russian ethnic nationalism and religion todaypatriotic sphere more appropriately called ‘statists’ or ‘patriots’,
using nationalist rhetoric. The ‘true’ nationalists seek an ethni-
cally homogenous state of Russian people: they do not want to
preserve the Russian Federation, still less to resurrect the Soviet
Union or the Russian Empire. Patriots, by contrast, are ready to
sacrifice the ‘special position’ of the Russian majority in the name
of preserving and increasing the territory of the state. The trans-
formation of the rhetoric, and in part also the nature, of the ruling
regime led the patriots to adopt a natural – for them – position
of supporting the government, which in their eyes now appeared
suitably (if not entirely) Russian and national. Among the nation-
alists, one section was busy consolidating the citizens of Russia,
and became civic nationalists, extremely loyal to the authorities.
‘True’ nationalists, in contrast, strengthened their opposition to
the regime, which they hitherto had deemed weak and unworthy
of serious opposition.
Ethnic nationalists had been a minority among the broad array
of ‘national patriots’ in the 1990s. Lebedev (2007: 453, 450)
refers to them as ‘low- profile’, ‘outsiders in the national patri-
otic movement’ and even ‘a ghetto’. The process of demarcation
created the illusion among nationalists themselves that a com-
pletely new ideology now had appeared.
The political demarcation between nationalists and patriots
was accompanied by a religious demarcation. Statist patriots pre-
served their traditional orientation towards Orthodoxy. Ethnic
nationalists split into three basic groups, to be examined sepa-
rately in detail below: (1) Orthodox nationalists, who may belong
to the Russian Orthodox Church or to uncanonical religious
organisations; (2) contemporary Slavic pagans (neopagans); and
(3) secularists: those who consider religious questions unimpor-
tant and do not advertise their religious affiliation (if they have
one).
Orthodox Christianity and Russian nationalism
Orthodox organisations and activist writers who publicly pro-
claim their adherence to nationalism comprise a discrete section
of the nationalist movement. Among the organisations, the most