Changes in Russian nationalist public opinion 2013–14
7
Rallying ’round the leader more than the flag:
Changes in Russian nationalist public opinion
2013–14
Mikhail A. Alexseev and Henry E. Hale
From May 2013 to November 2014, Russia’s domestic and inter-
national environment underwent a tectonic shift. As hundreds
of thousands of ordinary citizens in neighbouring Ukraine rose
up against the Moscow- backed and increasingly authoritarian
government of Viktor Yanukovych and ultimately ousted him in
early 2014, the Kremlin and the media it controls ratcheted up
anti- Western rhetoric, dramatically increased its use of national-
ist themes, and even employed military force in a sudden opera-
tion to annex the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and its port of
Sevastopol, which Ukraine had since independence rented out to
the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The Kremlin then expanded its activ-
ity with a separatist insurgency in parts of eastern Ukraine. The
Russian state, after almost a quarter century of retreat and recov-
ery, finally appeared to be striking back to restore what many
Russians saw as its rightful place in the world.
Theories of nationalism indicate that such events would have a
profound effect on Russia’s national and state identity among the
general public – particularly given the intense use of state- backed
symbolic politics (Suny 1993; Billig 1995; Kaufman 2001), the
invocation of emotive mythology and rhetoric (Breuilly 1993),
the direct contestation of state borders (Brubaker 1996), the
putative need to respond to invasive international influences
(Greenfeld 1992), the mobilisation of nationalist collective
action (Hechter 1995; Wintrobe 1995), and changing social
categorisations (Horowitz 1985). With these factors suddenly