Articles by Ilya Budraitskis

About Ilya Budraitskis

Ilya Budraitskis(1981) is a historian, cultural and political activist. Since 2009 he is Ph.D. student at the Institute for World History, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow. In 2001-2004 he organized Russian activists in mobilizations against the G8, in European and World Social Forums. Since 2011 he has been an activist and spokesperson for Russian Socialist Movement. Member of Editorial board of "Moscow Art Magazine". Regular contributor to the number of political and cultural websites.
September 12, 2017

Contradictions in Russian Cultural Politics: Conservatism as an Instrument of Neoliberalism

by Ilya Budraitskis   0

Note from the editors: The following piece is scheduled to appear in the edited collection The Art of Civil Action, edited by Philipp Dietachmair and Pascal Gielen and published through Valiz in November 2017. Today, it is common to contrast the statism of today’s Russia with the Western neoliberal order, which is based on the primacy of political and economic freedom. European journalists and experts discuss Putin’s Russia as though it were a revisionist state that is not only ready for military aggression but is also driven by internal destructive forces: a “populist international” of right and left par ..

July 24, 2017

“The Putinist Majority Could Fast Become Anti-Putinist”: an Interview with Ilya Budraitskis

by Ilya Budraitskis   0

This interview was originally published in Russian on www.yuga.ru and translated for LeftEast by Adam Leeds. How would you describe the ideology of the ruling regime in contemporary Russia? On what values rests that which some call “Putinism”? What is behind the facade of all this speech about ‘spiritual bonds’ and ‘our glorious past’? The conventional idea has become that from the beginning of Putin’s third term we have been experiencing a conservative turn. If in the ’00’s the regime presented itself as technocratic, standing above politics and simply ensuring the integrity of the country, s ..

June 22, 2017

The Protests of June 12: Beginning Russia’s Cold Summer of 2017

by Ilya Budraitskis   1

Note from the LeftEast editors: The rallies that took place in Russia on June 12 under the slogan “We Demand Answers” are the first political event of the summer of 2017. Translated kindly from the original Russian on OpenLeft.ru by Emma Claire Foley. Anti-corruption protests took place in Moscow, Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Lipetsk, Tula, Vladivostok, Norilsk, Sochi, and other cities, a continuation of the high-profile protests of March 26, when people demanded Prime Minister Medvedev answer for his appalling wealth. But it wasn’t as straightforward as that. In Moscow the rally was initiall ..

April 18, 2017

The Specters of Munich: Closing Ranks against Revolutions

by Ilya Budraitskis   0

Ilya Budraitskis’s essay is the first in a series entitled Ways of Seeing the New Russian Colonialisms: Writing on and from Post-Soviet Territories, curated by Nikolay Oleynikov for ArtsEverywhere. It is accompanied by Vladan Jeremić’s artwork in the different graphic series (2015-2017) ——————————————————————————————————— At the last Munich Security Conference[1], one of the most importan ..

July 15, 2016

Neither Moscow, nor NATO: Notes on the NATO summit and the antiwar counter-summit in Warsaw

by Ilya Budraitskis   4

The main result from this weekend’s NATO summit in Warsaw was the official proclamation of a “containment” strategy toward Russia. So far, the practical consequence of this declaration is modest in military terms—a total of 3,000 foreign troops will be deployed to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Far more important are the politics of this decision. The “Russian threat” is primarily defined as hybrid, that is it’s covert and exists on the borders of war and peace, state policy and social dynamics. The concept of “hybridity” is central in today’s confrontation between Russ ..

April 30, 2016

The 2016 Russian Elections: Putrefaction as the Laboratory of Life

by Ilya Budraitskis   1

How do the upcoming Duma elections threaten the regime? Today, it would seem that the upcoming September elections to the State Duma are a cause of growing concern only in the Kremlin. While polls continue to record a low level of public interest in the event, and the tiny number of parties allowed to run in the election wanly prepares to fulfill their usual roles, the president and his entourage are increasingly talking about possible threats. The rationale of radicalization At a recent meeting with activists of the Russian People’s Front, Putin noted that external enemies would preparing ever more provo ..

March 14, 2016

Putin: First as Farce …

by Ilya Budraitskis   0

translated by Maria Brock To be published in Russian in the April issue of the Сеанс magazine. A few days ago came the 16th anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s rule, which is traditionally celebrated by endless fantasies on the theme of ‘Russia after Putin’. This intellectual exercise, which is constantly reproduced by the liberal opposition media, has an obvious therapeutic function: no one believes that it will actually end, and therefore the question of the end of this era, as it is beginning to seem endless, becomes the subject of utopias and anti-utopias. In a similar vein, during the depressive atmo ..

February 17, 2016

The Eternal Hunt for the Red Man

by Ilya Budraitskis   0

from e-flux.com The dramatic events in Russia and Ukraine over the past two years have begun a new phase in the struggle over the legacy of communism in the post-Soviet space. As the concrete features of “real socialism” become blurred and vanish, those necessary for the production of ideology become ever more sharply defined. It’s often argued that communism, buried a quarter of a century ago as living practice, has since acquired an afterlife in the form of a restlesscorpse, a remnant, a regurgitated survivor from the past, blighting the lives of new generations. A popular explanation for the unfulfilled ..

February 4, 2016

Russia in Crisis: the Agonies of the Oil Empire

by Ilya Budraitskis   1

(translated from Russian by Emma Clair Foley) Everyone understands that the coming year will see Russia immersed in an economic crisis, one which will almost inevitably entail a social and political crisis. It was already over a year ago that Vladimir Putin, while taking part in his favorite genre of television, “direct association with the people,” assured viewers that the crisis was a matter of temporary difficulties which would be successfully overcome within a year or two. These assertions are not simply a propagandist’s device, but a reflection of deeply-rooted elements of the consciousness of Russia ..

November 24, 2015

Art and Politics in Russia in a Time of Crisis

by Ilya Budraitskis   0

On our trip to Moscow in June 2015, we met with Ilya Budraitskis, who spoke to us about the crisis facing Russia today and its effects on art and culture. Budraitskis’ argument is presented here alongside drawings by Sveta Shuvaeva, whom we also met while in Moscow. These works were made over the last two years in reaction to the mediation of current events in Russia by the Internet and television. [This article originally appeared in post]. No one can deny that Russia is in crisis. Of course, the vast majority of Russians view the problem as primarily an economic one, reflected in their decreasing personal in ..