Originally published in the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, Director of MacArthur's Russia office Igor Zevelev argues that Russian identity will grow out of the existing historical legacies and deep-rooted cultural traditions, which at the same time adjusting itself for
Originally published in the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, Director of MacArthur's Russia office Igor Zevelev argues that Russian identity will grow out of the existing historical legacies and deep-rooted cultural traditions, which at the same time adjusting itself for a new vector of global development.
The collapse of the Soviet Union did not resolve the “national question” for Russians. Rather, this event gave birth to the question. For the first time in centuries, millions of people who consider themselves Russian have found themselves separated by political borders and now have to live in several neighboring states. Since 1992, Russia’s policy towards ethnic Russians living abroad has been built as a cautious and moderate response to this challenge. Russia did not support irredentist sentiments in the Crimea, northern Kazakhstan and other places where ethnic Russians live in compact communities. Russia made the first attempt to protect its citizens and compatriots abroad by military force in August 2008 in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where ethnic Russians make up only about two percent of the local population. Does this mean that the ethnic factor does not play a significant role in Russia’s perceptions and policy vis-à-vis the post-Soviet space? Can the situation change in the future?
The attitude to the fact that about a quarter of Russians live outside Russia, of whom more than a half live in neighboring states, may become a major factor in the development of Russia’s national identity and the system of international relations in Eurasia in the 21st century.
There are two main approaches to the “Russian question” in Russia now. The first is a radical nationalist discourse on a “divided nation,” which, however, does not have a strong impact on concrete policies. The second approach embraces moderate concepts of “the diaspora” and “the Russian world,” as well as the governmental policy towards “compatriots.” If we place these two approaches in a broader context of the formation of Russian identity over the last two centuries, then we can say that they reflect the traditional coexistence of two principles – ethno-national and supranational.
After the Soviet Union’s disintegration, it seemed that many factors created favorable conditions for strengthening the ethnic awareness of Russians and their leading role in the formation of a new national identity of Russia. Russians, who now make up about 80 percent of the country’s population (compared with 43 percent in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century and 50 percent in the Soviet Union), are an absolutely dominating ethnic group in the country for the first time in the last two centuries. Russian ethnic nationalism received a strong intellectual impetus from the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was the first great thinker to challenge the supranational tradition in its imperial form. The deep economic crisis of the 1990s and the difficulties faced by ethnic Russians in neighboring nationalizing states created prerequisites for political mobilization around this issue. The inflow of migrants to big Russian cities during the last 