Opinions
To correctly identify the attitude of Putin and his government towards Russian Nationalism, one of the most important criteria is the persecution of Russian Nationalists during his reign. The subject of this article is the facts of criminal prosecution of Russian nationalists in the period from 2000 to 2025. The objectives of the research are to show whether these persecutions were systematic, when and in what form they occurred. The article aims to show the attitude of the Putin regime towards Russian nationalists from the point of view of criminal law and other laws. The relevance of this article is due to the existing debates in scientific and public circles about the ideological essence of Putin’s power, including theories about the nationalistic nature of this political regime. The novelty of the article is evident in the lack of publications on this topic that systematically describe the facts of persecution of Russian nationalists in Putin’s Russia. Previous works on the connection between Putin and nationalism have mostly focused on his ideological worldviews and policies, rather than his relationship with groups that openly call themselves Russian nationalists, although the facts of criminal and systematic persecution are one of the most important indicators of the regime's attitude to a particular ideology. The lack of articles written in English is especially important. The research methods used will be the formal legal method, the historical method, and the systems method. The analysis will include theoretical and scientific works, media publications, court decisions, the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, as well as reports from human rights and information and analytical centres. The hypothesis is that in Putin's Russia, there was a systematic persecution of Russian nationalists, which gives grounds to assume that the goal was to eradicate the nationalist movement, which was perceived as hostile.
In recent years, one could frequently encounter rather widespread discussions about the Russian Federation as a “Christian State,” and in some cases, even as the “last stronghold of Christianity in the world.” Such descriptions of Russia regularly appear in social media and public speeches by various American and European conservatives, ranging from Tucker Carlson to Viktor Orbán. Representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, including Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev), even claim that: “Today many people, including in the West, look to Russia with attention and hope as the last stronghold. To use Biblical language, Russia is becoming the one ‘who restrains the total dominance of evil, i.e., the coming of the Antichrist.” As with many other false constructs promoted by the current political regime, these rhetorical templates are utterly deceptive, while the actual actions of the authorities and the ROC hierarchy are more often anti-Christian.
In his recent address to the Muslims of Russia on Kurban Bayram/Eid al-Adha celebration, Vladimir Putin, yet again, repeated the mantra about their “contribution to the unity of our people and the development of interethnic and interreligious dialogue.” Putin was referring to that mythical “multinational people” of the Russian Federation, which, according to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, is “the only source of power.” It takes neither a historian nor a constitutional law expert to immediately identify the source of inspiration for the authors of the concept of creating this very “multinational people.” It is, of course, the very “Soviet people” from the text of the USSR Constitution: the “Soviet people formed as a new historical community of individuals in a society of mature socialist social relations, on the basis of the convergence of all classes and social strata, the legal and factual equality of all nations and nationalities, and their fraternal cooperation.”
A number of authors—from a broad array of voices, including international academic experts on Russia, the originators of the term “imperial nationalism” and political commentators, to sincere apologists of the idea of the uniqueness of “Russian civilization” and the in-house propagandists of the current regime in the Russian Federation—frequently assert that, at various points in history from the 15th century to the present day, there have existed forms of statehood based on the idea of the priority of the organic interests of the Russian nation. Apologists for this thesis construct diverse argument systems which supposedly confirm their assertion. They draw upon the works of certain past historians (for example, Vasily Klyuchevsky’s reflections on the construction by Grand Prince Ivan III of a prototype of a “people’s Russian state” as a “striving for political unity on a popular basis”), interpretations ofEmperor Alexander III’s “russification” policy, quotations from Stalin’s speeches and toasts, public statements by representatives of the executive power of the Russian Federation, … and even song lyrics by modern pop performers. Often, the aforementioned thesis is used either as propaganda for supporting the existing political regime—allegedly consistently representing the interests of Russian people—or for the purpose of creating a false impression of an a priori consent on the part of the Russian population to all social, economic, and political processes occurring in the Russian Federation. An unbiased and measured analysis of both this thesis and the factual circumstances of the historical and current state of the organic interests of the Russian population in the RF forces any independent researcher to reach completely opposite conclusions.