Source: PostPravda.info 18.03.2025
Why do Ukrainians use the images from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – Mordor and the orcs – to describe Russia and Russian soldiers, rather than references from zombie or vampire films and TV series? Is this connected to aesthetic intuition, the existential experience of war, or value orientations? These questions are addressed in another article by Nikolai Karpitsky for the Dictionary of War, which the editorial team of PostPravda.info is compiling.
Mordor
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Mordor is a land in the southeast of Middle-earth ruled by the Dark Lord Sauron. It is a barren, volcanic wasteland covered in ash, unfit for normal life. Yet the orcs who inhabit it feel entirely at home there and strive to turn all lands into the same kind of wasteland. Their purpose in life is to serve Sauron and spread his power, killing and dying for it.
In modern cultural consciousness, Mordor has become a symbol of inhuman dictatorship and slavery. The obsessive idea of domination seems to transform people into orcs incapable of independent thought, driven instead by instincts of servility, aggression, and hatred toward others. Initially, it was Russians themselves who began to call their country Mordor – those who found the strength not to hide behind comforting illusions. However, most Russians fail to perceive the horror of the state’s irrational violence, thanks to psychological defense mechanisms that create illusions. Fear and a sense of helplessness in the face of arbitrary power are displaced by faith in its humanity and the righteousness of its actions. But when the sheer force of horror destroys this illusion, Russia’s dark side is revealed – inhumanity, irrationality, and the unpredictability of evil. That is what people call Mordor.
Mordor Through Ukrainian Eyes
The spread of the image of Mordor as applied to Russia is not connected with propaganda or ideology. No one imposed such an interpretation or offered a theoretical justification for it. Russians themselves first began to perceive their country as Mordor based on their own existential experience. For Ukrainians, however, such an association did not exist until 2014. But after Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in 2014, they too felt an existential threat from Russia and began calling it Mordor.
Ukrainians perceive their own country as a home – one that may have many problems, but problems that can be fixed. The presence of Mordor, however, changes the perception of living space: part of the home is consumed by chaos, where existence is impossible. In the heart of Ukraine, life continued more or less normally, but the closer one was to the frontline with the horde of orcs, the more palpable became the chaos and the breath of death. With the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, that breath spread across the entire country – there were no safe places left.
The most terrifying thing in facing an existential threat is the enemy’s irrational motivation, which rules out the possibility of reaching an agreement. If Putin were pursuing political influence or material gain, his actions could be explained rationally, and one could seek compromise. It is precisely this illusion of rationality that Western leaders cling to, hoping to negotiate peace. However, Putin has declared an utterly irrational goal – the destruction of Ukrainian identity, calling it “denazification.” As long as Ukrainians continue to perceive themselves as Ukrainians, they remain his enemies, destined for annihilation. Thus, the motivation for the attack on Ukraine merges with a necrophilic drive for destruction. That is why Ukrainians perceive the Russian invasion as the onslaught of orcs, with whom no agreement is possible, and the war with Russia as a war of extermination waged not only against the Ukrainian army but against all Ukrainians.
Why Tolkien?
Ukrainians use images from Tolkien’s epic to describe Russia and its army because, first, his depiction of war corresponds to the existential experience of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and second, the value stance of Tolkien’s heroes coincides with that of Ukraine’s defenders. In his trilogy, Mordor’s aggression occurs not only on the material but also on the spiritual level, and any manifestation of moral relativism leads to defeat. In resisting Russian aggression, Ukrainians consider the unambiguous separation of good and evil, as shown in Tolkien, to be of fundamental importance. Any attempt at a relativist interpretation of good leads to justifying Russian narratives, including equating the victim with the aggressor.
The popularity of Tolkien’s imagery was reinforced by the screen adaptations of his epic. Yet far more films, TV series, and anime have been made about zombies and vampires – images that resonate not only with the necrophilic orientation of Russian power but even with the symbolism of Russian military units, “Z” and “V.” Russian command ruthlessly expends manpower in senseless suicidal assaults, as if that power were not living at all, and soldiers obediently agree to die in such attacks, as if they were zombies. Nevertheless, the carriers of aggressive Russian imperial ideology are associated specifically with orcs, not zombies or vampires. This is due to the aesthetic rejection of death symbolism in Ukrainian cultural consciousness, which refuses to extend it even to enemies. Although orcs embody evil, they are still alive, unlike zombies or vampires. Mordor is not an otherworldly realm or a kingdom of the dead, but the embodiment of evil in earthly life. Therefore, it must also be fought in our reality. If in Russia death is glorified, in Ukraine it is the struggle for life that is glorified. This difference is revealed in the way Russians and Ukrainians wage war.
