to take it away without hindrance)”9.
“The ability to commit murder without committing a crime” is, according to Agamben, “the domain of
sovereign decision”10, which correlates with the Schmittian notion of sovereign power as the ability to
rule by exclusion. Thus, the sovereign’s exclusive right to impose the death penalty leads to a blurring

1
The Constitution of the Russian Federation, chapter III, art. 67.1, par. 4.
2
The Constitution of the Russian Federation, chapter III, art. 72, par. 1, item g.1.
3
Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, (St. Petersburg: Nauka,
2005).
4
Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, 256.
5
Ibid., 257.
6
Michel Foucault, “The Birth of Biopolitics”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2010).
7
Foucault, “The Birth of Biopolitics”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, 407.
8
Ibid., 263.
9
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Moscow: Publishing House “Evropa”, 2011), 16.
10
Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 108.
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of the boundaries between “bare life” and the space of the political, which is “a characteristic feature of
contemporary politics”11.

Speaking of Russian politics in relation to bodily life, in this paper we will also refer to the notion of
necropolitics, which is a field of biopolitics, the foundation of which was laid by the Cameroonian
political theorist Akille Mbembe. While Foucault and Agamben focus on the technologies of controlling
biological life, Mbembe focuses on the capacity of sovereign power to subordinate death to its political
will, determining “who can live and who must die”12. This concept seems an important point of
reference for our analysis in relation to the series of accusations against the Russian secret services
related to the murder of opposition figure Boris Nemtsov13, as well as the attempts on the lives of another
oppositionist Alexei Navalny14 and Sergei Skripal15, convicted in Russia of treason.

This review responds to the research question of how biopolitical technologies in contemporary Russian
politics are addressed in the existing academic literature. For our analysis, we have selected 20 of the
most cited and relevant sources examining both biopolitical technologies in Russian foreign and
domestic politics. The main objective of our study is to identify research gaps in the academic literature
on the topic. We also set ourselves the following tasks: first, to identify research gaps in the literature on
biopolitical technologies in Russian domestic politics and, second, in the literature on biopolitical
strategies in foreign policy. We argue that most biopolitical studies on Russia are focused on events
related to Putin’s third term in office, while only a small number of papers have addressed the events of
Putin’s fourth term, focusing primarily on the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the biopolitical control
of the population during this period has, in our view, taken even more extreme forms, manifested in the
proliferation of practices of direct physical abuse of the bodies of “internal others”, which include
mechanisms of the penitentiary system and necropolitical techniques aimed at the physical destruction
of people constructed as “outsiders” in relation to the incumbent regime.

The first part of this review is devoted to the analysis of sources describing the use of biopolitical
technologies in domestic Russian politics. We have discovered that the majority of authors link the
beginning of the biopolitical turn to the events of Putin’s third term in office and identify its main task
as the construction of the nation, which is realized within the framework of three biopolitical directions:

11
Ibid., 16.
12
Achille Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa”, Public Culture 12, no.
1 (2000): 259–284.
13
“Boris Nemtsov: Murdered Putin rival ‘tailed’ by agent linked to FSB hit squad”, BBC News, Mar. 28, 2022,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60878663 (accessed March 29, 2022).
14
“Alexei Navalny: Report names ‘Russian agents’ in poisoning case”, BBC News, Dec. 14, 2020,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55303703 (accessed March 29, 2022).
15
“Russian spy poisoning: What we know so far”, BBC News, Oct. 8, 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43315636
(accessed March 29, 2022).
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the construction of the nation through traditional family values, the construction of the nation through
the leader’s body, and the construction of the nation through “internal others”. In this review, we use
these directions as lines of comparison of domestic policy sources. In the second part of the paper, we
turn to the literature on the application of biopolitical technologies in foreign policy. We analyze the
sources in this group along two main lines of discussion, organized by territorial principle: biopolitical
technologies in Russia’s relations with post-Soviet countries and biopolitical technologies in Russia’s
relations with Western countries (primarily the US and the EU).
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1. Biopolitical technologies in domestic politics

1.1 Constructing a nation through traditional family values

The motif of traditional family values as a tool for the normalization of biological bodies is one of the
central ones in the literature on biopolitical technologies in contemporary Russia. As a result of our
analysis, we managed to identify that all authors whose works address this topic agree in at least three
aspects: first, they all claim that contemporary Russian family policy can be characterized as
conservative; second, that the origins of this policy can be traced back to the 2000s, and its sharp
tightening was observed during Putin’s third presidential term; and, thirdly, that the most important aim
of the current policy is to build national identity through “traditional Orthodox values” that construct the
image of a “proper Russian family”. As for the reasons for the conservative biopolitical turn that has
taken place, most researchers primarily point to the regime’s legitimacy crisis. Other authors explain the
intensification of biopolitical interventions in the family by the state’s desire to solve the birthrate crisis.
In what follows, we consider in more detail what biopolitical mechanisms for regulating Russian family
life are discussed in the academic literature on this topic.

First of all, attention should be paid to MP Elena Mizulina’s draft “Concept of Family Policy” which
proposes a model of a “normal family” where “there are at least three children and several generations
living in a common household”16. In “Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia”17, A. Makarychev and
S. Medvedev argue that this project “is the best illustration of biopolitical totalization of the whole set
of family matters”18. In addition, according to the researchers, Mizulina’s draft “contains explicitly
religious connotations, characterizing the family as a ‘small church’ that sustains the idea of immortality
understood as ‘the continuation of the nation’”19. The growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church
in the process of biopolitical regulation is also noted by S. Medvedev in his work “The State and the
Human Body in Putin’s Russia”20. According to Medvedev, “the Kremlin gave a special role to the
Russian Orthodox Church in decision-making on family matters”21. The consequence of this policy, in
the researcher’s view, has been a tightening of abortion legislation. A substantial part of F. Stella and
N. Nartova’s paper “Sexual Citizenship, Nationalism and Biopolitics in Putin’s Russia”22 is also devoted
to the restriction of Russian women’s reproductive rights. The researchers cite a 2011 law, “On the

16
Andrey Makarychev and Sergei Medvedev, “Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia”, Problems of Post-Communism 62,
no. 1 (2015): 48.
17
Makarychev and Medvedev, “Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia”.
18
Ibid., 48.
19
Ibid., 48.
20
Sergei Medvedev, “The State and the Human Body in Putin’s Russia”, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, no. 597 (2019).
21
Medvedev, “The State and the Human Body in Putin’s Russia”, 3.
22
Francesca Stella and Nadya Nartova, “Sexual citizenship, nationalism and biopolitics in Putin’s Russia”, Sexuality,
citizenship and belonging: Trans-national and intersectional perspectives, (2015).
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Fundamentals of Public Health Protection in the Russian Federation”, which establishes a mandatory
“week of silence” before an abortion and also stipulates a doctor’s right to refuse providing such
services23. Moreover, the list of social reasons for termination of pregnancy in the second trimester,
which previously included 13 items, was subsequently reduced to one - pregnancy as a result of rape24.
Stella and Nartova, like Makarychev and Medvedev, emphasize the role of Orthodoxy and traditional
values as the ideological basis for the biopolitical regulation of Russian family life. For instance, they
argue that the new legislation on abortion is based on a proposal by Deputy Draganov, who claims that
“the approach, based on the freedom of reproductive choice, goes against traditional Christian values
and leads to the spiritual and moral degradation of the Russian people”25. In addition, the draft “Concept
of Family Policy” mentioned earlier, in the view of the researchers, “reflects the growing influence of
Orthodoxy in Russian political and social life”26. An example of a different perspective is the work by
A. Yatsyk on the comparison of the biopolitical strategies of Russia and Poland. On the one hand, Yatsyk
admits that the tendency to tighten the biopolitical regulation of the family (in particular, the restriction
of access to abortion) is common to both countries 27. On the other hand, the researcher argues that
“contrast with Poland, the ROC’s influence on Russian society is not as significant”28. Moreover,
according to her, the ROC is critical of some of the biopolitical strategies of the Russian state. For
example, it opposes the idea of juvenile justice and the removal of children from dysfunctional
families29. Thus, the opinions of researchers regarding the influence of the ROC on Russian family
policy are divided: some see Orthodoxy as the main ideological basis for the biopolitical regulation of
family life, while others point to contradictions between the state and the church regarding the
permissible degree of intervention in the family.

In the context of birth-rate deficit in Russia and biopolitical measures to overcome it, P. Åberg’s paper
“Civil Society and Biopolitics in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Russian ‘Daddy-Schools’”30 is also
worth mentioning. While aforementioned scholars focus on the biopolitical strategies of the state, Åberg
suggests that civil society initiatives to combat the demographic crisis should also receive attention. The
researcher argues that contemporary Russia has inherited a Soviet biopolitical discourse that assigned

23
Stella and Nartova, “Sexual citizenship, nationalism and biopolitics in Putin’s Russia”, 32–34.
24
Ibid., 34.
25
Ibid., 32.
26
Ibid., 30.
27
Alexandra Yatsyk, “Biopolitical conservatism in Europe and beyond: the cases of identity-making projects in Poland and
Russia”, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 27, no. 4 (2019): 468.
28
Yatsyk, “Biopolitical conservatism in Europe and beyond: the cases of identity-making projects in Poland and Russia”,
468.
29
Ibid., 468.
30
Pelle Åberg, “Civil Society and Biopolitics in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Russian ‘Daddy-Schools’”, Foucault
Studies, no. 20 (2015).
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men the role of “workers and defenders of the country and women the role of mothers and care givers”31.
As a consequence, the state’s methods of stimulating natural growth are mainly directed at women. Stella
and Nartova point to the same, citing the example of maternity capitals, which exist in Russia as a means
of increasing the birth rate, “strengthens the idea that a woman is a mother first and foremost” 32. At the
same time, the role of men as fathers is largely ignored by the country’s administration. Åberg’s research
explores Russian daddy-schools as an alternative biopolitical mechanism proposed by civil society and
aimed primarily at male representatives. According to the author, daddy-schools, on the one hand, help
the state to overcome the demographic crisis, but, on the other hand, challenge its biopolitical strategies
based on the traditional notion of gender roles in the family 33. Åberg’s article thus complements the
existing literature by exploring alternative biopolitical technologies for increasing fertility proposed
“from below”.

We suggest that the writings on the biopolitical regulation of family life of Russians could be expanded
by analyzing events that occurred during Putin’s fourth term. For example, in 2020, the following
amendments were made to the Russian Constitution: first, the state was charged with “protecting the
institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman”34; second, children were proclaimed “the
most important priority of state policy in Russia”35. Thus, the policy of etatization of private life has
been enshrined in the basic law of the country, which may indicate a trend towards an even stricter
biopolitical course after the 2018 presidential elections. This issue, in our view, requires further research.

1.2 Constructing a nation through leader’s body

The leader’s body as part of a symbolic order aimed at constructing national identity is one of the main
narratives in the literature on biopolitical technologies in the post-Soviet space. Most authors whose
works address this aspect of Russian biopolitical discourse tend to share one of the following two
approaches. The first approach is based on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, according to whom “the body
of the sovereign transgresses its physical qualities and becomes the political body of the nation”36. The
second approach is based on Michel Foucault’s concept, whereby the leader’s biopolitical care for the
population can be interpreted as a pastor’s concern for his flock 37. Thus, in the literature on biopolitical

31
Åberg, “Civil Society and Biopolitics in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Russian ‘Daddy-Schools’”, 77.
32
Stella and Nartova, “The State and the Human Body in Putin’s Russia”, 27.
33
Åberg, “Civil Society and Biopolitics in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Russian ‘Daddy-Schools’”, 92.
34
The Constitution of the Russian Federation, chapter III, art. 72, par. 1, item g.1.
35
The Constitution of the Russian Federation, chapter III, art. 67.1, par. 4.
36
Makarychev and Medvedev, “Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia”, 49.
37
Elizaveta Gaufman, “Putin’s Pastorate: Post-structuralism in Post-Soviet Russia”, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political
42, no. 2 (2017), 74.
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technologies in Russia, Putin’s body is either identified with the collective body of the nation or with
the figure of the pastor overseeing this collective body.

Let us first take a closer look at the works analyzing the biopolitical connotations of Putin’s symbolic
power through the prism of the concept of pastorate. In their article on the biopolitical turn in Russia 38,
A. Makarychev and A. Yatsyk quote Foucault, from which it follows that the main attribute of pastoral
power is the ability of the person endowed with it to “account for every act of each of his sheep, for
everything that may have happened between them, and everything good and evil they may have done at
any time”39. This aspect is further elaborated in Elizaveta Gaufman’s paper “Putin’s Pastorate: Post-
structuralism in Post-Soviet Russia”40. From her point of view, “Putin is particularly suitable as the
pastor”41 because he is a former member of the KGB and the FSB, the security and surveillance
agencies42. Another important manifestation of the pastorate, Gaufman calls the leader’s direct
involvement in people’s lives, “a vivid example of which is the annual sacrament of ‘direct line with
Vladimir Putin’”43. According to the researcher, this ceremony creates a perception that “local
governance is utterly dysfunctional and necessitates Putin’s direct involvement to perform its duties”44.
It follows that Putin’s image as a pastor is constructed, among other things, by contrasting his personal
engagement with the inaction of regional authorities.

The opposite trend was noted by A. Makarychev, M. Goes and A. Kuznetsova in their article on Russia’s
biopolitical strategies during the Covid - 19 pandemic, when responsibilities of biopolitical concern for
the population were delegated to governors, which, in the researchers’ view, contributed to strengthening
the legitimacy of regional leaders 45. According to the scholars, this model of governance is indicative
of the crisis of “quasi-religious construct of Putin’s power, based on the imitation of the supreme ruler’s
connection with the people”46. A. Yatsyk, on the contrary, in her article “Biopolitical Responses to the
COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia, France, Germany, and the UK”47 argues that the decentralized response
to the pandemic is a part of the Kremlin’s “biopolitical project” whereby “being a Russian patriot entails

38
Andrey Makarychev and Alexandra Yatsyk, “The biopolitical turn in post-ideological times: a trajectory of Russia’s
transformation”, in Body, Personhood and Privacy: Perspectives on the Cultural Other and Human Experience, ed. Anu
Kannike, Monika Tasa and Ergo-Hart Västrik (Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2017), 108.
39
Makarychev and Yatsyk, “The biopolitical turn in post-ideological times: a trajectory of Russia’s transformation”, 108.
40
Gaufman, “Putin’s Pastorate: Post-structuralism in Post-Soviet Russia.
41
Ibid., 83.
42
Ibid., 83.
43
Ibid., 83.
44
Ibid., 83.
45
Andrey Makarychev, Maria Goes and Anna Kuznetsova, “The Covid Biopolitics in Russia: Putin’s Sovereignty versus
Regional Governmentality”, Mezinárodní vztahy 55, no. 4 (2020): 37.
46
Makarychev, Goes and Kuznetsova, “The Covid Biopolitics in Russia: Putin’s Sovereignty versus Regional
Governmentality”, 35.
47
Alexandra Yatsyk, “Biopolitical Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia, France, Germany, and the UK: The
“Post-Truth” Coverage by RT”, Social Sciences 11, no. 139 (2022).
 11

bearing responsibility for the nation’s survival” 48. According to the researcher, this model implies that
“it is not a sovereign but an individual actor who should take care of herself and the population”49. Thus,
in contrast to Makarychev, Goes and Kuznetsova, Yatsyk believes that Russian biopolitical strategy of
Covid-19 is still based on the connection between the ruler and the people, which, however, is
constructed here “from the bottom up” and reinterpreted as “personal loyalty of the individual to
sovereign power”50.

In this context, it is worth paying attention to writings that examine the symbolic connection between
the President Putin’s body and the community of Russian citizens through the prism of sexual narratives.
For instance, Elizabeth Gaufman in her article on the pastorate mentions a famous pop song “I want a
man like Putin” (Takogo kak Putin), whose lyrical heroine expresses her desire to find a husband
resembling the Russian president 51. The researcher compares the desire to marry Putin to a “religious
‘marrying’ of God”52. Thus, “the figure of pastor is seen not only though his governing functions but
also through his physical duties as a husband toward the wife, by which is meant the nation”53 , Gaufman
writes. A similar motif can also be found in literature that does not address the concept of the pastorate.
For example, in the article “Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia”54 Makarychev and Medvedev argue
that “Putin’s divorce from his wife Lyudmila did not greatly damage his image. Meanwhile, some
political analysts have suggested that Putin is now ‘married to the whole nation’”55. Moreover, the
researchers add that “rumored relationship with a former Russian Olympic gymnast and Duma deputy,
Alina Kabayeva, are perceived in Russia as yet more proof of Putin’s biological health”56, constructing
him as the embodiment of the nation’s masculine power.

Masculinity is thus another aspect of Putin’s biopolitical image. Most researchers writing on this issue
pay particular attention to the contrast between the emphatically masculine Russian president and the
emphatically feminine “outside others”. In an article on the connection between biopolitics and the
Russian fashion industry, Ekaterina Kalinina writes that “In contemporary patriotic discourses, gender
has become a central aspect of civilizational differences”57: the West is constructed as a bastion of
homosexuality associated with “degradation and degeneration” from which Russia is supposed to save

48
Yatsyk, “Biopolitical Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia, France, Germany, and the UK: The “Post-Truth”
Coverage by RT”, 6.
49
Ibid., 6.
50
Ibid., 6.
51
Gaufman, “Putin’s Pastorate: Post-structuralism in Post-Soviet Russia”, 84.
52
Ibid., 84.
53
Ibid., 84.
54
Makarychev and Medvedev, “Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia”.
55
Ibid., 49.
56
Ibid., 49.
57
Ekaterina Kalinina, “Becoming patriots in Russia: biopolitics, fashion, and nostalgia”, Nationalities Papers 45, no. 1
(2017): 12.
 12

the world, while its image is masculinized to fit the role of “global savior of humanity”58 . Central to this
symbolic order is the body of Vladimir Putin as the embodiment of national masculinity. Kalinina
analyses the activities of several pro-Kremlin brands, that produced clothes with a print depicting the
Russian president, often in military uniform or with a bare torso 59 (18-19). According to the researcher,
the wardrobe items with Putin’s portrait that people put on themselves can be interpreted as a symbol of
the fusion of the ruler’s body with the body of the folk, and the masculine image of the president,
exploited by patriotic designers, becomes a tool for constructing the nation by opposing a strong, manly
Russia to a weak, feminine West. This opposition is also analyzed by Elizaveta Gaufman in the context
of Putin’s pastoral power60. Thus, the dichotomy of masculine Russia and feminine “outside others” is,
according to a number of researchers, a leitmotif of Russian nation-building.

We suggest that the academic literature that examines Putin’s body as an element of visual biopolitics
aimed at constructing the nation could be complemented by an analysis of the masculine image of the
Russian president compared to the image of oppositionist Alexei Navalny, which is constructed by
Kremlin supporters as “feminine” and “weak” through the language of corporeality. For example,
according to “Lenta.ru”, in the run-up to the 2018 elections, “Unknown citizens put up a large poster
with an image of a half-naked opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, and the caption ‘Sisyan 20!8’”61. The
term “Sisyan” is an offensive nickname given to Navalny by supporters of the current government, the
meaning of which can roughly be interpreted as “a man with female breasts”. The nickname has gained
traction in pro-Kremlin circles and has become a well-known Internet meme used to discredit the
Navalny’s anti-government activities during Putin’s fourth term. This phenomenon in itself and how it
relates to the masculine image of the Russian president is, in our view, suitable material for analysis,
which could be conducted in further biopolitical studies.

1.3 Constructing a nation through internal others

An important place in the literature on biopolitics in Russia is occupied by the construction of the nation
through the formation of the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Most of the researchers whose work
touches on this aspect of Russian biopolitical discourse rely on the concept of Homo Sacer developed
by Giorgio Agamben. The term itself was borrowed by Agamben from Roman law, where it was used
to refer to a category of people subjected to exile from public life and deprived of the protection of state

58
Kalinina, “Becoming patriots in Russia: biopolitics, fashion, and nostalgia”, 12.
59
Ibid., 12.
60
Gaufman, “Putin’s Pastorate: Post-structuralism in Post-Soviet Russia”, 84–85.
61
“At a Navalny rally in Novosibirsk, a huge banner ‘Sisyan 20!8’ was put up”, Lenta.ru, Sep. 22, 2017,
https://lenta.ru/news/2017/09/22/sisyan/ (accessed March 31, 2022).
 13

laws62. As a result of our analysis of academic literature, we have managed to identify two main criteria
of belonging to the Russian nation: first, conformity to traditional values and conservative culture, and
second, loyalty to the incumbent regime. There is no contradiction between these criteria; rather, they
complement each other. Nevertheless, some researchers emphasize only one of them in their works,
while others pay attention to both.

To begin with, let us take a closer look at the articles whose authors identify conservative culture as the
basis for the formation of the Russian national community boundaries, as well as the factor that
determines the conditions of exclusion from it. Thus, T. Romashko in the article “Biopolitics and
Hegemony in Contemporary Russian Cultural Policy”63 argues that “The political construction of ‘the
Russian people’ is divided into those who belong to the Russian nation with ‘true cultural’ patterns and
those who belong to the marginalized cultural minorities”64 The “true cultural” patterns, in her opinion,
refer to elements of “conservative culture”, which is based on values that are recognized as “traditionally
Russian” in official political discourse65. According to Romashko, this conservative biopolitical project
creates a situation where legal protection of constitutional rights of entire social groups can be suspended
on the grounds that they do not conform to given cultural parameters 66. A prominent example of such a
marginalized group, according to many researchers, are members of the Russian LGBT community. For
instance, Stella and Nartova in their article “Sexual citizenship, nationalism and biopolitics in Putin’s
Russia”67 write that “same-sex sexualities are constructed as the ‘Other’ to Russian national traditions
and family values”68, which was reflected in the 2013 law “banning gay propaganda”69. This law,
according to S. Medvedev, “in fact criminalized homosexual discourse” and “increased social and
political pressure on LGBT communities and individuals”70 . The researcher lists certain cases of
physical violence against members of non-traditional sexual orientation71. Thus, cultural narratives that
are constructed as “traditional” and “Russian” form lines of “inclusion” in the national community and
“exclusion” from it, with those who are granted outcast status, like the Roman Homo Sacer, being denied
the protection of state laws and subjected to a variety of ostracism practices.

Another criterion that constructs the boundaries between members of the nation and the “internal others”,
according to a number of researchers, is loyalty to the incumbent regime. Thus, in the article “Biopower

62
Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 16.
63
Tatiana Romashko, “Biopolitics and Hegemony in Contemporary Russian Cultural Policy”, Russian Politics 3, no. 1
(2018).
64
Romashko, “Biopolitics and Hegemony in Contemporary Russian Cultural Policy”, 27.
65
Ibid., 23.
66
Ibid., 27.
67
Stella and Nartova, “Sexual citizenship, nationalism and biopolitics in Putin’s Russia”.
68
Ibid., 43.
69
Ibid., 43.
70
Medvedev, “The State and the Human Body in Putin’s Russia”, 3.
71
Ibid., 3.
 14

and geopolitics as Russia’s neighborhood strategies: reconnecting people or reaggregating lands?”72

Makarychev and Yatsyk write that the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, who practices traditional
Islam, is nevertheless a supporter of the “Russian world” ideas and can be perceived, from the point of
view of the state and its individual representatives, as “more Russian” than, for example, “the liberal TV
journalist Ksenia Sobchak” and other opponents of the Kremlin 73. The members of the punk rock band
Pussy Riot are an example of the “internal others” who have gained their status by failing to meet the
criterion of loyalty. According to A. Yatsyk (article “Biopolitics, believers, bodily protests: The case of
Pussy Riot”74), “Pussy Riot can be understood in terms of Agamben’s homo sacer: as outcasts (‘internal
others’) bracketed outside of the ‘normalized’ political community through imprisonment and multiple
verbal animadversions”75. Furthermore, the motif of biopolitical ostracism can be traced in the actionism
of the artists. For example, one of the girls, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, expressed her solidarity with the
women prisoners by sewing a huge tricolor on Russia Day on Red Square 76. This performance
encapsulates the penitentiary metaphor of imitating the sewing work done by incarcerated women 77.
Another Russian opposition activist, Pyotr Pavlensky, is also known for his symbolic reproduction of
prison rituals in his performances. This topic is explored in detail in Makarychev and Medvedev’s article,
entirely devoted to Pavlensky’s activism, which they conceptualize as “corporeal protest”78. According
to the researchers, penitentiary metaphors play a central role in the biopolitical art of the artist. For
example, some of his most famous actions – “Stitch”, “Fixation” and “Partition” - are imitations of the
protest practices of prisoners79. “By the use of prison body language, Pavlensky re-created the situation
of “bare life” which Giorgio Agamben found in the concentration camp”80. Thus, according to a number
of scholars, representatives of disloyal political views are constructed by the Russian state as “internal
others” against whom the regime applies technologies of biopolitical normalization, including
imprisonment.

In our view, the existing academic literature pays insufficient attention to the Russian penitentiary
mechanisms of “normalizing” excluded individuals and groups. Meanwhile, the number of criminal
cases involving representatives of disloyal political views has increased dramatically during Putin’s

72
Andrey Makarychev and Alexandra Yatsyk, “Biopower and geopolitics as Russia’s neighborhood strategies: reconnecting
people or reaggregating lands?”, Nationalities Papers 45, no. 1 (2017).
73
Makarychev and Yatsyk, “Biopower and geopolitics as Russia’s neighborhood strategies: reconnecting people or
reaggregating lands?”, 31.
74
Alexandra Yatsyk, “Biopolitics, believers, bodily protests: The case of Pussy Riot”, in Cultural Forms of Protest in Russia,
ed. Birgit Beumers et al. (New York: Routledge, 2018).
75
Yatsyk, “Biopolitics, believers, bodily protests: The case of Pussy Riot”, 131.
76
Ibid., 131
77
Ibid., 131.
78
Andrey Makarychev and Sergei Medvedev, “Biopolitical art and the struggle for Sovereignty in Putin’s Russia”, Journal
of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 26, no. 2–3 (2018): 176.
79
Makarychev and Medvedev, “Biopolitical art and the struggle for Sovereignty in Putin’s Russia”, 169–170.
80
Ibid., 170.
 15

fourth term. In 2020, for example, seven people accused of forming an underground anarchist
organization called “Set’” were sentenced to prison81, another anarchist, Azat Miftakhov, was jailed in
202182, in the same year prominent opposition figure Alexei Navalny was imprisoned too83, and in 2022
one of the defendants in the “Kansk teenagers’ case”, 16-year-old anarchist Nikita Uvarov, was
convicted to five years in a colony84. In addition, during this period, media reports of torture against
people accused in political cases as well as cases of physical violence over participants in protests
became increasingly more frequent. On this basis, we suggest that the academic literature on biopolitical
technologies in Russian politics could be complemented by an analysis of the practices of direct physical
abuse towards the bodies of “internal others”, primarily through the mechanisms of the penitentiary
system.

81
“Won’t see you for a long time”. The verdict in the Set’ case came into force”, BBC News, Oct. 20, 2020,
https://www.bbc.com/russian/media-53990203 (accessed April 05, 2022).
82
“Mathematician and anarchist Miftakhov received six years in the case of a smoke bomb thrown into the office of United
Russia”, BBC News, Jan. 18, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-55477373 (accessed April 05, 2022).
83
“Putin critic Navalny jailed in Russia despite protests”, BBC News, Feb. 2, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-
55910974 (accessed April 05, 2022).
84
“I’m a child, I’m not a terrorist”. Court sentences Kansk schoolboy to five years in ‘Meinkraft’ case”, BBC News, Feb. 10,
2022, https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-60326468 (accessed April 05, 2022).
 16

2. Biopolitical technologies in foreign politics

2.1. Biopolitical technologies in relations with post -Soviet countries

In the academic literature devoted to the analysis of Russia's biopolitical strategies in its relations with
the countries of the former Soviet Union, the concept of the “Russian world” is central. From the
perspective of most of the researchers whose writings are included in this review, the “Russian world”
is primarily a biopolitical concept, as its focus is less on territory and more on the population, which is
constructed as “Russian” on the basis of certain parameters. There are two main approaches to defining
the “Russian world” in the literature. Firstly, the “Russian world” can be understood in terms of cultural
imperialism85; secondly, this concept has a religious reading, based on which “the borders of the Russian
world coincide with canonical boundaries of the Orthodox Church”86. Thus, the “Russian world”, on the
one hand, can be interpreted as a symbolic body of the Russian nation, based on the shared culture and
language; on the other hand, as a community of representatives of a single flock, which corresponds to
the concept of pastorate, discussed earlier. These interpretations have a strong correlation and, in the
view of some researchers, represent “two sides of the same coin”.

First of all, let us turn to works that interpret the Russian world through the prism of pastoral power.
According to Elizaveta Gaufman, whose work on Putin’s pastorate has already been mentioned in the
first part of our review, this type of power always implies “references to transborder sovereignty” as it
seeks to “united people on the basis of a common spiritual appeal that goes beyond ethnic origins and
language”87. From the researcher’s perspective, it is the principle of transborderism considered to be the
key Russian strategy in relations with the CIS countries. Makarychev holds a similar view in his article
“Beyond Geopolitics: Russian Soft Power, Conservatism, and Biopolitics”88. He argues that “the
Orthodox faith is used as a particular power tool” aimed at spreading a common traditionalist agenda
among the citizens of Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova, consolidating the population of these countries
around the Russian conservative project to protect “Christian values”89. The researcher elaborates on
this theme in an article entitled “Imperial Biopolitics and Its Disavowals: Russia, Georgia, and Spaces
In-Between”90, which he co-authored with Alexandra Yatsyk. According to the authors, due to the lack
of Russophone population in the South Caucasus, Russia had to use another channel of biopolitical

85
Makarychev and Yatsyk, “Biopower and geopolitics as Russia’s neighborhood strategies: reconnecting people or
reaggregating lands?”, 29.
86
Ibid., 30.
87
Gaufman, “Putin’s Pastorate: Post-structuralism in Post-Soviet Russia”, 76.
88
Andrey Makarychev, “Beyond Geopolitics: Russian Soft Power, Conservatism, and Biopolitics”, RUSSIAN POLITICS 3,
(2018).
89
Makarychev, “Beyond Geopolitics: Russian Soft Power, Conservatism, and Biopolitics”, 143.
90
Andrey Makarychev and Alexandra Yatsyk, “Imperial Biopolitics and Its Disavowals: Russia, Georgia, and Spaces In-
Between”, Region 7, no. 1 (2018).
 17

influence in the region - the Orthodox Church91. However, this policy was resisted by some members of
the Georgian Orthodox Church92. In this context, the article “Russia’s Foreign Policy from the Crimean
Crisis to the Middle East: Great Power Gamble or Biopolitics?”93 by Swiss political scientist Philipp
Kasula is also noteworthy. In his view, Russia is using the transborder potential of pastoral power not
only in the former Soviet space but also in relation to the countries of far abroad. For example, the
intervention in the conflict in Syria was justified in the Russian media by the need to protect the lives of
Orthodox Christians94. Thus, the Orthodox faith is one of the tools of the biopolitical construction of a
cross-border “Russian world”.

Another biopolitical connotation of the “Russian world”, according to many researchers, is the discourse
on the “divided body of the Russian nation”95 and “our people abroad”, the concern for whom the
Russian state justifies its actions that violate the sovereignty of the former Soviet republics. Belonging
to the category of “our people” is defined on the basis of various parameters: from language to political
views. Thus, Philip Kasula, in the above-mentioned article notes that the intervention in South Ossetia,
which took place during the Medvedev administration, was motivated by the possession of Russian
citizenship by a large part of South Ossetians, achieved through passportization policy that preceded
these events96. Six years later, Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea. In doing so, given the lack of Russian
passports among Crimeans, the president relied on “a broader interpretation of compatriots” based on
linguistic and ethnic arguments97. In the article “Beyond Geopolitics: Russian Soft Power, Conservatism,
and Biopolitics”98 Makarychev, like Kasula, points to passportization as one of the main biopolitical
tools for “promoting the Russian world”99. One more tool, according to the researcher, is “increasing the
scope of Putin’s regime supporters among Russian diaspora”100. In another article by Makarychev,
“Illiberal geographies: popular geopolitics and Russian biopolitical regionalism” 101, written in co-
authorship with Yatsyk, the scholars link this technique with “biopolitical regionalism”. According to
them, “biopolitical regionalism emerges when people who are citizens of one country shift their group
loyalties to a different political community”102. “The most visible and troublesome manifestation of this

91
Makarychev and Yatsyk, “Imperial Biopolitics and Its Disavowals: Russia, Georgia, and Spaces In-Between”, 10.
92
Ibid., 12.
93
Philipp Casula, “Russia’s Foreign Policy from the Crimean Crisis to the Middle East: Great Power Gamble or Biopolitics?”,
Rising Powers Quarterly 2, no. 1 (2017).
94
Casula, “Russia’s Foreign Policy from the Crimean Crisis to the Middle East: Great Power Gamble or Biopolitics?”, 42.
95
Medvedev, “The State and the Human Body in Putin’s Russia”, 2–3.
96
Casula, “Russia’s Foreign Policy from the Crimean Crisis to the Middle East: Great Power Gamble or Biopolitics?”, 33–
34.
97
Ibid., 33.
98
Makarychev, “Beyond Geopolitics: Russian Soft Power, Conservatism, and Biopolitics”.
99
Ibid., 142.
100
Ibid., 142.
101
Andrey Makarychev and Alexandra Yatsyk, “Illiberal geographies: popular geopolitics and Russian biopolitical
regionalism”, Eurasian Geography and Economics 59, no. 1 (2018).
102
Makarychev and Yatsyk, “Illiberal geographies: popular geopolitics and Russian biopolitical regionalism”, 55.
 18

phenomenon”, from the researchers’ perspective, is the Donbass103. Thus, the leitmotif of Russian policy
in the post-Soviet space is the biopolitical discourse about “protecting our people abroad”, which serves
as a basis for Russia’s violation of the sovereignty of the former Soviet republics, taking, at times, quite
aggressive forms, up to and including a thwarted intervention.

At the time of our work on this review, relations between Russia and Ukraine have taken a new tragic
turn: on 22 February 2022, President Putin recognized the official status of the DPR and LPR
republics104, and on 24 February the Russian army invaded Ukrainian territory105. As of this writing in
April 2022, the war is not yet over. These events require further academic analysis, including through
the lens of the theory of biopolitics.

2.2 Biopolitical technologies in Russian -Western relations

The literature on Russia’s biopolitical technologies used in its interactions with Western countries is not
very numerous. Researchers whose papers include analysis of this direction of foreign policy tend to
focus on at least one of the following two biopolitical strategies pursued by Russia in relation to the EU
and the US: first, the dissemination of a conservative biopolitical agenda of “traditional values” through
the Western right politicians; second, the use of the bodies of Russian citizens (former or present) as a
support for transborder sovereignty. In the following, we will examine each of these strategies in more
detail.

The topic of a so-called “fundamentalist international” based on a normalizing biopolitical discourse of

“traditional values” is explored in S. Braghiroli’s article “Redefining Europe: Russia and the 2015
Refugee Crisis”106, co-authored with A. Makarychev. According to the researchers, “Moscow gaining
access to the European public and having a possibility to propagate its counter-hegemonic model of
‘illiberal Europe’ via its ‘understanders’” including French National Front party leader Marine Le Pen
and Italian Northern League’s leader Matteo Salvini 107. Makarychev and Braghiroli argue that the
conservative ideas promoted by the Russian administration through their Western sympathizers have a
clear biopolitical connotation because they are primarily concerned with issues of corporeality and social
hygiene, such as anti-migrant sentiment108 . Thus, one of Russia’s main biopolitical strategies in relation

103
Yatsyk, “Illiberal geographies: popular geopolitics and Russian biopolitical regionalism”, 55.
104
“Ukraine: Putin announces Donetsk and Luhansk recognition”, BBC News, Feb. 21, 2022,
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60470900 (accessed April 05, 2022).
105
“Ukraine conflict: What we know about the invasion”, BBC News, Feb. 24, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-60504334 (accessed April 05, 2022). \
106
Stefano Braghiroli and Andrey Makarychev, “Redefining Europe: Russia and the 2015 Refugee Crisis”, Geopolitics,
(2017).
107
Braghiroli and Makarychev, “Redefining Europe: Russia and the 2015 Refugee Crisis”, 14.
108
Ibid., 9.
 19

to the Western countries is to strengthen its influence through the export of “traditional values”, the
channel for the dissemination of which is provided by local right-wing forces.

Another biopolitical strategy pursued by Moscow in its Western direction of foreign policy, according
to some researchers, is asserting Russia’s cross-border sovereignty through the bodies of its citizens.
Furthermore, both current Russian citizens and those who previously held that status can be used for this
purpose. For example, A. Makarychev and S. Medvedev in their article “Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s
Russia”109 mention a law banning the adoption of Russian orphans by American families named for
Dima Yakovlev, a former pupil of a Russian orphanage who tragically died in the US 110. According to
the scholars, this law is “based on the presumption that the bodies of “our” children belong to the nation”,
and can be used as an instrument in foreign policy even if they are no longer Russian citizens 111. The
situation with the bodies of Russian Olympic athletes looks the same. In an article entitled “Doped and
disclosed”112, Makarychev and Medvedev conceptualize the 2014 “illegal doping operation” as a
strategy asserting “Russian biopolitical sovereignty” based on the Schmittian “state of exception”113.
Thus, Russian athletes were excluded not only from medical practice, but also from “international doping
rules and codes of fair play” 114. It follows that the bodies of members of the Russian national team, as
previously the bodies of Russian orphans, became an instrument for the state to assert transborder
sovereignty.

From our perspective, the academic literature on Russia’s biopolitical strategies in relations with
Western countries could be complemented by an analysis of events that have occurred since 2018. For
example, on the eve of Putin’s re-election to a fourth presidential term, there was an attempt on the life
of former Soviet spy Sergei Skripal, convicted in his home country of treason115. The UK authorities
blamed Russian security services for the incident 116. This case may be considered in further research as
an act of asserting Russian sovereignty over the bodies of its former citizens, implemented through more
radical biopolitical techniques pertaining to the field of necropolitics.

109
Makarychev and Medvedev, “Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia”.
110
Ibid., 48.
111
Ibid., 48.
112
Andrey Makarychev and Sergei Medvedev, “Doped and disclosed: Anatomopolitics, biopower, and sovereignty in the
Russian sports industry”, Politics and the Life Sciences 38, no. 2 (2019).
113
Makarychev and Medvedev, “Doped and disclosed: Anatomopolitics, biopower, and sovereignty in the Russian sports
industry”, 5.
114
Ibid., 5.
115
“Russian spy poisoning: What we know so far”, Oct. 8, 2018.
116
Ibid.
 20

Conclusion

In the course of our analysis of the academic literature we were able to draw a generalized picture
characterizing the perceptions of the majority of researchers about biopolitical technologies in Russian
politics. These views can be summarized as follows: first, the biopolitical turn took place during Putin’s
third term in office; second, it occurred in both domestic and foreign policy; in domestic policy the key
role is played by the discourse of “traditional values”, aimed at constructing the nation through the
biopolitical normalization of citizens’ bodies; the central element of foreign policy is the concept of the
“Russian World”, the biopolitical meaning of which is the spread of sovereignty of Russia beyond its
political borders through the bodies of “our people”. Nevertheless, from our point of view, the existing
literature on this topic contains a number of gaps that require further study.

We argue that during Putin’s fourth term, the Russian model of biopolitics has taken even more extreme
forms, shifting to the regular use of methods of direct pressure on the bodies of the “internal others”, as
evidenced by the growing number of political prisoners and the increasing frequency of state violence
against members of the opposition and other “excluded groups”. Moreover, these cases include attempts
to assassinate people who are constructed as “outsiders” in relation to the incumbent regime. In addition,
the escalation of the conflict with Ukraine into full-scale war has resulted in the deaths of a large number
of Russian and Ukrainian citizens 117. Thus, while Putin’s third term is conceptualized in the academic
literature as a time of biopolitical turn, the fourth term, in our view, can be called a period of transition
of biopolitics into the phase of necropolitics. This point is poorly addressed in existing studies and
requires, in our opinion, further analysis.

117
“Ukraine War: Kremlin spokesman Peskov admits ‘significant’ Russian losses”, BBC News, Apr. 08, 2022,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61033173 (accessed April 08, 2022).
 21

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 24

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