Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Russia’s appeal to ‘warrior masculinity’

Marina Yusupova 10th May 2023

Putin’s Victory Day pitch for more military recruits is unlikely to encourage men to enlist in the army.

In his Victory Day parade speech yesterday, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, likened the war in Ukraine to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, saying ‘real war’ had been unleashed against Russia. He is reported to be planning to mobilise an extra 500,000 troops in 2023. Last month he passed new legislation introducing electronic military-draft papers, which will make it much harder to avoid conscription.

The last wave of conscription in September 2022 prompted an exodus of hundreds of thousands of young men to neighbouring countries. So to encourage men to enlist, the Kremlin has launched a massive media campaign appealing to the notion of ‘warrior masculinity’.

Russian news outlets and ‘social media’ platforms, as well as billboards and lampposts in big cities, have been filled with advertisements explaining that a man who joins the military is a hero—a real man deserving respect and admiration. The advertising videos tell the stories of men who volunteered to join up. It’s a familiar tale of how signing up drastically improves men’s lives. Their children and wives admire their heroism, their ex-girlfriends fall in love with them again and they gain the respect of their communities.

Those who have left are portrayed as selfish cowards, as with one advertisement in which a woman says: ‘The boys left, the men stayed.’ Another, which ends with the caption ‘You’re a real man, be one‘, emphasises the good wages on offer to men who join up. Enlisting is presented as a means to improve one’s financial standing: pay off a debt, buy a car, move out from a small town into a large city.

But how effective are campaigns like this? My research on Russian masculinities suggests that the themes of ‘be a man’ and ‘make more money’ play into two of the most common anxieties among Russian men. But the problems experienced last September when—according to some reports—up to 700,000 left Russia to avoid conscription (something the Kremlin has denied) suggest that these messages have not worked very well. Two paradoxes, legacies of the fall of the Soviet Union, can help explain the lukewarm response to the call to arms.



Don't miss out on cutting-edge thinking.


Join tens of thousands of informed readers and stay ahead with our insightful content. It's free.



Unwilling to serve

The first is a structural contradiction which has persisted since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that military service remains a constitutional duty for men aged 18-27, only a minority of men in the draft pool end up serving in the armed forces. The rest avoid military call-up via legal and illegal means. According to the Canadian researcher Maya Eichler, compared with the Soviet era when 70 to 85 per cent of draft-age men were conscripted, in the first post-Soviet decade or so the Russian state was only able to call up about 10 to 30 per cent of men in the draft pool.

Secondly, my research has found that while Russian men tend to support the military as an institution, they are very critical of the way it is run in Russia. Men I spoke to—across generations—called the Russian army ‘corrupt’, ‘venal’, ‘deeply damaged’, ‘rotten’, ‘discredited’, ‘severely underfunded’ and ‘a shameful place based on dedovshchina‘ (hazing and bullying). I conducted these interviews in 2012-14 and the majority of my interlocutors expressed personal unwillingness to serve in the Russian army and were strictly against their own sons serving.

My research comprised in-depth biographical interviews with 40 Russian men of different ages and highly varied socio-economic and professional backgrounds living in Russia and in the United Kingdom. In almost half of those interviews, militarised notions of masculinity and heroic fantasies were expressed. For 17 participants, the idea of being a man was first and foremost linked to the notion of a ‘warrior’ or ‘defender’.

Conversations about the military were one of the main grounds where Russian men negotiated and established their masculinity, as well as that of other men. A lack of military experience was explicitly or implicitly perceived as a lack of respectable masculinity. This was evident whether or not the men I was interviewing had done military service.

Despite Putin’s military reforms, my interviewees however regarded the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian armies as two completely different social institutions. The former was seen as a social uplift, a place where masculinity was forged and where ordinary men became heroes. The post-Soviet army, by contrast, was often seen as a corrupt and dangerous place, a waste of time and a place for poor people with no other life prospects.

Demilitarising masculinities

In 2004, a Human Rights Watch report found that the transition to a market economy had had a serious impact on conscription. Young men from relatively privileged backgrounds could buy their way out of the army or get a draft deferment to attend university, so the majority of conscripts in Russia came from ‘the most disadvantaged, least affluent parts of society’. In her 2012 book, Militarizing Men: Gender, Conscription, and War in Post-Soviet Russia, Eichler asserts that army service has become ‘increasingly tied to a marginal masculinity differentiated by class’.

The Russian army in Ukraine is overwhelmingly made up of soldiers from the poorest regions of the country. Mobilisation has also disproportionately targeted ethnic-minority regions such as the republics of Buryatia and Dagestan, where for many signing an army contract is the only way to make a living.

The breakdown of the Soviet social contract on which men’s soldiering rested (guaranteed employment, housing and other state-funded benefits) and the failure of the Russian state to provide similarly tangible rewards radically undermined men’s willingness to serve in the military. The transition to capitalism and the ‘free market’ created new notions of masculinity tied to financial success. This new masculinity entered into conflict with the patriotic, self-sacrificing, militarised masculinity of Soviet times.

In his work on the contradictions in modern militarism, the US scholar Michael Mann likens public interest in the national use of armed forces to a ‘spectator sport‘. I found this in my research, where it became clear that the Soviet-era citizen-soldier has turned into a citizen-spectator. Individuals may vocally support militarism while personally refusing to engage in any military practices.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence

Marina Yusupova
Marina Yusupova

Marina Yusupova is a lecturer in sociology at Edinburgh Napier University. Her research documents the relationships between gender, race and coloniality in the post-Soviet contexts.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u421983d2 3 The EU’s Landmark Mercosur Deal Promises Much But Delivers LittleSimela Papatheophilou, Werner Raza and Bernhard Tröster
u4219834af 1 Will Denmark Lead Europe Towards a Super-Rich Tax?Isabelle Brachet
611e8de7e149c8763c9d58fc537549c18d20044a0abfeadd41919a1a731b6e64 Britain Rediscovers Europe as Macron and Merz Lead a Democratic ReawakeningPolly Toynbee
u42198346b1 1 Europe’s Appeasement Dilemma: The Price of Standing Against PutinFrank Hoffer

Most Popular Articles

u4219834676 bcba 6b2b3e733ce2 1 The End of an Era: What’s Next After Globalisation?Apostolos Thomadakis
u4219834675 4ff1 998a 404323c89144 1 Why Progressive Governments Keep Failing — And How to Finally Win Back VotersMariana Mazzucato
09d21a9 The Future of Social Democracy: How the German SPD can Win AgainHenning Meyer
u421983462 041df6feef0a 3 Universities Under Siege: A Global Reckoning for Higher EducationManuel Muñiz

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

S&D Group in the European Parliament advertisement

Cohesion Policy

S&D Position Paper on Cohesion Policy post-2027: a resilient future for European territorial equity

Cohesion Policy aims to promote harmonious development and reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union, and the backwardness of the least favoured regions with a particular focus on rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition and regions suffering from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as outermost regions, regions with very low population density, islands, cross-border and mountain regions.

READ THE FULL POSITION PAPER HERE

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

With a comprehensive set of relevant indicators, presented in 85 graphs and tables, the 2025 Benchmarking Working Europe report examines how EU policies can reconcile economic, social and environmental goals to ensure long-term competitiveness. Considered a key reference, this publication is an invaluable resource for supporting European social dialogue.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
The evolution of working conditions in Europe

This episode of Eurofound Talks examines the evolving landscape of European working conditions, situated at the nexus of profound technological transformation.

Mary McCaughey speaks with Barbara Gerstenberger, Eurofound's Head of Unit for Working Life, who leverages insights from the 35-year history of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS).

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Summer issue of The Progressive Post is out!


It is time to take action and to forge a path towards a Socialist renewal.


European Socialists struggle to balance their responsibilities with the need to take bold positions and actions in the face of many major crises, while far-right political parties are increasingly gaining ground. Against this background, we offer European progressive forces food for thought on projecting themselves into the future.


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss the transformative power of European Social Democracy, examine the far right’s efforts to redesign education systems to serve its own political agenda and highlight the growing threat of anti-gender movements to LGBTIQ+ rights – among other pressing topics.

READ THE MAGAZINE

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

BlueskyXWhatsApp