The Duck of Minerva

Lisa Gaufman

Elizaveta Gaufman is Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She is the author of "Everyday Foreign Policy: Performing and Consuming the Russian Nation after Crimea" (2023) and "The Trump Carnival: Populism, Transgression and the Far Right" (2024).

Recent Posts

#MeToo

#MeToo

by Lisa Gaufman | 17 October, 2017 | , ,

“The women who accused Harvey Weinstein did not act as women. Because sexual harassment - well, that's great, honestly. And if you have a role, what difference does it make how you got it. […] In general, how can a man be accused of sexual harassment, is it not what he exists in this world for? If he has the power that he uses in this way, that's good. It's wonderful when a man who has so much power is sexually harassing you, isn’t it?” No, it isn’t. But that is what a relatively famous Russian actress Lyubov Tolkalina had to say about the Hollywood scandal. Even though in the same article...

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You Are Fake News!

You Are Fake News!

by Lisa Gaufman | 9 October, 2017 | , , ,

Yes, you have heard a lot about it. A German version of the ISA just featured a roundtable entitled: ‘Reclaiming the facts: analysis of international politics in the age of fake news and post-facts’. There has been a lot of panic over the new era of alternative facts.  Let me assure you: fake news and post facts are not new. Social networks are not new. We all have seen and read about them before. And they are not only as American as George Washington’s cherry tree. They are old and they are universal. Here’s an example. Once upon a time, there was a bankrupt opportunist from a notable...

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Coffee and TV

Coffee and TV

by Lisa Gaufman | 21 September, 2017 | , ,

I am (sort of) on vacation and visiting the Motherland. In the meantime, I allowed myself a couple of days of couch potato mode that included some Russian TV. A political scientist in me is never on holiday so while flipping through some mainstream channels I made a little Russian TV digest for the Duck. I am not repeating Gary Steyngart’s experiment of watching Russian TV for a week at the Four Seasons, mostly because early career researchers don’t have money for 5* hotels and my mum cooks better than Michelin restaurants. Let’s skip the morning shows that, fortunately, don’t include the...

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Fall of Giants

Fall of Giants

by Lisa Gaufman | 31 August, 2017 | ,

Footage of toppled Confederate statues all over cities in the US reminded me of the events my homeland went through a couple of decades ago and might go through again in some years. Some experts already compared the toppling of Confederate statues with “Leninopad” – razing of Lenin statues in Ukraine, but renaming streets and bringing down monuments was a la mode in newly independent Russia as well. Most Westerners might be familiar with the iconic footage of Felix Dzerzhinsky's downfall in 1991 among the jubilant crowds gathered in front of the KGB building. The infamous founder of NKVD...

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#MH17

#MH17

by Lisa Gaufman | 17 July, 2017 | , ,

Three years ago, on this day, the Malaysian Airliner MH17 flight from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur was shot down over Ukraine. 298 people died. In October 2015, the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) concluded that the airliner was downed by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine. These findings were also confirmed in September 2016 by a Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT). The Russian government disputes these findings. Let’s go back 3 years to the Russian mass media  and examine what passed as "truth" about the crash. One of the first...

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Trump and the Russian Money Trail

Trump and the Russian Money Trail

by Lisa Gaufman | 14 July, 2017 | , ,

This is a guest post from Seva Gunitsky, an associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His book Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the Twentieth Century was recently published by Princeton University Press. To understand the roots of the collusion, set aside Putin and follow the money. In the endless pursuit of the Russia-Trump collusion story, we sometimes forget a key element: this whole mess began with money, not with election interference. The connections between Trump and Russia were forged years ago, well before he developed...

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Motherland Calls

Motherland Calls

by Lisa Gaufman | 30 June, 2017 | ,

Y’all are probably sick and tired of hearing about Russia: hacking, colluding, obstructing, peeing, meddling, trolling, spying... I'm waiting in terror to see what Stephen Colbert has filmed in the Motherland. So far, his mispronouncing of Sergey Kislyak’s name together with fur hat clad ‘Russian hackers’ with vodka and thick accents have not been particularly impressive. To quote Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler, ‘Really?’ Throw in a mail-order bride and we have a full house of Russian stereotypes. Has American TV not been able to come up with anything new since Boris and Natasha? Yes, Russia is...

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Trolling Me Softly

Trolling Me Softly

by Lisa Gaufman | 30 May, 2017 | ,

While the Russia probe is expanding to include naïve 36-year old Harvard graduates, pundits all over the world have been worried about elections in other countries. The massive WikiLeaks dump (pun intended) on Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in France did not work, so the next troublesome case seems to be Germany (the UK is fine, they are already leaving the EU). As Quattrociocchi et al. note, the so-called ‘echo-chambers’ on social media reinforce selective exposure and group polarization, further radicalizing the political debate that is  already polarized in the US. With 62% of American adults...

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It’s Not Easy Being Green

It’s Not Easy Being Green

by Lisa Gaufman | 28 April, 2017 | , ,

A dilute alcoholic solution of Brilliant Green (Viridis nitentis spirituosa) is a topical antiseptic, effective against gram-positive bacteria, also known under a Russian colloquial name zelyonka. If you grew up in the Soviet Union and ever had chicken pox, zelyonka turned you into a green-spotted leopard for at least a week: it’s hard to get it out of your skin. Brilliant green has, however, some serious safety issues: when ingested it can induce vomiting and contact with eyes can lead  to grave injuries, even blindness. This is what a prominent Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny...

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If You Post It, They Will Come

If You Post It, They Will Come

by Lisa Gaufman | 29 March, 2017 |

I know most of you are busy watching the all-too-real reality horror show of the 45th administration, but there has been some interesting news coming  out of Russia (sorry, no meteorites or Putin's nipples). On Sunday, somehow almost 90  thousand people went out on the streets in 87 cities all over Russia to protest against corruption. The unsanctioned demonstrations were met with brutal police crackdown with around 1000 protesters arrested in Moscow alone. To make matters worse, none of the TV channels reported the disturbances (apart from Russia Today, to be fair). Channel One spent about...

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