Source
Fridman (2017), LIT-088, “The Russian perspective on information warfare” (Defence Strategic Communications 2, pp. 61–86), read in NOTE-070. Clark (2020), LIT-023, read in NOTE-012, for the same belief in military writing.
What was actually shown
Two strands (p. 62). Russian writing on information warfare divides into a neutral, “dual-use” technical literature and an ideological strand in which information war is a Western technique aimed at Russia (C1, moderate; no counts).
The theorists (pp. 63–76). Messner’s “subversion-war”, republished after 1991 and inverted from an account of Soviet subversion into one of the West’s (“the Messner formula got it right, but in the exact opposite way”, p. 70). Dugin’s “net-centric war” (2007), aimed at “full and absolute control”. Panarin’s “informational struggle over the control of the minds of the elites”, with 1991 “a defeat in the informational war, which lasted for 48 years”, though he blames Soviet failure more than US skill (p. 75). Dugin and Panarin share four tenets: continuous Western effort to undermine the Russian establishment, information war as its method, a “fifth column”, and a patriotic new elite as the answer (p. 76).
Adoption (pp. 77–79). Putin (30 June 2016) on “a growing barrage of information attacks”; Lavrov (April 2015): “We are faced with a large-scale information war”; the 2015 National Security Strategy on the “manipulation of public consciousness”; laws 121-FZ, 398-FZ, 97-FZ, 374-FZ and 305-FZ; Levada polls of 2014–2016 (C4, strong for presence).
The causal claim (pp. 80–81). Because the theorists predate Putin, the reading that the Kremlin uses them “seems to be flawed”. A demand-side reading, the Kremlin following the public’s “hearts and minds”, is offered. “None of these explanations is completely right or entirely wrong”; the truth is “somewhere in the middle”. Following Tulchinsky, the discourse about information war is itself information war, aimed mainly at a domestic audience because it is conducted in Russian (p. 77).
From the military side. Clark reports an “institutional worldview that the US has led the West in an ongoing hybrid war against Russia since the end of the Cold War” (Clark p. 16). He calls it “deeply paranoid and frankly hyperbolic” and argues it shapes planning, or that if it began as propaganda “a fake tail … is now wagging the dog” (p. 18). Both authors reject the merely-cynical reading, and both say the narrative now drives behaviour whatever its origin.
What could have come out otherwise. The theorists could have appeared only after official adoption, or the public could have rejected the narrative. On the article’s evidence neither holds, with the exceptions below.
What this does not say
- That the Kremlin played no part. The conclusion is hedged to “somewhere in the middle”; the account denies direction, not participation.
- That the chronology holds throughout. It holds for Messner’s revival and for Panarin. By the article’s own dates Dugin’s net-centric concept is from 2007, under Putin (C8, weak–moderate).
- That doctrine produced the laws. Four of the five laws (2012–2014) predate the 2015 Strategy and the 2016 draft Doctrine they are said to be “an outcome of” (C5, weak). One legal citation, 374-FZ supported by a 2014 story on what is usually 242-FZ, looks mismatched and is unverified.
- That the public simply absorbed it. The same polls show majorities believing TV censored and trust in TV falling from 79% to 41% (2009–2015), which the article does not reconcile (C6). That academics played “an equal if not more powerful role” is inferred from those polls (C7, weak).
- That the two sources corroborate each other’s evidence. Clark cites none of Fridman’s theorists and Fridman none of Clark’s military authors (NOTE-070). They agree on the narrative and on its not being merely cynical.
- Anything after 2016, for Fridman, or after September 2020, for Clark.
Connections
- THEORY-488 (Clark’s definition of hybrid war) is the military category the narrative feeds. Clark cites Fridman’s later book (Russian “Hybrid Warfare”, 2018), not this article.
- THEORY-659 (the EEAS) catalogues Russian FIMI practice from the target’s side; this account explains the Russian self-account in which Russia is the target.
- QUESTION-119 asks when a diffusely organized population with no procedure for collective judgment can be credited with a stance. Fridman credits the narrative’s politicisation to several populations at once, with no centre. The account is a case for that question, not an answer to it.