The USSR as Conspiracy Theory

One of the many weaknesses of Western pundits' accusation that Putin and his supports want to resurrect the Soviet Union is how little thought is put into exactly what the "Soviet Union" is supposed to signify. Is it a question of revived imperialism, a return to communism, pure nostalgia, or something else entirely? It would be easy to make the same mistake about the Citizens of the USSR.  Without asking what the Citizens themselves mean when they talk about the USSR, we are left simply imposing our own preconceptions onto them.  Assuming they must be Stalinists, quasi-nationalists, or old people longing for the Brezhnev days says more about the commentators than it does about the movement.

Should we really be surprised, then, to find out that even the Citizens do not all agree on their vision of a Soviet radiant present?  Part of the problem is the movement's decentralization, but the real issue is a combination of ideology, and epistemology (while also begging for a bit of ethnography that I am in a poor position to provide).  The Citizens of the USSR are a group that starts out with an idea that is almost too simple (the Soviet Union never collapsed), allowing its adherents to project a wide variety of fears and desires onto what is essentially a blank slate.  The result is an ideological syncretism that has transformed the Citizens of the USSR into a collection of the usual preoccupations found among Russian conspiracy theorists.  

In fact, if we set aside the obvious genealogical connections to the Sovereign Citizens and the Reichsbürger, the movement that the Citizens of the USSR most resembles is QAnon. Like QAnon, the organization thrives on the culture of the Internet in general and social media in particular (with YouTube hosting a number of the movement's most prominent speakers).  Like QAnon, the Citizens of the USSR's demographic skews towards (but is not limited to) the middle-aged and elderly.  In the Citizens' case, this would be the segment of the population with the greatest affective ties to the Soviet Union based on their own lived experience, and also the most traumatized by the 1990s. And, like QAnon, the Citizens of the USSR rapidly accrued a set of familiar xenophobic, conspiracist tropes that were not part of the initial stages of the theory.

Just as QAnon did not initially traffic in antisemitic fear-mongering, the basic premise of the Citizens of the USSR had nothing to do with Jews. And yet it is hard to be surprised at the news that a group of Citizens in the Kuban were arrested for plotting to murder a rabbi.  Or that some of them believe that Jews are poisoning children's food, eating Christian babies, and brainwashing innocent Russians (Варламов. “Граждане СССР»).  By no means am I suggesting that all the Citizens hold such belief, or that only Citizens do; quite the opposite, the tropes and memes of antisemitism are already so prevalent in the discourse of authoritarian, conspiratorial, and hardcore nationalist groups that their migration into the worldview of some of the Citizens was inevitable. My aim here is not to uncover antisemitism (especially when it barely bothers to cover itself), but to highlight the ideological work that goes into the development of the various Citizens' groups.  There is no need for a single mastermind to put all these tropes together; for one thing, the Citizens' have many candidates vying for the "mastermind" status, and, more important, it is far more likely that citizens themselves cobble together a familiar conspiratorial ideology on their own. [1]

The stories that the Citizens of the USSR tell each other are inconsistent, underdeveloped, and often quite distant from the basic idea of a Soviet Union that never fell.  Taraskin claims not only to be the head of the USSR, but also of the Russian Empire. Sergei Torgunakov already believed he was the second coming of Christ even before copying from Taraskin's playbook; he published a tract about his divinity, and also suggested an alliance with Alfa Bank ("Jesus Christ is a VIP Client of the New Alfa Bank!") (Мерзликин. “Правительство в изгнании"). Another group is preparing for a great battle against the Reptiloids ( Половинко. “День Совка.”). And I haven't even brought up one of the most common tenets of the USSR, taken directly from the Sovereign Citizens movement:  they insist that they are the only "living people" on the territory of the Russian Federation.  [2]

In a 2018 interview published on Lenta.ru, Acting USSR President Sergei Taraskin seems much more committed to the Soviet Union as an entity than to the Soviet system.  The "fact" that Lenin was an agent of anti-Russian Western forces does not bother him:

You're connecting large legal entities to concrete individuals. But you must understand that such a large state always had plenty of scoundrels and traitors, and heroes, and so on. An individual whom you like or don't like should not be connected to the whole entity.

In and of itself, this statement sounds like common sense, but when applied to the founder of the very state that Taraskin claims to represent, it should undercut the foundations of everything Taraskin is trying to (re)build. But it does not, because Taraskin's reflexive syncretism and lack of interest in ideology render the search for consistency foolish. Taraskin says that socialism will play a role, because the word's root is "society," and a person can't live without a society. There will be a planned economy ("How can you create something without planning?"), but not Marxism.  Socialism for him is based on "honor, conscience, [and] justice." 

While there are no doubt plenty of Stalinists among the Citizens of the USSR, as well as others who are committed to their understanding of the tenets of communism, expecting the entire movement to display such ideological dedication is to fall into the trap that so often awaits liberal observers of conspiracy theories.  We search in vain for ideological consistency when what we really should be looking for is affect. The Citizens' appeal is emotional, not logical, which is one of the reasons that they can't be disillusioned through argument.  

Yet there is still a very potent irony about this USSR that lacks a coherent political program.  However much Soviet practice deviated from Soviet theory, the historical USSR was dependent on the idea of an ideology to an unprecedented extent.  The Citizens either cannot come to a consensus, or cannot be bothered to dwell on social and economic theory.  The contours of their USSR might resemble a utopia, in that it is both idealized and unrealized, but modern utopias, while often mirroring an imagined Golden Age, have tended to look forward to the creation of something new.  Borrowing from the title of Edward Bellamy's famous utopian novel, the Citizens of the USSR are looking backward (in every sense of the phrase's meaning).  They want what they have lost:  decent living standards and pride in a powerful country.  The rest, from grand ideological theorizing down to the minutia of daily life, is a set of details that can be addressed later.

 Notes

[1] QAnon seems to do just fine generating new content even in the absence of new "Q drops" (public posts from the anonymous person or persons behind the "Q" identity). 

[2] Nor is it surprising that many of the Citizens are anti-mask COVID-deniers, who call the epidemic a "global conspiracy" (Козлов. “Союз нерушимый)