2The imperial syndrome and its influence on
Russian nationalism
Emil Pain
How to explain the continued presence of the imperial legacy
in the political life of Russia, and its impact on Russian nation-
alism? This has been a focus of my research for more than a
decade (Pain 2001, 2004, 2008, 2012). The combination of
Russian nationalism and imperial consciousness is conducive to
the development of a special phenomenon in Russia that may
be called ‘imperial nationalism’. That term may sound odd, at
least to those within the Western academic tradition who are
accustomed to examining nationalism as one of the factors con-
fronting empires, as a factor involved in destroying the imperial
system, but, in the Russian setting, an imperial nationalism that
supports imperial aspirations really does exist, and has appeared
more than once – recently manifesting itself boldly after the 2014
annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. The second
decade of the 2000s had begun with political events that – it
seemed to many – augured the replacement of imperial nation-
alism by a new (for Russia) anti- imperial Russian nationalism
(Milov 2010; Russkii svet n.d.). Such hopes increased with the
rise of the democratic opposition movement and the participa-
tion of Russian nationalists in the political protests that began
in December 2011. The subsequent defeat of this new, anti-
government, anti- Soviet Russian nationalism once again prompts
reflection on the reasons for the stability of the imperial com-
ponent in Russian nationalism – and, indeed, in contemporary
Russian society as a whole.