4Russian ethnic nationalism and religion today
Anastasia Mitrofanova
This chapter examines the ideology and the political practice of
Russian ethnic nationalists, exploring religio- ideological trends
in contemporary Russian ethnic nationalism and assessing their
potential. By Russian ethnic nationalists, I refer solely to those
individual authors, parties and movements who hold the self-
determination of Russians as an ethnic group as a central element
of their ideology and political programme. Thus I do not deal
here with political movements that are not nationalist but that
borrow from the nationalists various popular ideas or politi-
cal slogans at odds with the basic ideology of that party or
movement.
Ethnic nationalists do not acknowledge that it is possible or
necessary to create a civic nation that unites different ethnic and
racial groups within Russia. For them, the Russian Federation
is an alien state, dominated by a minority that oppresses the
majority – akin to the South African system of apartheid.
Nationalists often call Russia ‘Rossiianiia’ or ‘Erefiia’ (‘RF- iia’),
stressing that they are not patriots. For nationalists, the word
‘rossiianin’, a citizen of the Russian Federation, as opposed
to ‘russkii’, an ethnic Russian, is an insult, and ‘tozherossiia-
nin’ (‘also- a- Russian- citizen’) is a scornful label for non- Russian
ethnic groups.