Russian nationalism

Russian nationalism was briefly revived through the policies of Joseph Stalin during and after the Second World War, which shared many resemblances with the worldview of early Eurasianist ideologues.

In the Eurasianist perspective, Russia is distinctive civilization separate from both Europe and Asia, and includes ethnic non-Russians of Turkic and Asiatic cultures.

Defunct The Russian motto "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality" was coined by Count Sergey Uvarov and it was adopted as the official ideology by Emperor Nicholas I.

Operas by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Borodin; paintings by Viktor Vasnetsov, Ivan Bilibin and Ilya Repin; and poems by Nikolay Nekrasov, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, among others, are considered[by whom?]

[7] Since Russian patriotism served as a legitimizing prop of old order, Bolshevik leaders were anxious to suppress its manifestations and ensure its eventual extinction.

[10]: 453 [14] According to scholar Jon K. Chang, the Bolsheviks "never made a clean break from Tsarist-era nationalist, populist and primordialist beliefs".

[15] Stalin reversed much of his predecessor's previous internationalist policies, signing orders for the exiling multiple distinct ethnic-linguistic groups which were branded as "traitors", including the Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush (see Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush), Karachays, Kalmyks, Koreans, and Meskhetian Turks, who were collectively deported to Siberia or Central Asia, where they were legally designated as "special settlers", which officially meant that they were second-class citizens with few rights and they were also confined within a small perimeter.

[17]: 143–145 According to Evgeny Dobrenko, "Late Stalinism" after World War II was the transformation of Soviet society away from Marxism to demonize the idea of cosmopolitanism.

But we will reach the Ganges River, and we will die in fights, to make our Motherland shine from Japan to England According to Nikolai Berdyaev: The Russian people did not achieve their ancient dream of Moscow, the Third Rome.

"[25][26] Although Khrushchev had risen up during Stalinism, his speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences and de-Stalinization signified a retreat from official anti-Semitism and Great Russian Chauvinism.

[27] Nonetheless, during Khrushchev's relatively more tolerant administration, Russian nationalism emerged as a slightly oppositional phenomenon within the Soviet elites.

Alexander Shelepin, a Communist Party hardliner and KGB chairman, called for a return to Stalinism and policies more in line with Russian cultural nationalism, as did conservative writers like Sergey Vikulov.

[citation needed] One of the more radical, ultranationalist movements was Russian National Unity, a far-right group that organised paramilitary brigades of its younger members before it was banned in 1999.

[35] However, the Kremlin scaled nationalism down out of fears that prominent figures such as Igor Girkin began to act independently, following a brief period of stirring activism that resulted in Russian men volunteering to fight in Donbas in 2014 and 2015, according to Lipman.

[32] Academics Robert Horvath and Anton Shekhovtsov described how the Kremlin uses far-right groups to promote Russian nationalist or anti-western views in Russia and abroad.

According to Horvath, the Kremlin cultivated neo-Nazis who reject democratic institutions and imposed restrictions on mainstream nationalists who may support free elections.

In November 2018, Vladimir Putin described himself as "the most effective nationalist", explaining that Russia is a multiethnic and multireligious state and preserving it as such serves the interests of the ethnic Russians.

[38] According to Michael Hirsh, a senior correspondent at Foreign Policy: Graham and other Russia experts said it is a mistake to view Putin merely as an angry former KGB apparatchik upset at the fall of the Soviet Union and NATO’s encroachment after the Cold War, as he is often portrayed by Western commentators.

... Putin is rather a messianic Russian nationalist and Eurasianist whose constant invocation of history going back to Kievan Rus, however specious, is the best explanation for his view that Ukraine must be part of Russia’s sphere of influence, experts say.

[45] In a speech on 21 February 2022, following the deployment of Russian troops in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics,[46] Putin made a number of claims about Ukrainian and Soviet history, including stating that modern Ukraine was created by the Bolsheviks in 1917 as part of a communist appeasement of nationalism of ethnic minorities in the former Russian Empire, specifically blaming Vladimir Lenin for "detaching Ukraine from Russia".

[citation needed] In the 1990s and the early 2000s ultranationalist/xenophobic movement was represented by neo-Nazi skinheads, Orthodox–Christian nationalists and national-Imperial forces such as Liberal Democratic Party of Russia headed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

These works are not marginal: they have a circulation of tens of thousands of copies (or millions, for example, for books by Alexander Asov), their content is involved in the formation of the worldview basis of a stratum of the population regarding ancient history.

[53] The "Aryan" idea in the version of Slavic neo-paganism (the origin of the Slavs from the "Aryans" from Hyperborea or Central Asia, also called the "race of white gods"; the connection of the Slavs with India; ancient pre-Christian Slavic "runic" books; origin from the "Slavic-Aryans" of the ancient civilizations; the neo-pagan symbol "Kolovrat" as an ancient Slavic symbol; a variant of the alien origin of the "Aryan-Hyperboreans") was popularized in the "documentary" programs of the REN TV television network, including broadcasts by Igor Prokopenko and Oleg Shishkin.

[54] In a number of areas of Russian nationalism, the "Aryan" idea is used to justify the right to the territory of modern Russia or the former Soviet Union, which is declared to be the habitat of the ancient "Slavo-Aryans".

The choice falls on paganism, since, according to these ideologists, it is endowed with an "Aryan heroic principle" and is not burdened by Christian morality, calling for mercy and ignoring the idea of the priority of "blood and soil".

Declaring themselves "Aryans", the radicals seek to fight for the "salvation of the white race", which results in attacks on "migrants" and other representatives of non-titular nationalities.

[55][page needed] In many areas of Slavic neo-paganism (rodnovery), Slavs or Russians are credited with historical and cultural or racial superiority over other peoples.

[72][73][74] In addition, Russia's biggest opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, is also of paternally of Ukrainian origin as well as being a potential Russian nationalist.

[77] Vladislav Surkov, who is of Chechen origin, was the chief figure who initiated the idea of Russian managed democracy, in which nationalism is a part of the ideology.

[78] Georgians in Russia do not have a positive view of Russian nationalism, and as a result, vast majority of them maintain a neutral or negative opinion.