the new russian nationalismSlavic Union within Russia was stronger among Russia’s non-
Russian Slavs than among ethnic Russians. If this tentative finding
holds, it means that ethnic irredentist motivations trumped ethnic
expansionist motivations among the respondents.
The most important substantive finding from these tests is that
significantly more ethnic non- Russians (33.7 per cent) than ethnic
Russians (25.5 per cent) wanted Russia’s borders to encompass
all of the former Soviet Union. Large in absolute terms, this dif-
ference is also statistically non- random. Within the non- Russian
ethnic sub- sample, intergroup differences were smaller than on
support for the Slavic Union, even though support for expan-
sion to a USSR 2.0 was this time stronger among the non- Slavs
than among the Slavs – namely, 31.7 per cent among the Tatars
and 42.7 per cent among those identifying with an ethnic group
from the Caucasus or Central Asia versus 23.7 per cent among
Ukrainians. About 36 per cent among the non- Slavs and 26.7 per
cent among the non- Russian Slavs supported Russia’s expansion
to a USSR 2.0. However, these intergroup differences were not
statistically significant. On the whole, it appears that among the
ethnic non- Russians, the idea of the imagined or idealised Soviet
‘condominium’, for all its flaws and controversies, has retained a
significantly stronger allure than among the ethnic Russians.
Proud rossiiane
Ethnic non- Russians emerged just as proud as ethnic Russians
of their ethnicity and Russian citizenship. In both sub- samples,
approximately 95 per cent of respondents expressed pride in their
ethnicity and approximately 90 per cent in being Russian citizens
(that is, rossiiane) (Table 6.1). The breakdown between respond-
ents who said they were ‘very proud’ of their ethnicity and citi-
zenship and those who said they were ‘more proud than not’ was
about the same between the sub- samples. On the whole, the data
show that Putin in 2013 could tap into Russian patriotism for
support almost equally among ethnic Russians and non- Russians
alike.