RUSSIAN LITERARY FICTION AS A TOOL OF INFORMATION WARFARE

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Russian Federation developed a neo-totalitarian regime aimed at subjugating the post-Soviet political and economic space. Futuristic propaganda became one of the promising political technologies with the help of which the ruling regime in Russia hoped to gain the loyalty of its citizens and the Russian-speaking population of the occupied territories. Russian propaganda bodies turned to the use of literary fiction as one of the most popular forms of mass culture. Using the Soviet experience of organizing the author and reader environment with the help of state-controlled associations and financial sources, Russian political technologists managed to create a literary community that acted as a disseminator of the ideology of rashism. The main means of its absorption is the focus of supporters of Russian fiction on constructing in their minds an image of the desired future of Russia as a Eurasian superpower. The result of such mental activities was to form an imperial consciousness among the readers. The use of modern information technologies has allowed the aggressor state to promote the messages of its aggressive foreign policy doctrine almost unhindered by the dissemination of Russian fiction. In the early 2000s, Russian popular literature actively used the experience of Soviet military fiction of the 1920s and 1930s. Revanchism, xenophobia, militarism, and hate speech have characterized this segment of Russian mass culture. These works are intended for an unpretentious reader, whom the authors convince of the normalcy of human existence in wartime and of Russia's certain victory in a hypothetical World War III. Russian science fiction writers consider relations with Ukraine as a scenario of a hybrid or full-scale war that would leave no chance for Ukrainian statehood to exist.