The “vatnik“‘s running Twitter.

Rejoice, aye, “Putin’s horde“!

“O Titushka, Where Art Thou?“

I truly stand for ‘vatnik‘‘s (and ‘vata’) expropriation reappropriation both in domestic and foreign Russia-friendly discourse. As long as it is a no-no in this discourse, it will be used in the worst cases of anti-Russian propaganda. Most likely, it will be used in this manner anyway but ‘we’ should add more positive connotations to this term. One cannot destroy stereotypes by just stating that “these are just stereotypes”. One can only try to deconstruct these stereotypes and/or reappropriate them (see: positive klyukvification). The ‘vatnik’ mythology uses social racism (‘vatniks’ as ‘bydlo‘, something similar to Russian ‘rednecks‘ and ‘gopniks‘ – Russian chavs) plus cultural racism (‘Russia-the-Anticivilization’ narrative which, e.g. equals IS with RF) and even biological racism (the ‘Mongoloid Russian horde’ narrative which is extremely popular among Ukrainian radical nationalists, hence the slur ‘mongolokatsaps‘).

Vatniks of the world, unite!

V is for Vatnik!

V is for Victory!

P.S. And yes, Dostoyevsky was a vatnik too…

Author: Sergey A. Armeyskov, Candidate of Sciences in Culturology (≈ PhD in Cultural Studies), certified vatnik. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.