ethnicity & nationhood on russian state- aligned tvgered by the Pussy Riot performance. Vesti and Vremia covered
the event at length,^19 promoting an image of Russia as primar-
ily the homeland of ethnic Russians, completely marginalising
the alternative state- sponsored vision of a multi- confessional and
multi- ethnic society. The marginalisation recurred throughout
our recording period, as the minimal attention accorded to other
religions attests (see below). Subsequent Kremlin support for
Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine was to fit the narrative all
too easily, but this was far less true of the proposition that, with
its generous accommodation of the Muslim Tatar minority, post-
annexation Crimea represented a microcosm of the multi- ethnic,
multi- faith Russian Federation.
Other religions
Under the category of ‘other religions’ we expected above all
to see stories about Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, which, like
Orthodoxy, enjoy an official status as Russia’s ‘traditional reli-
gions’. Yet Buddhism had no presence at all on the federal news,
and Judaism had virtually none; the only relevant report related
to New Year celebrations in Israel in September 2011.^20
Islam was less peripheral to the news agenda. In official dis-
course, Russia’s multi- cultural nature is often described with refer-
ence to the centuries of peaceful co- existence between Orthodoxy
and Islam. During the recording period, this line was strongly
endorsed in coverage of the celebrations of Muslim religious holi-
days in Moscow. Reporting on one such celebration in September
2011, Vesti gave a brief history of the life of ‘the Muslim com-
munity’ in Moscow, stressing its beginnings in the fourteenth
century, and noting that approximately twenty million Muslims
live in Russia today.^21
Nonetheless, in 2010 and 2011 overall coverage of Islam was
limited, particularly on Vremia (six stories). On Vesti there were
twenty- one stories, many of which were about the celebrations of
religious holidays in Russia’s predominantly Muslim regions of
Tatarstan and the North Caucasus. As with Orthodox Christianity,
the display of relics was a familiar theme.^22 These parallels helped
to project an image of the harmonious co- existence of Orthodoxy