‘It’s become part of the landscape’

How residents of southern Siberia show support for a war thousands of miles away

Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the Russian authorities’ emphasis on patriotism as a pillar of everyday life has gone into overdrive. The Republic of Buryatia and the Irkutsk region, the two federal subjects that border Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, are no exceptions. Over the last year and a half, patriotic concerts, motor rallies, and children’s competitions have become a common occurrence there.

Visual evidence of this pro-war fervor has become ubiquitous in the area as well. Signs with the letter Z adorn theaters and museums, restaurant owners have put up banners with portraits of Russian soldiers, and locals have painted their cars the colors of the St. George ribbon.

For the website People of Baikal, an anonymous photographer recently compiled a series of “patriotic” photos he’s taken in Buryatia and the Irkutsk region over the last year and a half. With the outlet’s permission, Meduza shares the images below.

“After the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, new symbols of patriotism appeared suddenly, as if they’d been planned and thought out long before the war broke out,” the photographer says. “In just a short period, they’ve filled every inch of the country. And I wanted to document these changes as they actually are.”

His goal, he says, was to show how propaganda manifests in regions that are far from the front but nonetheless fully involved in the war: “I’m struck by the contrast between the romanticization of war and its real consequences.”

Some of the first institutions to embrace Russia’s new wartime spirit were cultural ones. In March 2022, a banner appeared on the outside of the Kyakhtinsky Regional History Museum in Buryatia that proclaimed “Kyakhtinsky Regional History MuZeum: Strength in truth,” with soldiers and the Russian flag in the background. The decoration was the idea of the museum’s director, Bair Tsyrempilov, who’s a shop teacher by training but always dreamed of being a soldier.

Meanwhile, in Irkutsk, one of the most outwardly patriotic buildings is the Okhlopkov Drama Theater. Its director, Anatoly Streltsov, hung a Z banner on the theater’s facade in April 2022. On multiple occasions, people have thrown rotten eggs and green dye at the banner, but Streltsov has insisted it remain. In June, the director donated money from museum ticket sales to help Russian soldiers. In July, he accompanied a group of musicians to the front, where they performed concerts for Russian troops. He told People of Baikal that supporting the military financially is his “sacred duty.”

In the first months of the war, residents of the Irkutsk region and Buryatia frequently used their personal vehicles as platforms for demonstrating patriotism, putting the letters Z and V on them and tying St. George ribbons to their mirrors.

In cities, where standards of living are relatively high, many car owners purchased premade stickers proclaiming “We don’t abandon our own.” Village residents, on the other hand, made do with what they had; during trips to remote parts of the Lake Baikal region last year, People of Baikal journalists even saw some V and Z signs made out of toilet paper.

Since then, however, the public’s interest in attaching patriotic symbols to their personal vehicles seems to have declined. At the very least, you don’t encounter many toilet paper decorations anymore.

Patriotism in Russia is frequently intertwined with religion. In 2018, the village of Selenduma in Buryatia unveiled a new memorial square dedicated to the local soldiers who died in Afghanistan. Since February 2022, portraits of fighters who died in Ukraine have also started appearing in the square. Next to the square is a WWII-era howitzer that was originally given as a gift to the village by the veterans’ organization Brothers in Arms. The weapon’s barrel is pointed towards a nearby Orthodox Church (presumably by accident).

Political leaders from both Buryatia and the Irkutsk region often reflect publicly on the idea of patriotism. On Russia Day this year, Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev wrote on Telegram that Russians are “filled with love for their Fatherland.” Commenting on Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed march on Moscow, Kobzev said that “Russians’ strength is in unity, solidarity, and patriotism.”

Businesses such as restaurants, carwashes, and even tattoo parlors have joined in on the patriotic signaling. One tattoo parlor in the city of Bratsk in the Irkutsk region, for example, gives free tattoos in the shapes of the letters Z and V.

“I’m a patriot to my very core,” the salon’s owner, Sergey Peregud, told People of Baikal. “I welcome the war to such an extent that I’m willing to do these for free. After all, people are going to defend the Fatherland.”

Some restaurants have incorporated the Latin letters V and Z, which don’t exist in the Cyrillic alphabet, into their names, such as a cafe in the town of Ust-Ilimsk called Buuza. (Journalists from People of Baikal visited the town to meet the relatives of Ruslan Zinin, a local man who opened fire on a military recruiting officer in September 2022. Zinin is currently on trial.)

Another way people demonstrate their “patriotism” is by wearing patches on their clothing. In March, People of Baikal reported on patches that volunteers from Buryatia were sending to soldiers on the front. They said things like “Don’t anger a Buryat,” “Not one step back — the morgue is behind us,” and “Be calm and wait for the Buryats.”

The photographer behind this project spotted insignias that read “Cargo 200 — We’re together,” using a Russian military term that refers to dead bodies in transport, at the opening ceremony for a memorial to Russian soldiers. The memorial was installed at the Landfill Museum near Irkutsk, which was built on the territory of a real landfill.

Students from the Irkutsk region and Buryatia frequently send letters and postcards to Russian soldiers. The “Soldier’s Letter” initiative began on March 1, 2022, one week after the start of the war, and remains ongoing. Children’s letters are sent to the front along with humanitarian aid packages; sometimes they’re delivered by regional governors themselves. Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev, for example, made a delivery trip in February.

“It was important for me to see [the soldiers’] smiles when they read the postcards from schoolchildren,” Kobzev wrote on Telegram. “The guys were truly touched; each of them heard something warm, something familiar, in [the children’s] words.”

Culture researcher Svetlana Yeremeyeva believes the Russian authorities’ patriotic initiatives for schoolchildren have one main goal: to get them accustomed to the idea that sacrificing oneself for the motherland is the highest good. “But this kind of strategy may not work; the government is using archaic cultural technologies that don’t always work to influence modern children or teenagers, who live in an information-based society,” she said.

In April 2022, the village of Selenduma in Buryatia held a musical competition called Soldier’s Envelope. More than 50 children from Selenduma and other nearby villages participated. The most common songs children performed were the patriotic numbers “To Serve Russia” and “Forward, Russia!”

The village of Khaim in Buryatia’s Pribaikalsky district is a popular stop for tourists on the way to Lake Baikal. It contains several small cafes and is said to have the best meat belyash, or fried dough pastries, in Buryatia.

Sometimes the symbols of Russia’s invasion — the letters V and Z — assume enormous proportions. In July 2022, the letters were drawn on the side of a five-story residential building in Ulan-Ude. According to residents, the decoration was put up by the building’s management company.

In Kultuk, a village in the Irkutsk region, a giant letter Z was laid out on the side of a hill. In September of this year, a banner appeared in Kultuk calling on residents to join the army as contract soldiers. The sign read: “We didn’t start it, but we’re going to finish it.”

Ulan-Ude’s sports complex is one of Buryatia’s largest venues, and it’s often used for patriotic events.

“I think the goal of all of this patriotic paraphernalia is to instill in people the desire to go to war and support it every way possible,” says the photographer. “The symbols are designed to spark hatred in people for their neighboring state, to invoke a feeling of revenge for their fellow citizens. To create the illusion that Russia is in the right in this conflict, and that it’s surrounded by evil and deception.”

At the same time, the photographer says, many residents of Buryatia and the Irkutsk region are losing patience with the ubiquity of patriotic symbolism. “It’s become a part of the everyday landscape, and people either don’t pay attention to it or they judge it,” he tells People of Baikal. “Although there are still those who proudly put stickers reading ‘We don’t abandon our own’ on their cars.”

In the last year and a half, according to the photographer, the patriotic “Z” and “V” banners that used to dot the landscape in the Buryatia and Irkutsk regions have largely been replaced by advertisements calling on residents to become contract soldiers and signs showing soldiers who have been posthumously awarded after dying in Ukraine.

Original text by Karina Pronina

Abridged English-language version by Sam Breazeale