Conspiracy, narrative, and anxiety

This article analyses conspiratorial thinking in wartime Russia as a site where anxiety and memory converge through narrative and media circulation. Drawing on a curated corpus of nationalist and pro-war Telegram channels active between February 2022 and July 2025, it argues that conspiracy does not merely reflect anxiety – it absorbs, structures, and redistributes it.

The analysed materials include statements and commentaries from high-visibility figures and Telegram channels such as Readovka (~2.0 million subscribers), Mikhail Zvinchuk (Rybar, ~1.3 million), Pavel Gubarev (Ryadovoi Gubarev, ~33,000), Alexey Zhivov (Zhivov, ~112,300), Apti Alaudinov (Apti Alaudinov ‘Akhmat’, ~242,825), Alexander Dugin (AGDchan, ~ 85,600), Roman Antonovsky (Syny Monarkhii [Sons of Monarchy], ~88,500), Alexander Kartavyh (~110,640), Tsargradtv (~377,385), Russkaya Obschina ZOV [Russian Community] (~660,000), Russkii Mech [Russian Sword] (~190,000), Dmitry Steshin (Russkii Tarantas, ~141,300), and Alex Parker (Alex Parker Returns, ~275,650), along with several smaller channels that circulate the same affective logic.

While these sources do not represent the full spectrum of Russian public discourse, they are emotionally resonant and politically influential within pro-war digital environments. Posts were selected for how they narrate loss – not only of geopolitical territory, but of symbolic authority, the right to define who belongs, who speaks, and who remembers.

This paper contributes to scholarship on memory and anxiety by shifting attention from trauma rooted in a shared past to anxiety over narrative authorship. Much of memory studies assumes a contested but already-formed past. This study instead engages with a more precarious symbolic terrain: the fear that one’s group may be denied authorship in the national narrative altogether. In such moments, conspiracy emerges not only as a belief system, but as a narrative technology for managing memory in formation – channelling diffuse anxiety into emotionally charged, shareable storylines of betrayal, erosion, and replacement.

Theoretically, the article draws on J.V. Wertsch’s concept of narratives as cultural tools – devices used to construct collective identity through time (Wertsch Reference Wertsch2002). Wertsch emphasizes the stabilizing role of narrative in national memory: its capacity to locate actors within a coherent story of past, present, and future. But this paper focuses on what happens when that stabilization fails. In the Russian case, multiple visions of Russianness coexist in unresolved tension. The analysed materials show a contested memory in formation, where roles in the master narrative – such as who embodies the legacy of victory over Nazism or who defends the Motherland – are not clearly assigned. This uncertainty generates anxiety, which conspiracy narratives attempt to resolve by offering narrative clarity.

In doing so, the article also builds on Sedgwick’s (Reference Sedgwick2024) analysis of the Great Replacement as a widely circulating narrative form, often mischaracterized as a marginal conspiracy theory. Sedgwick shows that this narrative provides a stable structure for channelling fears of cultural erosion and civilizational decline – particularly in Western contexts shaped by Islamophobia, migration anxieties, and elite distrust. This study presents a case of the narrative’s Russian adaptation, which on the surface reproduces similar thematic elements. Yet in the Russian context, the Great Replacement functions within a distinct set of national memory scripts and unresolved identity narratives. As a result, the central anxiety shifts: from demographic replacement to symbolic displacement. The fear is not only of being outnumbered, but of losing the right to define Russianness itself – of becoming invisible within one’s own national story.

The analysis also engages Melley’s (Reference Melley2016) concept of ‘agency panic’, understood as the fear that one’s capacity for autonomy and intentional action is being undermined by hidden or impersonal forces. While Melley conceptualizes panic primarily as an acute response to perceived loss of control, the Russian case points to a more chronic form of agency panic, sustained by authoritarian conditions and long-term narrative instability. In political systems where initiative is structurally constrained and meaningful participation is limited, individuals and groups experience a persistent erosion of agency – not only in practice, but in representation.

This condition is better understood as anxiety – a structural affect that emerges from narrative ambiguity and fragile authorship over social meaning – rather than as episodic fear or panic in response to discrete threats.

Wartime intensifies this dynamic. Mass mobilization removes men from their local communities for prolonged periods, while non-Russian ethnic groups – particularly from the Caucasus and national republics – are increasingly conscripted and publicly valorized. For some ethnic Russians, this unsettles established hierarchies of symbolic power and belonging. The resulting anxiety is not limited to concerns about demographic change. Rather, it takes the form of a perceived loss of symbolic centrality: a fear of being displaced within the nation’s moral and historical core.

This process unfolds within what media theorists and memory scholars describe as mediated reality. Rather than serving as neutral platforms, digital media operate as narrative infrastructures – structures that facilitate the co-authorship, circulation, and emotional charge of specific storylines. In the Russian pro-war context, Telegram does not merely transmit ideological content; it enables users to participate in shaping emotionally resonant narratives of betrayal, loss, and symbolic disintegration. These narratives are not simply pushed by propagandists – they respond to genuine affective demand.

While early critiques characterized platforms like YouTube as ‘radicalization machines’ (Lewis Reference Lewis2018; Tufekci Reference Tufekci2018), more recent research complicates this assumption. Munger and Phillips (Reference Munger and Phillips2020) argue that political radicalization online is not solely a product of media supply, but of audience demand. Extremist content circulates not because algorithms impose it on passive users, but because it aligns with widespread anxieties already present in society. Likewise, Eatwell and Goodwin (Reference Eatwell and Goodwin2018) emphasize that the populist and authoritarian turn across Europe and beyond should not be dismissed as a reactionary outburst, but understood as the expression of deeper symbolic dislocations – anxieties about identity, legitimacy, and belonging.

In this light, Telegram becomes a medium of emotional co-authorship, where narratives of grievance are not only consumed but co-constructed. Through reposts, affectively charged memes, and shared tropes of symbolic replacement, users collectively transform diffuse unease into structured plots of betrayal and loss. What emerges is not simply a set of conspiracy beliefs, but what this article terms imagined grievance communities – networks united not by ideology or region, but by a shared fear of erasure.

Narrative replacement and the anxiety of disinheritance

Conspiratorial thinking in Russia draws much of its force from an anticipatory logic of threat – one oriented not towards a loss that has already occurred, but towards a future imagined as imminent and irreversible unless decisive action is taken. The Great Replacement narrative operates in this forward-looking mode, organizing anxiety around the expectation of symbolic and demographic displacement. In the Russian case, this anxiety does not stem from numerical marginalization. According to the 2020–2021 Russian census (https://rosstat.gov.ru/vpn/2020), ethnic Russians comprise 80.85% of the current day population of the country. But these numbers are based on self-identification and citizenship, not on ancestry or ethnic origin. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ‘nationality’ line once printed in Soviet passports was removed during the liberal reforms of the 1990s (the liberal reforms of the 1990s in Russia, often associated with Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, included rapid privatization, constitutional changes, and a shift towards market capitalism). What was framed as a move towards civic equality has since been reinterpreted by Russian nationalists as evidence of betrayal. The erasure of ethnic designation is seen as part of an elite conspiracy to dissolve the boundaries of Russian identity.

Post-Soviet identity itself has been widely described as unsettled and contested rather than fixed along clear ethnic lines. Scholars have shown that Russia’s nation-building project since 1991 has been marked by competing conceptions of what constitutes ‘Russianness’ – ethnic, civic, imperial, and multinational – without any single model achieving definitive dominance (Blakkisrud Reference Blakkisrud2023). In this context, identity is experienced as layered and dynamic: some individuals draw on Soviet-era affiliations, others emphasize regional or ethnic identities, and many navigate hybrid positionalities shaped by language, culture, and historical memory. The difficulty of defining a coherent national subject reflects broader debates about the content of Russian identity and its symbolic foundations and invites both political contestation and emotional anxiety (Likhacheva et al. Reference Likhacheva, Makarov and Makarova2015; Blakkisrud Reference Blakkisrud2023). What fuels contemporary conspiratorial anxiety is not only concerns about numerical or demographic change, but the impossibility of fixing who ‘really’ belongs to the nation amid overlapping and often conflicting identity narratives.

A central axis of post-Soviet debates over identity in Russia has been the unresolved distinction between russkii (ethnic Russian) and rossiyanin (citizen of the Russian Federation). Scholars of Russian nationalism have shown that this distinction reflects a deeper tension between ethnic and civic conceptions of the nation that has never been fully resolved (Laruelle Reference Laruelle2009; Blakkisrud Reference Blakkisrud2023). While rossiyanin was promoted by political elites in the 1990s as an inclusive civic category capable of holding together a multiethnic federation, russkii has remained a powerful marker of cultural, historical, and symbolic centrality.

Within nationalist and pro-war discourse, this distinction is frequently mobilized in oppositional terms. Commentators associated with ethnic nationalist currents – ranging from Orthodox conservatives to imperial revanchists – tend to portray rossiyanin as an empty legal designation, detached from ancestry, culture, and historical continuity, while russkii is framed as a category rooted in blood, language, and civilizational mission (Laruelle Reference Laruelle2015). What was initially framed as a tool of civic integration is thus reinterpreted as a mechanism of dilution. The possibility that citizens of non-Russian ethnic backgrounds – Chechens, Tatars, Dagestanis, Armenians, or Central Asian migrants who have acquired citizenship – may legally claim Russianness becomes, in this discourse, evidence of symbolic dispossession rather than inclusion.

This anxiety is closely tied to institutional changes following the Soviet collapse. The removal of the ‘nationality’ line from internal passports in the early 1990s, intended to dismantle Soviet ethnic hierarchies and promote equality, has been retrospectively reframed by nationalist actors as an act of elite betrayal (Brubaker Reference Brubaker1996; Blakkisrud Reference Blakkisrud2023). The disappearance of formal ethnic markers is read not as neutral administration, but as a deliberate attempt to erase the boundaries of the titular nation. In conspiratorial interpretations, this administrative ambiguity becomes proof that Russianness itself is being hollowed out under the guise of civic universalism.

It is within this symbolic terrain that the Russian variation of the Great Replacement narrative takes shape. The perceived threat is not simply demographic decline, but the loss of narrative authority: the fear that the meaning of ‘Russian’ will be redefined by others and that historical legitimacy will be redistributed away from ethnic Russians as the imagined core of the nation. The lack of consensus over who constitutes the ‘real Russians’, and what privileges follow from that status, transforms identity from a shared reference point into a contested and unstable field.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine marked a critical point in this dynamic. On the one hand, it forced the question of identity into an ambiguous space. Ukraine, after all, is a country with deep linguistic, cultural, and historical entanglements with Russia. Many Ukrainians share Slavic roots, language, and Soviet memory. For years, Putin repeated the claim that Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians are ‘one people’. Yet the invasion demanded an enemy. It transformed former kin into traitors and exposed the instability of the identity categories that had once bound them together. Debates followed: Are Ukrainians still part of the Russian world? Can they be reintegrated? If so, how do we distinguish those who can from those who cannot?

Independent investigations suggest that the burdens of military recruitment and wartime loss have fallen disproportionately on Russia’s poorest and most structurally dependent regions – particularly in national republics such as Buryatia and Dagestan, as well as among migrant communities from former Soviet states who recently obtained Russian passports. While comprehensive data on recruitment itself remain limited, casualty tracking by Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service – based on obituaries, court records, and social media reports – reveals significant overrepresentation of these regions in confirmed fatalities (Russian losses in the war with Ukraine. Mediazona count, updated: https://en.zona.media/article/2025/12/05/casualties_eng-trl). These men are fighting alongside Russian nationalists, dying in uniform, appearing on billboards, in textbooks, and in patriotic events across schools and municipalities. Some viewed military service as a way to prove their belonging – to demonstrate that they were ‘better Russians’ than ethnic Russians who refused to fight.

The sharpest resentment is often directed at groups perceived to enjoy disproportionate state support or symbolic power. Chechens, in particular, have been portrayed in nationalist and far-right Telegram discourse as a ‘privileged’ group, allegedly granted special status by the Kremlin following the Chechen wars in exchange for loyalty under Ramzan Kadyrov. Similarly, Tatars are sometimes imagined as politically overrepresented due to their population size and elite connections, including persistent conspiracy theories that link high-profile figures such as Alina Kabaeva to Tatar networks within Putin’s inner circle. (Alina Kabaeva is a former Olympic rhythmic gymnast, State Duma deputy (2007–2014), and Vladimir Putin’s long-term partner, though their relationship has never been officially confirmed.)

In this context, it was a Chechen general who most visibly challenged the ethnic boundaries of Russian identity. Lieutenant General Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Akhmat special forces, has repeatedly declared that he is both Russian and Chechen and has questioned the right of ethnic Russians to monopolize the definition of Russianness. In a December 2024 interview with military blogger Semyon Pegov, Alaudinov responded to critics by stating: ‘Let them prove they are Russians. Russianness is not in a passport—it is in the soul and in loyalty. Many so-called Russians ran abroad and threw dirt at their homeland. And we, who stayed and stood up for Russia—are we not Russian?’ (Alaudinov Reference Alaudinov2024).

While Alaudinov’s assertion of dual identity may appear inclusive from a patriotic or civic nationalist perspective, it provoked sharp backlash within Russian ultranationalist circles. For many nationalist actors, especially those aligned with ethnic essentialism, declarations of loyalty or military service are insufficient to claim membership in the symbolic core of the nation. Alaudinov’s statement was interpreted not merely as a gesture of national unity, but as an attempt to overwrite existing ethno-symbolic hierarchies.

One of the most forceful responses came from Dmitry Bastrakov, editor-in-chief of the far-right monarchist press Chernaya Sotnya [Black Hundred] and commander of the volunteer formation Tyl-22 (‘Rear-22’). On his Telegram channel, he condemned Alaudinov’s comments as a deliberate provocation:

Such incidents have contributed to a growing perception within segments of the Russian nationalist and Orthodox conservative milieu that more is at stake than mere political marginalization or demographic change. In June 2025, Alaudinov reignited this unease. After Igumen Gavriil, the abbot of Varlaam Monastery, warned in a sermon about rising Muslim migration – describing it as ‘an army of strong young men’ who could be mobilized ‘at any moment’ – Alaudinov responded with an unusually personal attack. He called Gavriil ‘a moron in a cassock’ and ‘the head of the army of the Antichrist’ (Alaudinov Reference Alaudinov2025). Gavriil was soon removed from his position. No official explanation followed. Alaudinov remained untouched and unapologetic.

Among right-wing Orthodox commentators and nationalist Telegram channels, the incident was not perceived as an isolated dispute. Rather, it was interpreted as part of a broader pattern: a sense that those articulating ethnically or religiously exclusive visions of Russianness are being sidelined, while actors associated with non-Russian ethnic or religious backgrounds are increasingly empowered to speak on behalf of the nation. This asymmetry – where the defence of symbolic boundaries is punished while their redefinition is institutionally tolerated or even rewarded – has fuelled further anxieties over narrative authority and belonging.

In June 2025, similar anxieties resurfaced during a federal investigation targeting the far-right anti-immigrant organization Russkaya Obshchina (Russian Community). While the details of the case remained opaque, several nationalist Telegram commentators interpreted the investigation as politically motivated and speculated – without direct evidence – that actors from regional power centres such as Chechnya and Tatarstan may have influenced or initiated the operation. Pavel Gubarev, once a central figure in the 2014 Donbas uprising and now a serving officer in Ukraine, echoed these suspicions in his Telegram channel:

What links these episodes is not only the fear of ethnic marginalization, but a deeper concern about narrative displacement – the sense that foundational stories are being retold, institutions reoriented, and the language of belonging rewritten. These shifts are rarely addressed directly in policy but are felt through public symbols: who is elevated, who is silenced, and who is permitted to speak on behalf of the nation.

Allegations that President Vladimir Putin has secretly converted to Islam – circulated not only on fringe nationalist Telegram channels but also across broader digital platforms such as VKontakte, TikTok, and meme-sharing communities – have become a recurring motif in Russia’s online political culture. These claims are rarely treated as literal truth. Rather, they function as symbolic narratives that condense broader anxieties about cultural displacement and the shifting locus of political power. Their resonance lies not in factual plausibility but in what they suggest: that the Kremlin is no longer aligned with the values, traditions, or identity of ethnic Russians. Notably, such narratives have also surfaced in liberal and oppositional media. The YouTube channel Populyarnaya Politika [Popular Politics], for instance, discussed the rumour in 2023 (Populyarnaya Politica Reference Politica2023) – not to endorse it, but to highlight the growing estrangement between the state and its citizens. What unites these diverse discursive spaces is not ideological coherence, but a shared sense of disorientation about who holds power – and on whose behalf it is exercised.

This anxiety becomes particularly visible in debates over historical interpretation. Some commentators associated with nationalist discourse have expressed concern about revisions to school curricula, particularly in Russia’s national republics and neighbouring post-Soviet states. These changes are interpreted not merely as pedagogical updates but as attempts to reframe the imperial and Soviet past predominantly through the lens of domination and inequality. In these narratives, ethnic Russians are no longer presented as participants in a shared or complex history, but increasingly as default aggressors and colonizers.

Russian combatant Pavel Kukhmirov, known by his nom de guerre ‘Shakespeare’, reposted a television segment from Tajikistan about a Russian community ‘left behind’ by ‘the kind country of Russia’ – now supported only by the local Orthodox Church. What Russian authorities truly care about, he noted, is not the protection of Russians living there, but the construction of schools for local children – where, ‘with Russian money, textbooks are published and children are taught that Russians are occupiers and colonizers’. He added that the Russian ambassador does everything possible to bring as many of these ‘dear guests’ as possible into Russian universities, while the ‘kind Russian state’ generously provides social benefits to their families – doing nothing, he wrote, for ethnic Russians, who are no longer treated as a priority (Kukhmirov Reference Kukhmirov2025, July 17).

The message behind the ongoing reports about textbook reforms and history curriculum revisions in former Soviet republics is clear: while Russia has continued to fund the construction of schools, accept migrant labour, and support regional development, it has failed to control either the scale of migration or the mental frameworks migrants bring with them. The result, nationalists argue, is not cultural integration but narrative displacement or inversion. What returns to Russia through these migrant flows is not gratitude or loyalty, but a worldview in which Russia itself is the villain.

On 25 June 2025, war correspondent Mikhail Zvinchuk – the figure behind the influential Telegram channel Rybar – responded to reports of vandalism against Christian memorials allegedly committed by migrants. For him, these acts were not isolated incidents, but symptoms of a deeper cultural conflict. ‘The problem of attacks on historical memory by newcomers’, he wrote, ‘is already a symptom not just of disrespect, but of deep contempt and the intention to eradicate and suppress a culture that is alien to them’. These ‘newcomers’, as Zvinchuk frames them, are not merely undereducated labourers but carriers of intellectual narratives shaped by national elites – elites who, in his view, were educated in the West and now act as their agents (Zvinchuk Reference Zvinchuk2025, June 25).

According to this logic, Western-funded institutions – American, British, and Turkish – are actively shaping the way post-Soviet societies perceive Russia. By funding educational programmes, rewriting textbooks, and influencing digital media, they are accused of demonizing Russian history, instilling resentment, and preparing the ground for a soft narrative takeover. ‘It will be no secret to anyone’, Zvinchuk writes, ‘that Western foundations participate in the writing of textbooks and editing of information broadcast across Central Asia and Transcaucasia. These narratives shape how migrants see Russia—not with reverence, but with suspicion or contempt’.

In this vision, Russian elites are already compromised – either corrupt, passive, or complicit. President Putin appears not as a saviour but as either a naïve figurehead unaware of what is happening or a silent participant in a larger design. For some nationalist thinkers, this leaves only one possible path: ethnic Russians themselves must awaken to the nature of the threat, recognize the stealth of this replacement, and begin to organize – socially, culturally, and politically – to defend their narrative sovereignty.

This imagined struggle, however, creates a strategic dilemma. Many of those sounding the alarm over internal cultural ‘replacement’ also see themselves already fighting an external civilizational battle – namely, against the West in Ukraine. To open a parallel front at home, against what they perceive as a network of domestic collaborators, disloyal elites, and ideologically alien migrants, presents both practical and symbolic challenges. There is a sense that this internal front is already active, even if there is no clear consensus or capacity to confront it. It is this perception – of being ideologically surrounded, betrayed from above, and diluted from below – that fuels conspiratorial thinking and the urgency to reclaim not just territory, but the power to narrate the nation’s future.

The disappearance from within

The Russian variation of the Great Replacement narrative shares with its European counterparts a preoccupation with cultural survival. However, the Russian version deepens the framework: it is not only about cultural dilution through migration or intermarriage, but about a total purge of Russianness from within. This turns the anxiety inward – towards those who, though ethnically Russian, are perceived as lacking loyalty, identity, or the ‘correct’ cultural consciousness.

Here, the figure of the noviop becomes central. Coined from the phrase ‘new historical community’ (novaya istoricheskaya obshchnost’) (the abbreviation combines the initial letters of each component: nov from novaya, i from istoricheskaya, and ob from obshchnost’. However, to facilitate smoother pronunciation in Russian, the final b from ob was replaced with p, resulting in noviop rather than noviob), the term was used in late Soviet discourse to describe a future-oriented Soviet identity – one in which class loyalty and ideological commitment would replace ethnic or racial divisions. In theory, it marked the emergence of a unified society where ‘national’ origin no longer mattered and what did matter was one’s willingness to build socialism.

The term re-emerged in a radically different context in 2012, when Russian writer and blogger Dmitry Galkovsky revived it in a LiveJournal post. In his reinterpretation, noviop acquired a distinctly negative connotation. It no longer referred to a utopian identity, but to an artificial social type produced by Soviet policies of ‘positive discrimination’ against ethnic Russians. The supporting evidence, frequently cited in nationalist discourse, includes the fact that Russians – despite being the largest ethnic group in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) – had neither their own national republic nor their own Communist Party. This absence reflected the Soviet logic that Russians were to function not as one ethnic group among others, but as the integrative ‘glue’ binding the multiethnic union together. After the Soviet collapse, they again received no privileged status, even though the new state bore their name.

According to Galkovsky, the noviop type was engineered by the Bolsheviks as a counterweight to the Russians themselves. It was composed of those from mixed Ukrainian-Jewish-Caucasian-Central Asian backgrounds, along with religious minorities like Old Believers and sectarians. In this interpretation, the Soviet project was not a utopian dream that failed but a calculated anti-Russian design from the beginning – a betrayal embedded in the very architecture of Soviet multinationalism.

When first introduced, Galkovsky’s concept gained limited traction, briefly discussed among monarchists and fringe far-right groups before fading into obscurity. But after 2022, the term reappeared – quietly at first, then with growing intensity – circulating through pro-war nationalist Telegram channels, repurposed and reposted across networks of Z-patriots, pro-war supporters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, it is no longer just an ethnic theory. It had acquired the political edge necessary to mark the boundaries of Russianness not by bloodline alone, but by ideological loyalty.

In this evolving version of the conspiracy, the noviop became a way to distinguish between the ‘real’ and the ‘false’ Russian – not just across ethnic groups, but within a single ethnic category, between those who fight and those who doubt, between those who serve the state and those who betray it from within.

As of now, the term noviop has come to be used by Z-community as a catch-all label for anyone perceived as outside the imagined ethnic and ideological core. It applies to members of diasporas, those who obtained Russian citizenship not by birthright, and those who support leftist or liberal ideas – or who oppose Russian expansionism and the war in Ukraine. In this worldview, such people are seen as playing into an anti-Russian conspiracy, either knowingly or by nature – often, as it is implied, because of their ‘wrong genes’. Dmitry Galkovsky once put it bluntly: ‘Scratch the surface of a Georgian in Russia, and out tumble a Buryat and a Turkmen—who, in turn, bring with them a Tofalar (a small Indigenous Siberian group of Turkic origin, residing primarily in the Irkutsk region of Russia), and, more often than not, a Jew’ (Galkovsky Reference Galkovsky2012, January 25).

In this logic, anyone not ethnically Russian is automatically suspect, assumed to be either disloyal or incapable of understanding what Russia ‘really is’. But relying solely on ethnic origins creates its own contradictions. A large part of Russian nationalists are self-identified monarchists, and it is well known that the Romanov dynasty – as well as the broader tsarist court and aristocracy – was overwhelmingly of mixed European descent. French, German, Dutch, and Swedish names filled the ranks of those who ruled imperial Russia. Many barely spoke Russian.

This creates a problem: if ethnic purity cannot fully explain disloyalty, then something else must. There has to be another explanation for why some individuals – even those who are ethnically Russian – have become part of what is now imagined as the noviop conspiracy. Something must have distorted them. If not their blood, then their upbringing, their ideology, or their exposure to foreign influence. The target thus shifts: not only to those from outside, but to an enemy within. As Nutsa Batiashvili argues in her analysis of Georgian national identity, ‘when the enemy is no longer simply the outsider but resides within, the anxiety becomes existential’ (Batiashvili Reference Batiashvili2018, 152). The same logic applies to the Russian case: the more nationalism fails to produce unity, the more it fuels a paranoid search for internal corruption. The conspiracy must keep expanding – until it risks devouring the nation from within.

Across Russian digital platforms – VK, Yandex Zen, Pikabu, Telegram, Facebook, as well as on numerous author-driven websites and news outlets – discussions of the term noviop are widespread. Although no singular definition prevails, the proliferation of commentary has produced a set of recurring themes. One common assertion among contributors is that noviop does not refer to ethnicity or bloodline but to a particular mindset – a mental orientation perceived as alien to ‘true’ Russian identity. This noviopic mindset is often depicted as an artificially implanted condition: for some, its roots lie in the intellectual experiments of the Soviet state, while others trace it to Western cultural influence. In either version, the mindset is imagined as a kind of psychological virus – one that does not merely influence behaviour but alters an individual’s inner essence. Its effects, according to these narratives, vary by degree: some are mildly affected, and others seen as entirely ‘consumed’.

The nationalist-leaning media outlet Readovka, founded in 2011 and boasting a Telegram following of over two million subscribers, has repeatedly published commentary framing noviops as a primary threat to Russian sovereignty and image – both domestically and abroad. In May 2023, it published Svyat Pavlov’s piece titled Noviopomodern Rules Everything on Both Sides of the Frontline (Pavlov Reference Pavlov2023), in which he linked the origins of noviopic identity to the legacy of the Soviet man. According to Pavlov, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialistic Republic not only inherited nuclear weapons but also a ‘biological weapon’ – the decomposing body of the Homo Sovieticus. From this corpse, he argues, oozed the mental residue of the noviops. Ethnic background, Pavlov insists, is not determinative: even ethnic Russians can become noviops if they fully reject Russian identity and Russian Orthodoxy.

He also introduces the term turbo-noviop to describe the post-2022 intensification of this mindset, a satirical echo of turbo-patriot, often used for hyper-loyalist pro-war figures. The turbo-noviop, in Pavlov’s telling, is particularly dangerous because they mimic patriotic behaviour while hollowing it from within. They ‘rename Russian cities with Soviet names, paint them red, and sing covers of songs by terrorist Timur Mutsuraev’ (Timur Mutsuraev is a Chechen singer-songwriter who sang in Russian and, rarely, in Chechen. Most of his songs are about the conflict in Chechnya), he claims, all to alienate ordinary Russians from their own country’s cause. The effect, he warns, is the creation of a grotesque patriotism that repels rather than unites. In his conclusion, Pavlov contends that for Russia to prevail in its war, it must first defeat the noviops, who represent the ‘cadaveric poison’ of a discredited past turned mental subversion.

A few months later, in October 2023, Readovka published a response essay by Yaroslav Belousov titled Self-Devourers, or Why Liberals Hate Russia So Much (Belousov Reference Belousov2023). Belousov expands the genealogy of the noviop, arguing that such figures long predate the Soviet Union. In his view, the true origins of the noviopic disposition lie in the Russian Empire, with the Westernized elites that emerged under Peter the Great. The intelligentsia’s children, sent to study abroad, became estranged from the Russian people and subsequently passed on their alienation through generations of elite culture. Belousov argues that this heritage of disdain culminated in a pervasive cultural self-hatred, embedded in institutions and media: ‘The masses of Russians were washed over by tons of filth constantly spewing from television and agreed that they were indeed “slaves”.’ For Belousov, those who perpetuate this worldview – regardless of ethnicity – can no longer be considered Russian. The cultural narratives they authored must be purged entirely. True Russians, he concludes, must be proud of their nation and its exceptional history: ‘We have a heroic history with the most fantastic stories that have come true.’

A paradigmatic example that is broadly used intensively in debates over how to identify a noviop and what drives a person to become one is Kseniya Sobchak, the journalist, influencer, and daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, former mayor of St. Petersburg and early mentor of Vladimir Putin. Since Sobchak is clearly ethnic Russian, discussions about her identity went far beyond questions of ethnic background or personal ambition.

Mariam Blynovskikh, a clinical psychologist and author of the Telegram channel Neyropsikhologiya I Prilozheniya [Neuropsychology and Applications], compared Sobchak’s biography to that of Andrei Makarevich, a Russian rock musician and outspoken liberal, and concluded that noviops share three key traits: (1) they position themselves in opposition to the Russian population, (2) they descend from privileged classes that founded the USSR, and (3) they remain fundamentally dissatisfied with their current condition (Blynovskikh Reference Blynovskikh2023, May 10).

According to Blynovskikh, noviops habitually portray Russia as a land of slaves, casting themselves in the role of natural-born masters. Their ancestors – whether from the Soviet nomenklatura, cultural elite, or artistic intelligentsia – allegedly took part in a long-standing conspiracy to destroy the Russian imperial elite, assuming that they, being of ‘mixed blood’ anyway, could seamlessly replace it. They expected to inherit privilege without responsibility, to issue commands without consequence. But, as Blynovskikh concluded with a note of scorn: ‘They were deceived. The first promise they were given—the right to rule—was fulfilled. The second—the freedom to do whatever they want—was not.’

And who deceived them? By the end of the post, Blynovskikh made her answer explicit: ‘The British.’ Behind Bolshevism, behind the post-Soviet state, behind the liberal opposition – it was always the British, she claimed, manipulating naïve Russian elites. And now, as punishment for their gullibility, noviops must live like the very slaves they once sought to rule – either in Russia or in exile in the West.

The beginning of the war was, logically, expected to resolve the problem of the so-called noviops. It offered what appeared to be a clear litmus test: those who expressed anti-war views revealed themselves as disloyal and, by emigrating, could only theoretically threaten Russia’s bright national future from afar. But as it soon became apparent, this initial test of loyalty was not enough. Additional markers of the noviopic mindset – now treated as synonymous with anti-Russian sentiment – were needed for further ideological purification.

As argued in Svyat Pavlov’s piece for Readovka and echoed across numerous social media posts, some noviops are believed to have remained in Russia – openly demonstrating patriotism and even expressing support for the war effort. Yet their continued presence is perceived by some commentators as deeply unsettling, precisely because their external conformity masks an internal ideological threat.

A relevant example is Russian blogger and media artist Artemy Lebedev. Despite his known far-right stance and vocal support for the war, when he criticized the nationalist organization Russian Community, he was swiftly labelled a noviop. Roman Antonovsky, host of the popular Telegram channel Syny Monarkhii (‘Sons of Monarchy’), accused Lebedev of being no different from the liberals who fled Russia and support Ukraine. ‘The only difference between Lebedev and the liberal zaukraintsy (Russians who support Ukraine) is his cunning and deeper conformism’, Antonovsky wrote. ‘He despises Russians and their Orthodoxy as much as the rest of the noviops’ (Antonovsky Reference Antonovsky2025, May 10).

Novioips are viewed as the bearers of the most dangerous narrative: one rooted in the deeply ingrained Soviet ideal of unity and equality among nations. It is a narrative that fuels one of the most persistent and seductive Soviet nostalgias – the memory of a multinational homeland where all peoples lived together in peace. This image remains widely popular both in Russia and across former Soviet republics (White Reference White2009; Esanu Reference Esanu2022). Given that the USSR’s collapse was accompanied by a weakened central state and the eruption of local conflicts, many continue to believe that a revival of the Soviet model, or at least its mindset, could bring back stability.

Yet for Russian nationalists, the Soviet project was never about peace – it was an intentional anti-Russian design, implemented according to a Western blueprint. From this perspective, every declaration of multinational harmony and every official programme of cultural openness becomes suspect. Such policies are seen not as signs of reconciliation, but as the realization of a long-term Western strategy. And in this imagined strategy, the noviops are the key tool. They appear native, they speak like patriots, they may even be ethnically Russian – but they are not truly Russian. ‘Noviops are parasites implanted by the West into the body of the Russian people to destroy it’, Antonovsky declared in another post (Antonovsky Reference Antonovsky2025, June 8).

This is not just ethnic suspicion – it reflects a deeper fear that the very story of what it means to be Russian is being overwritten from within. In this sense, the noviop conspiracy becomes a central mechanism of what I call the Great Narrative Replacement Theory: a conspiratorial anxiety not about physical erasure alone, but about the displacement of historical and cultural identity by an alien, insidious narrative that mimics Russianness while hollowing it out.