On one single day, 16 January, Mr. Korotchenko published no fewer than 13 (thirteen!) tweets devoted to President Grybauskaitė. The president is depicted inspecting a military unit in Lithuania; Mr. Korotchenko’s captions have an ironic tone: Dalia Grybauskaitė easily copes with any kind of weapon; “Bang, I’m shooting!” Grybauskaitė is on a first name basis even with anti-tank missiles, awaiting the attacks from the Armata tanks from Russia; She prefers edged weapons. So it goes on. Thirteen tweets of the same type. All targeting a European leader, the president of a neighboring country.
And Russian nationalistic newspapers have picked up Mr. Korotchenko’s campaign, especially as Korotchenko’s followers joined in with derogatory comments on the president of Lithuania. The Tsargrad website readily quotes the most aggressive ones, particularly focusing on the fact that the Lithuanian president was born and raised in the USSR. In the logic of the Russian nationalist discourse, she is, therefore, a traitor. Korotchenko even tries to defame her through alleging a past in the KGB.
So what makes a Russian nationalist pundit obsessed with a female leader? This is obviously not the first attack on president Grybauskaitė. Disinfo Review has observed similar attempts earlier; Mr. Korotchenko’s lies are rather an old hat. She has been accused before of being a Washington agent and an agent of the KGB claims easy enough to refute.
Russia, in fact, has a strong and proud tradition of feminism. Russia was in 1917 one of the first countries in Europe to grant women the right to vote. It was the first country in the world to set up a military combat unit, the Women’s Battalion of Death. Among its revolutionaries, one finds several strong women: Vera Zazulich, Aleksandra Kollontay, Inessa Armand. The fight for women’s rights was a strong element in the revolutionary movement.
Soon after the revolution, however, women’s right ceased to be a priority for the Bolsheviks, and eventually, feminism was branded a bourgeois ideology. Women were phased out from most decision making processes; allowed to perform hard, manual labor, forced to manage family and home, but at the same time generally cut out from career, influence and the possibility of self-determination. The Soviet ideology sported a veneer of gender equality but attempted in many ways to oppress women.
Korotchenko’s rant against Grybauskaitė fits well into this idea. Women are not supposed to be strong, women are not supposed to be commanders-in-chief. Women are supposed to be quiet and docile, and Igor Korotchenko attacks women who challenge his stereotypes.
Read more:
- Baltic past and present successes explain Moscow’s schizophrenic propaganda response
- Missiles in Kaliningrad can also reach Berlin — Lithuanian president
- Vilnius editor: Moscow using free Lithuanian media against Lithuania
- On 75th Anniversary of Soviet occupation, Balts must remain vigilant, Grybauskaite says
- Lithuania says Kremlin inflaming information war
- Internet, not TV, now Moscow’s main propaganda channel for Baltic countries, Lithuanian expert says
- Pro-Kremlin media to Baltic states: “nobody needs you”
- “If we betray Ukraine, we will be next” — Lithuania’s president
- Lithuania’s President: UN must rise up against Russia’s abuse or face irrelevance
- Moscow plans to ‘export separatism’ to Baltic countries, Christensen says
- Russian colonel Zhirinovsky threatens “total annihilation” of Baltics & Poland
- Lithuanian honorary consul murdered by Russian-backed terrorists (2014)
