Dr. Marco Biasioli of the University of Manchester will give a guest lecture entitled “Patrioprotest: ambiguous resistance in Russian independent music (2014-2022)” on Friday 6 June at 3.15pm in room H105. Everyone is warmly invited to attend.
Below you will find an abstract of the presentation and a brief biographical sketch of Dr Biasioli’s career.
Abstract: Western discourses have often framed Soviet or Russian popular music, particularly if independently produced, as an anti-establishment cultural movement. However, several of the claims regarding the musicians versus the Russian state (and vice versa) over the 2010s were reductive, as they presented only one of the possible relationships between the actors involved, and perhaps not the most common one. Binary interpretations may too quickly discard the fact that the interactions between independent culture and the authoritarian state were dynamic and ambiguous, and that the ‘Russian state’ was also traversed by inconsistencies and fragmentations within its various components: not rarely, the Kremlin, regional and municipal authorities and state-controlled media entered in contradiction as to how to interpret and react to the products and actions of independent music practitioners. One of the reasons for such confusion was that, in the mid- to late 2010s, Russian musicians often mixed political protest with elements of state-endorsed narratives, rendering the disentanglement of these components as difficult as possible for the authorities. To understand these manifestations of protest music – that is, music that carries messages contrary to the official narrative – the paper introduces the notion of patrioprotest. This term encapsulates the ambiguity and interpretative fluidity of a varied range of audio-visual products containing criticism of (some) official narratives, but nonetheless fluctuating across a spectrum that usually comprises patriotism as one of the poles. In the context of growing state censorship and control during Putin’s third and fourth terms, patrioprotest became both a conventional survival strategy and aesthetic technique.
Brief biography: Dr Marco Biasioli is a lecturer in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Manchester. His forthcoming book (Routledge, 2025) explores the interactions between popular music, language, politics and national identity in contemporary Russia (2008-2022). His research interests include Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian popular music. His current research focuses on culture in the context of migration, specifically on how migrant Russian artists and grassroots organisations reimagine Russian culture in times of war.
