Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power

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International Feminist Journal of Politics

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Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power

Elizabeth A. Wood

To cite this article: Elizabeth A. Wood (2016): Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power,International Feminist Journal of Politics, DOI: 10.1080/14616742.2015.1125649

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2015.1125649

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Hypermascul ini ty as a Scenar io ofPower

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S ICONIC RULE, 1999 – 2008

ELIZABETH A. WOODMassachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The image of Russian President Vladimir Putin riding bare-chested in Siberia has

attained mythic status among journalists and the public, both Russian and non-

Russian. The current article analyzes the Russian leader’s instrumental deployment of

hypermasculinity as a strategy for creating not just legitimacy, but also power.

Putin’s public scripts and behaviors have, in different ways at different times, been

overwhelmingly derived and embellished from a masculine menu that would be imper-

missible for Russian women. They also frequently demonstrate, in words and gestures,

his active and absolute dominance over his interlocutors in ways that would be unac-

ceptable for other, subordinated men. The creation of Putin’s image, his scenario of

power, thus becomes a “hegemonic project,” in the sense developed by Meghana

Nayak and Jennifer Suchland, one that is deeply imbued with implied gender domi-

nance and at times even gender violence. Ultimately, this work shows that studies of

hypermasculinity and militarized masculinity cannot be limited to war settings, but

rather must be extended to questions of political leadership and especially to ways

that politics itself is undermined by leaders’ and their handlers’ excessive reliance on

masculinity as a substitute for genuine political dialogue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ KeywordsPutin, hypermasculinity, Russia, ideology, hegemony, scenario of power

The attacks against Putin are attacks against Russia. Without Putin, there is noRussia. (Vyacheslav Volodin, Russian official, speaking at the Valdai Club, 22October 2014)

Marxism was an ideology. Conspiracy theories are not an ideology. (Ivan Krastevon the comments of Volodin; Fidler 2014)

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2015.1125649

# 2016 Taylor & Francis

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The image of Russian President Vladimir Putin riding bare-chested inSiberia has attained almost mythic status among journalists and the public,both Russian and non-Russian. Since his ascent to national power in 1999,Russian scholars have been debating the nature of his regime, increasinglycalling it a personalist regime, that is, one based on the person of the ruler(Colton and Hale 2009; Ledeneva 2013; Smyth, Sobolev, and Soboleva2013). Yet the masculinity and even hypermasculinity at the core of Putin’srule have not been analyzed as a political phenomenon.1

Obviously all politicians foster certain images of themselves, some moreobviously gendered and others less so (Bederman 1995; Dean 1998, 2001;Spackman 1996). Putin’s persona too has aspects that are not explicitly gen-dered, particularly his evident professionalism (which can be consideredgender neutral since it is accessible to both men and women) (Hill andGaddy 2013). Still, his persona stands out as gendered in three distinct regis-ters: visual imagery (the Russian Marlboro Man); domination of the politicalsphere through verbal attacks on other men; and a series of crude, machoaphorisms which have been collected as “Putinisms.”

The current article analyzes the Russian leader’s instrumental deploymentof hypermasculinity, that is, an exaggerated set of cultural norms and beha-viors usually associated with males, as a strategy for creating not just legiti-macy, but also a scenario of power itself. As Richard Wortman (1995–2000)has shown with regard to the Russian tsars and tsarinas, a “scenario ofpower” can be understood as a set of political messages conveyed asmuch through symbolism and signals, ceremonies and rituals, as throughtexts and doctrines. Putin’s symbolic actions have been overwhelminglyderived from a masculine menu that would be impermissible for Russianwomen (Russian has stronger gender differences particularly with regardto crude language than does English). These actions also frequently demon-strate, in words or gestures, his active and absolute dominance over hisinterlocutors in ways that would be unacceptable for other, subordinatedmen as well.

The creation of Putin’s image, his scenario of power, thus becomes a“hegemonic project,” in the sense developed by Nayak and Suchland(2006), one that is deeply imbued with implied gender dominance and attimes even gender violence. In mirror image to George W. Bush’s hypermas-culinization of the American state (Agathangelou and Ling 2004), Putincreates a muscular equation of himself and the Russian state, so that he dom-inates both the internal and the external landscape by mobilizing languageand imagery that carry deeply masculine overtones in the Russian politicalworld.

Furthermore, as Carol Cohn (1987, 1993), and Christensen and Marx Ferree(2008) have also found, the challenge of such an exaggerated and dominantmasculinity is that it can close off reasonable discussion and, as I show inthis case, provide a way to avoid politics itself if we define politics as the con-testation of ideas as well as the contest of candidates (Fraser 1989).

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THE ICONIC AS A SCENARIO OF POWER

Two questions form the core of this article: what is the work that PresidentPutin’s masculine persona does for his political power? And what does hiskind of highly politicized masculinity say about political power in Russiamore generally?

Putin and his handlers have used his display of masculinity to demonstratehis dominant position in iconic form, that is, in a form that is highly stylizedand repeated in order to instill a certain political sentiment and loyalty in thepopulation at large. This stylized representation or iconicity in turn works onthree distinct, yet interrelated planes: the pictorial/visual; the interpersonal;and the verbal. Because this representation is not spelled out in explicitly ideo-logical terms, it can appear to be “above politics,” a positive value in theRussian context where the political is usually viewed as “dirty,” rigged,unfair. Because he disdains politics and uses tough language, Putin appearsto be a heroic figure.

While appearing to be outside politics, even apolitical, Putin’s scenario ofmasculine power in fact operates as a proto-ideology or set of defining ideasunderlying the official ideology (Duerst-Lahti 2002, 2008). Moreover, itserves to fill the vacuum created by the Russian leader’s refusal to articulatean ideology that is more than strings of empty words (“sovereign democracy,”“dictatorship of law”). The “masculinity” in the scenario relies on the prever-bal, the emotional, the taken-for-granted, even sometimes the sexuallycharged (Connell 1987; Fraser 1989, 120; Poovey 1988). By relying on themultiple masculinities that are the subject of this article, Putin appeals todifferent groups in the population. He becomes the Everyman, the regularJoe. Yet the masculinity at the core of his self-presentation tends to precludepolitical discussion rather than open up issues for public examination and con-testation because it is made to appear “natural” and “spontaneous.” In otherwords, because his scenario of power is based on values that are rarely madeexplicit and yet are omnipresent in society (especially the superiority of mas-culinity in the sphere of politics), Putin’s hypermasculinity remains simul-taneously visible to his constituents yet unremarked. Putin appears to be ademocratic ruler because he is a popular man, a regular Joe, not because heruns against other candidates and convinces viewers of his superiority. Thepeople are asked to applaud the ruler through opinion polls that allege hispopularity rather than to consider the political direction of the nation.

Judith Butler (1990) famously remarked on the performative and ritualizednature of gender as “an identity tenuously constructed in time, instituted in anexterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (140). Gender is, thus, “nota noun” but rather something continually fashioned through repeated acts(24–25). In Putin we see an almost obsessive repetition and development ofa hypermasculinity until it has become (in different ways at different times)one of his trademarks. In Putin’s first eight years this masculine “brand”

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became, in fact, a kind of blocking antibody, substituting for a positiveprogram for the nation.

It also bears noting that Putin’s masculine persona combines a number ofunstable and even competing components. He is the heroic commander-in-chief claiming he will establish a “dictatorship of the law;” yet he positionshimself as the outlaw threatening to “rub out” the bandits. He is the high-handed autocrat dressing down ministers who appear to fail; yet he uses ado-lescent, street language to chastise his viewers for “chewing snot,” that is,failing to accomplish anything. In terms of class politics he favors theexpressions of the lowest segments of society (iazyk podonkov, literally “thelanguage of the scum”) in some contexts, while emulating the elite inothers, singing the American popular song “Blueberry Hill” and wearingdesigner suits.

The extent of Putin’s street masculinity, in particular, is generally not wellknown in the West. His crude sayings are often not even translated in thewestern media, although Michael Gorham in particular (2011, 2012, 2014)has given some excellent scholarly attention to them (without, it could besaid, fully delving into the hypermasculinity of Putin’s persona). In utterancesthat sound like textbook cases of what Mary Douglas (1966) would call the“unclean” and Julia Kristeva (1982) the “abject,” Putin’s speech is strewnwith references to sweat, snot, blood, bodily fluids, infection and castration.In Russian these are both transgressive in terms of class (the intelligentsiawould not use such expressions) and privileged in terms of gender (Russianholds whole categories of sexualized and criminal language as outside thebounds permissible for women). They also demonstrate his domination asthe one person who can use this kind of language, as the Russian Dumapassed restrictive laws in 2003, 2005 and again in 2014 explicitly banningobscenities and vulgarity in both official language and in public media(Belikov 2009; Gorham 2014).2 For women especially such language istaboo, as they are subject to a strict regimen of “politeness,” prohibitingcrude language and participation in politics as too “dirty” (Peterson 1996; Vor-onina 1993, 1994; Voronova 2009).

A number of scholars have focused generally on Putin’s cult of personality,including Colton and Hale (2009), White and McAllister (2008) and Ledeneva(2013). There has also been good gender analysis of the Russian leader’s mas-culine “celebrity status,” his appearance as “an action hero” and a “macho sex-object” (Cassiday and Johnson 2010, 2012; Goscilo 2011, 2012; Kolonitskii2004; Ryabova and Ryabov 2011; Sperling 2012, 2015). However, with thepartial exception of Riabov and Riabova (2014), who focus on gender andnationalism, and Sperling, who discusses legitimacy, there has been littleanalysis of the political work of this hypermasculinity, its contradictionsand the ways that it becomes a substitute for political discussion.

Because it is impossible to study every aspect of Putin’s first two terms inoffice (2000–08), I have chosen to examine some of his most famousimages and phrases, highlighting in the course of this article some of the

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different masculinities he has employed, including militarized masculinity(Putin in uniform and in military contexts; also see Wood 2011); outlaw mas-culinity; pop-star virility; dominance over other men (especially in the famousKhodorkovsky case); the Marlboro manhood of 2007 in the run-up to passingpower to Dmitry Medvedev; and the demasculinization, even feminization ofMedvedev himself in the latter’s bid for election (winter 2007–08).

Each of these images and moments contains telling contradictions. Theheroic law-and-order Putin appeared at roughly the same time as the outlawPutin (1999–2000). The chic Putin of the pop song “I Want a Man likePutin” came at the same time as the Putin who attacked others (2002–03).The Marlboro Man appeared just before Putin appeared to cede power to Med-vedev (2007–08). Several of these intensive image-making campaigns alsotook place in the months immediately prior to an election period (in 2000,2004, 2008). Over and over again Putin has campaigned without campaigningby showing his different macho sides. At the same time his reliance on a hyper-masculinity has also demonstrated a frailty as seen in the protests of 2011–12(Riabov and Riabova 2014; Sperling 2012, 2015).

Methodologically, this article particularly focuses on an examination ofPutin’s distinctive phraseology, which has been facilitated by the Russianmedia practice of collecting “Putinisms” at every possible turn. Using theEast View Universal Database of newspapers, as well as Google searches, Ihave made every effort to determine the greater context in which commentswere made, as well as to find the most authoritative version of a particularphrase or photo.3 Interestingly, the Russian press has often tended to report“Putinisms” without commentary, especially from 2003, when a new law onmass media forbade the use of “any expressions denigrating human worth”(Golovinskaia 2003). While these examples cannot aspire to being comprehen-sive, they do show both moments of success and also a few moments when theimage-making seems to have failed.

MOBILIZING CHARISMA WHERE THERE WAS NONE

Initially in 1999, when Boris Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin as Prime Ministerand his anointed successor to the presidency, Putin was by all accounts ratherlacking in charisma. He was the fifth prime minister in eighteen months. Jour-nalists from around the world asked repeatedly “who is Mr Putin?” One earlyarticle in the Russian press noted that ordinary people were not sure that thisprime minister “without an image” even existed (Levina 1999a, 1999b).

While Putin aggressively pursued the war in Chechnya from the moment hecame to power, he made a show of not developing an official ideology. In May2000, political insider Vyacheslav Nikonov (grandson of Stalin’s foreign min-ister Vyacheslav Molotov and himself a former head of an ideological divisionwithin the Soviet Communist Party) described the new president in terms of hisabsence of ideology: “He is not an ideologist – he did not write philosophical

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treatises, he did not substantiate his system of values and he did not identifyhimself with any known theory” (Nikonov 2000).

Putin quickly solved the relatively superficial problems raised by the tran-sition from Soviet to Russian anthem, national flag and coat of arms, but hestill did not have an easy way to solve the larger problem of “the RussianIdea,” or national identity, a problem that Yeltsin had also struggled with(Fish 2001; Hill and Gaddy 2013). In fact, on 30 December 1999, in a piecethat became famous as the “Millennium Manifesto,” Putin emphaticallydeclared: “I am against the restoration in Russia of an official state ideologyin any form” (Putin 1999).

It is easy to see Putin’s dilemma on the subject of ideology. The omnipre-sence of official state doctrine in the Soviet period had made “ideology” repug-nant to many, especially those in the intelligentsia. The Russian Constitution of1993 stated explicitly that Russia was not to have one single ideology, butrather to allow many to flourish.4 For Putin all the obvious ideologies had pro-blems: “communism” was the property of his rivals, the Communist Party;“social democracy” was associated with the Bolsheviks; “monarchism” wasdead; “liberalism” was associated with capitalism (still a topic of muchambivalence); “perestroika” was associated with anarchy; “nationalism”tended to be the province of extremists and could be highly divisive.5

In his autobiography, First Person (2000), Putin himself commented on theproblem of the weakness of the center in Russian politics:

I think that many people believe the President had ceased to be the center ofpower. Before, they behaved quite loyally. If need be, I will simply act in sucha way as to guarantee that no one has such illusions anymore. (191)

This willingness to break people’s illusions, often with threatening language,was the first step in the creation of the image of Putin as “tough guy.” This wasnot an ideology, in the classic sense of the word, but rather a stance, a form ofposturing that demonstrated Putin’s power (vlast’) more than his authority. Itwas also a stance that relied on a hypermasculine resort to the threat of vio-lence.

A WARRIOR AND A TOUGH GUY

In 1999–2000, Project Putin (Baker and Glasser 2005) got underway withphotographs (clearly planned) (Foxall 2013) and language (apparently impro-vised but possibly also planned) to show Putin as all-powerful. Intertwiningthe heroic (in imagery) and the tough (in language), Putin’s handlers madesure the media was saturated with the new scenario of power of the warrior.While initially focused on giving him visibility in fighting the war in Chech-nya, this project soon became focused on campaigning without appearing tocampaign.

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Putin’s heroic persona included several media photos of him flying intoChechnya on fighter jets. On New Year’s Eve, 1999, as the rest of the worldwas worrying about Y2K and Russians were watching Boris Yeltsin’s televisedresignation and nomination of Putin as acting President, Putin flew into thecombat region of Gudermes with his wife, his Minister of the Press and acorps of journalists. There he presented the troops with hunting knives, amacho gift of gratitude and solidarity (“Russia: Troops Spend Their NewYear’s Night” 1999; “Putin Thanks Russian Troops” 2000).

In March 2000, a week before the presidential elections, Putin’s handlersstaged him flying an SU-27 fighter jet into Grozny, the capital of Chechnya,in full flight gear and helmet, appearing solo like a deus ex machina. On theday before, Russian television had showed an amateur video of a Chechencommander’s allegedly barbaric execution of Russian soldiers (Petrov 2000;“V izbiratel’nuiu kampaniiu Vladimira Putina” 2000).6 Putin, the hero, thusappeared posed to undertake a dangerous mission flying into battle againstthe savage bandits. As Maya Eichler (2006) has shown, by contrasting “theidea of militarized, ordered, patriotic Russian masculinity . . . to the notionof a racialized, aggressive, anarchical, criminal Chechen masculinity” (490),the Russian leadership bolstered its own legitimacy. Commentators were con-vinced that this alone won him the vote. Putin’s time in office was now becom-ing known as the “war presidency” (Eichler 2006, 2012; Kovalev 2000; Wood2011). Though in 2000 he lacked actual military experience, Putin (and histeam) were clearly attempting to gain some of the reflected legitimacy (andglory) of the military by flying military planes into a war zone (see Messersch-midt 2010 for the obvious comparison to George W. Bush).

More powerful, however, than his flights into the war zone was Putin’s useof vulgar, macho language that both shocked and thrilled many Russians,especially the famous “rub them out in the outhouse” (mochit’ v sortire). On24 September 1999 in the context of apartment bombings in Daghestan,Southern Russia and Moscow itself, Putin launched his famous tirade claiminghe would catch the Chechen rebels wherever they might be. “We will pursuethe terrorists everywhere. Pardon me for saying so, but if we catch them inthe bathroom, we’ll rub them out even in the outhouse” (Vy uzh menia izvinite,v tualete poimaem, my i v sortire ikh zamochim). Analyzing this phrase (fol-lowing linguist Remi Camus 2006), one can see that it contains both vulgar,criminal language (to “rub them out”) and also humiliation/scatology (thebathroom, the outhouse where the bandits will not even have time to pursuetheir bodily functions). By ostensibly “excusing” himself (“Pardon me”),Putin accentuates the distinction between the permissible and the impermissi-ble, allowing himself to move into an area not permitted to other members ofsociety.

This famous phrase has been credited more than any other with raisingPutin’s popularity rankings. As one member of Russia’s Council for Foreignand Defense Policy commented, “[n]o politician has ever been so fantasticallyvulgar. Ordinary people love it because it’s the way they speak themselves.

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They think he’s less hypocritical than other politicians” (Chazan 1999). Putin’slanguage gave him credibility as someone “real” and therefore democratic, incontrast to the fancy but empty phrase-mongering Gorbachev and the bom-bastic Yeltsin. Although Putin himself has claimed on several occasions (in1999 and 2011) that he blew up because the journalists were pushing himtoo hard, several political observers have argued that he was too smart andtoo politically experienced to have made such a comment by accident (Kuznet-sova 1999; “Mochit’ v sortire” 2011; Bershidskii 1999). Only one week beforethe outhouse comment (on 17 September), he had publicly exhorted his gov-ernment to “strangle the beast at its root” (zadushit’ gadinu na korniu): “Wemust neither drool nor drip snot, but rather act harshly and energetically atall levels” (Akopov 1999; Efimovich 1999). Contrasting running body fluidswith decisive action, he mobilized one of Stalin’s favorite phrases, “to stranglethe fascist beast.”

The phrase “to rub out” immediately began to be used by others as well. InFebruary 2000, when he was still a month away from the elections for the pre-sidency, Putin met with 500 oligarchs and other notables, whom many insociety considered to be one of his biggest problems (because of their wealthand general fractiousness). When someone asked if those who are parasiticalon the government should be rubbed out (mochit’), Putin answered “Absol-utely. We must exclude the possibility of anyone sucking up to power (priso-salsia)” (Germanovich 2000). At this same meeting he was adamant that he didnot want his trusted people to make “a sweet, syrupy image” of him as a can-didate (“Chto est’ chto” 2000). Here he contrasted his gangster image (mochit’)with a possibly feminine image (“sweet, syrupy”) and rejected “sucking up”(etymologically close to nursing, sosat’).

In this same pre-election period Putin frequently criticized those he saidwere “just” campaigning. On 8 March 2000 he told a group of women inIvanovo-Voznesensk (a city associated with women’s textile labor) that hewould not be trying to figure out which was more popular, “Tampax or Snick-ers” (Belton 2000; Piontkovski 2000). Openly trivializing the elections (vybory)as mere choices (also vybory) between consumer goods, he simultaneouslyestablished his gender dominance. On International Women’s Day (8 March)he showed he was not afraid to say the word “Tampax” or to refer towomen’s internal bodily processes and fluids.

His disdain was also famously visible when Larry King asked him onAmerican TV about the Kursk submarine incident of 12 August 2000. “Itsank,” he told King. Some commentators viewed this as a scandal (Putin’s“Kurskgate”), revealing his Soviet-style failure to protect the population ofhis country (Sturua 2000). Others, by contrast, viewed Putin’s response as“natural and human” (Vasil’kov 2000). Either way, his laconic style, whichRussian voters had previously appreciated, now came under fire and had tobe rectified by a more personal meeting with the grieving families ten daysafter the accident.

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BRINGING ON THE POP VIRILITY

In 2002, Putin’s acolytes decided to try a “pop star” approach to the newPresident’s image (this had first been tried with Boris Yeltsin discodancing as part of his campaign in 1996). In the summer and fall of 2002(on the eve of Putin’s 50th birthday) a new song appeared out of nowhereentitled “I Want a Man Like Putin.” In it the narrator lambastes a recent boy-friend and praises the masculinity of Putin as a better alternative. Theorigins of the song tell a great deal about the quasi-ideological nature ofthe Putin masculinity project.

Aleksandr Elin, the man who wrote the words to the song, claims that hethought up the song as a way to win a bet. Someone had said that youcould not get into show business unless you had a million dollars. Elinwrote the song to prove that he could. Later, significantly, he went on tobecome the producer of a rock group called “Charisma” [Kharizma] and onecalled “Chimera” [Khimera] (Geraskina 2005; “Aleksandr Elin” 2005).

The song’s producer, Nikolai Gastello, at the time the official spokesmanfor the Russian Supreme Court and himself the grandson of a famousSoviet pilot, claimed that he sponsored the song as part of what he con-sidered his civic obligation (obshchestvennaia rabota). In Soviet times suchvolunteer civic activism was required of all ambitious individuals whohoped to get ahead. “I like to do civic work,” Gastello told an interviewerfrom Izvestiia; “we should revive this tradition.” He even referred to thenew musical group Singing Together that he had created for this song asan “agitbrigade” (a Soviet group formed for propaganda purposes). Besidesfishing, he noted that his main hobby was “ideology.” According to thenewspaper, his apartment was lined with volumes of Stalin, Cicero andMachiavelli. A pop group, he concluded, could be an excellent vehicle forcontemporary ideology (Braterskii 2002).7

While the song says merely “I want someone like Putin” (takogo inRussian is not an explicitly male term), it nonetheless differentiatesbetween the singer’s boyfriend (moi paren’) and Putin, who would notlead her into trouble. Like Putin’s own speech, the song relies on colloquial-isms. The boyfriend, for example, swallowed kakoi-to muti – literally, somekind of slime; in other words, some kind of drugs or alcohol. Putin is madeto look virile through the contrast to both the boyfriend (a failed male) andthe young women singing. In the most popular video version of the songPutin actually watches the young women singing this song. He and anunnamed man sit in leather chairs, bonding with each other through gesturesand eye contact, while watching the women on a screen.8 The success of thesong, which seems to have fostered the beginning of creating an explicitlycivic (i.e. nonmilitary) masculine image for President Putin, has been repeat-edly sung at gatherings of the Nashi youth movement, a group which alsoappeals to young people’s group emotions and visceral patriotism (Sperling2012).

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THREATENING OTHER MEN

In fall 2002, Putin’s masculine image showed a decidedly unglamorous side,however, as he began to attack the manhood of interlocutors who displeasedhim. In Brussels he told a reporter asking about Chechnya that he should con-sider becoming circumcised in Moscow: “We have specialists on this question.I will recommend they do the operation so that nothing grows back“ (Kolesni-kov 2002).9 Putin’s threat of castration aggressively threatens the bodily integ-rity of the other man, enforcing his position as the one who can make extremestatements, again a taboo for other politicians, male and especially female.

Putin’s street masculinity now began more than ever to show an obsessionwith the unclean and the abject. On 29 January 2003, Putin asked a group ofstudents in Kiev why Russian–Ukrainian relations compared so poorly withthe European Union with its common currency and visa. “But what aboutus? . . . We’re still chewing our snot and dabbling in politics” (Kolesnikov2003).10 Once again Putin pointed his finger at politicking, comparing it tochewing snot, an expression typically used by young people to mean doingnothing.11

The oligarchs as a group now became Putin’s target in fall 2002 when helikened the work of the government to taking up a club in order to beat itsenemies on the head.12 Then in November 2003 he told Italian journalists,“[e]veryone must always obey the law, and not only when they’ve beengrabbed in a certain place,” making it clear he meant a part of the maleanatomy (Babasian and Iusin 2003). After Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the busi-nessman who became his leading scapegoat in this period, was arrested in ablazing display of military masculinity (twenty masked men toting assaultrifles seized him in Novosibirsk), Putin responded to the barrage of mediaarticles by calling on everyone to stop “the speculation and hysteria.”13 Hisown response was restrained, he implied, while that of the media was femin-ized as hysterical.

In a press conference in January 2006 Putin managed to use multiple vulgarphrases reminiscent of adolescent males, telling the audience that his govern-ment had not settled Ukrainian gas prices arbitrarily “by pulling them out ofour nose” and ending with a comment that the journalists present (presumablymale and female) should probably end the long, almost four-hour sessionbecause he doubted any of them were wearing “diapers” (“Stenogrammapress-konferentsii” 2006). Two years later, furious at journalists, he rejectedthe notion that he held a secret fortune in foreign bank accounts as “nonsense,excavated from someone’s nose and then smeared on bits of paper” (“Ezhegod-naia bol’shaia press-konferentsiia” 2008). Here bodily functions (snot andexcrement) are referenced both directly (through naming them) and indirectly(through mentioning the diapers and bits of paper where they might besmeared).

The most egregious case of Putin’s hypermasculine display before other mencan probably be seen in his praise, in October 2006, for then Israeli President

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Moshe Katsav, who was under investigation on charges of rape and sexual har-assment. At a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehut Olmerd, Putincommented over an open microphone:

Say hello to your president [Katsav]. It turns out he’s quite a powerful man! Heraped ten women. I didn’t expect that of him. He surprised us all. We all envyhim!14

Putin continues here to play on the outlaw image, claiming to envy theprowess of a man under investigation for his violence against women.

THE MARLBORO MAN AND THE FEMINIZATION OF DMITRY MEDVEDEV

In late August 2007 the media, both Russian and western, began carrying abarrage of publicity photos from Putin’s vacation in the Tuva region ofSiberia with his friend Prince Albert II of Monaco and Emergency MinisterSergei Shoygu, himself half-Tuvan (Danilova 2007). In them the often bare-chested Putin rides horseback, fishes and drinks tea from an aluminum cup.Wearing army fatigues, shades, a cowboy-style hat and a knife at his belt,he projects an ultramasculine image. The photos almost always picture himalone, dominating the photographic space and, by extension, the politicalspace as well (Foxall 2013).

The appearance of this set of photos at this time was hardly accidental. Putinwas once again campaigning without campaigning, fueling speculation aboutwho would be the next Russian president in 2008. Putin repeatedly told obser-vers that he would not stand for a third term since that was not permitted bythe 1993 Constitution. That, however, did not stop the political elites fromspeaking about him as “national leader” and “father of the nation” (Wood2008). The heroic Putin astride his Siberian horse combined cliched views ofthe Russian love of nature with the iconic imagery of the Marlboro Man,whose poster had dominated the Moscow urban landscape from the late1990s onward. The new pageantry made a concerted visual argument thatPutin should remain at the head of the Russian polity whatever he and theKremlin decided about who should run for office in 2008.

In the fall of 2007 Putin’s image shifted again, this time focusing ondepicting him as “father of the nation.” “For Putin” (za Putina!) posters fes-tooned the streets of all the major cities, urging people to vote in the Decem-ber Duma elections even though Putin was not a candidate himself. Thephrase “Putin’s Plan” was sprinkled liberally through the political newsand on television without mention of any specific content. The UnitedRussia Party Congress now staged a number of demands “from below” (intrue Soviet style) that Putin should remain in power. A woman weaverfrom Ivanovo, Elena Lapshina, led the charge, pleading her own ignoranceand Putin’s greatness: “I see so many big bosses and just smart people at

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this congress. I appeal to all of you – let’s think of something together sothat Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will remain the President of Russiaafter 2008 as well” (Chivers 2007; “Putin soglasilsia vozglavit” 2007). Thestaging of this scene deemphasizes the political and explicitly ideologicalin favor of the apparently personal. It removes politics from a highly politi-cal situation (the potential changing of the constitution) by having an ordin-ary woman attempt a natural and spontaneous appeal to those in power.

On 10 December the four leading “alternative” but loyal parties nominatedDmitry Medvedev for office in a classic example of what Andrew Wilsoncalls “dramaturgiia,” that is, conscious creation of a spectacle (2005;Wood 2008). Putin appeared to give his approval. A week later Putinappeared at a United Russia Congress meeting and formally nominated Med-vedev, saying, “I am certain that Dmitry Anatolevich [Medvedev] will copewith the work of the highest post in government in a worthy manner”(Kolesnikov 2007). Putin himself, he implied, would be the judge of whatand who was worthy. Medvedev might only “cope” with the work, but he,Putin, would be checking. He now actively patronized Medvedev as a kindof younger brother, a secondary male. In fact, Russian observers notedthat Medvedev often used the formal form of “you” (vy) to Putin, whilePutin used the informal (ty) to Medvedev (Aizenshtadt 2010).

Putin, moreover, proceeded to steal the limelight repeatedly from Medvedev,as if he were the one campaigning for office, not Medvedev. On 14 February,just a little over two weeks before Medvedev was to be voted in, Putin held arecord-breaking press conference in Moscow with 1,364 journalists. Onceagain Putin sounded like the Presidential candidate. When asked about hissuccesses and failures in the eight years of his presidency, he commented: “Iam not ashamed before those who have twice elected me. For eight years Ihave plowed like a slave in the galleys” (“Ezhegodnaia bol’shaia press-konfer-entsiia” 2008). Although the metaphor was mixed (plowing and ship galleys), itconveyed the image of a hardworking and physically strong, male presidentwho, like Stalin, worked all hours. Putin touched on every imaginablesubject: from Kosovo to Chechnya, from nuclear power to relations withChina. In so doing, he continued his dominance of the national agenda, ignor-ing the fact that the Russian Constitution defines the prime minister’s job, theone he had promised to take once Medvedev was president, as limited to theeconomy and national issues, not national security and foreign relations.

Putin even told the journalists that he had already laid out everything thatMedvedev would discuss in his most important campaign speech the next day.In fact, when Medvedev gave that speech, he was 2,000 miles east of Moscowat the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum in the middle of Siberia. In it he limitedhimself to economic matters with only a passing reference to civil liberties.His most memorable phrase was the not very resounding “freedom is betterthan unfreedom.” Ostensibly he was supporting freedom of the press. Yet hiscomments lacked conviction (Shevtsova 2008).

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Throughout the campaign period Medvedev was actively “feminized” in thepress by association with the so-called “national projects” – housing for veter-ans, healthcare, agriculture and ecology. He opened maternity hospitals in theprovinces, spoke about housing and healthcare, all projects of a distinctly less“political” nature than Kosovo or Chechnya, and none of them in Moscow(“Dmitrii Medvedev pogovoril” 2007). On 14 February, the day before his Kras-noyarsk appearance and the day that Putin gave his huge Moscow press con-ference, Medvedev attended the Second Mothers’ Forum in Novosibirsk,Siberia where he announced the creation of the Order of Parental Glory, aprize reviving the old Soviet Prize for Mother-Heroines (those who hadten or more children). Medvedev rationalized the new prize saying that thePresident [Putin] had given a directive for it (Volkova 2008; “Medvedev pre-dlagaet” 2008). Once again, his comments lacked bite: “After all, the mainwork is happening not in the Kremlin and not in the White House [the seatof the prime minister], but rather among you here, in the kindergartens”(Volkova 2008).

The event itself was held in a Soviet style. One mother of three childrenopened her presentation by saying, “[t]hank you to the President [Putin] andthe government for what they are doing to strengthen the family.” Childrensang Soviet-era songs. Video footage showed children explaining why theyloved their mothers: “[m]y mother’s voice is like a zebra’s”; “I love my Momfrom the tips of her feet to the top of her head” (“Gosudarstvo namereno”2008). Two weeks later, three days before the elections, the newspaper Ekspressgazeta published some of the 1,000 children’s drawings from a contest called“Draw the President of Russia.” All the children drew Medvedev, assuming thatPutin’s candidate would indeed be the next president. They depicted himholding hands with children, holding babies in a maternity hospital (“EvenSchool Children” 2008). Putin had said Medvedev should be the next president,so even the children knew that he was the one. The lucky winners wouldreceive a laptop, a smart phone and a teddy bear (Medvedev’s name means“bear” in Russian). It would be hard to think of an image further from thehypermasculine than the children’s drawing of Medvedev holding newbornbabies in a maternity hospital.

Finally, there is one funny story about Medvedev’s accession to power inlight of this question of masculinity. At the United Russia Congress that nomi-nated Medvedev in December 2007, a journalist from Kommersant asked del-egates their reactions to the presidential nominee.

“I am satisfied,” answered Iosif Kobzon, a famous pop singer and Dumadeputy. “I’ve always dreamed that a woman would become president.”“But how is it you are satisfied?” the journalist asked with surprise.“He’s perfectly suited,” explained Kobzon.“Because in this position he will fulfill the role of a woman?” the journalistasked.“A woman,” repeated Kobzon, “is less vulnerable to moral failings than a man,you must agree. And it’s exactly the role of Medvedev in the government to

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take care of children, the family, the home. In that sense they have nominatedthe candidate I wanted.” (Kolesnikov 2007)

In essence, as one Russian joke put it, if Putin was the father of the nation,then Medvedev must be the mother of the nation. Or in a more serious vein, aspolitical commentator Gleb Pavlovsky put it, “We’ve gotten used to the ideathat the president is the father of the nation. For Medvedev that won’t work,since we already have one father” (Budberg and Novikov 2007).

CONCLUSIONS

So why does Putin need this hypermasculinity? How does it contribute to hisappearance of power? Part of the answer lies in the Russian political tra-dition of using iconography to demonstrate the superiority of the nationalleader, be it tsar or General Secretary of the Party (Lane 1981; Wortman1995–2000). In Putin’s case his masculinity also contributes to his personalscenario of power by: (1) appearing to concentrate all power in his hands asthe dominant male; (2) making it appear that he rules above the fray ofordinary politics and so is untouchable; yet also (3) establishing the connec-tion of the ruler with the “masses” because of his rough and hence appar-ently “natural,” unscripted masculinity. During the Medvedev years thissame hypermasculinity signaled Putin’s continued dominance when heappeared heroically tranquilizing a tiger in August 2008, swimming breast-stroke in Tuva in August 2009 and piloting a plane above Moscow puttingout fires on the ground in 2010.

In these first years of power (2000–08), masculinity for Putin became away of showing power without having to explain it. Only he could showhis muscular body, resort to rude language and establish his dominanceover other males. At the same time, through vulgar language he couldimpugn the masculinity and even the corporeal integrity of his interlocu-tors. Ultimately, the fact that Putin’s PR masculinity is both seen and notseen by the general population contributes to the disenfranchising of thatpopulation because they are not encouraged to reflect – in fact, they areactively discouraged from reflecting – on the political values and directionof the nation. It is entirely possible that the lack of a stated vision for thenation, one that would ideally be reached through political debate andcontest, has created the political vacuum that makes the Putin regime vul-nerable to extreme nationalism among the political elites and militarystructures in the current period (2013–15) and has helped to push thenation into the fraught and painful situation it is currently experiencingin Eastern Ukraine. Ultimately, this article shows that studies of hypermas-culinity and militarized masculinity cannot be limited to war settings, butrather must be extended to questions of political leadership and especially

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to ways that politics itself is undermined by leaders and their handlers’excessive reliance on masculinity as a substitute for developing genuinepolitical dialogue.

Elizabeth A. WoodHistory Faculty

Massachusetts Institute of Technology77 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, MA 02139, USAEmail: [email protected]

Notes

1 Sperling (2015) was published just as this article was going to press so her analysis

could not be included in this article in a substantive way.

2 For information about the most recent law, see “Russian Law Bans Swearing”

(2014).

3 One note about sources: since the Russian Internet is constantly being purged of

articles critical of the regime, I have often used citations from the East View Data-

base, which begin with the url “dlib.eastview.com.”

4 Article 13 states explicitly: “1. In the Russian Federation ideological diversity shall

be recognized. 2. No ideology may be established as state or obligatory one. 3. In

the Russian Federation political diversity and a multi-party system shall be recog-

nized.” http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-02.htm.

5 As Marlene Laruelle (2009) has shown, Putin tended for his first two terms to rely

on a “patriotic centrism” where patriotism, broadly defined, was positive, while

nationalism was negative.

6 As early as 15 January, commentators predicted that Putin would make some kind

of publicity (Iadukha 2000).

7 One radio station nicknamed the group “Licking Together” for their fawning attitude

(Vandysheva 2003).

8 See “Takogo kak Putin,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk_VszbZa_s.

9 This quote has been somewhat disputed. For discussion of the different versions,

see Sciolino (2002) and Wines (2002).

10 Russian newspapers including Gazeta, Rossiiskaia gazeta and Zerkalo nedeli

picked up on Putin’s comment, but the only western press that commented was

Strauss (2003).

11 Another example of Putin and “chewing snot” is Melikova (2006).

12 Interview with Figaro, October 2002; cited in http://www.mk.ru/politics/2012/10/

04/757165-chto-myi-znaem-ovvp.html.

13 See “Prezident V. Putin” (2003; also full text at http://www.kremlin.ru/text/

appears/2003/10/54587.shtm), Korchagina and Danilova (2003a, 2003b), and

“Isteriku prekratit” (2003).

14 See Kolesnikov (2006), Myers (2006) and “Putin pozavidoval” (2006).

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Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the generous support and insights ofRochelle Ruthchild; Valerie Sperling; Betul Eksi; Daniel Parker; Molly Nolanand the Gender and History Reading Group at NYU; Michael Gorham;Richard Wortman; Al Evans; Chris Capozzola; Jerry Wheelock; and the anon-ymous reviewers at IFJP.

Funding

Important institutional support came from the Davis Center for Russian andEurasian Studies at Harvard, the MIT History Faculty and the WoodrowWilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

Notes on Contributor

Elizabeth A. Wood is Professor of Russian and Soviet History at the Massachu-setts Institute of Technology.

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