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Currently, I am interested in the ‘Facial Annalistic Set of the 16th Century‘ (aka ‘The Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible‘ ,’Obverse Chronicle‘, ‘Tsar Book’, ‘Facial Chronicle‘, ‘Litsevoy letopisny svod’, ‘Лицевой летописный свод‘, etc.) because of its contemporary depictions of torture and execution from the reign of Ivan IV, who commissioned the work.

While the historical accuracy of the events depicted in the books may be debated, we can infer that this is how the Tsar purposefully intended his legacy to be remembered in line with his efforts to revise the history of his own era.

The existence of these images may dispute the arguments of Russian nationalists who claim a conspiracy by Western rivals to create a “black legend” related to information warfare surrounding Ivan IV.

Such images of death and destruction only make up a small fraction of the miniatures in the Facial Annalistic Set. However, their existence does support the idea that Ivan IV wished himself to be perceived in a fearsome way and didn’t hide that he had people brutally punished in order to enforce his rule.

It was hard to find good quality images online from the chronicles to support this research. After some digging, I’ve found some excellent digital copies of the Facial Annalistic Set which were commissioned by the Russian nationalist businessman, conspiracy theorist, and political aspirant German Sterligov; who became one of the first millionaires (if not the first) in post-Soviet Russia after starting the stock exchange Alisa.

(The files are posted here, after the break and a bit of interesting biography on Sterligov.) Continue reading “German Sterligov’s Facial Annalistic Set of the 16th Century”

An exhibition called “The First Tsar. Moscow. Grozny” opened at the Zaryadye Park in Moscow and will run through October 31, 2021. This is the first of ongoing exhibits slated for the museum-like attraction which is referred to as the “Podklet” (Подклет) ‘project’ [1].

Podklet refers to the stone basement which is present at the museum site and where the rotating exhibits will be housed. Notably the Zaryadye Park location is on the site of the so-called Old English Court where Ivan IV granted a residence to English merchant-diplomats which “became the first official representation of a foreign power in Moscow.” [2]

According to Elena Voitsekhovskaya, head of the scientific and educational projects department of Zaryadye Park: “the Podklet project will become a kind of a catalog of personal informal studies of various historical phenomena, their factology and trace in the mass consciousness. And the premises of the white-stone basement are an intellectual attraction, a cabinet of rarities placed in a multimedia field.”  [2]

Zaryadye Park was the first new park in Moscow in 50 years. It opened in 2017 in a ceremony inaugurated by Vladimir Putin [3]. Coinciding with a national security mandate to protect the Russian historical memory, the announcement of the exhibition at Zaryadye also appears amidst a flurry of other semi-official rehabilitations and popularizations of Ivan IV which seem to have been pushed by ideologists close to Putin’s inner circle [4]. Continue reading “Meme-ry Wars and Ivan IV”

Conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales do not appear to have been previously considered in an ‘information warfare’ context which is attributable to Russia. However, my recent research has uncovered a highly probable scenario of Russian co-optation and development of these conspiracy narratives as part of a strategic information campaign targeting the United Kingdom. Of course, these connections to Russian strategic information are opaque, and laundered through fronts and third parties; but the connections are top-level and obvious.

While this report will suppose that land mines play a role in the motive for disinformation attacks on Diana and her legacy, it asserts that those attacks have come from Russian strategic information interests, rather from any UK or ‘Western interest’.

As tempting as it is to wonder if Russian wetwork may be at play in this story, it is out of the scope of this report which will focus only on provable or highly likely Russian strategic conspiracy narratives and will not seek to dispute any official forensic findings of the accident investigation.

Continue reading “Princess Diana Conspiracy Theories: Russian Active Measures?”

I was poking around in the apocalyptic milieu of Eurasianist and Orthodox nationalist conspiracy theory, and came across an interesting name: Maria Vladimirovna Katasonova. She’s been profiled as a Russian nationalist and former Duma candidate who is associated with Kremlin propaganda efforts in the French elections of 2017 and on the Ukrainian war front [1].

Frequently invoking the image of a destroying Orthodox angel in her social media posts, Katasonova was described in 2015 as “low budget purveyor of fear” and “a disciple of [Alexander] Dugin and aide to presidential advisory-board member Yevgeny Fyodorov… Like her dark father who had called for genocide against the Ukrainian “cretins”, Katasonova, dressed like a white angel of death, said Russia would “destroy the whole world” if they lost the war in East Ukraine.” [2]

[nods to Solid Snake and Sviridov]

In this case, Katasonova’s “dark father” referenced in the bio is Alexander Dugin, who wrote: “We should clean up Ukraine from the idiots,”…“The genocide of these cretins is due and inevitable… I can’t believe these are Ukrainians. Ukrainians are wonderful Slavonic people. And this is a race of bastards that emerged from the sewer manholes.” [3]

While the comment here about a ‘dark father’ is rhetorical in relation to philosophical leanings (as Katasonova is not Dugin’s daughter), she operated at times in a network close to Alexander Dugin’s biological daughter (Daria Dugina aka Darya Platonova) and the political operative Andrey Kovalenko [4].  She’s also appeared in media stories close to the daughter of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov (Elisaveta Peskova)[5].

Given that she seems influential and close to the daughters of other top ‘propagandists’ it stands to wonder, who might be her real father? The answer doesn’t seem clear, but the question is intriguing. Continue reading “Who’s Your Daddy Maria Katasonova?”

Due to it being difficult to find an English translation of Alexander Dugin’s 1997 book “Foundations of Geopolitics” for sale in America, I ran a Russian copy through the same online translation portal which I’d used for Alexander Verkhovsky’s book on “Political Orthodoxy“.

Note, that this the “25th anniversary edition” which has a cover reflecting back on 25 years of the works of men in Russian geopolitics.  Otherwise, it is the same as the 1997 edition in content.

The book has been described as mandatory reading for Russian military officers (and equally critiqued for a bad computer-translated English version which I hoped might be remedied with a more recent run through Google Translate). (A good, short analysis of the work by John Dunlop is posted here.)

Similarly to posting Verkhovsky’s book in English, my goal in posting Dugin is to promote greater understanding of the culture of Russian nationalism (especially Orthodox nationalism), and how that nationalism apparently informs the strategic culture of Russia. Followingly, it supports my thesis that the disinformation and ‘information warfare’ produced by that strategic culture is characterized by nationalistic features.  (See published works 1, 2, 3, and recent cited post 4)

I can tell the translation is far from perfect, but if you’re looking to add it to your library, it will work with search indexing and appears to be basically readable. You can cross reference the appended Russian original from p. 453 of the PDF with any broken portion of the translation, since the page numbers are consistent between the documents.

• Foundations of Geopolitics: Geopolitical Future of Russia, [English auto translation with appended original], Alexander Dugin (1997)

My analyses frequently come down to the examination of how Russian Orthodox nationalism is a major factor in Russian information warfare ideology. Alexander Verkhovsky is a Russian author on Russian Orthodox nationalist ideas who has been influential on my research and perspectives. I think he gets close to the cultural core of Russian information warfare in his research – although his focus is on political extremism, not information warfare or disinformation. His work does frequently however include the analysis of conspiracy theories.

Using online translation tools, I made an unauthorized English translation of his book: “Political Orthodoxy” which I hope will be useful for non-Russian speaking disinformation researchers (like myself) looking into figures like Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Dugin, etc.

• Political Orthodoxy: Russian Orthodox Nationalists and Fundamentalists 1995-2001 rr. [Unauthorized English translation with appended Russian original], Alexander Verkhovsky (2003)

While working on a criminology and forensic science-oriented investigation into the seven tragic marriages of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia (aka Ivan Vasilyevich, Ivan Grozny, Ivan the Terrible,  etc.), I specifically began to note that there was a strong dimension of “information warfare” in the Russian narratives surrounding Russia’s first tsar. Enough so, that it deserved its own paper.

Here is the peer reviewed work presented this week to the virtual 2021 International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ICCWS): 2021 Ivan the Terrible as Pivotal Figure in the Ideology of Information Warfare

Read below the break for more thoughts on expanding this research.

Continue reading “Ivan the Terrible as Pivotal Figure in the Ideology of Information Warfare”

A friend visited the other day and suggested we watch the 2008 HBO documentary ‘Cat Dancers’. The film is about the eponymous dance troupe which used big cats like tigers and leopards in their act, and was ended abruptly after two deadly freak accidents. My friend wanted me to watch it because he thought I would find the main character’s  flamboyance humorous. In the end, that wasn’t the case so much as that I came away with an unshakable, almost obsessive perception of (at least negligent) homicide.Very few on the internet seem to see it the same way as I do, with the exception of a comment here and there.

It makes me wonder if because of the similar features in themes of death, sex, and documentary techniques – my brain has contorted Cat Dancers into a ‘Forensic Files’ episode, where the husband is almost always guilty, and an assignment of culpability is to be expected. 

Continue reading “My brain converts the ‘Cat Dancers’ documentary into a ‘Forensic Files’ episode”