Russia's Nationalist Turn

How Putin Created the Russian National State

Anatoly Karlin • September 28, 2021

In addition to affirming 

    the rights of Russian compatriots abroad, 

    Russia’s historical belief in God, 

    and the family as a union of woman and man, 

        the amended Constitution also alluded to 

    the thousand-year legacy of Russian statehood, thereby asserting 

    cultural continuity with the Russian Empire and explicitly 

    rejecting the joint Soviet-Western “noviop” vision of the Russian Federation as just a historyless shard of the Soviet Union.

 

Consequently, the Constitutional amendment became the base to what has become a comprehensive embrace of the mainstream Russian nationalist program.

In April 2017, I had defined its three key principles as follows:

1. The cessation of political prosecutions for “hate speech” under Article 282.
2. An end to mass immigration from Central Asia.
3. The regathering of the Russian lands, including Belorussia, North Kazakhstan, Novorossiya, and Malorossiya.

All of them have essentially been fulfilled.