The use of the word originates from an Internet meme first spread by Anton Chadskiy on VKontakte in 2011, and later used in Russia, Ukraine, then in other post-Soviet states. Its meaning refers to the original cartoon, which depicts a character made from the material of a padded cotton wool (Russian: ва́та, IPA:[ˈvatə]) jacket (vatnik in Russian) and bearing a black eye, which is used to disparage someone as a blindly patriotic and unintelligent jingoist who pushes the conventional views presented in Russian government media as well as those of Russian web brigades.[4][5] The name "Vatnik" derives from the cotton wool jacket (Telogreika) that Chadskiy's cartoon character in the meme is made from.
History
The word "vatnik" was originally an informal term for a telogreika, a type of gray, cotton-stuffed quilted jacket that is seen as "a cheap, highly unglamorous item of clothing". Russian linguist Gasan Guseinov, speaking about the jacket, said, "A vatnik is a garment of poor, destitute people who possess nothing else and who are ready to wear it for the rest of their lives."[6]
The meme was created by the Russian artist Anton Chadskiy under the pseudonymJedem das Seine.[7][8][9] His associated picture of an anthropomorphic version of the "vatnik" jacket similar to the title character of SpongeBob SquarePants was posted on VK for the first time on September 9, 2011. In 2012, the meme became widely popular on the Internet.[10] Chadskiy created a group for the character on VK called RASHKA - THE SQUARE VATNIK. Rashka is a derogatory nickname for Russia, derived from the English pronunciation of the country's name with the Russian -k- diminutive suffix attached.[11][12][13] Chadskiy's original drawing has been reproduced and modified many times. Features that are consistently included are gray color, a red nose from drinking vodka, and a black eye, presumably from a fistfight with another vatnik.[3]
The meme became much more widespread in society after the Russo-Ukrainian War started in 2014.[10]We will not let the Russian vata into our homes[a] was the name of a protest held as part of the "Boycott Russian Films" campaign in Ukraine in 2014.[14] In late 2014, the comedy television show VATA TV (original: ВАТА TV) was shown in Ukraine. It was devoted to the "vata" phenomenon. It was hosted by the popular 5 Kanal host Viktor Lytovchenko. He mainly spoke Surzhyk, a mixed language with features of Ukrainian and Russian, during the show.[15][16]
In early 2015, Anton Chadskiy reported that he was forced to leave Russia in November 2014 because he feared political persecution by the government.[19] He was living in Kyiv and planning to move to Berlin at the time.[13] In November 2016, the Russian government blocked Chadskiy's original "RASHKA - THE SQUARE VATNIK" community on the grounds that it "offended ethnic Russians and Russian state officials". In February 2017, a Russian teenager was sentenced to 160 hours of community service for espousing hateful language online about "vatniks".[20]
The term gained prominence in the wake of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The anti-Russian internet group NAFO uses the Vatnik slang and imagery very commonly in English-language tweets and memes.[21][22] When a disabled Russian T-72 was publicly displayed in Vilnius in February 2023, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda emphasised using it to "see the vatniks" who came to mourn its capture.[23]
Variations
The word also exists in Ukrainian as ватник (vatnyk), in Belarusian as ватнік (vatnik), in Latvian as (vatņiks), in Lithuanian as (vatnikas), in Czech as vaťák, and in Polish as waciak. Its plural in English is "vatniks", or less commonly, "vata", via a direct transliteration of the Russian collective ва́та.
Vyshyvatnik (Russian: вышиватник, romanized: vyshivatnik) is an equivalent insult for an overly patriotic Ukrainian, and is a blend of "vatnik" and vyshyvanka, a traditional type of Ukrainian embroidered shirt.[24][25]
The word mobik (from моб(илизо́ванный) (mob(ilizóvannyj), “mobilized”) + -ик (-ik, diminutive suffix) is a derogatory slang term for a mobilised soldier, usually in the Russian military. This term became popular in the West due to internet memes about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[26]
Analysis
Journalist Vadim Nikitin, writing for American socialist magazine Jacobin, has criticized the trope of the uneducated, working-class "vatnik" Putin supporter as classist and inaccurate, writing that it "whitewashes and elides the essential role played by the middle and upper-middle classes in bringing about and sustaining Putinism". He described the trope as the latest iteration of a long history of social elitism within Russian liberalism in which it is believed that "only a miniscule [sic] elite – the intelligentsia – was capable of awakening and stewarding the mute, slumbering masses." He compared the term to Hillary Clinton's use of the phrase "basket of deplorables" to describe some supporters of Donald Trump.[27]
^Devlin, Anne Marie (25 November 2016). "Lard-eaters, gay-ropeans, sheeple and prepositions: lexical and syntactic devices employed to position the other in Russian online political forums". Russian Journal of Communication. 9 (1): 53–70. doi:10.1080/19409419.2016.1219642. hdl:10468/4415. ISSN1940-9419. S2CID151382929.
