Abstract
Post-Soviet Eurasia is a region where conspiracy theorising has been playing a prominent political role for a long time, being used by political regimes as a tool to mobilise public support, marginalise dissenters and construct internal and external enemies. For a long time, post-Soviet conspiracies did not attract much attention of researchers, who mainly focused on the USA and the Middle East. However, a number of works (including monographs) on Russian conspiracy theories have been published since the second half of 2010s. The contribution of Scott Radnitz is a must-read monograph on conspiracy theories that makes post-Soviet Eurasia one of the most important regions for conspiracy studies.
The research by Radnitz stands out both for its design (that relies on a large database of conspiracy theories, surveys and focus groups) and for highly important conceptual findings that challenge some commonplace assumptions about the political role of conspiracy theorising. Unlike most previous relevant works, the research by Radnitz goes beyond Russia and covers some other post-Soviet states, exploring similarities and differences between autocracies and democracies and susceptibility of post-Soviet states to Russian conspiracy theories.
Contrary to a commonplace assumption, Radnitz argues that conspiracy theorising is not necessarily more typical for the authoritarian politics than for the democratic one (e.g., the Georgian public is more receptive to conspiracy theorising than the Kazakh one), as political competition makes anti-governmental conspiracy narratives heard better (p. 77–78, 137). Moreover, he argues that conspiracy theorising is normally not a first-choice tool for autocracies, as it is not a particularly effective way to enhance public trust in the regime (p. 142) and as it can produce significant side effects like signalling about the regime’s weakness or enhancing the level of social anxiety (p. 5). Authoritarian regimes are particularly inclined to conspiracy theorising if they feel themselves threatened by some disturbing events and to counterattack perceived challengers and signal their strength and competence to internal audiences (p. 176). Radnitz also argues that authoritarian leaders are normally reluctant to make conspiracy claims themselves, and such claims are usually made either by other officials or by various political proxies (p. 85–86). However, as Russian and Belarusian leaders are increasingly inclined to articulate conspiracy claims themselves in connection with the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war and 2020 Belarusian protests correspondingly, this finding probably should be updated.
Several reviews, published in 2022, have already criticised some points of the Radnitz’ research. Some critics have emphasised methodological drawbacks: data quality of surveys and focus groups (Gentile) and insufficient attention to television and online media (Abdullaev). Others argue that some important cases are missing, including conspiracy theorising in the Russian Empire and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict (Abdullaev) and Baltic states (Kortukov); in this light, one could also suggest to add Moldova and the Transnistrian conflict.
In my opinion, Maria Popova’s criticism highlights the most serious issues, such as overrated importance of rational intentions of those authoritarian leaders who resort to conspiracy theorising (she argues that personal beliefs also do matter) and the author’s unconvincing effort to distinguish between credible and non-credible evidence about actual and imagined conspiracies. I can illustrate this point with the case when the author considers Ukrainian narratives of 2000s about an extensive network of Russian agents in Crimea as a conspiracy theory (p. 123); taking into account the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea, these narratives could look plausible though. What is worse, I believe that failure to distinguish between ‘acceptable’ and ‘non-acceptable’ conspiracy theories is a challenge for very conceptual foundations of conspiracy studies. If conspiracy theorising is an acceptable way of thinking in some cases (to which most of us do resort at least sometimes), what is the point of studying it as a deviant style of thinking? Should one either specify what conspiracy theorising is “bad” more convincingly or abandon the conspiracy theorising framework?
Some other points can be added to this criticism. Defining a conspiracy theory, Radnitz emphasises that just a small number of actors could be alleged perpetrators (p. 8). However, this approach excludes those conspiracy theories that involve a large network of perpetrators or their accomplices, such as anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Finally, the research on post-Soviet states other than Russia looks fragmentary and inconsistent. Only few pages are explicitly devoted to analysing the situation in each of these states while the coverage of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is not uniform: In case of Kyrgyzstan, media narratives but not results of surveys and focus groups are analysed, whereas in the case of Kazakhstan, the research design is quite the opposite.
In spite of these points, the book of Radnitz is one of the best monographs on conspiracy theorising that makes important and innovative contribution both to conspiracy studies and to the studies of post-Soviet politics.
