Imagining the future – rejecting the present: Future thought and defensive discourse strategies in Russian society during wartime

Abstract

Abstract For many Russians, the Russia–Ukraine war became a starting point for rethinking their identity. And thinking about their personal and national future played a significant role in this process. This article is based on the analysis of the interviews I collected during the first year of the war. It examines how imagining the future activates a variety of defense mechanisms, which can be situated in four unique, yet not mutually exclusive, defensive discourse strategies. The primary focus is the connections among future thinking, agency, defensiveness, and identity. The whole spectrum of different and, in some cases, opposite visions of the future and the fact that the majority of respondents used more than one defensive discourse strategies can be a sign of a significant fragmentation – on individual and collective levels. This fragmentation is almost invisible if we consider the public opinion polling or Putin's approval rating. This paper gives crucial insights into what remains hidden in the statistics and presents a more complex picture of Russian society in a time of war.