Staunton, May 15 – The pride the people feel in their country consists of two elements: a cognitively processed one in which individuals assess the actual past and present of their nation and a normative one which is imposed from above by governments and others to support their policies, according to two Moscow scholars. The […]
Staunton, April 30 – Vladimir Putin and his supporters have made the struggle against what they see as Russophobia a cornerstone of their ideology, Yevgeny Ikhlov says; but if one examines the characteristics they offer for this phenomenon, it is clear that Russophobia as such does not exist. At the same time, fear and hatred […]
Staunton, November 17 – Russian nationalists have long insisted that a supra-national non-ethnic Russian identity not only doesn’t exist but undermines Russian identity, but now one of their most prominent theorists is arguing the unthinkable. According to Pavel Svyatenkov, an ethnic Russian nation does not now exist while a Ukrainian nation very much does. Svyatenkov […]
Staunton, June 9 – “Russia is part of Europe but it never will be part of the West,” a psychological pattern that has remained “unchanged” over the course of the last 500 to 600 years and one whose continuity leads to the modification of any system it has adopted to fit the Russian mentality, according […]
Staunton, May 16 – Vladimir Putin routinely asserts that Russian speakers abroad, a category which includes both those of ethnic Russian background and others who use Russian in their daily lives, are not only a single nation but one that requires the continuing protection of the Russian state. But a new study shows that the […]
Staunton, April 24 – The Russian language and Russian culture are today “the main unifying factor[s]” for the citizens of the Russian Federation, unlike history which continues to be a source of divisions given that different groups have different understandings of past events, according to the Valdai International Discussion Club. The Moscow Higher School of […]
Staunton, April 24 – In a comment that many non-Russians in the Russian Federation are certain to see as a threat to the existence of their groups and some Russians may view as a danger to Russian-ness as well, Vladimir Putin said yesterday that “it is not so important what is written in the ‘nationality’ […]
Staunton, April 23 – Not only have the number of people in the former non-Russian republics identifying as ethnic Russians fallen dramatically since 1991, but the number who speak Russian or who study it in school has fallen precipitously as well, a trend that means Vladimir Putin is reaching out to an ever-smaller group and […]
Staunton, April 22 – It is a measure of just how worried the leaders of countries bordering Russia are about the possibility that Vladimir Putin will build on his Crimean Anschluss by moving against their states that even Alyaksandr Lukashenka feels the need to deny that Minsk is oppressing ethnic Russians and to call on […]
Staunton, April 22 – Vladimir Putin’s “Russian world” project of “empire instead of a nation state and dictatorship instead of democracy” is far more popular his country than calls for the development of a civic nation, Mariya Snegova says, but it will end, as all other such projects in Russian history have, with “a catastrophe” […]
