how nationalism and machine politics mix in russiaRussia’s nationalist spectrum, at least compared with available
political rivals. The events starting in 2014 mark a major shift to
a situation in which nationalist issues became central to Putin’s
public support. But these same events also reveal why Putin has
been so reluctant to make nationalism the centrepiece of his
public appeal: playing to nationalist sentiment is a risky strategy
that threatens to divide his supporters more than unite them over
the long- or even medium- term. For this reason, even when Putin
gives nationalism more prominence in his rhetoric, he does so in
an intentionally ambiguous way (Shevel 2011).
Before examining the role of nationalism in Russia’s political
system under Putin, it is important to elaborate on the Gellnerian
definition of nationalism used in this chapter, with the term refer-
ring (as noted above) to collective action designed to promote
the congruence between the governance unit and the nation.
Importantly, the concept of ‘nation’ need not be defined in nar-
rowly ethnic terms, but can also be based on ‘civic’ criteria, such
as belonging to a particular state defined in terms of territory and
institutions (Brubaker 1998).
With respect to Russian nationalism, this distinction helps
us identify two strains that authors have variously identified
(Szporluk 1989; Laruelle 2009a; Rogoza 2014). First, there is
a nationalism of ethnic Russian purity. By these lights, making
the nation and state coterminous could include such actions as
purging Russia of non- Russian elements and, perhaps, incorpo-
rating ethnic Russians living outside Russia into a single state.
Second, there is a Russian nationalism that is explicitly multi-
ethnic, defining the ‘Russian nation’ much more broadly, typi-
cally including some or all ethnic groups that have longstanding
historic ties to Russian states, empires, culture, history or lands.
Taken to its extreme, making the state coterminous with this kind
of nation could lead not only to the tolerance of ethnic diversity
within Russia, but also to some form of reincorporation of now
(broadly) ‘Russian’ lands that are currently outside of the Russian
state. To some degree, these distinct notions of nation are (respec-
tively) captured by two Russian- language terms that are usually
both translated as ‘Russian’ in English, russkii and rossiiskii. But
it is often overlooked by analysts that, in practice, the distinction