The New Russian Nationalism Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism
the new russian nationalism
- According to the State Strategy on Nationalities Policy, the state
is responsible for ‘ensuring the conservation and enhancement of
the spiritual and cultural potential of the multi- ethnic people of the
Russian Federation on the basis of the ideas about unity and friend-
ship of the peoples, interethnic consensus and Russian (rossiiskii)
patriotism’ (Strategiia... 2012).
- The average score for this cohort was a full ten percentage points
higher than that of the oldest cohort, the 60+.
- As pointed out in several other contributions to this volume,
increased labour migration also played an important part. The
combination of the need to import workers – Russia is estimated
to be second only to the USA in the number of immigrants (United
Nations 2013) – and a weakened identification with the sending
countries and their cultures accentuated the perceived need for rede-
fining the national ‘self’.
- Despite its overwhelmingly ethnic Russian population and Putin’s
assertion that Crimea was ‘Russian land’ (russkaia zemlia) (Putin
2014a), Crimea joined the group of ethnic autonomies, being
granted the status as a republic within the Federation, whereas
Sevastopol became a ‘city of federal importance’ (the same status as
the two ‘capitals’, Moscow and St Petersburg).
- Four of these are groups with external homelands: the Ukrainians,
Armenians, Kazakhs and Belorussians.
- This danger of accelerated re- identification was recognised by the
leaders of several of Russia’s ethnically defined republics, who
insisted on maintaining information about ethnic affiliation in the
internal passports. In the end, the republics won the right to include
an insert containing information about ethnic affiliation in the pass-
ports issued on their territory (see, for example, Simonsen 2005).
- According to Oxana Shevel (2011: 183) it has always been open to
interpretation how Russo- centric the rossiiskii nation is.
