Translated material
Mobiki
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Signal:
Mobiki
Mobilization in Russia has been going on for almost a month and a half. During this time, according to Vladimir Putin, 318 thousand people were drafted into the war with Ukraine. And although the authorities announced that the first stage of mobilization is over, Russians continue to be sent to the front. Meduza’s sources said at the end of September that more than a million people were going to be drafted into the army.
So far, mobilization has not radically changed the situation at the front. Military analysts agree that several hundred thousand Russian troops are unlikely to achieve the effect the Kremlin is counting on. The Russian army has not yet been able to create combat-ready units, properly arm and equip them.
Therefore, for now, those mobilized are simply dying one after another: according to preliminary estimates, we are already talking about at least 101 people, of whom 23 did not even have time to get to the front.
Mobilized Russians are increasingly called “mobs” - Ukrainian media also do this ( one , two , three , four ), some Russian publications , bloggers , but what’s interesting is sometimes even propagandists . Is there more to this word than Newspeak ?
How did the mobilized become “Mobics” in the first place?
We do not know. Perhaps the word “mobs” first appeared in the context of Russian military aggression in Ukraine even before the start of a full-scale invasion.
On February 19, the authorities of the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” announced the beginning of general mobilization in the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions under their control.
As local residents said , tens of thousands of men were taken to the war in the LPR and DPR, even if they were not physically healthy and had no combat experience. Many, despite the protests of their relatives, were mobilized by force. Those who didn’t want to fight hid or tried to leave. It was the men mobilized in the self-proclaimed and then annexed “republics” who were nicknamed “Mobics” .
According to one version, “mobiks” came from the merger of the words “mobilized” and “dodiki” in the meaning of “frail”. Even representatives of the self-proclaimed republics admitted that there was almost no decent military training for those mobilized in the territories under their control.
One of the most famous “mobiks” was Gorlovka resident Andrei Ryazantsev, who surrendered to the Ukrainian army in early March. The photograph of Ryazantsev in captivity became , along with the “Russian warship,” one of the main Ukrainian military memes. The prisoner was insultingly nicknamed “chmonya.” In TikTok alone, mocking videos about “shit” (for example, one , two , three , four ) have collected more than 100 million views. He became a symbol of Russian and pro-Russian “mobs”.
Perhaps it was thanks to “chmona” that “mobiks” turned into “chmobikov” - this more derogatory form began to gain popularity in the fall among both Ukrainians and Russians . There is a formal explanation here: mobilization in Russia is “partial” - hence the initial Ch.
It is obvious that the expression “mobics” primarily expresses a disparaging attitude. It’s one thing when professional soldiers who serve in the army under contract, or mercenaries who have combat experience and know how to handle weapons, participate in a war. It’s completely different when people are sent to war who are completely unprepared for it .
In Ukraine, people who do not always have combat experience are also called up to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, we were unable to find examples of Russians calling mobilized Ukrainians “mobs.” The disdainful attitude towards Ukrainians, characteristic of many Russians, does not apply to the military.
Why do so many Russians accept the role of “mobiks”?
There may be several reasons. Firstly, mobilization is a way to earn money . Unless, of course, the due payments are appropriated by officials, and the mobilized person himself remains alive . For people from poor regions (mostly national republics ), war is one of the few accessible social elevators, no matter how monstrous it may sound. According to Yandex queries , the word “mobile” is most often used by people from relatively prosperous regions, including Moscow and the Moscow region. This is such a strange marker of inequality .
Secondly, due to many years of processes of depoliticization of society, many Russians simply do not know about their rights and do not understand the laws. And they may be afraid that if they do not accept the summons or hide from serving it, they will definitely be arrested and sent to a pre-trial detention center ( this is not true! ). Independent media that tell you how to behave during mobilization and not legally go to war are blocked in Russia, which means millions of people simply do not know how to behave.
Thirdly, many Russians are influenced by television propaganda, which claims that the Russian army does not kill civilians, but only strikes with “high-precision weapons” at “decision-making centers” and “neo-Nazi headquarters.” This means that the war seems to be controlled and as if it is not real - and the feeling that you can die in it is dulled.
In addition, the Russian government and its relationship with the people are based on a “boyish” culture (read the text of Andrey Pertsev about this in our friendly Kit newsletter). Not going to war when the “boss” calls means betraying the “boys,” and a “real man” doesn’t do that (we already wrote about the special, largely artificially created “Russian masculinity” in the issue “Grandfather” ). The one who fights in Ukraine, according to Putin and other Russian political figures, is a hero , and the one who opposes the war is a traitor .
Finally, according to political scientist Vladimir Gelman, Russian men, faced with a crisis such as mobilization, decide to simply submit to fate, because they believe that fighting the state is pointless. This is not a unique feature of Russian society—this is how people behave in many authoritarian societies.
Words like “mobs” are derogatory because they reduce a person to a characteristic or function. In this particular case, to participate in hostilities as mobilized. Therefore, when Russian propagandists call men mobilized for the war with Ukraine “mobs,” they seem to be letting it slip. For Russian authorities and propagandists, “mobiks” are just another means to achieve goals in a war of conquest.
In fact, “mobs” are another way of saying “cannon fodder,” which the Russian authorities throw at the front without preparation, with weapons from the last century and with unrealistic combat missions. It seems that the word “mobiki” clearly shows the price of human life in Russia. And this does not escape the Ukrainians, who have to defend their country, including from the Russian “mobs”.
Are “Mobs” dehumanization?
Probably not.
Although in previous years, researchers noted that derogatory language plays a big role in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Words such as “vatniks” (or “cotton wool”), “embroidery”, “colorados” (from Colorado beetles, whose colors resemble a St. George’s ribbon), “ukropy”, “Bandera” (often also mistakenly “Bendera”), “maydowns” ", "separatists", "punishers", "cyborgs", "Crimean nashists" have become a kind of marker for defining “friends” and “foes”.
Even then, in 2014-2015, it was more of a mutual dehumanization - a kind of self-hypnosis that opponents are not fully human and do not deserve either compassion or even being listened to. Dehumanization is a subject of psychological and sociological research (for example, one , two ).
Back in the late 1970s, scientists concluded that it plays a key role in state-sanctioned violence (such as genocides and mass murders), and dehumanizing rhetoric reduces internal moral constraints and contributes to the growth of cruelty. However, modern neuroscientists insist that this is just one of the theories explaining people’s behavior and their readiness for violence, which should not be considered the only correct one.
The dehumanization of entire groups of people continues to contribute not only to war crimes, but also to support torture, violations of the laws of war and the murder of civilians by citizens of the country that initiated the aggression. By stripping their opponent of their humanity, people are freed from moral constraints, including empathy, guilt, and ultimately humanity.
Over the past decade, Russian propaganda has been consistently creating images of the enemy and dehumanizing them. For Putin, Ukraine is “a fictional state created by Lenin”, without its own history and the right to independence and self-determination (you can read why this is not so here or here ). In the ideology of the “Russian World”, Ukraine is, at best, the southwestern part of Russia, and Ukrainians who disagree with this are “Nazis”, “Banderists” or “Satanists” who need to be “corrected” or exterminated.
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that dehumanization transforms into real violence and genocide primarily with the sanction of the state. Russian propaganda has been preparing Russians for war for years. Dehumanization of Ukrainians has been the official policy of Russia for at least the last eight years. Although much indicates that the dehumanization of Ukrainians by Russians began under Soviet rule - and that is why current propaganda finds such fertile ground.
When Ukrainians call Russians “orcs,” this is also, of course, dehumanization. Before the start of a full-scale military invasion, this was the name given to the Russian military, Russian volunteers and occupation authorities in the territories of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, which were controlled by the “people's republics”. “Orcs” finally became an offensive name for the Russian army on February 25 - then the Russians who invaded the country were described as such on the official page of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. Also in Ukraine, other offensive nicknames for Russian soldiers and Russians in general are in use, including “racists.”
Against this background, the condescending “mobiki” looks like a manifestation of, if not empathy, then pity. Of course, “orks”, “mobiks”, “vatniks”, “racists” or even “Muscovites” sound offensive. But these insults come from people who have spent the last eight years literally defending the very existence of their country and its right to self-determination. Today, for Ukrainians, any Russian military personnel (no matter whether they entered the country of their own free will or not) are occupiers who brought war to their country.
These insults were not preparation for military aggression - they were its consequence. And this is a fundamental difference. In this sense, derogatory language is in many ways an attempt to preserve the very national identity that Vladimir Putin personally consistently denies, considering Ukrainians to be “Little Russians” - and in many ways this is why he continues to wage a war of conquest.
An unexpected discovery we made while preparing this letter
At the end of June, “mobik” from Gorlovka Andrei Ryazantsev, who became the hero of one of the main Ukrainian military memes in the first months of the full-scale invasion of the “chmons,” was freed from captivity. He found himself in a group of fifteen prisoners of war who were exchanged for sixteen captured Ukrainian military personnel and one civilian. It is unknown whether Ryazantsev returned to Gorlovka, where he worked as a teacher until February 2022.
P.S
According to Meduza's sources, the Kremlin has already prepared new manuals for propagandists who will have to prepare the country's population for the retreat of the Russian army from Kherson - perhaps for Russia's main failure in this war. The main motive of the new manuals is that the Russian army, in another “gesture of goodwill,” will most likely decide to leave the city, because fighting for Kherson is “inappropriate.”
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