Atlas of the Invisible

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
George Orwell, 1984

At the start of Russia’s War on Ukraine, everyone tried to understand who was supporting the war, why, and in what proportion. Two years later, more and more Russians have been touched by the war, whether by being sent to the front, losing friends or loved ones, or feeling its impact because they live in border areas. At the same time, society is slowly becoming accustomed to and has adapted to the new military reality. Now experts, analysts, and the general public have a new question: to what extent are Russians feeling the impact of the war in their everyday lives?

If you imagine a Russian Rip van Winkle who fell asleep in an average Russian city in February 2022 and only woke up this summer, it might not be immediately obvious to him that his country was at war. You can walk the length and breadth of any Russian city today, and probably the only clues would be a few prowar symbols and the occasional advertisement for contract military service.

Over the past year, visible signs that a war is going on have all but disappeared from Russian cities. People have removed stickers from their cars. In contrast with the fanfare of the war’s early days, the departures of those heading for the front and the funerals for mobilized soldiers are now private affairs, attracting little attention from outsiders. People are also less likely to discuss the war even among friends and family. In Russia, we are witnessing a general decline in interest in the war.

Official propaganda cannot accept this. So it is devising ever new ways of provoking Russians into active displays of support for the military action. One year ago, President Vladimir Putin promised that, in Russia, “streets and cities, parks and schools” would be named in honor of [deceased] participants in the country’s military invasion of Ukraine. A year later, Russia now has more than 150 new and renamed streets, avenues, lanes, squares, parks and embankments that bear the names of “participants in the Special Military Operation.” In a newly developed neighborhood of Nevinnomyssk, almost all the streets have been named in honor of fallen Russian soldiers. Meanwhile, in Volgograd, not a single house has been built on the city’s newly named street.

For this photo feature, our photographer made virtual visits to several of Russia’s newly named streets to capture the minor changes that have occurred in local citizens’ visual field. To achieve this, the photographer asked city residents to walk the newly named streets and guided them in the photographs they took, creating a long-distance, telephone collaboration.

Indeed, the changes are so insignificant on these “streets of honor” that the only clue that the country in the photographs is in a state of war is the captions beneath the images.

The renamed city features were identified using surveys by the Public Sociology Lab, media publications, and data from Russia’s Federal Address Information System.