Marlene Laruelle. Problems of Post-Communism. Volume 62, Issue 2, March/April 2015.
The assumption that Russia’s foreign policy is “nationalist,” advanced as the main explanation to understand the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, needs to be questioned. First it is almost impossible to identify a “nationalist school” that would have shaped Russia’s foreign policy decisions. Only one nationalist storyline has gone from being marginal in the early 1990s to becoming part of state policy in the 2000s, namely that of compatriots, under the argument of “Russia as a divided nation.” This is the only case where we can trace the influence of a nationalist group with clearly identifiable figures and lobbying structures; however, the nationalist content has been neutralized in the process of cooptation by state organs. This article argues that even in the context of the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, which has partly changed previously established interactions between nationalism and Russia’s foreign policy, Russia may use a nationalist post hoc explanation but does not advance a nationalist agenda.
Usually it is journalists who describe Russia’s foreign policy as “nationalist,” but the term tends to crop up in scholarly discussions as well, especially since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis. This mostly uncritical use of the term “nationalist” as a broad, catchall category allows for a simplistic description of Russian foreign policy in terms that readers presumably understand. However, this assumption is precisely what needs questioning. How is it possible to evaluate the role that nationalism and nationalist groups play in shaping Russia’s foreign policy? Can we track discourses and topics that have been channeled from the level of nationalist circles up to that of state policy? Can we endorse the assumption that nationalist lobbying activities have been successful in crafting some of Russia’s foreign policy or legislative action?
The discussion is significant in light of Russia’s annexation/reintegration of the Crimea in early 2014 and the subsequent actions in eastern Ukraine. Russian president Vladimir Putin justified these events with geopolitical arguments about Ukraine’s tilt toward the West, but he also made finely honed references to the divided nature of the Russian nation and Russia’s legitimate moral duty to take care of Russian communities outside Russia and to respect their supposed desire to rejoin the motherland. Defining what is to be understood as “nationalism” in Russia is challenging, as several traditions compete-some limiting it to ethnonationalism, some including references to the imperial past or Soviet identity, and some insisting on a civic or legal definition (people with a Russian passport). Here I define nationalism broadly as encompassing all these concentric visions: in the case study I explore here, “compatriots” embrace several definitions of Russianness.
Exploring the overlap between nationalism and Russia’s foreign policy presents scholars with many methodological problems. Locating the place where foreign policy decisions are taken is a difficult task, given the opacity of Russia’s decision-making process, especially on important issues related to national security and great-power status. Another issue is tracking the possible trajectory of specific narratives from intellectual groups and media outlets to state organs. This is even more challenging, given that nationalist groups express some viewpoints that are largely shared by the majority of the population, making their narratives part of a larger Zeitgeist. A causal relationship is therefore almost impossible to demonstrate. In this paper I restrict myself to discussing a case study, that of the “compatriot” narrative.
This paper first questions the ability of scholars to identify a “nationalist school” that could have shaped Russia’s foreign-policy decisions and then urges us to take a broader definition of that influence. Nationalists have never directly participated in decision-making processes on foreign policy, but they have fostered a general atmosphere that can influence official narratives. Next, this paper investigates the only nationalist storyline that has gone from being politically incorrect to becoming part of state policy, namely that of “Russia as a divided nation.” The theme gave birth to two policies: the state program of repatriation of compatriots and the legitimization of the “Russian World” concept. This is the only case where we can trace the influence of a nationalist group with clearly identifiable figures and lobbying structures. However, as I show in this paper, the content is neutralized in the process of co-optation. Third, the paper explores briefly how the Ukrainian crisis has partly changed previously established interactions between nationalism and Russia’s foreign policy.
Narrow and Broad Definition of the Influence of Nationalists on Foreign Policy
In his seminal works on Russia’s foreign policy, Andrei Tsygankov defines four schools of thought: the integrationists, who emphasize Russia’s similarity with the West and who all but disappeared in the second half of the 1990s; the nationalist hardliners, who define Russia as “anti-Western” but are excluded from decision-making; the balancers, who endorse the view that Russia should be a geopolitically and culturally distinct entity with a mission to stabilize relations between East and West; and the great-power normalizers; with the latter two categories dominating the Putin administration. Andrew Kuchins and Igor Zelevev provide a three-part typology of Russian foreign policy schools: liberals, great-power balancers, and nationalists. These analyses are ground breaking, but the authors do not define their use of the term school. A school of thought is a collection of people who share common opinions. It presupposes that they agree on shared contents, but also that they use—at least at a minimal level—similar outreach platforms or strategies and work and network together.
When discussing nationalism in foreign policy, we face a kind of words-versus-deeds dilemma. Are we speaking about “foreign policy schools” or about “schools of thought about foreign policy”? The former expression refers to a group of people with influence on foreign policy decision-making processes, whose practices and worldly perceptions share a common background; the latter is a group of people who speak about foreign policy, with or without the means to shape it. Many public figures—politicians, journalists, and media pundits—discuss Russia’s foreign policy for a domestic audience, but without participating in actual decision-making. This distinction is key: if foreign policy indeed constitutes a discursive element of identifiable nationalists in Russia, the presence of a “nationalist school” among foreign policy practitioners is more difficult to demonstrate. The narratives about foreign policy that are spread throughout the public space are far removed from foreign policy practices. In the above-mentioned analyses, the so-called nationalist school is a narrative on foreign policy, while the others form identifiable groups of decision-makers.
Russia’s official policies and nationalist groups agree on their interpretations of several specific foreign policy issues, at least to a certain extent. They share the same views of the Yugoslav wars at the end of the 1990s, of the “color” revolutions in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004, and of the war with Georgia in 2008 and the Crimea annexation/reintegration in 2014. However, the nationalists tend to add a degree of radicalism to the general tone, and often adopt a position of “yes, but not enough.” They celebrate Putin’s reassertion of Russia as a great power on the international scene as compared to Yeltsin’s denial of the country’s global role and status, but they criticize the Kremlin for what they consider to be half-measures. They call for more assertive positions in the Near Abroad, especially with unfriendly neighbors such as the Baltic states, Georgia, or Ukraine; fewer detente measures with the United States, for instance around Afghanistan and the Northern Distribution Network; and more support for countries that challenge what they see as the United States’ unilateral world order, such as Iran or now Syria. Disappointment is thus the main nationalist feeling regarding Russia’s official foreign policy. If the most vocal nationalists had been able to shape foreign policy, Russia would not have been the status quo power it has been for the past two decades. It would have acted more aggressively in the Near Abroad, occupied Russian-populated parts of Estonia and northern Kazakhstan, rejected the “reset” policy with the United States, refused to improve relations with Poland and Central Europe, introduced a restricted visa regime with the Central Asian republics, and annexed the Arctic continental shelf without spending millions of dollars in geological studies in order to adhere to the United Nations’ official Convention on the Law of the Sea procedures. With the exception of the 2008 recognition of South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence and the 2014 crisis in Ukraine, where Moscow breached international agreements to which it was beholden, Russia has been a conservative power on the international scene, while Russian nationalists have been calling for more pre-emptive actions.
If we use a fairly narrow definition of influence—namely, influence on legislation and policy execution at the institutional level-nationalist groups cannot be considered as powerful agents in shaping Russia’s foreign policy. Few of them have contacts within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, of course, can be considered only as an executive organ of daily foreign policy management, not the one where policy is crafted. In the 1990s Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) controlled some of the State Duma committees that they considered crucial: the Committee for Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Affairs and Relations with Compatriots, the one for International Affairs, and the one for National Security. Both the KPRF and the LDPR promoted nationalist themes at the Duma, but their ability to influence legislation was modest, and only KPRF tried to hamper the legislative process.
Among individual figures, Alexander Dugin is one of the few Russian nationalist thinkers with a sophisticated doctrine on foreign policy and with firm networks abroad. He gained some influence in military circles when he taught at the Military Academy of the General Staff, and he was close to Minister of Defense General Igor Rodionov in 1996-97. In 1999, he chaired the geopolitical section of the Duma’s Advisory Council on National Security, which the LDPR then dominated. Since the mid-2000s he has been an advisor to Sergey Naryshkin, chairman of the Duma, and he has developed friendly contacts with influential figures such as media personality Mikhail Leontev, Rosneft’s press officer since January 2014, and United Russia MP Yevgeni Fedorov, leader of the obscure Movement of National Liberation. The degree of Dugin’s direct influence on two important ministerial figures that promote Eurasianist themes, Sergei Glazev, adviser to the president for regional integration issues, supervising the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union, and Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, remains difficult to assess. Dugin had no point of entry into the Public Chamber until spring 2014, when his right-hand man, Valeri Korovin, was able to get elected by collecting nearly 40,000 votes online.
A specific case of somewhat identifiable nationalist influence over the decision-making community is Alexander Prokhanov, one of Rogozin’s closest advisors. Famous for having celebrated Soviet exploits in Afghanistan, this elderly writer and journalist remained an influential figure in military circles and in nationalist associations such as the Union of Writers of Russia, and his weekly newspaper, Zavtra, is the main platform for nationalist voices. Since 2012, Prokhanov has further gained in stature by launching the Izborsky Club, a think tank that brings together around thirty nationalist ideologists and politicians—who often have contradictory views and conflictual personal relations—and lobbies state organs. Prokhanov, who has presented himself as an imperialist and a supporter of Stalinism, cultivated his own network of friends in the military and the security services and uses the Club as a platform to develop a nationalist storyline that can then be transmitted to the upper echelons of power.
Nationalists may not be influential in terms of crafting legislation and practical decision-making, but they do contribute to creating an “atmosphere” that can color Russia’s foreign policy with nationalist motives and craft an aspirational vision of Russia. Luke March and Mikhail Suslov have looked at that nurturing process beyond a narrowly defined influence by examining the intensification of references to civilizational values in Russia’s foreign policy doctrine and the president’s speeches. We could discuss the articulation between nationalism and these civilizational values, which now deeply mark Russia’s own image on the international scene, but that would go beyond the scope of this paper. More important, this broader approach to tracking the influence of nationalists on foreign policy cannot demonstrate causal mechanisms. Is it because nationalists are supposedly increasingly vocal on foreign policy issues that Russia’s foreign policy is becoming more “nationalist,” or are they simply providing, a posteriori, a discursive legitimacy to foreign policy decisions taken without them? Case studies seem to tip the scale in favor of the second view: nationalists often react to a foreign policy decision; they rarely forerun it.
One good example is the pro-presidential youth groups, especially Nashi, which were used in precisely this way by the presidential administration to foment “memory wars” with Ukraine after the Orange Revolution, and with the Baltic states. Similar strategies orchestrated by Vladislav Surkov were developed toward Moldova and Georgia, but on a smaller scale. However, Nashi’s excessive confrontational behavior toward Estonia, a member state of the European Union, tarnished the Kremlin’s image and contributed to the partial discrediting of the movement among the ruling elite. Another example is the publishing house Evropa, which Gleb Pavlovsky established in 2005 with the goal of promoting the Russian point of view in the “information war” with the West and some CIS countries. The publishing house commissioned several works by nationalist-minded journalists or writers with a noticeably targeted goal of defending the Kremlin’s own agenda on NATO’s eastward enlargement, U.S. involvement in Caspian energy issues, Western support for the color revolutions, discrimination against Russian minorities, the trials of World War II veterans in the Baltic countries, and so on. In these cases, nationalist groups were a tool of Russia’s foreign policy, not its engine.
Trajectory of a Nationalist Narrative: “Russia as a Divided Nation”
Taking a closer look at this articulation between “nationalism” and “foreign policy,” I explore here the entanglements of one theme that was unique to the nationalist repertoire in the early 1990s and which has now evolved into a foreign policy tool, namely the notion of “Russia as a divided nation.” This is a distinctive case because the trajectory of its proponents, as well as their lobbying activities, can be studied with some precision. Through this example I hope to demonstrate the complexity of the interaction between nationalist groups and foreign-policy-making processes.
From the Congress of Russian Communities to Rodina
By the autumn of 1989, several parliamentary factions had formed within the USSR Supreme Soviet with a goal of preserving the unity of the Soviet federation, which had been undermined by Gorbachev’s liberalization policy. Within this Sovietophile camp, the most important organization was the Soyuz movement organized by ethnic Russian deputies from the union republics, such as Viktor Alksnis in Latvia, Yevgenii Kogan in Estonia, and Yuri Blokhin in Moldavia. A few months after the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the Congress of Russian Communities (KRO), led by Dmitri Rogozin and some of the Soyuz MPs, emerged as the first movement seeking to defend Russians abroad. It claimed “the right of the Russian nation to be unified in a united state on its historical territory, to the rebirth of the fatherland’s great power, to well-being, and to the development of all the peoples of Russia.” Among the anti-Yeltsin groups that dominated the Supreme Soviet back then—Zyuganov’s Communist Party and Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic Party—the KRO established its own distinctive voice: it did not call for a pure and simple restoration of the Soviet Union or for rebuilding an imperial influence on the whole territory of the former Union; rather, it called for protecting Russian minorities and, if possible, for modifying borders in order to integrate Belarus, at least part of Ukraine, and northern Kazakhstan into the Russian Federation. The KRO’s nationalist motives were directly inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose publications during this time left a mark on the debates that raged among so-called “imperial” and “ethnic” nationalists.
In 1994 the KRO Congress gathered 1,800 members who represented almost fifty associations (obshchiny) from various former Soviet republics and who stood for the interests of Russian “compatriots” (sootechestvenniki). Several official figures participated in the Congress, including Russian State Duma spokesperson Ivan Rybkin and some members of the Yeltsin government. Along with Rogozin, the KRO featured General Alexander Lebed, at the time governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai and later Russia’s Security Council secretary; Konstantin Zatulin, long-time director of the influential Institute for the CIS Countries; Sergei Glazev, who represented Russian social-democrats who did not identify with the Communist Party; Natalia Narochnitskaya, who stood for small political Orthodox groups; Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov; and some MPs including Sergei Baburin, Viktor Aksyuchits, and Viktor Alksnis. In 1995, the KRO became a part of the Union of the Russian People’s bloc, led by Yuri Skokov and Lebed, the latter then at the height of his influence; nevertheless, in the 1995 parliamentary elections, the movement did not win the 5 percent threshold needed for representation in the Duma.
After its flagrant electoral failure, the KRO collapsed, and its leaders pursued separate political trajectories. Rogozin, elected in 1997 as a single-seat Duma deputy from Voronezh, was appointed vice-chairman of the Duma’s Committee for National Policy and dealt mostly with the sensitive issue of the Russian North Caucasus. Re-elected to parliament in 1999, he directed the Duma’s Committee for International Affairs, as well as the permanent delegation of the Duma to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In July 2002, in recognition of his loyalty to the Kremlin, Putin appointed him chairman of the Committee for Problems of the Kaliningrad Region Due to the Expansion of the European Union to the East. Glazev, Baburin, Alksnis, Narochnitskaya pursued their careers as MPs, and Lebed “retreated” to the Krasnoyarsk region until his death in 2002. Luzhkov, meanwhile, remained a very active player on the compatriot issue. In 2001, the Moscow city government established an entire administrative section devoted to this issue as well as an Interdepartmental Commission for Work with Compatriots. It developed an extensive program that included sending hundreds of thousands of textbooks to neighboring republics, organizing the legal defense of compatriots, granting scholarships to young ethnic Russian students living in the Baltic states and Ukraine, and funding a new branch of Moscow State University in Sevastopol. In addition, the municipality established the International Council of Russian Compatriots, and, in 2004, it opened the Muscovite House of Compatriots, designed to be the main center for working with Russians of the Near Abroad.
In 2003, thanks to the new atmosphere created by Putin’s rise to power, the KRO camp reformed around Rogozin and his new party Rodina (Homeland). Rodina sought to restore Russian influence over the Near Abroad and to create a supra-state encompassing Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, as well as the pro-Russian secessionist regions of Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. In March 2005, the Rodina faction pushed— unsuccessfully—for a vote on a bill called “Accession to the Russian Federation and the Formation of New Subjects Within It.” Proposed by Rogozin and Narochnitskaya, the amendments would have facilitated accession to Russia for autonomous regions of other CIS states without constituting, from the Russian perspective, a violation of the international treaties recognizing post-Soviet borders. Rodina’s ultimate goal was thus to provide the legal means for South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria to join Russia, and indirectly to suggest that the borders of the new post-Soviet states were “artificial.”
In its beginnings Rodina was largely a puppet of the Kremlin, but it gained autonomy and began overtly challenging the pro-Putin party United Russia; it quickly paid the price for this in 2006, when the Kremlin coopted some of its leaders and dismantled the party. Despite its short, three-year lifespan Rodina was able to unify many once disparate nationalists under one partisan banner. Some of them had previously belonged to the KPRF or to the LDPR; others were members of parties that did not emphasize nationalism, or—as in the case of Baburin or Alksnis-had pursued independent actions without partisan affiliation. Rodina thus gave structure to previously disparate individual actions and nationalist discourses in the form of a political party and parliamentary faction. More important, Rodina managed to formulate consensual, respectable nationalist arguments and transform concepts that had previously been deemed too radical when put forth by the LDPR, the KPRF, or by the KRO. It garnered support from members of the presidential majority, despite the fact that all of its leaders began their careers in monarchic, Orthodox, or Soviet nostalgic circles. Largely thanks to Rodina, many “nationalist” themes moved from the margins into the realm of publicly accepted topics.
Rodina was also the only political party present at the fourth Duma that linked its narrative on Russia as a divided nation to the country’s global migration policy. In fall 2005, during the election campaign for the Moscow City Duma, Rodina ran a television advertisement that depicted youths identifiably originating from the Caucasus throwing leftover pieces of watermelon under the wheels of a baby carriage pushed by a young, blond woman with Slavic features, accompanied by slogan “rid the city of garbage.” Ironically, Zhirinovsky’s LDPR, which was competing with Rodina for the same electoral niche, filed a complaint against it for “inciting ethnic hatred,” leading the Russian courts to cancel Rodina’s participation in the elections. The party paid dearly for the success of Rogozin as a politician, and his ability to encroach on Zhirinovsky’s niche. Nonetheless, it achieved some of its goals: Rodina’s slogans actually came to dominate the campaign; and its leaders, perceived as victims of the Kremlin, gained legitimacy in the nationalist camp and were heralded as defenders of a Russian people under attack from migrants.
Between 2004 and 2006, Rodina deputies campaigned for a bill restricting the retail business of foreign citizens in Russia. The Duma did not pass this bill but it did directly inspire a November 2006 law prohibiting foreigners from trading in Russian markets. At the same time Andrei Saveliev, then Rodina’s number two and vice-president of the Duma Committee for CIS Affairs and Relations with Compatriots, became the linchpin of the rapprochement between some MPs and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), led by Alexander Belov. The DPNI not only dramatically contributed to making the migration issue one of the most debated topics in the Russian media but also fomented anti-migrant riots, especially the first big one in Kondopoga, by recruiting skinheads. Saveliev was the first deputy officially to join the DPNI. He participated in the first Russian Marches—the demonstrations of Russian nationalists organized on November 4 for the Day of National Unity—and made Belov his personal adviser. Rodina was thus the first official political structure to anticipate the role xenophobia would play in reconfiguring the public debate on Russia’s national identity.
Russia’s Compatriot Policy and the Lobbying Role of KRO-Rodina
More important for our assessment here, KRO-Rodina is the only nationalist movement to have developed systematic positions on the Near Abroad and that has tried to participate in the official decision-making process. Despite its electoral failure in 1995, the Congress of Russian Communities left a considerable heritage. Its “Manifesto of Russia’s Rebirth” (Manifest vozrozhdeniya Rossii) and its “Declaration of the Rights of Compatriots” (Deklaratsiya prav sootechestvennikov) directly influenced the first official texts adopted by the Duma on the topic. At that time, Yeltsin’s pro-Western Kremlin argued that the Russians of the Near Abroad were sufficiently protected by international legislation on the protection of national minorities, to which the new states had subscribed. However, in 1994 the Duma, largely dominated by the Communists, passed a first official declaration on compatriots titled “On Measures for the Defense of the Rights of Russian Compatriots” (O merakh po zashchite prav rosskiiskikh sootechestvennikov), which was complemented by a last-minute presidential decree, “On the Principal Directions of the Federation’s State Policy Toward Compatriots Living Abroad” (Ob osnovnykh napravleniyakh gosudarstvennoi politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii v otnoshenii sootechstvennikov, prozhivayushchikh za rubezhom). This decree proposed to organize diverse protective measures for compatriots in CIS member states and in the Baltic countries and to form a governmental commission to coordinate the activities of state bodies on this question. However, it was not followed by any practical measures and seems to have been one of Yeltsin’s modest concessions to his opposition.
A new phase opened in 1995, when the Yeltsin administration decided again to take up the topic of the diaspora in order to challenge the Communist and nationalist opposition and avoid letting them appear to be the lone defenders of Russians abroad. The government organized the first material aid for the diaspora and allocated special federal funds for compatriot policies. A first “Declaration of Support for the Russian Diaspora and for the Protection of Russian Compatriots” (Deklaratsiya o podderzhke rossiiskoi diaspory i o pokrovitel’stve rossiiskim sootechestvennikam) was passed that year, and considered by nationalists to be a great personal victory for Rogozin, Baburin, and Zatulin, all of whom had worked hard to have it implemented.
Nevertheless, in practice the state only paid lip service to the diaspora. In 1997, a bill on Russia’s policy toward compatriots was the first to define precise rights for these individuals. However, it provoked violent polemics in the Duma between Communist and liberal deputies. The Federation Council voted down the text and Boris Yeltsin used his veto, arguing that the proposed resolutions would interfere in the domestic affairs of neighboring countries. A new bill, “On the Russian Federation’s Policy in Its Relations with Compatriots Living Abroad” (Federal’nyi zakon o gosurdarstvennoi politike Rossiiskoi Federatsii v otnoshenii sootechestvennikov prozhivayushchikh za rubezhom), passed in 1999, confirmed that the Russian authorities found it difficult to take a stance on the issue: the text remained strictly declarative and did not put forward any legal definition of the so-called compatriots.
Vladimir Putin’s promotion to the presidency in 2000 gave a new validation to the KRO claims. From his first months in power, he decried the demographic danger that was creeping up on Russia and that threatened it with extinction—remarks he would repeat on several occasions afterwards. In 2001, a “Concept on the Demographic Development of Russia 2001-2015” was adopted and defined immigration as one of the country’s priorities. In October 2001, Putin attended the first World Congress of Compatriots Living Abroad, a gesture welcomed by KRO circles, which saw this as the Kremlin’s endorsement. At the congress Putin stated, “Russia is interested in the return of compatriots from abroad.” He put forward a critical assessment of state-conducted efforts on this matter: “Over the ten years of work spent with the compatriots, the state has done too little, one can even say so little that it is unacceptable. […] There have been obvious insufficiencies on the part of the official authorities, on the part of the state, and till today, there are holes in the legislation, the laws adopted are incomplete, muddled, and sometimes they are simply not implemented.”
After the 2001 Congress of Compatriots, the Kremlin published a new text on the “Principal Directions of the Federation Toward Compatriots Living Abroad for 2002-2005” (Osnovnye napravleniya podderzhki Rossiiskoi Federatsii sootechestvennikov, prozhivayushchikh za rubezhom), which for the first time outlined the range of possible actions that Russia could take on this issue. The document played simultaneously the card of defense of Russians abroad and that of their repatriation for demographic and workforce-related issues: “The Federation’s policy toward compatriots living abroad is oriented with a view to their adjustment in their adopted country, with a deliberate conservation of their ethnocultural specificity, but also with a view to the formation of mechanisms for their legal and controlled migration to Russia and the reaching of an optimal balance between both processes.”
The KRO-Rodina lobby played a key role in fostering a state repatriation program. Both Rogozin and Saveliev tried to influence the legislative debates conducted on the subject. In 2004, Rodina filed a draft bill on repatriation that was not adopted by the Duma, but it did contribute to the codification, in June 2006, of the “State Assistance Program for Voluntary Repatriation of Compatriots to Russia.” This program was designed to frame the “return” of compatriots, who were defined as “those educated in the traditions of Russian culture, the possession of the Russian language, and not wanting to lose their relation with Russia.” For his part, Konstantin Zatulin devoted a large portion of his activity as a deputy to making proposals for amendments to the set of laws related to the freedom of movement in the post-Soviet region and to those related to the acquisition of Russian citizenship, with the aim of giving former Soviet citizens privileged access to a Russian passport. The Program of State Assistance for Voluntary Travel of Compatriots to Russia can thus be considered as the group’s main—and only—success in directly influencing Russia’s foreign policy making, even if its results have been more than disappointing.
The KRO-Rodina network is the only instance in which a group with a well-defined nationalist agenda has been in a position to submit draft bills to the Duma on such a regular basis, to have its concerns filter up to the presidential administration, and to secure decrees and a state program on a topic dear to it. But it is also clear that in the process of shaping foreign policy, many aspects of the nationalist doctrine have been lost. Whereas the KRO-Rodina network advocated that Russia should grant compatriots a legal status enabling their defense manu militari, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Duma have always emphasized the state’s inability to defend people who are not legally citizens of the Russian Federation-that is, until the Ukraine crisis of 2014. KRO-Rodina yearned for a vibrant repatriation program that would have brought back millions of ethnic Russians and stopped labor in-migration of other peoples. Here also, their role in drafting the repatriation program and shaping the general anti-migrant atmosphere did not result in a success on the scale they hoped: the repatriation program brought only a few hundred thousand people, and labor migrants became a key element of Russia’s workforce. Once integrated into Russia’s foreign policy, the issues raised by nationalist groups lose their conflict potential and their most problematic aspects, and they can easily be integrated into the more consensual narrative promoted by the regime.
A similar conclusion can be drawn from the other side of the “compatriot” project; namely, protecting Russian communities abroad that do not want to come back to their kinstate. Here also, the KRO-Rodina network planted the seeds but didn’t reap the benefits. This side of the “compatriot” project took life through the notion of a “Russian World” (Russkii mir). The Russian World concept promotes Russian culture in the world (by providing funds for the development of the Russian language and culture abroad) and hopes to reinforce the Russian diaspora’s identification with Russia (by supporting Russian associations and the Orthodox Church abroad and by inviting Russian diasporas to invest in Russia). The Russian World became a more prominent part of Russia’s official narrative in the second half of the 2000s. On the occasion of the “Year of the Russian Language” in 2007, Putin established a Russian World Fund and assigned it to the portfolio of a loyal intellectual apparatchik, Viacheslav Nikonov, the head of the Politika Foundation, not to a member of the KRO-Rodina network. In the course of its development, the Fund moved away from its initial “compatriot” aspect to include a broader promotion of Russian language and culture abroad and at home. A year later, in 2008, this Fund was complemented by the creation of a state agency Rossotrudnichestvo (Russian Cooperation) under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the aim of which was to “reinforce international relations and close cooperation in the sphere of humanitarian sphere [sic] and forming a positive image of Russia abroad.” Here again, the primary goals of the KRO-Rodina network were broadly diluted and adapted into more palatable public-relations campaigns, and the group lost its stranglehold on a brand it largely helped create.
Through this trajectory, one can investigate the content of the notion of “compatriots.” In KRO’s perception the term was inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s assumptions and encompasses only ethnic Russians and the Slavic populations (Belarus, Ukraine, and Northern Kazakhstan), and thus has a clear ethnic/linguistic focus that excludes other Soviet peoples. However, the state’s cooptation of the term broadened its notion: all official documents, from the first law in 1999 to today’s handbooks on repatriation, define the term “compatriot” in an utterly extensive way. It includes: “Russian citizens permanently residing abroad; individuals and their descendants who live abroad and are linked (otnoshyashiesya) to the peoples historically residing on the Russian Federation territory; those making the free choice of a spiritual, cultural, and legal link to Russia; those whose ancestors resided on the Russian Federation territory, including former USSR citizens now living in states that were part of the USSR, regardless of whether they became citizens of another state or are stateless; and those who have emigrated from the Russian state, the Russian republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the USSR, and the Russian Federation that either became citizens of another state or became stateless persons.”
The legal definition of compatriot functions in a concentric way. It is going from a civic core (expatriate citizens) to a broader group of people who are culturally and spiritually oriented toward Russia (the Donetsk and Lugansk insurgents would be part of that group, which prevents a purely ethnic or linguistic definition of “ethnic Russians”) before encompassing the even larger group of all Soviet peoples and people who were part of the Tsarist Empire (according to the definition, citizens of Poland and Finland could apply to have compatriot status). The transformation of the notion of Russian World from defining ethnic Russians in the Near Abroad to becoming a tool for Russian soft power encapsulates the blurry boundary between ethnic and state identities. The slogan “Russia as a divided nation” used during the Ukrainian crisis does not help to solve the dilemma, as the “divided nation” can also be a Soviet one, and not necessarily the ethnic one.
The 2014 Ukrainian Crisis: Is It a Game Changer?
Does the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian crisis constitute a game changer in the connection between nationalism and Russia’s foreign policy, and, if so, on what grounds? Putin decided to annex Crimea but he stood firm on taking a “wait-and-see position” for eastern Ukraine, which allowed Donetsk and Lugansk to slide into civil war. Russia did not support the declarations of independence and the demands for integration into the Russian Federation made by the self-proclaimed Republic of Novorossiya. Until July 2014 its assistance to pro-Russian insurgents was not sufficient for them to prevail, but it did allow them to withstand attacks from the Ukrainian regular army. The Kremlin has also allowed Russian nationalist movements to get involved in the conflict by creating a gray area in which the authorities neither approve nor disapprove of their doing so. Nationalists have invested in the conflict in every sense, by sending brigades of volunteers trained in paramilitary actions, distributing humanitarian aid, and dominating the media space.
Can “nationalism” explain Russia’s diverging positions on Crimea and eastern Ukraine? As Russia sees it, Kiev has committed two “crimes.” First, it violated an implicit agreement, according to which Russia accepted an independent Ukraine, provided it did not espouse anti-Russian policy and did not rally to the Western camp. In preparing to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union that would symbolically pave the way for Ukraine’s slow integration into Europe’s economic and military spaces, Ukraine violated this implicit Finlandization status. The price to pay was the outright annexation of Crimea, which was efficiently carried out without any military blunders. Second, Ukraine was poorly governed and experienced recurrent “Maidans,” that is, regime changes driven from the streets, which, depending on one’s point of view, can be defined as democratic revolutions or as coups. For the Kremlin, political instability in the name of democratization, inspired by Western values and funded by Western money, is a direct route to domestic chaos and lost sovereignty. The price to pay for Viktor Yanukovych’s failure was the emergence of a secessionist movement in the most fragile part of Ukraine’s territory.
In justifying Crimea’s reintegration into Russia, Putin invoked historical memory and great power status, recalling the glorious feats of the Russian army on the peninsula—during the Ottoman wars up until the Crimean War (1853-56) and during the Second World War—and by emphasizing the importance of Sevastopol in Russia’s assertion of its strategic autonomy. In eastern Ukraine, it emphasized Russia’s relationship to “Russian-speakers” and “Russians” abroad, which hits more of an emotive register because it plays on an essentially ethnic and/or linguistic nationalism. However, to say that Putin has become a frenzied ethnonationalist since the onset of the Ukrainian crisis is a mistake. If Russia’s decision-making process was driven by ideological goals, it would have annexed eastern Ukraine as well: it didn’t because the ultimate aim is to penalize Ukraine for not respecting the rules of the game, not to reconstitute a divided Russian nation.
It is true that with the crisis in Ukraine, Putin has enlarged his own repertoire of arguments. He has unambiguously declared that “the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest, ethnic groups in the world to be divided by borders.” The Kremlin thus officially recognizes the gap between Russia’s territorial body and its “cultural body,” that is, its self-representation as a nation. As is the case with many former empires, Russia’s “cultural body” is larger than its territory, which has shrunk from the Soviet-era borders. But this does not mean that every country with a Russian minority should prepare for a Ukrainian scenario. The Kremlin’s relationship to this cultural body abroad is contextualized. This “cultural body” can stay abroad if the country that hosts it accepts being Finlandized. Ukraine refuses to play according to the rules, and therefore paid the hefty price of both annexation and destabilization. As seen from the Kremlin’s perspective, it was because of Maidan that Ukraine lost Crimea and faced civil war, not because it hosts part of the divided Russian “cultural body.” Kazakhstan, too, hosts important Russian minorities, but so long as the Nazarbayev regime plays according to Moscow’s rules, the nationalist argument will not apply to it.
Rhetoric on the “divided nation,” present in the repatriation program and the Russian World policy, became explicit with the Ukrainian crisis and was used for the first time to justify violent action against a neighbor. However, the status of this “divided nation” line of argument remains instrumental: it is part of the discursive repertoire of Russia’s foreign policy, deployed whenever the Kremlin needs to penalize a neighbor for its geopolitical or political disloyalty, but it does not appear as a driver of routine foreign policy decisions. The Ukrainian crisis has extended and made official a storyline that was elaborated immediately following the fall of the USSR by groups then outside of the decision-making process.
Some KRO-Rodina personalities have also gained in visibility in recent years. In 2011 Dmitri Rogozin was named deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry and is therefore connected with the military-industrial complex, which has probably the most organized lobbying effort in Russia and direct connections to Putin’s inner circle. But Rogozin also leads a new Rodina party, thus continuing the role he played in the 2000s, linking radical nationalist groups and ideologies to the Kremlin, along with the personal support of Alexander Prokhanov and his Izborsky Club. Natalia Narochnitskaya, at the Paris office of the Russian Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, has gained a level of influence that she has not seen since the Yugoslav wars at the end of the 1990s, thanks to the Kremlin’s current “morality turn,” its positioning as a herald of conservative values, and the rapidly escalating activism of the Moscow Patriarchate. Sergei Glazev, adviser to Putin for regional integration issues, supervises the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union. He has become one of the regime’s key figures, one of the few—along with Putin himself—to defend a project of integration with Central Asian countries that includes a visa-free regime. The founding fathers of the KRO-Rodina network have thus taken a step forward in terms of integration into the upper echelons of decision-making.
Conclusions
Exploring the articulation between nationalism and Russia’s foreign policy involves accepting and recognizing myriad shades and tones. Russian nationalists do not constitute a “school” of foreign policy similar to the other schools, as they have no direct access to or influence in places where decisions are taken. The few public figures identified as nationalists in the upper echelons of the state and who have managed to become part of Russia’s policy establishment have very specific trajectories. Dmitri Rogozin and Sergey Glazev benefit from a ministerial position not thanks to their KRO-Rodina past, but because they have powerful personal and business-related contacts inside the presidential administration, ties not intrinsically related to their set of ideological convictions.
The articulation between nationalism and Russia’s foreign policy poses a chicken-egg dilemma. This is not a one-way process, where nationalists directly shape the presidential administration’s worldviews, or where the presidential administration can freely manipulate nationalists like puppets. Many nationalist proponents consider that they have not moved toward the regime or evolved in their views, but that the current political and cultural landscape around them has changed and progressively created a kind of mirroring effect with the state-run discursive repertoire. Already back in 1995, the Kremlin began to appropriate topics that were previously considered the domain of nationalist circles and coopted them into its official narrative. This was the case for “patriotism” and Soviet nostalgia, “memory wars” with other post-Soviet states, and the policy of compatriots and the Russian World. In all cases, once integrated into a state-run narrative, issues that once belonged to nationalist groups are largely rendered harmless. They lose their mobilizing potential and their most conflictual aspects, and they are assimilated into a narrative more likely to fit the status quo. The example explored here, “Russia as a divided nation,” shows the only case of traceable success in terms of narrative and group strategy; but it also illustrates the limits and level of denaturing that the cooptation of a nationalist agenda into a foreign policy implies.
Then the Ukrainian crisis emerged. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s foreign policy has breached the status quo in its most symbolic aspect—changing state borders. The Kremlin has used a panoply of narratives to justify its actions—from denouncing the double standards of Western countries that accepted Kosovo’s independence, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and NATO’s eastward expansion, to promoting the “divided nation” line of argument and Moscow’s duty to protect its minorities abroad. The nationalist theme is thus only one among others within a more general constellation on which there is a broad consensus among the population. This advancing of a nationalist argument is noticeable, but it has a history with different phases that I have tried to analyze here, and a context specific to Ukraine’s own trajectory. Russia may use a nationalist post hoc explanation but does not advance a nationalist agenda.
The main “point of entry” by which nationalist groups are able to interact with state-led foreign policy consists of issues related to the Near Abroad. As the Kremlin considers the future of some former Soviet countries as impacting its own status as regional hegemon, its strategic security, and its domestic scene, nationalist groups can more easily articulate their own agenda with the country’s policy. Their influence can thus be typologized in three levels. The highest level is to participate in shaping Russia’s foreign policy worldviews and legislation, which, in the case of the “divided nation,” was partly successful but also largely denatured. The second level involves becoming a tool of Russia’s foreign policy in some specific campaigns that are limited in time, for instance Nashi‘s activities in Estonia and Ukraine, or Russian nationalist paramilitary groups that have joined the ranks of the Donbass insurgents. The third level, which is also the most diffuse and difficult to trace, is for Russian nationalist groups and leaders to “escort” Russia’s foreign policy by crafting legitimizing ideological storylines. These storylines are often produced simultaneously or a posteriori, and therefore are more a product than a cause of foreign policy action. The success of the KRO-Rodina group is to have played mostly at the first and the third levels. It is also the only nationalist group that has anticipated that the winning combination between “Russian nationalism” and “Russia’s foreign policy” would be a carefully measured dose of inclusion (Ukraine) and exclusion (Central Asia and South Caucasus), and a mix of statism (a strong state but not an empire) and ethnic homogeneity (a restricted migration policy, a pro-family narrative, and marginalization of the North Caucasus).