Debate_A4: Russian influence – the biggest threat to democracy in Slovakia?

Part of the elites and opinion-forming media in many Western countries, including Slovakia, explains various current social and political crises as a result of the effects of the hybrid war. Even information activities such as conspiracies, disinformation or propaganda are in the online spaces considered to be a part of the hybrid war that Russia is waging against the Western world, i.e. against Slovakia, with the aim of dismantling democracy from within. Such framings offer the idea that the root cause of many of the problems we face as democratic societies is precisely these sophisticated subversive activities.

Are (the Russian) disinformation and propaganda key threats to Slovak society and the country’s democratic order, or is their influence overestimated? 

What can we imagine under the term hybrid war and how did its definition gradually mutate into today’s form?
How are the interpretations of the indisputable problem of Russian interests acting in our space formed? 

Doesn’t  such an exclusive framing of the threat to democracy prevent us from taking a more comprehensive look at the sources and causes of our difficulties with democracy, as well as the search for their democratic political solutions? 

Would the Russian influence have a chance of success if it wasn’t for a wider societal demand for it – stemming from a number of longer-term frustrations? 

Discussed by: experts on social sciences and humanities 

Dramaturgy and moderated by: Bohdan Smieška