THE PAST AS A SYMBOLIC RESOURCE FOR IMAGINING THE FUTURE: BASED ON SPEECHES BY DEPUTIES OF THE STATE DUMA OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION OF THE VIII CONVOCATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2218-1067-2025-4-38-48Keywords:
image of the future, symbolic politics, political use of the past, political construction of the future, State Duma, discursive strategiesAbstract
Although the future is central to public political communication, its articulation is hindered by fundamental uncertainty, intensified by the special military operation. Despite these conditions, politicians must still speak about the future; analyzing how State Duma deputies construct such images reveals both the possibilities and the limits of using the past as a symbolic resource. The study uses transcripts of plenary sessions of the VIII State Duma (2nd–7th sessions) as empirical data, which are analyzed through qualitative content and semantic analysis to identify discursive strategies employing the past to imagine the future. The study concludes that the 1990s, the Soviet era, and the Great Patriotic War perform different but complementary functions in parliamentary discourse, acting as symbolic resources used to construct images of the future. It should be noted that the practices of using the past in the discourse of deputies run counter to the traditional thematic repertoire of the politics of memory of the ruling elites in Russia. The 1990s period in the discourse of deputies acts as the «most convenient tool» used to construct images of the future and overcome its uncertainty in the modern context.References
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