Identity under narrative pressure: How Russian citizens navigate strategic war narratives

Abstract This article looks at the understudied process of strategic narratives’ reception in authoritarian states at times of military crisis. Using the Russia–Ukraine war as a case study, the article conceptualises the reception of strategic narratives as identity work and as a reaction to the government’s attempt to weaponise Russians’ national identity and its important element, patriotism, to mobilise support for the war. Relying on interviews with Russians living in the country when the invasion started, triangulated with Public Sociology Laboratory (PSL) data, the article develops a model that shows three modes of reception shaping Russians’ engagement with and interpretation of patriotic narratives through the prism of identity – alignment, separation, and ambivalence – and two mechanisms of management of perceived identity threat – compartmentalisation and withdrawal. This model shows that Russians’ understanding and evaluation of the war goes beyond a simplistic typology of supporting/rejecting and is not conditioned by the type of media they consume. More broadly, the article shows that even in authoritarian states, reception is still conditioned by narratives’ resonance with audience identity and the emotional load they impose. Moreover, in a time of crisis, repetitive and highly emotional messages may cause a wear-out effect and decrease narratives’ effectiveness.