Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/Zuma Press/PA Images. All rights reserved.Russian elections used to be all about dramaturgiya, meaning an artificial and carefully-scripted drama. Elections may not have had the normal interest, like an uncertain outcome, but they buzzed with all the drama of artificial conflict. In fact, one of the tricks of local “political technology” was to deliver emotive narratives to marginalise subjects that the Kremlin didn’t want to see discussed.
The 2018 presidential election, however, isn’t just boring. It’s devoid of any politics at all. If it is about anything, it’s about the politics of nothingness. It may therefore apparently not be worth paying too much attention, but dramaturgiya has been a functional part of the Russian political system for over 20 years, and it’s not clear how things will work without it.
Switching the tracks
Dramaturgiya has changed its function several times. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was part of a weak state’s box of magic tricks. Russia’s leaders were presented as either a lesser evil against exaggerated threats (Yeltsin against the “red-brown” coalition in 1993 or against the Communists in 1996), or as a crusader against soft targets or threats that the state didn’t have the capacity or desire to properly confront (the oligarchs in 2003, the Chechens in 1999 were arguably both). Dramaturgiya’s main function was thus distraction, changing the dominant narrative away from the authorities’ corruption or incompetence.
