Biopower in Putin’s Russia

In this book, Makarychev and Medvedev examine the importance of biopolitics in fueling Russia's confrontation with the West. In their view, the development of Putin's illiberal authoritarianism was largely triggered by what they call a biopolitical turn. This shift is exemplified by the use of an increasing number of regulatory mechanisms to discipline and constrain the human body. Such political practices concern issues of sexuality, reproductive behavior, adoption, fertility, family planning, public hygiene, and demography. This turn created a new disciplinary framework for the population and the elite. Bans and restrictions of a biopolitical nature, became one of the main tools for articulating the rules of belonging in the political community and drawing its political boundaries. Biopolitical discourses have taken up the core of the Russian identity formation, which contrasts a positive "conservative Russia" with a supposedly vicious "liberal West."

Acknowledgements, Introduction, Chapter 1. The Biopolitical Genealogy of Putin's Regime Introduction Framing the biopolitical debate The Russian biopolitical debate: an outline The "Russian world" and civilizational biopolitics Putin's zoepolitics The necropolitical turn Is it fascism yet? Conclusions Chapter 2. Performative Biopower and Biopolitical Activism Sovereign biopower and biopolitical dystopia The biopolitics of performative resistance Piotr Pavlensky's biopolitics of protest Aleksandr Gabyshev, the Shaman Conclusions Chapter 3. Biopower and Sovereignty in the Russian Sports Industry Introduction The Soviet doping legacy The Sochi doping scandal Biopolitical sovereignty Sovereignty and anatomopolitics Conclusion Chapter 4. Biopolitics of the Pandemic Introduction Medicalized bio-governmentality Regionalized governmentality Futuristic bio-governmentality The bio-governmentality of resistance Anatomopolitical governmentality The absent center of sovereignty? From the pandemic to war Conclusion Chapter 5. War in Ukraine: From Bio- to Necropolitics Introduction Anatomopolitics of the "Russian world": the Bucha massacre Biopolitics of mobilization: the body as a natural resource Exposing bare life: "Wagner" PMC The gendered war: re-defining masculinity, femininity, and the family Necropolitics of war: the cult of death Concluding remarks: the dialectics of bio- and necropolitics, Conclusion, Appendix: Academic, Glossary, References, Index