russian ethnic nationalism and religion todayRussian ethnic nationalism and religion in historical
perspective
Ethnic nationalism is a relatively young ideology in Russia.
Political thought in Russia has always focused on the relationship
between the state and Orthodox Christianity. Until the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, the historical role of the Russian
people was rarely questioned. As John Anderson notes, in the
first quarter of the nineteenth century, Slavophiles were the first
to focus more on the roots of religion in the ‘national psyche’
(2012: 209). Slavophiles barely distinguished the ‘people’ from
the ‘state’: ‘they all took the view that Orthodoxy was in some
sense core to the very identity of Russians as a people and Russia
as a state’ (ibid.). At that time the Russian people were divided
into social classes with differing legal status, so the foundations
for ethnic nationalism had not yet been laid.^1 The idea of a civic
nation, borrowed from the West, was unacceptable to conserva-
tives, but was to become the hallmark of the liberal and social-
democratic camp.
At the start of the twentieth century, the ‘Black Hundreds’ ide-
ology emerged. This became a step on the way to ethnic national-
ism, since the Black Hundreds sought the formation of a Russian
state, rather than imperial expansion (Stepanov 1992). However,
the Black Hundreds were still closely linked with the traditions
of Russian conservatism, which was state- centred and religious,
whereas ethnic nationalists severed the connection between the
Russian people and the Russian state, admitting the possibility of
personally opposing the state. This kind of Russian ethnic nation-
alism emerged only after the revolution of 1917. It developed
in the diaspora and was a part of the dissident movement in the
USSR, but only after the beginning of perestroika was it possible
to propagate ethnic nationalism openly.
In the final years of the USSR and immediately after its col-
lapse, various conglomerates took shape that united people of
diverse ideological orientations under the common name of
‘Russian nationalists’. Important here were the Pamiat Society,
which arose at the end of the 1980s, and Russian National Unity
(RNE). Almost all long- standing members of today’s nationalist