EVGENIA LEZINA - The revival of ideology in Russia
Events in Ukraine have
prompted the Kremlin to promote an official state ideology for the first time
in post-Soviet history. The past takes on increased significance in
legitimizing the regime, while attempts at critical historical reflection are
actively repressed.
Ever since the
collapse of the USSR, the Russian authorities have argued repeatedly that the
country needs a unifying national idea. But it was only after the annexation of
Crimea in 2014 that, for the first time in post-Soviet history, the notion of
drawing up legislation on state ideological policy was mooted, along with the
possibility of introducing amendments to the constitution that would allow
this. Although the Kremlin has not yet built up a well-constructed narrative
and continues to draw on symbols from different historical periods, its efforts
suggest a readiness to revive ideological dogmas. Rhetorical trends in statutes
and other state documents, as well as in staffing policy and the official
politics of memory, reveal the increasingly totalitarian nature of Russian
society.
Patriotism as state
ideology
In February 2016,
Vladimir Putin announced that patriotism was to be equated with the Russian
national idea. Subsequently, the leader of the parliamentary party ‘A Fair and
Just Russia’ (Spravedlivaya Rossiya), Sergei Mironov, declared that the
constitutional norm prohibiting the establishment of a state ideology ‘no
longer corresponds to national interests’.1 He
was supported by the ombudsman, Tatyana Moskalkova, who expressed the view that
a debate about removing the prohibition on state ideology from the constitution
could be justified.2
At the end of October
2016, it was suggested at a meeting of the Presidential Council for
Inter-Ethnic Relations that a law on the Russian nation should be drawn up.
This was supported by Putin. Mironov called this initiative the first step in
the ‘tangible creation of a state ideology’.3 The speaker of the Federal Council, Valentina
Matvienko, also emphasised that Russia needs a national idea founded on
patriotism.4 At the beginning of December,
Putin instructed the presidium of the Council to draw up a draft law before 1
August 2017.5A
parliamentary commission was duly set up.
The Kremlin’s
ideological motives
This ideological trend
became better established after the annexation of Crimea and the start of
Russian military aggression in south-eastern Ukraine in 2014. When the Euromaidan
protests began in the autumn of 2013, the Putin regime was experiencing a
crisis of legitimacy. Its level of popularity had reached the lowest level
since 2000. The annexation of Crimea and the huge propaganda campaign that
followed helped the Kremlin to regain the support of the population.
This was by no means
the first time, under Putin’s governance, that the achievement of greater
social cohesion had been sought through military conflict and confrontation
with the West. Support for the president had reached its highest, post-Crimean
level in 1999, 2003–4 and 2008. In each case, this occurred against the
backdrop of military action and a confrontation with the EU and the USA on
Serbia, Iraq, Georgia or Ukraine. All these campaigns also exploited
anti-western motifs ‘combining a rhetoric of mass resentment, patriotism and
revenge.’6
But the propaganda
campaign launched on state television simultaneously with military action in
Ukraine proved unprecedented in its ferocity and aggression. Over the course of
two months, Putin’s ratings rose by 20 percentage points – from 65 per cent in
January 2014 to 87 per cent in March. Simultaneously, there was a turnabout in
public attitudes towards European countries and the United States. According to
data released by the Levada Centre, in January 2015 the proportion of people
taking a negative view of the European Union reached a record 71 per cent,
while those ill-disposed to the USA counted 81 per cent. Yet in March 2011, for
example, 62 per cent of Russians had been favourably disposed to the EU, and 54
per cent took a positive view of the USA.7
From then on, the
Putin regime – which had effectively put the county on a military footing –
regarded foreign policy as the chief means by which greater internal social
cohesion could be achieved. As the sociologist Lev Gudkov explained at the
time, Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 had already
given Russian foreign policy ‘the features of a geopolitical mission’, with its
fervent message to a West dubbed ‘infirm and in its declining years’, with a
lost sense of tradition and morality.
This approach was consolidated when Putin
returned to the Kremlin in 2012, and especially after the annexation of Crimea:
‘Thanks to the strength of the national spirit, the preservation of Christian
values and a powerful and renovated army, Russia has been reborn as a “great
power … It has its own interests and a right to power legitimated by its
time-honoured contribution to the welfare of the nations of Europe, which it
liberated from fascism.’8 In a separate interview, Putin boasted that ‘We are
stronger than anyone, because we are in the right. Power lies in truth. When a
Russian has a sense of his own righteousness, he is invincible.’9.. read more:
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George Lichtheim: The Concept of Ideology
