In Russia these days, Motorola is less commonly spoken of as a brand name for mobile devices than as the nom de guerre of a famous pro-Russian separatist commander in Ukraine. That Motorola, whose real name was Arsen Pavlov, was killed on Oct. 16, when a bomb exploded in the elevator of his apartment building in Donetsk, a rebel stronghold in eastern Ukraine.
The reason Motorola was killed remains murky. Some say factional disputes among eastern Ukrainian rebel leaders left some people wanting him dead. The separatist government in Donetsk blamed the Ukrainian government in Kiev. What is clear is that Motorola’s funeral on Oct. 19 was a major event, a mass demonstration of mourning in eastern Ukraine. And in their eulogies to Motorola, who originally came from the Komi region of northwestern Russia, the news media here have elevated him almost to the stature of a national hero. His popularity in Russia is nothing short of astonishing.
Motorola’s main secret is encoded in his nickname. Why Motorola? According to the story put forward by Russian news media, the moniker was bestowed on Mr. Pavlov by separatists who were amused when, in the spring of 2014, he started using his cheap cellphone to film battles with the Ukrainian military. Russian TV journalists eagerly bought his videos, and the young man quickly became a Russian tabloid star and then an influential rebel commander — in that order.
Russians love the phrase “information war.” Usually, it refers to the use of news and ideas to fight enemies. But with Motorola, the words took on a literal meaning. The Russian news media prefer not to talk about Russian troops’ participation in the war in Ukraine. Early in 2015, President Vladimir V. Putin claimed that the men fighting against the Ukrainian Army in Donetsk and the surrounding areas were local miners and tractor drivers. The truth, of course, is that amid Russian tank operators and infantrymen, tractor drivers and miners have been few and far between.
Motorola, though, was a genuine, regular guy. He wore a wispy red beard and — at least when he wasn’t fighting — had a friendly temperament. He’d been a soldier in the Russian Army during the wars in Chechnya, but then retired, temporarily, to a normal civilian life. Before the war in Ukraine, he worked at a carwash. This image came in handy for the Russian news media in their attempts to explain who actually was fighting in Ukraine, since — according to the official version — it was not and never has been the Russian Army.
Motorola’s image must be understood in the context of the modern Russian mass consciousness. Mr. Putin has placed special emphasis on the cult of national history, which these days exclusively means World War II. This is the period that, thanks to Mr. Putin, encapsulates the Russian national self-identity. The number of films now being made about the war exceeds that of the Soviet years. And there are even some new Russian traditions related to that war that have arisen during the Putin years, such as attaching an orange-and-black ribbon to your car or your jacket — a nationalist symbol that emerged just over 10 years ago. The “Immortal Regiment” marches, in which hundreds of thousands of people carry portraits of their ancestors who fought in World War II, is only five years old.
The four years of World War II were catastrophic for the Russian people, but at the same time — paradoxically — they represented the peak of truth, freedom and justice in Soviet history. For people who lived under Stalin’s dictatorship, the war served as a real, though tragic, means of escape. During peacetime, people were immersed in terror, destitution and lies, but on the battlefield everything was different. These were the men who, as the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote, “Marched boldly into foreign capitals but returned in fear to their own.”
The same formula can explain the motivation of those Russians who, like Motorola, preferred the war in Ukraine to their dismal lives back home. In peacetime, you are a carwash employee with debts and a troubled family life; at war you are a brave commander with a chest covered in combat medals, a charismatic figure of interest to everyone you meet.
Motorola has often been compared to the archetypical heroes of World War II. The Russian mythology of the war emphasizes the role played by partisans — that is, the miners and tractor drivers who, when their towns and villages were occupied by Nazis, continued to fight the Germans independently from the regular army. (Actually, the Soviet special services directed the partisans, a fact that the myth ignores.) Russian propaganda considers the present-day Ukrainian authorities to be not so much opponents of Mr. Putin as they are heirs of the Ukrainian nationalists of the 1940s who backed Hitler. Red-bearded Motorola represents an adaptation of an image of soldiers and partisans taken from Soviet war movies.
The most gushing obituaries for Motorola have been written by Russian tabloid reporters. Semyon Pegov, a journalist for LifeNews, appeared once on live TV in 2014 with an assault rifle propped against the wall behind him. He disclosed that the gun belonged to Motorola, who had leaned it there so he could pick up a camera to take Mr. Pegov’s picture. Around the same time, Aleksandr Kots of the Russian tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda proudly discussed the time he, a reporter, had been the first to spot a column of Ukrainian tanks. According to Mr. Kots’s account, he pointed them out to Motorola, who praised the reporter for his “eagle eye,” then opened fire. In another battle, Motorola’s battalion supposedly delayed its retreat so that Russian correspondents could retrieve a drone with a camera that they had launched overhead.
This particular relationship between the government and the news media arose during the Putin years. For whatever reason, the tabloids have become the Kremlin’s favorite media outlets. Komsomolskaya Pravda is the only newspaper for which Mr. Putin has consented to be photographed. These are the news outlets that, in the intervals between show-business gossip and tasty recipes, inform Russians about the wisdom of Mr. Putin, the intrigues of the hostile West and the exploits of Motorola. This absurd combination of contemporary media culture with the mythology of World War II is producing new Russian heroes, the likes of whom could never before have been imagined.
Oleg Kashin is the author of Fardwor, Russia! A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin. This essay was translated by Carol Apollonio from the Russian.