Plots Against Russia

Eliot Borenstein is Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University. He is the author of Men without Women and Overkill.

A fascinating book written with self-awareness and humility, which only lends greater credibility to his arguments overall.(Choice) He offers close readings of how conspiracy manifests itself in Russian popular as well as political culture. In doing so, he pushes our understanding of how conspiracy has transcended the paranoid fringe and become widely accepted as credible.(East-West Review) A study that both answers a number of questions about the post-Soviet Russian public sphere and signals other possible ways to interrogate its workings. As such, it should be read by all specialists in contemporary Russian culture.... Borenstein's text is so well written and entertaining that it will easily hold the attention of undergraduate students of post-Soviet Russian culture, history, and politics.(Russian Review) Written with irony and wit, Eliot Borenstein's Plots Against Russia analyzes Russian national myths and disturbingly popular beliefs in the internet age. Borenstein's tour of the darker side of Russian internet, popular fiction, television, and movies, where conspiracy theories flourish with baroque profusion, opens a window onto the engaging and terrifying landscape of contemporary Russian fantasy.(Citation from the 2020 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize Committee) Brilliantly written and captivating, sometimes very funny as well as academically well-grounded, Borenstein's monograph provides an in-depth analysis of Russian contemporary conspiratorial culture. It will undoubtedly be useful for scholars dealing with post-Soviet Russia within disciplines such as cultural, literary and media studies, and should not be overlooked by historians, political scientists and sociologists, as the phenomena it describes are crucial for better understanding the political landscape of present-day Russia.(Europe-Asia Studies) Eliot Borenstein has contributed a rich and insightful study of conspiratorial narra-tives in Russian films, media, and fiction to the growing scholarly field of post-Soviet conspiracy theory[...]describing how these narratives function to construct conceptions of Russia's state-hood, identity, and destiny.Borenstein also provides a sophisticated, critical, and productive discussion and further development of theo-ries on conspiratorial thinking that could be applied to conspiracy narratives outside of Russia. It makes for an insightful and often entertaining read.(Laboratorium)

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Russia as an Imaginary Country1. Conspiracy and Paranoia: The Psychopathology of Everyday Speech2. Ruining Russia: Conspiracy, Apocalypse, and Melodrama3. Lost Horizons: Russophobia, Sovereignty, and the Politics of Identity4. One Hundred Years of Sodom: Dystopian Liberalism and the Fear of a Queer Planet5. The Talking Dead: Articulating the Zombified Subject under Putin6. Words of Warcraft: Manufacturing Dissent in Russian and UkraineConclusion: Making Russia Great AgainNotesWorks CitedIndex