The collapse of the Soviet Union two decades
ago left behind as a remnant a Russian-majority state, albeit
one with many minorities.
And though it retained the lion’s share of
the old USSR, nationalists have fought hard to retain what was
left, including regions like Chechnya.
Under President Vladimir Putin, a Russian
nationalist ideology has become a mainstay of his rule.
The coronavirus pandemic, however, has been
disrupting his ambitious visions. Victory Day, marked on May 9,
commemorates the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany and has long
been a cornerstone of Russian patriotism.
Usually observed by world leaders hosted by
Putin amid throngs of veterans, it may be canceled because of
COVID-19.
An April 22 referendum to approve
constitutional changes has already been postponed. The proposal,
passed on March 24 by the lower house of Parliament just hours
after it had been introduced, would allow Putin to serve for an
additional two six-year terms when his current tenure expires in
2024.
He could serve as head of state until 2036.
If so, he will have held the nation’s highest office for 32
years, longer than Soviet leader Joseph Stalin but still short
of Tsar Peter the Great, who reigned for 43 years.
Russian nationalists in 1991 faced a dilemma.
As the core of the Soviet system, the Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic (RSFSR) – today’s Russian Federation --
lacked distinctly Russian counterparts to the political,
economic, and cultural institutions that the non-Russian
republics took for granted.
There had been no place for a Russian state
in the ideology and, hence, no ideologically justifiable ways of
promoting its interests as a state. As the presumption was that
the entire Soviet space was Russian, the ideology could not
offer much solace to Russian state-builders. It did, however,
offer another source of legitimacy, the Russian nation.
Because the RSFSR lacked a comparable
institutional and ideological status, Russian elites had no
ideologically legitimized base to fall back on when the USSR
imploded. Instead, the source of their legitimacy turned out to
be the Russian nation itself.
Russian Communist elites also jumped on the
republican bandwagon in the final years of perestroika, with
Boris Yeltsin deliberately using the RSFSR as a power base for
his struggle with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 1991 Russia inherited the bulk of the
Soviet state -- the central ministries, the army, and the secret
police, and it possessed a sense of cultural superiority and
historical destiny that underpinned both nationhood and empire.
Some nationalists went even further,
insisting on regaining Russian-populated areas no longer within
its boundaries.
Today the largest ethnic Russian diasporas
outside Russia live in former Soviet states such as Ukraine
(about 8 million), Kazakhstan (about 3.8 million), Belarus
(about 785,000), Uzbekistan (about 650,000), Latvia (about
520,000), Kyrgyzstan (about 419,000) and Estonia (about
328,000).
North-eastern Estonia, the urban parts of
Latvia, much of Belarus, eastern Ukraine and the Crimea, and
northern Kazakhstan, all with substantial ethnic Russian
populations, have been the repeated targets of Russian rhetoric.
Russian policymakers, including Putin, have
developed elaborate schemes for protecting the rights of their
“blood relatives” in the “near abroad.” This has become a
central theme of Russian political discourse.
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