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The Confluence of Historical Revisionism, Political Radicalism, and Militarism in Contemporary Russian-Imperial Culture: A Time-Sensitive Network Perspective

Werner, Wiktor; Dieriabin, Antoni

Abstract

This record contains the slides of a conference presentation delivered at the international conference “Cultures of War and Violence” (University of Potsdam, Germany, 27–28 November 2025). Conference presentation was not peer-reviewed. Work-in-progress results of ongoing research project. The presentation analyses how historical revisionism, political radicalism and militarism intersect in contemporary Russian neo-imperial ideology under Vladimir Putin. It builds on previous work (Werner, Dieriabin & Vovchuk) that reconstructed transnational networks of far-right actors (individuals, organisations, media and states) connecting Russia, Western Europe and the United States. The new contribution of this study is to aggregate these actor-level relations to directed state-to-state influence networks and to analyse them in a time-sensitive perspective. Using manually coded influence relations extracted from a corpus of around 145 scholarly and journalistic sources, the study constructs four directed graphs for the periods 1945–1991, 1991–2014, 2014–2022, and after 2022. For each period, it computes standard network measures (density, reciprocity, degree assortativity, node strengths and centralities) as well as Russia-specific indicators (share of edges and total edge weight involving Russia, strength concentration). In addition, the presentation visualises directional flows to Russia and from Russia in each period. The results show a clear structural trajectory: from a relatively dense, multipolar Cold War network in which the USSR is one important actor among many; through a post-1991 phase in which Russia becomes a highly central exchange hub within a reciprocal transnational radical-right ecosystem; to a sparser, strongly disassortative hub–periphery structure after 2014, and finally to a small, asymmetric post-2022 core dominated by one-way flows from Russia to a reduced circle of states. Graph-theoretically, the network evolves from a configuration of ideological exchange to a broadcasting structure optimised for centralised propaganda and neo-imperial ideological export. The presentation illustrates how state-level Social Network Analysis combined with historically meaningful periodisation can illuminate long-term transformations in Russia’s position within the global radical right and contribute to broader debates on cultures of war, violence and memory in Eastern Europe.

Full text

Dr hab. Wiktor Werner (Prof. AMU, Poznan, Poland) The Confluence of Historical Revisionism, Political Radicalism, and Militarism in Contemporary Russian-Imperial Culture: A Time-Sensitive Network Perspective 1. Research problem & context Analyse how historical revisionism, political radicalism, and militarism intersect in Putin’s neoimperial culture. Show that this is not a purely “internal Russian” phenomenon but a hub in a global radical-right ecosystem. 2. Theoretical background & previous work ●Build on the earlier paper (Werner–Dieriabin– Vovchuk) mapping networks of people, organisations, media and states. ●Starting claim: Russian political radicalism is largely a Russianised adaptation of Western farright and Christian Right ideas, not an isolated invention. http://eehb.dspu.edu.ua/article/view/311495 3. New contribution of this study Extend the analysis to state-level networks (state-tostate SNA). Introduce a time-sensitive approach with four periods: ●1945–1991 ●1991–2014 ●2014–2022 ●After 2022 (preliminary results) Main question: How does Russia’s structural position in this network evolve across these periods? 4. Data & method ●Corpus of ~145 scholarly and journalistic sources → manually coded influence relations (Auth: Antoni Dieriabin, supervised by Wiktor Werner) ●Aggregation to state of origin → state of influence. ●Directed graphs for each period. ●Metrics: 1) density, reciprocity, degree assortativity, 2) node-level centralities (strength, betweenness, closeness, combined centrality score), 3) share of edges involving Russia (by count and weight), 4) strength concentration (max / mean). 5. Key results: ●1945–1991: multipolar, relatively dense network; Russia/USSR important but not dominant; moderate centralisation. ●1991–2014: expansion + Russia as a super-hub; high reciprocity, intensive exchange; over 60% of total edge weight involves Russia. ●2014–2022: network becomes sparser, hub–periphery pattern strengthens; about half of all ties involve Russia → stabilised dominance. ●After 2022: small, narrow core; low reciprocity, nearly 70% of total edge weight involves Russia; Russia as primary broadcaster, not a symmetric partner. Bibliography (selected) ●Andersen J., Rising from the Ruins: The Right of the 21st Century, Arktos, 2018 ●Clover C., Black Wind, White Snow: Russia's New Nationalism, Yale University Press, 2022 ●Donovan J., Dreyfuss E., Friedberg B., Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022 ●eds. 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Valencia-García L.-D., Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories, Routledge, 2020 ●Weiss-Wendt A., Adler N., Future of the Soviet Past: The Politics of History in Putin's Russia, Indiana University Press, 2021 ●Weiss-Wendt A., Putin’s Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control over the Past, Bloomsbury Academic 2020 ●Werner, W. ., Vovchuk, L. ., & Dieriabin, A. . (2024). Formation peculiarities of the Russian political radicalism (2012 – 2024). EAST EUROPEAN HISTORICAL BULLETIN, (32), 131– 147. https://doi.org/10.24919/2519-058X.32.311495 ●Research funded by the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) under grant title “Historical narratives in Web 2.0 as a functional element of national identities in Central and Eastern Europe” (2020/39/B/HS3/01237). ●[email protected]l ●https://x.com/drWiktorWerner ●https://zenodo.org/records/17716221 ●10.5281/zenodo.17748317