Vera Tolz
Biographic Data
| ID | 1120845 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vera Tolz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vera |
| FAMILY NAME | Tolz |
| SIGNATURE | TOLZ V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7118-9918 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 221 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
From Moscow to Cologne and across the Atlantic: Newspaper science and the global origins of Soviet mass communication
This article situates early Soviet studies of the press, a specific academic field called gazetovedenie , within the global history of mass communication research. While scholarship often portrays Soviet media theory as entirely subordinate to agitational practice, this situation only became established by 1930, when well-known Soviet orthodoxies on the nature and role of propaganda fully solidified. In the 1920s, Soviet press scholars actively e…
Disinformation as process: Modeling the lifecycle of deceit
This article offers a new conceptual model of disinformation which accounts for the performative status of disinformation accusations, and the dialogistic interaction between accusers and accused, within a multi-aspectual dynamic process involving diverse actors (including those disassociated from various forms of deceit). The model shows how claims acquire or lose their disinformation status, as they transgress temporal, geopolitical, and lingua…
Truth with a Z: Disinformation, war in Ukraine, and Russia’s contradictory discourse of imperial identity
This article offers a qualitative analysis of how, by adopting identity-related discourses whose meanings resonate within a given culture, Russian state propaganda strives to bolster “the truth status” of its Ukraine war claims. These discourses, we argue, have long historical lineages and thus are expected to be familiar to audiences. We identify three such discourses common in many contexts but with specific resonances in Russia, those of colon…
Mediatization and journalistic agency: Russian television coverage of the Skripal poisonings
The 2018 Skripal poisonings prompted the heavy securitisation of UK-Russian relations. Despite the ensuing tight coordination between the Russian government and state-aligned television, this article argues that in today’s mediatised environment – in which social and political activities fuse inextricably with their own mediation – even non-democracies must cope with the shaping of global communications by media logics and related market imperati…
Regime legitimation, not nation-building: Media commemoration of the 1917 revolutions in Russia’s neo-authoritarian state
Scholars predicted that official Russian commemorations of the centenary of the 1917 revolutions would prioritise ‘reconciliation and accord’ between pro- and anti-communists. Such a frame might help construct a new post-Soviet Russian identity. Yet, in 2017, state-affiliated political and media actors gave accounts that contrasted with their previous narratives and with each other. Domestic state-aligned media were unprecedentedly negative about…
Communicative integration in nation‐states and empires
Broadcasting agitainment: A new media strategy of Putin's third presidency
This article argues that accounts of the Russian media system that tend to view the time from Vladimir Putin's rise to power in 2000 as a single homogenous period do not capture major qualitative shifts in state-controlled media coverage. By analyzing the output of Russia's two main television channels during Putin's third presidential term, we identify a range of distinctly new features that amount to a new media strategy. This involves a signif…
From a threatening “Muslim migrant” back to the conspiring “West: ” Race, religion, and nationhood on Russian television during Putin's third presidency
This article analyzes official discourse of the nation during Vladimir Putin's third presidency, as reflected in Russian television coverage of Islam and migration. It argues that the replacement of earlier deliberately ambiguous definitions of Russian nationhood with clearly framed exclusive visions reflects the change in the regime's legitimation strategy from one based on economic performance to one based on its security record. In this contex…
(Un)covering alterity
This chapter examines the initially subdued role of ethnicity in television&s;s approach to consensus management as it struggled to negotiate the competing demands of the democratic and nationalist oppositions. Ethnicity&s;s centrality to the hegemonic process is indicated by the subliminal manner in which it colours the corruption theme so ubiquitous in Russian political discourse. The chapter examines the role of Naval&s;nyi&s;s own populist ca…
Transcending marginality
This chapter focuses on how challenges have been manifested, on why such a development might occur and on what it tells about the relationship between the Kremlin and federal broadcasters, through the prism of television coverage of migration issues. The selection of officials and experts is such that only a minority of the speakers support the Kremlin-endorsed position, namely, that migration is essential for the country&s;s economy and that int…
Mapping an uncertain terrain
This chapter focuses the television&s;s ability to perform state television&s;s balancing act was tested severely during the ethno-racially motivated riots in Moscow in December 2010. In addition to Channel 1 and Rossiia, the author analyse relevant news reports by NTV and REN TV. Conflicting information about the Manezhnaia disturbances was refracted by the four channels through a set of consistently utilized interpretative lenses reflecting off…
An unholy scandal
The scandal took place on the eve of the presidential elections, and in the context of the liberal opposition&s;s criticism of the Moscow Patriarchate for offering its overt support to Putin. Prime among the discursive displacements from the Pussy Riot scandal was the paranoid vitriol launched by the Orthodox Church and the hyperbolic professions of piety. The Moscow Times singled out from among the prosecution&s;s far-fetched accusations the cha…
Ethnic conflict and television news coverage of the December 2010 Moscow riots
This chapter analyses the broader historical and current political context of the region within which Vesti-Buriatiia&s;s coverage. It explores the representational strategies with which Vesti-Buriatiia deals with the republic&s;s actual and symbolic borderland position and negotiates its cultural and religious diversity. The author attempts to make sense of the complex balancing act by analysing Vesti-Buriatiia&s;s broadcasts through the perspec…
R ussia
Perceptions of the concepts of ethnicity, nation, and race in Russia have historically been shaped by two factors: the specificity of the imperial state framework and a dialogue that Russian intellectual and political elites have been conducting with their European counterparts. The concept of nation was borrowed from Western Europe in the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth wide‐ranging debates began about how to define the Russian nation …
Re-working Russian diversity
The scandal took place on the eve of the presidential elections, and in the context of the liberal opposition&s;s criticism of the Moscow Patriarchate for offering its overt support to Putin. Prime among the discursive displacements from the Pussy Riot scandal was the paranoid vitriol launched by the Orthodox Church and the hyperbolic professions of piety. The Moscow Times singled out from among the prosecution&s;s far-fetched accusations the cha…
Television and nationhood
In this chapter the author presents an overview of the body of news recordings that people collected over a two-year period from September 2010 to August 2012. From news recordings the author generated a simple content analysis which enabled, to gain a grasp of the broad patterns and trends in coverage of inter-ethnic relations in Russia, to map out the contested and shifting terrain. In presenting the content analysis, the author begins by asses…
Conclusion
National television serves as a key facilitator of the process, both aspects of which were epitomized in Mamontov&s;s Spetsial&s;nyi korrespondent series on Pussy Riot and migrant workers respectively. The symbiosis of national self and antithetical western &s;other&s; in the Russian patriotic imagination, and the fragile condition in which free expression, and with it the future of Russian civil society, and of the Federation, finds itself place…
‘There is war on our streets…’
This chapter focuses on how challenges have been manifested, on why such a development might occur and on what it tells about the relationship between the Kremlin and federal broadcasters, through the prism of television coverage of migration issues. The selection of officials and experts is such that only a minority of the speakers support the Kremlin-endorsed position, namely, that migration is essential for the country&s;s economy and that int…
Re-inventing Russia in television news commemorations of the ‘Day of National Unity’
This chapter talks about the wake of Manezhnaia revealed, television&s;s role in the mis-management of diversity policy is far from restricted to news bulletins. The new generation of gypsy dramas to flood Russian television can also be traced to the early 1990s arrival on post-Soviet screens of the Latin American &s;soap opera&s; form, with its melodramatic narratives of provincial girls finding love and social advancement in new, urban environm…
Reconciling Ethnic Nationalism and Imperial Cosmopolitanism: The Lifeworlds of Tsyben Zhamtsarano (1880–1942)
This article intends to make a contribution to our understanding of how the Russian empire was shaped by its colonies by shifting the focus away from the circulation of knowledge between the European empires and onto crosscultural transfers between the imperial center and one part of Central Asia – the Buryat lands in southern Siberia and Outer Mongolia, during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The article looks at these transfers…
From “Compatriots” to “Aliens”: The Changing Coverage of Migration on Russian Television
This article analyzes an anti‐immigration campaign evident in 2012 and 2013 on the two main Russian state‐aligned television channels, Channel 1 and Rossiia. This campaign marked a significant departure from the earlier coverage of migration‐related issues by these broadcasters and, surprisingly, contradicted the federal government's position on migration and on “the national question”, which was authorised by Vladimir Putin during his presidenti…
Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television: Mediating Post-Soviet Difference
Russia, one of the most ethno-culturally diverse countries in the world, provides a rich case study on how globalisation and associated international trends are disrupting, and causing the radical rethinking of approaches to, inter-ethnic cohesion. The book highlights the importance of television broadcasting in shaping national discourse and the place of ethno-cultural diversity within it. It argues that television’s role here has been reinforce…
Discourses of Race in Imperial Russia (1830–1914)
The aim of this chapter is to analyze how Russian intellectuals, particularly scientists and scholars, engaged with race-related theories during the imperial period. The chapter questions the long-standing assumption in Russian studies about the marginality of racial theories to the Russian intellectual tradition and considers the ways in which the Russian imperial context set its own agenda for the exploration of the concept of race, shaping the…
Race and ethnicity in the Russian media: Rights, responsibilities and representations’, Public debate, The Frontline Club, London, Thursday 18 October 2012
Fault Lines in Russia's Discourse of Nation: Television Coverage of the December 2010 Moscow Riots
This article analyzes Russian television news accounts of the December 2010 Manezhnaia riots that followed an ethnic Russian football fan's murder by a group of men from the North Caucasus. It focuses on the narrative struggle to reconcile official nation-building rhetoric with grassroots realities and broadcasters' own assumptions. Using the tools of media discourse analysis, Stephen Hutchings and Vera Tolz demonstrate that national television's…
Broadcasting agitainment: A new media strategy of Putin's third presidency
This article argues that accounts of the Russian media system that tend to view the time from Vladimir Putin's rise to power in 2000 as a single homogenous period do not capture major qualitative shifts in state-controlled media coverage. By analyzing the output of Russia's two main television channels during Putin's third presidential term, we identify a range of distinctly new features that amount to a new media strategy. This involves a signif…
Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television: Mediating Post-Soviet Difference
Russia, one of the most ethno-culturally diverse countries in the world, provides a rich case study on how globalisation and associated international trends are disrupting, and causing the radical rethinking of approaches to, inter-ethnic cohesion. The book highlights the importance of television broadcasting in shaping national discourse and the place of ethno-cultural diversity within it. It argues that television’s role here has been reinforce…
Forging the nation: National identity and nation building in post‐communist Russia
After the downfall of the USSR all the newly independent states had to embark on the road of nation building (defining 'who are we the people' and fostering the people’s national identity, i.e. their sense of belonging to one distinct community) and state building (defining state boundaries which can be accepted by all major political players and creating new political institutions which can inspire the loyalty of the people). By now they have ac…
Truth with a Z: Disinformation, war in Ukraine, and Russia’s contradictory discourse of imperial identity
This article offers a qualitative analysis of how, by adopting identity-related discourses whose meanings resonate within a given culture, Russian state propaganda strives to bolster “the truth status” of its Ukraine war claims. These discourses, we argue, have long historical lineages and thus are expected to be familiar to audiences. We identify three such discourses common in many contexts but with specific resonances in Russia, those of colon…
From “Compatriots” to “Aliens”: The Changing Coverage of Migration on Russian Television
This article analyzes an anti‐immigration campaign evident in 2012 and 2013 on the two main Russian state‐aligned television channels, Channel 1 and Rossiia. This campaign marked a significant departure from the earlier coverage of migration‐related issues by these broadcasters and, surprisingly, contradicted the federal government's position on migration and on “the national question”, which was authorised by Vladimir Putin during his presidenti…
Conflicting "Homeland Myths" and Nation-State Building in Postcommunist Russia
The second disintegration of the empire this century has reopened the debate over Russian state and nation building with direct implications both for Russia's reform process and for its relations with other newly independent states. In December 1991, the Russian Federation was transformed into an independent state as a historically formed regional entity, not as a nation state. Scholars argue that the Russian empire was built "at the cost of Russ…
Orientalism, Nationalism, and Ethnic Diversity in Late Imperial Russia
Questioning Edward Said's controversial perception of European Oriental studies as a facilitator of imperialism, this article analyses the views and policies promoted in late imperial Russia by academics specializing in Oriental studies, as they debated how best to integrate ethnic minorities in the country's eastern borderlands. The article argues that, themselves influenced by the pervasive impact of nationalism on European scholarship, between…
Rethinking Russian–Ukrainian relations: A new trend in nation‐building in post‐communist Russia
This article analyses new trends in the assessment of Russian–Ukrainian relations by representatives of the Russian elites in the late 1990s. It sees a discussion of the historic roots of Ukrainian separatism in the Russian media and attempts to identify the origins of the ‘Russian national homeland’ outside Kyiv Rus as the first steps towards a revision of traditional Russian perceptions of Russian–Ukrainian relations. The article argues that th…
Fault Lines in Russia's Discourse of Nation: Television Coverage of the December 2010 Moscow Riots
This article analyzes Russian television news accounts of the December 2010 Manezhnaia riots that followed an ethnic Russian football fan's murder by a group of men from the North Caucasus. It focuses on the narrative struggle to reconcile official nation-building rhetoric with grassroots realities and broadcasters' own assumptions. Using the tools of media discourse analysis, Stephen Hutchings and Vera Tolz demonstrate that national television's…
Regime legitimation, not nation-building: Media commemoration of the 1917 revolutions in Russia’s neo-authoritarian state
Scholars predicted that official Russian commemorations of the centenary of the 1917 revolutions would prioritise ‘reconciliation and accord’ between pro- and anti-communists. Such a frame might help construct a new post-Soviet Russian identity. Yet, in 2017, state-affiliated political and media actors gave accounts that contrasted with their previous narratives and with each other. Domestic state-aligned media were unprecedentedly negative about…
Regional Governors and the Kremlin: The Ongoing Battle for Power
This article examines the relationship between heads of regional administrations (governors) and the federal government in Russia since 1992. It looks at the methods with which governors have enhanced their powers vis-a-vis Moscow and at the policies of the federal authorities aimed at preserving some form of control over regional officials. The article argues that the gubernatorial elections of September 1996–March 1997, which gave almost all go…
From a threatening “Muslim migrant” back to the conspiring “West: ” Race, religion, and nationhood on Russian television during Putin's third presidency
This article analyzes official discourse of the nation during Vladimir Putin's third presidency, as reflected in Russian television coverage of Islam and migration. It argues that the replacement of earlier deliberately ambiguous definitions of Russian nationhood with clearly framed exclusive visions reflects the change in the regime's legitimation strategy from one based on economic performance to one based on its security record. In this contex…
The USSR's Emerging Multiparty System
Foreword Summary Introduction Chronology of Development of Unofficial Movements Activities of Unofficial Movements Attitude of the Authorities: Constant Changes Challenges to the Policy of the CPSU Case Studies: Political Groups in Moscow and Leningrad Conclusion Appendix Index
Disinformation as process: Modeling the lifecycle of deceit
This article offers a new conceptual model of disinformation which accounts for the performative status of disinformation accusations, and the dialogistic interaction between accusers and accused, within a multi-aspectual dynamic process involving diverse actors (including those disassociated from various forms of deceit). The model shows how claims acquire or lose their disinformation status, as they transgress temporal, geopolitical, and lingua…
Imperial Scholars and Minority Nationalisms in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia
Imperial Scholars and Minority Nationalisms in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia Vera Tolz (bio) The late imperial period in Russia was marked by intense debates about how to achieve social, political, and, in some instances, cultural cohesion within the context of the empire's multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism. To use our contemporary terminology, we can define the challenge that faced Russian politicians and intellectuals as a resolution…
Informal Groups in the USSR
(1988). Informal Groups in the USSR. The Washington Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 137-144
Controverses sur le nombre des victimes de Staline
The USSR's Emerging Multiparty System
The USSR's Emerging Multiparty System
Foreword Summary Introduction Chronology of Development of Unofficial Movements Activities of Unofficial Movements Attitude of the Authorities: Constant Changes Challenges to the Policy of the CPSU Case Studies: Political Groups in Moscow and Leningrad Conclusion Appendix Index
The Demise of the USSR
The War in Chechnya
Essay| October 01 1996 The War in Chechnya Vera Tolz Vera Tolz Vera Tolz is a lecturer in Russian histoiy at the University of Salford. She is the author of The USSR’s Emerging Multiparty System (New York: Praeger, 1990) and coeditor of The Demise of the USSR: From Communism to Independence (London: Macmillan, 1995). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (1996) 95 (603): 316–321. https://doi.org…
Regional Governors and the Kremlin: The Ongoing Battle for Power
This article examines the relationship between heads of regional administrations (governors) and the federal government in Russia since 1992. It looks at the methods with which governors have enhanced their powers vis-a-vis Moscow and at the policies of the federal authorities aimed at preserving some form of control over regional officials. The article argues that the gubernatorial elections of September 1996–March 1997, which gave almost all go…
Forging the nation: National identity and nation building in post‐communist Russia
After the downfall of the USSR all the newly independent states had to embark on the road of nation building (defining 'who are we the people' and fostering the people’s national identity, i.e. their sense of belonging to one distinct community) and state building (defining state boundaries which can be accepted by all major political players and creating new political institutions which can inspire the loyalty of the people). By now they have ac…
Conflicting "Homeland Myths" and Nation-State Building in Postcommunist Russia
The second disintegration of the empire this century has reopened the debate over Russian state and nation building with direct implications both for Russia's reform process and for its relations with other newly independent states. In December 1991, the Russian Federation was transformed into an independent state as a historically formed regional entity, not as a nation state. Scholars argue that the Russian empire was built "at the cost of Russ…
European Democratization since 1800
An historical and comparative analysis of democratization in Europe since 1800 which highlights the varied factors accounting for both its success and failure in the past, and its present prospects. C
Russia
Includes bibliographical references (p. [275]-290) and index
Russia
Cultural Bosses’ as Patrons and Clients: The Functioning of the Soviet Creative Unions in the Postwar Period
The article argues that the postwar years rather than the 1930s, as hitherto has been assumed, was the period when top administrators of the Soviet creative Unions acquired their super-elite status. It shows how in this period the Union leaders finalised their control over the production and distribution of, as well as the reward for, literary and artistic work. The article looks at the reasons behind the government's conscious decision to allow …
Russia
Rethinking Russian–Ukrainian relations: A new trend in nation‐building in post‐communist Russia
This article analyses new trends in the assessment of Russian–Ukrainian relations by representatives of the Russian elites in the late 1990s. It sees a discussion of the historic roots of Ukrainian separatism in the Russian media and attempts to identify the origins of the ‘Russian national homeland’ outside Kyiv Rus as the first steps towards a revision of traditional Russian perceptions of Russian–Ukrainian relations. The article argues that th…
Right-wing Extremism in the Twenty-first Century
Orientalism, Nationalism, and Ethnic Diversity in Late Imperial Russia
Questioning Edward Said's controversial perception of European Oriental studies as a facilitator of imperialism, this article analyses the views and policies promoted in late imperial Russia by academics specializing in Oriental studies, as they debated how best to integrate ethnic minorities in the country's eastern borderlands. The article argues that, themselves influenced by the pervasive impact of nationalism on European scholarship, between…
Imperial Scholars and Minority Nationalisms in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia
Imperial Scholars and Minority Nationalisms in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia Vera Tolz (bio) The late imperial period in Russia was marked by intense debates about how to achieve social, political, and, in some instances, cultural cohesion within the context of the empire's multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism. To use our contemporary terminology, we can define the challenge that faced Russian politicians and intellectuals as a resolution…
Russia's Own Orient: The politics of identity and Oriental studies in the late Imperial and early Soviet periods
"Russia's own Orient examines how intellectuals in early twentieth-century Russia offered a new and radical critique of the ways in which Oriental cultures were understood at the time. Out of the ferment of revolution and war, a group of scholars in St. Petersburg articulated fresh ideas about the relationship between power and knowledge, and about Europe and Asia as mere political and cultural constructs. Their ideas anticipated the work of Edwa…
Fault Lines in Russia's Discourse of Nation: Television Coverage of the December 2010 Moscow Riots
This article analyzes Russian television news accounts of the December 2010 Manezhnaia riots that followed an ethnic Russian football fan's murder by a group of men from the North Caucasus. It focuses on the narrative struggle to reconcile official nation-building rhetoric with grassroots realities and broadcasters' own assumptions. Using the tools of media discourse analysis, Stephen Hutchings and Vera Tolz demonstrate that national television's…
Race and ethnicity in the Russian media: Rights, responsibilities and representations’, Public debate, The Frontline Club, London, Thursday 18 October 2012
Discourses of Race in Imperial Russia (1830–1914)
The aim of this chapter is to analyze how Russian intellectuals, particularly scientists and scholars, engaged with race-related theories during the imperial period. The chapter questions the long-standing assumption in Russian studies about the marginality of racial theories to the Russian intellectual tradition and considers the ways in which the Russian imperial context set its own agenda for the exploration of the concept of race, shaping the…
(Un)covering alterity
This chapter examines the initially subdued role of ethnicity in television&s;s approach to consensus management as it struggled to negotiate the competing demands of the democratic and nationalist oppositions. Ethnicity&s;s centrality to the hegemonic process is indicated by the subliminal manner in which it colours the corruption theme so ubiquitous in Russian political discourse. The chapter examines the role of Naval&s;nyi&s;s own populist ca…
Transcending marginality
This chapter focuses on how challenges have been manifested, on why such a development might occur and on what it tells about the relationship between the Kremlin and federal broadcasters, through the prism of television coverage of migration issues. The selection of officials and experts is such that only a minority of the speakers support the Kremlin-endorsed position, namely, that migration is essential for the country&s;s economy and that int…
Mapping an uncertain terrain
This chapter focuses the television&s;s ability to perform state television&s;s balancing act was tested severely during the ethno-racially motivated riots in Moscow in December 2010. In addition to Channel 1 and Rossiia, the author analyse relevant news reports by NTV and REN TV. Conflicting information about the Manezhnaia disturbances was refracted by the four channels through a set of consistently utilized interpretative lenses reflecting off…
Political science (33 works) · Law (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (15 works) · History (13 works) · Soviet and Russian History (13 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Media studies (10 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (9 works)