the new russian nationalismInstitute of Ethnology and Anthropology, the Council received
more than a thousand comments during the hearing process.^12 To
avoid inflaming ethnonationalist feelings unnecessarily, the draft-
ers thus sought to have it both ways: to promote both a unifying
civic identity as well as individual ethnic affiliation. In the words
of Mikhailov, ‘We for the first time introduce the concept of a
“Russian civic nation” (rossiiskaia grazhdanskaia natsiia), but
do not desert the ethnic definition’ (quoted in BBC 2012). During
the election campaign, Putin could woo Russian ethnonationalist
sentiments, but for the nationalities strategy to win widespread
acceptance, the powers- that- be would have to find a middle way.
The result was a watered- down version in which the Russians
were merely the first among equals: in the final version of the
strategy, they were fobbed off with a reference to historically
having played a key role in the unification of the Russian nation
(rossiiskaia natsiia): ‘The Russian state was formed as a union
of peoples with the Russian people (russkii narod) historically
playing the system- forming core (sistemoobrazuiushchoe iadro)
(Strategiia... 2012).
On 19 December 2012, Putin signed a decree approving the
new ‘State Strategy on Nationalities Policy for the Period through
2025’ (Ukaz Prezidenta RF 2012c). The media hailed the strategy
as the first comprehensive document on nationalities policy in
Russia for several decades. With this move, the Kremlin had laid
down the general guidelines for political, economic and cultural
policies towards Russia’s various ethnic groups for the coming
two decades.^13 The text represented less than a clear- cut ‘ethnic
turn’, it remained more preoccupied with the civic rossiiskaia
natsiia than the ethnically defined russkii narod, but Putin had
given the marching orders, and this was probably in itself more
important for providing further direction to the debate on the
national identity than the compromise- and consensus- oriented
strategy.
Reception among the general population
What about the public reaction? How did the population at large
respond to Putin’s ethnonationalist overtures? In recent years,