how nationalism and machine politics mix in russiaAzerbaijan. Indeed, one of the chief demands of ethnic Russian
nationalists is to restrict the flow of migrants from countries in the
Caucasus and Central Asian regions of the former USSR. In the
wake of the riots, therefore, new calls emerged to strengthen the
border between Russia and these regions, including imposing new
visa requirements on them. This, obviously, directly contradicts
the goals of the more inclusive Russian nationalists, who want
not only to break down borders but even to make the Caucasian
and Central Asian homelands of these migrants fully part of the
Russian state itself. We see the tension as well when it comes to
the North Caucasus. Recall that in 1999, many Russians would
have been happy to let Chechnya become independent, seeing it
as not really being part of ‘Russia’, while others were prepared to
fight to keep it part of the unified, more broadly defined ‘Russian’
state.
Putin’s statements indicate fairly consistently that he is more
sympathetic to the broader rather than the narrower version of
Russian nationalism, as discussed elsewhere in this volume, but
the tension between the two sheds light on why he has generally
tried to avoid taking a stand too far on either side. He has clearly
voiced his support for more integration with territories of the
former USSR, but has been especially cautious when it comes to
migration policy. In the wake of the Biriulevo riots, for example,
he resisted widespread calls from even many of his own support-
ers to impose a tight visa regime on other former Soviet countries,
but at the same time refrained from directly opposing it and coun-
tering with a call to break down borders entirely. Nationalism,
in short, was seen by the Kremlin throughout the 2000s and the
start of the 2010s as a politically dangerous issue, one that could
threaten to divide Putin’s electorate more than unite it, prompting
the Russian leader’s strategists to tread carefully and generally
avoid politicising it where possible.
Indeed, the May 2013 NEORUSS survey conducted by the
Romir polling agency found that Russians were quite divided on
the ideal state of Russia’s borders. As is illustrated in Figure 8.1,
some 37 per cent favoured the status quo, while another 13 per
cent actually preferred shrinking Russia, which would increase
the country’s ethno- religious ‘purity’. Most of the other half of