ABSTRACT
Galina Zvereva’s chapter discusses how the idea of Russia as civilization is reproduced in the mediatized public sphere (TV, print media, Internet, social media) by Russian politicians, officials, representatives of the Orthodox Church as well as public intellectuals. Zvereva shows that in the media sphere civilizational discourse serves several purposes. It allows public figures to connect contemporary Russia with previous Russian empires legitimizing the perception of Russian history as a continuous narrative distinct from the West. It serves also to present Russia as the defender and inheritor of Christian European values. This implies in turn that Russia should isolate itself from the rest of the world yet also lead the way by using conservatism as soft power. Despite the intention to present Russia as homogeneous, the country emerges in media as both regional and global, national and multi-ethnic, religious and secular, and ancient and modern; it is simultaneously a center and a periphery. To produce a consistent idea of Russia as civilization proves challenging, and the currently popular conceptualization of the regions as separate civilizations, i.e., “Siberian civilization,” “Bashkir civilization,” submits civilizational discourse to criticism and even mockery, especially in social media.
