Czech Journal of International Relations

Unveiling the War and Constructing Identities: Exploring Memes in Ukrainian and Russian Social Media during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Alina Mozolevska — 2024-02-22

The article examines the generation and deployment of visual narratives in Ukrainian and Russian digital participatory cultures, with a specific focus on internet memes in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It analyzes the form, content, and functions of these memes and highlights their similarity in mobilizing and conveying political messages despite variations in their visual components. The study indicates that Ukrainian memes are used not only to promote political agendas but also serve as trauma coping and collective identity construction mechanisms in times of crisis, helping to promote new war narratives that are engaged in the construction of the self and the other.

Ukrainian Wartime Posters as a Tool of Participatory Propaganda During the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Elżbieta Olzacka — 2024-03-04

Drawing inspiration from the Ukrainian poster boom during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this article explores the role of war-related posters in today’s world, where printed media is no longer dominant, and images can travel across different media platforms. The example of wartime Ukraine shows that the poster remains an essential tool of wartime propaganda, promoting patriotic and proactive attitudes and encouraging action to support the war effort, while experiencing substantial changes in its form and means of dissemination. Analyzing various types of grassroots and institutional initiatives related to creating and disseminating war-related posters in Ukrainian offline and online public spaces made it possible to focus on two issues: firstly, how online media facilitate the creation and distribution of posters in offline formats and allow them to transcend the traditional printed form; and secondly, how posters become a convenient tool of participatory propaganda, involving various state and non-state actors in their production and dissemination.

Jakub Eberle, Jan Daniel: Politics of Hybrid Warfare: The Remaking of Security in Czechia after 2014 Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 229 pages, 978-3-031-32702-5.

Chiara Libiseller — 2024-08-01

Chiara Libiseller reviews Jakub Eberle and Jan Daniel’s timely book on the politics of Hybrid Warfare (HW) in Czechia. According to Libiseller, the book provides an insightful analysis of the detrimental effects of the HW discourse on democratic politics in Czechia. Leveraging a number of critical traditions, the book deepens the critique of the HW concept, which hitherto was often limited to aspects of conceptual clarity or newness. Yet, the authors' engagement with the power of the concept could have gone even further: by examining these trends as unique to Czechia and as unique to the HW discourse, the authors remain unable to address the HW discourse's international dimensions and its feeding on other militarizing discourses. Libiseller concludes that Eberle and Daniel’s book remains a powerful call to move away from Russia-centered narratives and reclaim agency to improve democratic and societal strength.

Degrowth from the East – between quietness and contention. Collaborative learnings from the Zagreb Degrowth Conference

Lilian Pungas — 2024-06-19

While degrowth as a plural and decolonial movement actively invites the Global South to be part of its transformative project, the current North-South dichotomy threatens to miss the variety of semi-peripheral contexts. Against this backdrop, we aim to contribute to dialogues on degrowth from the often-overlooked ‘East’ – specifically post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Instead of being viewed as a site for transformative examples and inspiration for degrowth-oriented socio-ecological transformation, CEE is often portrayed as ‘lagging behind’. Problematising such reductionist narratives, this essay explores CEE as a lively and rich site of postcapitalist alternatives. Based on two special sessions organised at the 2023 International Degrowth Conference in Zagreb, we ref lect upon insights gathered on various degrowth-aligned traditions and practices in CEE with a goal to 1) advance an equitable dialogue between the global degrowth scholarship and the East, and 2) strengthen a context-sensitive degrowth agenda in CEE.

Degrowth in the Semi-Periphery: Ecology and Class in Central and Eastern Europe

Josef Patočka — 2024-05-09

The aim of this extended review essay is to discuss the potential relevance of degrowth-aligned social-ecological transformation for the specific context of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We frame this discussion around three recent books which we consider especially useful for this debate: The Future is Degrowth by Schmelzer et al. (2022, in Czech 2023) for an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the concept of degrowth; Marx in the Anthropocene by Saito (2023) for an ecologically grounded debate on anticapitalist strategies stemming from writings of late Marx; and The Political Economy of Middle Class Politics and the Global Crisis in Eastern Europe by Gagyi (2021) that empirically analyses the specific position of the CEE semiperiphery and its implications for a radical social-ecological transformation. We introduce and interlink the main ideas of these books and discuss their implications for the degrowth movement in the CEE context. We argue that to deeply transform our socio-metabolic relation with nature, it is crucial to cultivate and expand spaces of reproductive autonomy, and link them to struggles of labour and social movements. We conclude by emphasising the role of internationalism from below.

Energy Transition in Central and Eastern Europe: A Neo-Colonial Perspective

Pengfei Hou — 2024-04-24

The article examines the neo-colonial inf luence in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries’ energy transitions, relating energy neo-colonialism with power asymmetries. Most CEE countries began to reduce their reliance on Russian energy after the Cold War, elevating energy security to new levels around 2010. Although European Union (EU) norms have helped counteract Russia’s inf luence on energy, they have brought about a neoliberal neo-colonialism. On the one hand, the CEE countries need reliable and affordable energy supplies to maintain their economic growth, which leaves them prone to the Russian inf luence. On the other hand, the EU’s energy rules and regulations, which disregarded the CEE countries’ interests, have resulted in disobedience. The article employs the degrowth concept to examine energy neo-colonialism in the CEE, contending that the concept stands out as a hopeful signpost for realizing the scenario wherein the CEE countries’ interests can be protected and prioritized.

Sustainability in the Czech Republic: From a Green Growth Laggard to a Degrowth Hotspot

Ondřej Kolínský — 2024-07-03

The Czech Republic is a notorious laggard in green transition policies. This begs the question of how stable the current socio-political setting is and whether it can resist deeper sustainability transitions in the long run. The paper combines institutional literature with sustainability transition research to describe the current situation and outline possible future developments in terms of the economic discourse. It shows that the reluctance towards the green transition may be caused not only by the strong position of incumbents but also by the limited relevance of the green competitiveness approach for the country’s situation. Based on recent developments and existing vulnerabilities, the paper identifies the possible strengths of the more radical approach to sustainability entailed in degrowth. Rather than a pure hegemony of one of the niche paradigms, however, it proposes as likely a pluriversal pathway combining elements of both in a patchwork manner.