Back to the Roots? Putin’s Russia, Slavophilism and the Official Nationality

Debates about the reasoning and narrative behind Russia’s war in Ukraine often highlight the imperialist tendencies and opportunistic nature of Putin’s regime as it attempts to restore Russian hegemony over the post-Soviet space. However, even a surface-level reading of Russian discourse on the background of the war reveals continuities with both Czarist-era dogma and Slavophilism. By exploring these continuities, this article seeks to examine how the Slavophile narrative plays into the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and its persistent imperialist stance towards the post-Soviet space, and how Czarist dogma is being revived in contemporary Russia.

Jan-Malte Schulz

Putin expounded his view of Russia’s historical place and mission in his essay ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“, published shortly before the invasion of Ukraine. Denying Ukrainian sovereignty and socio-cultural distinctiveness, he endorsed the reunification of the Russkiy Mir and echoed central Slavophile talking points. Emerging as a countermovement to the Westernising tendencies in Russia after the reforms of Peter the Great, Slavophiles emphasise the uniqueness and distinctiveness of Russian culture in opposition to malicious Western influences and believe that culture to be, at times,  under pernicious attack from the outside. Emphasising the supposed unitary nature of the polities emerging from the Kyivan Rus while lambasting the malicious influence of Western religion and values, Putin laid out his understanding of the past and present of the supposedly singular Russian people. 

In a manner reminiscent of 19th century Slavophiles, who raised the alarm at the supposed waywardness, individualism, amorality, and materially-oriented mundanity of Western Europe, Putin also frequently attacks the EU and the US as the very antithesis of the spirituality, communitarianism and moral steadfastness of the Russian spirit. It is this Russian spirit, endowed with a unique historical mission, and if you believe Lev Gumilev’s work on passionary theory to which Putin subscribes, with a charge of cosmic energy that enables and justifies expansionism and aggression, that Putin believes to be under attack. Both through Western support for Ukraine and in the form of supposedly shadowy attacks on the integrity of Russian society and morals, its very culture appears to be under attack. This perception of threat, along with the use of Russian minorities as a means of foreign policy,  made it necessary to include the defence of Russian culture as part of Russia’s National Security Strategy. 

One aspect of the Slavophile tradition, already present in the older discourse and now endowed with renewed prescience, is the casting of Russia as an Eurasian polity. Rejecting the view of Russia as a European culture and society, this ideology locates it at a median position between both Asia and Europe, giving it a somewhat messianic mission and the possibility of a unique historical “third way”. Reminiscent of Trotsky’s characterisation of Russia as “not only geographically, but also socially and historically between Europe and Asia”, Eurasianism became influential after the collapse of the Soviet Union and endowed Russia with a new mission. Incidentally, both Eurasianism and the so-called passionary theory were expounded by the already mentioned Lev Gumilev, a controversial Soviet historian and ethnologist who has a not-so-secret admirer in the Kremlin.

An examination of the internal discourse of Putin’s Russia reveals another parallel with late 19th century Czarist Russia. When the growing influence of Western thought, prescribing broader political participation, civil rights, and checks on the absolute power of the Czar, began to threaten the post-Napoleonic Wars regime a campaign of deliberate counter-culture was initiated, culminating in the formulation of a new ethos of governance. Dubbed the “Official Nationality”, this ideological doctrine espoused a triad consisting of three pillars: Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality. In a move to counter the nascent political drive for liberalisation, which culminated in the Decembrist Revolt, this doctrine was initially proposed by Sergei Uvarov and gained traction with the Czarist elite.

A look at current Russian discourse seems to confirm that both Autocracy and Nationality in the form of militant patriotism and Slavophilism made a comeback under Putin. Additionally, it is worth taking into account the strong ties between Putin’s regime and the Russian Orthodox Church. In an almost symbiotic relationship that recalled the backing of the Orthodox Church for Czarist rule, the contemporary Russian religious establishment endorsed Putin’s rule and embraced its role as a propaganda machine for the dictatorship and the war in Ukraine. Echoing the Russkiy Mir ideology, Moscow’s patriarch Kyrill I., incidentally a former KGB colleague of Putin, lent spiritual backing to the “special military operation”.

Ultimately, it is difficult to say whether many of these parallels are conscious choices and policies to mimic Czarist ideology or, rather, a case of convergent political evolution. Given the deep trauma Russians endured after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting search for new paradigms to explain the role and mission of Russia in the post-Cold War world, the revival of Slavophilism and Orthodox spirituality certainly were attractive ideologies. While a certain level of glorifying past achievements and the supposed greatness of the Czarist empire is to be expected (though not endorsed) Putin’s obsession with Gumilev’s passionary theory certainly raises eyebrows and concern. While Gumilev himself rejected antisemitism and remained critical of it, his theory on ethnogenesis, his casting of Jews as an “ethnic chimera”, and the resulting “Khazar yoke” has given rise to antisemitic conspiracy theories. Strands of these crackpot theories even justified Russia’s war against Ukraine as an act of self-defence against the creation of a Jewish “New Khazaria” polity.