The institutions responsible for Russian cultural diplomacy are fully integrated into the power circles of Putin's regime and purposefully spread the Kremlin's narratives around the world. There are even full-time employees of Russian intelligence services operating under the guise of cultural managers, as journalists from the Ukrainian YouTube project Toronto Television uncovered using OSINT tools.

After the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian Institute, together with the MZ Hub agency, investigated the three main institutions of Russian cultural diplomacy - the Russkiy Mir Foundation, Rossotrudnichestvo, and the Gorchakov Fund. The resulting research is available online in English and Ukrainian.

To understand how Moscow uses cultural diplomacy, we asked Denys Tereshchenko, co-author (along with Nadiia Koval) of the book Russian Cultural Diplomacy under Putin (Stuttgart, 2023). The book is based on an in-depth and refined study by the Ukrainian Institute and MZ Hub.

Key information:

• Rossotrudnichestvo is the largest institution of Russian cultural diplomacy. It descends from a long lineage of Soviet and post-Soviet institutions, and thus inherited a network of representative offices abroad from them, known as so-called "Russian houses."
• The Russkiy Mir Foundation was established as a "non-governmental" organization in 2007 but is strictly subordinate to the Russian regime. The Foundation also has offices in numerous countries, where it promotes the study of the Russian language and spreads key Russian narratives.
• The Gorchakov Fund is also a formally non-governmental organization that is quite closely related to the Kremlin. The Fund runs projects of various levels of ambition: from micro grants for young people and NGOs to the support of intergovernmental contacts, such as the Potsdam meetings of Russian and German governmental experts and parliamentarians (suspended in March 2022) as well as the promotion of Georgia's integration into the Russian sphere of influence.

Can we pinpoint when the Kremlin stepped up its cultural diplomacy?

On the one hand, revisionist, revanchist, and conservative ideas emerged in Russia as far back as the 1990s, when Russian elites realized that their status as a major geopolitical power was lost, and they found themselves in a world dominated by the United States. Even then, a number of considerations on the ways to compensate for this defeat were cropping up. However, under the presidency of Vladimir Putin and his anti-Western, conservative turn, these ideas became institutionalized and put into service of the Russian government's foreign policy.

The idea of the "Russian world" was formulated in the 1990s. It initially argued that there is an archipelago of Russian diasporas around the world which need to be united and coordinated so that they become Russia's helpers in connecting with the wider world.

At first, it was a progressive idea that "compatriots" (sootechestvenniki in Russian) were people who were knowledgeable about other countries and that their skills in doing business would help Russia integrate into the world economy. When Putin came to power, he eventually appropriated these ideas and made them the basis of state policy. However, now Russians abroad have been pushed to serve as tools to increase Russian influence. This was the objective in the establishment of the Russkiy Mir Foundation in 2007.

One of the organizations the study analyzed was the Gorchakov Fund. It finances and coordinates non-governmental organizations in Russia and abroad working to strengthen the influence of Russian interests in the field of public diplomacy. Although it is a small organization, it is still an important one as it serves the promotion of Russian foreign policy interests.

Two key ideas - Primakovism and Gorchakovism - are of interest here. The so-called Primakov doctrine (named for 1990s Foreign Intelligence Service director and Foreign Minister Yevgeniy Primakov) has long dominated among Russian experts in international relations, ever since Russia transitioned from unconditional cooperation with the United States to multipolarity in the late 1990s, asserting that Russia was not a mere subordinated part of the Western world, but a global power of its own. 

The concept of "Primakovism" builds its ideas partly on "Gorchakovism," a line of thinking named for Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire (1856 - 1882) Aleksandr Gorchakov, which came about in large part due to the popularity of the 1977 novel Battle of the Iron Chancellors.

In this book, Gorchakov is portrayed as a powerful minister and state figure, on par with the German chancellor Bismarck. Simply put, Gorchakovism is condensed into the formula that "Russia is not sulking, Russia is collecting itself."

These were the words issued by Gorchakov after Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, which encapsulated the country's relative and temporary weakness compared to the West. The formula envisaged that the period after the collapse of the USSR was to be seen as a time of Russia's recovery, the growth of its economy, and the development of both hard and soft power - all so that it may later return to its old borders and influence operations.

Thus, the ideas Russia propagates now about its place in the world are not new, but merely came to the forefront at the end of Putin's first term. The so-called "color revolutions" in former Soviet republics  (primarily the Rose Revolution of 2003 in Georgia and the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine) are believed to have triggered this transition.

Russian elites perceived these revolutions as humiliating defeats borne of the weakness of Russian cultural diplomacy in comparison to that of the United States and the European Union. In an address to the Russian Federal Assembly in 2005, Putin stated that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century, as it left many Russians out of Russia's borders and that the Russian authorities needed to do something about this. He repeated this claim in 2008, and Russia would go to war against Georgia later that year.

Shortly before this in 2007, the Russkiy Mir Foundation was created. It was at this point that the Russkiy Mir agenda was hijacked by the Kremlin, because this Foundation is, in fact, an extension of the Russian state, created and financed by its ministerial structures.  

What is the basis of these organizations' anti-Western ideology?

In addition to its frequent refrain about the world becoming multipolar and that the West cannot be allowed to dictate its will to other countries, Russia's cultural diplomacy institutions took up a banner of resistance against what is often derogatorily called, even in Ukraine, as "gender ideologies."

In 2022, Putin signed a directive titled "Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values," which declares that the United States is using"destructive ideologies"to undermine social unity and stability in Russia, and that Russia must respond by defending all its values, such as the "traditional family," service to one's homeland, and Russian identity.  

On the one hand, social attitudes in Western countries have shifted more in favor of postmodern values, and more liberal ideas about family and citizenship have gained currency. However, even in the EU and the United States, these ideas have met active resistance. Russia is trying to unite with other countries based specifically on opposition to these liberal values and adherence instead to "traditional" ones.

Russia certainly appears to be working to organize other countries around this agenda. For example, in March 2024, the Black Sea city of Sochi hosted the International Youth Festival, which Russia tried to model upon the famous Moscow Youth Festival of 1957, which itself was designed to mitigate the reputational damage Moscow sustained with its invasion of Hungary the previous year. In his speech to festival participants, Putin argued for socially conservative positions on gender roles and "traditional values." Similar narratives are being used in Russia's dialogue with African countries.

What did Putin say?

How did you Festival participants manage to create this city of the world's youth? Even when they are so different? Apparently, there is something that unites us all. Today in Russia, we call it our traditional values. This is the foundation of our life, our being. It means there is something that brings us all together.

At the same time, Putin argues that Russia is not against the West as such, but is in fact preserving the values the West once had and with which he believes he can find accord. The message here is that Russia can have a dialogue with the West, but specifically with conservative leaders like Donald Trump or Viktor Orban.

What cultural content do these organizations offer?

On the one hand, Russia's cultural diplomacy institutions offer many messages inherited from previous structures. As a result of institutional inertia, Rossotrudnichestvo's activities are generally limited to what they have already been for decades -- staples of recognizable Russian culture like Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky,and so on. Although the content is often quite archaic, it is put in more contemporary formats, which makes it appear somewhat ridiculous. One particularly amusing post featured an image of people with paper masks of Pushkin labeled Pushkins Wandering Around Kazakhstan. While dressed up to appeal to modern youth sensibilities, its ultimate message and audience remained unclear.  

However, there are often quite a few other activities that have been able to find audiences in targeted countries, from film screenings, exhibitions about the occupied territories, and youth camps to the publication of books, translations of Russian literature, and its distribution to foreign schools and libraries.

In addition, Rossotrudnichestvo appears to have recently realized that their older methods of operations will not be able to achieve their desired effect and reach new audiences, and that newer formats will be required. The organization's leadership is now aiming to improve the competence of Russian cultural diplomacy NGOs.

Meanwhile, Russian Houses abroad are testing new PR strategies. These new campaigns sometimes feature irony or gloating, such as when Russian Houses in the EU invited people who were supposedly "freezing" without Russian gas to warm up in the winter of 2022/2023.

Is the world aware of the threat posed by these organizations?

Most European governments understand that campaigns by the Russian government, including those in cultural diplomacy, do not have friendly intentions. In countries across the continent, Russian Houses have been closed or had their activities suspended, but many are also operating as before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Gorchakov Fund has representative offices in Georgia and Belarus, and it previously had one in Ukraine. It operated at Kyiv National Aviation University but was closed because of student protests in 2015. In Belarus, it has been operating since 2020 and is aimed at promoting the integration processes for the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

In Georgia, a Gorchakov Fund office has been operating for 10 years and is named in honor of Foreign Minister Primakov. In Georgia, the government is known to be under the influence of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who has extensive financial ties to Russia. There are also a number of organizations and projects of Russian influence, such as the Alt-Info news agency.

This became especially noticeable during protests against the recent law on foreign agents, [which appeared modeled upon an equivalent Russian law and was adopted in May 2024]. While drafting our research in 2022, we noticed that this outlet was publishing news stories and promoting bilateral moves and policies which had not yet been released by other outlets, such as the restoration of air travel between Russia and Georgia, the introduction of visa-free travel for Georgian citizens in Russia, the simplification of labor terms, and the expansion of Russian language studies. Some of these policies were later implemented, but discussion on them started from the Primakov Center months before.

The Primakov Center, along with its parent organization the Gorchakov Fund, are in fact tools of forward presence for the Russian government through which Moscow seeks to cultivate its relations with TbilisiGeorgia, facilitates meetings with legislators and visits of Georgian delegations to Russia and so on. The Primakov Center became particularly active in Georgia in 2022, and now appears to be working on bringing Georgia back into the Russian sphere of influence.

For its part, Rossotrudnichestvo has existed since Soviet times and often operates in other countries via intergovernmental agreements. It is a large, cumbersome structure with quite substantial organizational funding. The first obstacle to containing the organization's operations is that it is run through Russian embassies. Even after the European Union imposed sanctions against Rossotrudnichestvo, the Russian House remained open.

Thus, if there is an agreement between Russia and a host country prescribing assistance to these "cultural and scientific centers," the host country cannot simply unilaterally ban Rossotrudnichestvo's activities.  However, a number of Russian Houses have been suspended, for example, in Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Romania.

However, no countries outside Europe have yet closed down any Russian Houses. Since 2022, the Russian Federation has been trying to play upon what it calls "Western domination" in the world. It calls attention to past Western European colonialism and present global economic inequalities. Russia uses all of this to appeal to the countries of the so-called Global South. Since most of these countries are not directly allied with the European countries or the United States, there is no incentive for them to shut down their Russian Houses. In some countries, Russia is even expanding its presence.

Dmitriy Polikanov, a deputy director at Rossotrudnichestvo, began to actively promote the idea of franchising Russian Houses in order to open them not as embassy branches or state organizations, but through local enterprising Russians who would like to be involved. Such centers have already been opened or are set to open in several African countries.

In democratic societies, government intervention in or regulation of cultural issues has always been a sensitive and highly controversial topic. However, it is worth remembering that institutions of cultural diplomacy are part of a state's official foreign policy. In the case of Russia, these institutions whitewash the Kremlin and serve as ideological accompaniment as Russia wages its war to destroy Ukraine and escalates its confrontation with the West.

The article was originally published on the Kremlin's Voice platform.