the new russian nationalismthe population favoured augmenting Russian territory, although
some would limit expansion only to Slavs while others would
prefer wholly restoring the Soviet Union’s old borders. Since there
is no clear majority opinion, pushing any particular nationalist
agenda strongly could threaten to alienate adherents to other
forms of nationalism, not to mention the large share happy with
the status quo.^4
So what changed in 2014, when the Kremlin for the first time
made nationalism a central part of its strategy for sustaining and
gaining public support? To understand this, it is helpful to refer
to the three considerations given at the start of this section that
had previously made it unpromising for the Kremlin to politicise
nationalism. First, in the past, other parties had been more promi-
nent champions of nationalist ideals, making it unclear that the
Kremlin would benefit more than these other parties from politi-
Figure 8.1 Per cent responses to ‘What should be the borders of Russia?’