the new russian nationalismideas and concepts are gradually seeping through the crevices
of the Kremlin walls. However, it would certainly be an exag-
geration to claim that Putin and his entourage have adopted eth-
nonationalism as their state ideology. Their messages are mixed
bags of often- disparate signals; official documents and speeches
draw on several, sometimes contradictory, discourses: Russian
Federation- civic, Eurasianist and ethnonationalist. Documents
signed by Medvedev generally promote a Tishkovian vision of
the state. Medvedev regularly employs terms like rossiiskii narod
and rossiiskaia natsiia, but rarely speaks of the russkii narod
(see, for example, Medvedev 2008, 2009). As recently as in 2011
Medvedev declared: ‘it is our task to create a full- fledged rossi-
iskaia natsiia in which the identity of all the peoples who inhabit
our country is preserved’ (Ria Novosti 2011).
Also documents signed by Putin sometimes contain expres-
sions such as rossiiskaia natsiia, as with the December 2012
‘State Strategy on Nationalities Policy for the Period through
2025’ (Strategiia... 2012). This document had been drafted in
the consultative Presidential Council on Interethnic Relations,
where two prominent members – Valerii Tishkov and Vladimir
Zorin – who both had served stints as minister in charge of
nationality questions – take credit for having kept ethnonational
phrases out of the final version. At one point, for instance, it had
been suggested to include the concept of the Russian people as a
‘state- forming nation’, but this idea did not find its way into the
published version.^10 However, the final version did refer to the
Russian (russkii) people as ‘the historically system- forming core’
of the Russian state. ‘Thanks to the unifying role of the russkii
people... a unique cultural multiformity and a spiritual commu-
nity of various peoples have been created’ (Strategiia... 2012).
This was a far cry from Eltsin- era rhetoric.
In the run- up to the 2012 presidential elections Putin published
a series of newspaper articles on various topics as part of his elec-
tion campaign. One of these articles, ‘On the national question’,
was on the face of it an attack on Russian ethnonationalism. Putin
denounced ‘thoroughly false talks about the russkie’s right to self-
determination’. The russkie, he declared, had exercised their right
to self- determination long ago, by creating a polyethnic civilisa-