Problems of Post-Communism, vol.

62: 88–97, 2015

Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1075-8216 (print)/1557-783X (online)
DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2015.1010902

Russia as a “Divided Nation,” from Compatriots to Crimea

A Contribution to the Discussion on Nationalism and Foreign Policy

Marlene Laruelle
George Washington University, Washington, DC

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 assump-
tion 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 dis-
courses 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? 1
The discussion is significant in light of Russia’s annexa-
tion/reintegration of the Crimea in early 2014 and the sub-
sequent actions in eastern Ukraine. Russian president
Vladimir Putin justified these events with geopolitical argu-
ments 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
Address correspondence to Marlene Laruelle, George Washington
University, Washington, DC, USA. E-mail: laruelle@gwu.edu
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).2
Here I define nationalism broadly as encompassing all these
concentric visions: in the case study I explore here, “com-
patriots” 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 iden-
tify 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 influ-
ence official narratives. Next, this paper investigates the
only nationalist storyline that has gone from being politi-
cally 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 nation-
alist 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 integration-
ists, 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.3 Andrew Kuchins and Igor Zelevev provide
a three-part typology of Russian foreign policy schools:
liberals, great-power balancers, and nationalists. 4 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 pre-
supposes that they agree on shared contents, but also that
they use—at least at a minimal level—similar outreach plat-
forms 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 deci-
sion-making. This distinction is key: if foreign policy
indeed constitutes a discursive element of identifiable
nationalists in Russia, the presence of a “nationalist school”
RUSSIA AS A DIVIDED NATION 89
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 deci-
sion-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,5 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, intro-
duced a restricted visa regime with the Central Asian repub-
lics, 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 institu-
tional 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)
90 LARUELLE
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.6
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.7
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 1996–97.8 In 1999, he chaired the geopoliti-
cal 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, chair-
man 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.9 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.10
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 ideolo-
gists 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.11
Nationalists may not be influential in terms of crafting
legislation and practical decision-making, but they do con-
tribute to creating an “atmosphere” that can color Russia’s
foreign policy with nationalist motives and craft an aspira-
tional vision of Russia.12 Luke March and Mikhail Suslov
have looked at that nurturing process beyond a narrowly
defined influence by examining the intensification of refer-
ences to civilizational values in Russia’s foreign policy
doctrine and the president’s speeches.13 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 track-
ing 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.14 Similar strategies orchestrated by Vladislav
Surkov were developed toward Moldova and Georgia, but
on a smaller scale. However, Nashi’s excessive confronta-
tional behavior toward Estonia, a member state of the
European Union, tarnished the Kremlin’s image and con-
tributed to the partial discrediting of the movement among
the ruling elite.15 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 “infor-
mation war” with the West and some CIS countries. The
publishing house commissioned several works by national-
ist-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, discrimi-
nation against Russian minorities, the trials of World War II
veterans in the Baltic countries, and so on.16 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 “national-
ism” 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.”17 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 organi-
zation 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 terri-
tory, to the rebirth of the fatherland’s great power, to well-
being, and to the development of all the peoples of
Russia.”18 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 mino-
rities 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 nation-
alist 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.19
In 1994 the KRO Congress gathered 1,800 members who
represented almost fifty associations (obshchiny) from var-
ious former Soviet republics and who stood for the interests
of Russian “compatriots” (sootechestvenniki). Several offi-
cial 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
secretary20; 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 Luzhkov21; and some MPs
including Sergei Baburin, Viktor Aksyuchits, and Viktor
Alksnis.22 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; never-
theless, in the 1995 parliamentary elections, the movement
RUSSIA AS A DIVIDED NATION 91
did not win the 5 percent threshold needed for representa-
tion in the Duma.23
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 perma-
nent 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 thou-
sands 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.24
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.25 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 recog-
nizing 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 challen-
ging 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.26 Despite its short, three-
92 LARUELLE
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 inde-
pendent 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 mana-
ged to formulate consensual, respectable nationalist argu-
ments 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.27
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 legiti-
macy in the nationalist camp and were heralded as defenders
of a Russian people under attack from migrants.28
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.29 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.30 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.31
Rodina was thus the first official political structure to antici-
pate 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 partici-
pate 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.32 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 sootechstvenni-
kov, 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 admin-
istration decided again to take up the topic of the diaspora
in order to challenge the Communist and nationalist oppo-
sition and avoid letting them appear to be the lone defen-
ders of Russians abroad.33 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 ros-
siiskoi diaspory i o pokrovitel’stve rossiiskim sootechest-
vennikam) 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 rubez-
hom), 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.”34 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.”35
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 rubez-
hom), 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.”36
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
RUSSIA AS A DIVIDED NATION 93
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.”37 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 giv-
ing 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 influen-
cing Russia’s foreign policy making, even if its results have
been more than disappointing.38
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 doc-
trine 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 pro-
gram 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 pro-
gram brought only a few hundred thousand people, and
labor migrants became a key element of Russia’s
workforce.39 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 pro-
moted by the regime.
A similar conclusion can be drawn from the other side of
the “compatriot” project; namely, protecting Russian com-
munities 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 “compa-
triot” 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
94 LARUELLE
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 cul-
ture abroad and at home.40 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 “rein-
force international relations and close cooperation in the
sphere of humanitarian sphere [sic] and forming a positive
image of Russia abroad.”41 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 peo-
ples. 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 “compa-
triot” in an utterly extensive way. It includes: “Russian citi-
zens permanently residing abroad; individuals and their
descendants who live abroad and are linked (otnoshyashie-
sya) to the peoples historically residing on the Russian
Federation territory; those making the free choice of a spiri-
tual, 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.” 42
The legal definition of compatriot functions in a con-
centric way. It is going from a civic core (expatriate citizens)
to a broader group of people who are culturally and spiri-
tually 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.43
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 agree-
ment, 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 sym-
bolically 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 demo-
cratic 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 asser-
tion of its strategic autonomy.44 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.45 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 unambigu-
ously declared that “the Russian nation became one of the
biggest, if not the biggest, ethnic groups in the world to be
divided by borders.”46 The Kremlin thus officially recog-
nizes 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 coun-
try 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 repa-
triation 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 argu-
ment 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 geopoli-
tical 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-indus-
trial complex, which has probably the most organized lob-
bying effort in Russia and direct connections to Putin’s
RUSSIA AS A DIVIDED NATION 95
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 position-
ing as a herald of conservative values, and the rapidly
escalating activism of the Moscow Patriarchate.47 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 integra-
tion 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 establish-
ment 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 presiden-
tial administration, ties not intrinsically related to their set of
ideological convictions.
The articulation between nationalism and Russia’s for-
eign policy poses a chicken–egg dilemma. This is not a one-
way process, where nationalists directly shape the presiden-
tial administration’s worldviews, or where the presidential
administration can freely manipulate nationalists like pup-
pets. 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
96 LARUELLE
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 narra-
tive 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 denoun-
cing 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 tra-
jectory. 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 articu-
late their own agenda with the country’s policy. Their influ-
ence 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 simulta-
neously 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 care-
fully 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 mar-
ginalization of the North Caucasus).
NOTES
1. A first version of this paper was presented at the PONARS Eurasia
Workshop “Rethinking the Sources of Russian Foreign Policy,”
George Washington University, Washington D.C., March 16–17,
2013. I thank Maria Lipman and the anonymous reviewers for their
valuable comments.
2. See Oxana Shevel, “Russian Nation-Building from Yeltsin to
Medvedev: Ethnic, Civic, or Purposefully Ambiguous?” Europe–
Asia Studies 63, no. 1 (2011): 179–202.
3. Andrey Tsygankov, Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity
in National Identity (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).
4. Andrew C. Kuchins, and Igor A. Zelevev, “Russia’s Contested
National Identity and Foreign Policy,” in Worldviews of Aspiring
Powers: Domestic Foreign Policy Debates in China, India, Iran,
Japan, and Russia, ed. Henry R. Nau, and Deepa M. Ollapally
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 183.
5. Luke March, “Is Nationalism Rising in Russian Foreign Policy? The
Case of Georgia,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet
Democratization 19, no. 3 (2011): 187–207.
6. On the Communist Party see Luke March, The Communist Party in
Post-Soviet Russia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002),
and Richard Sakwa, “The CPRF: the Powerlessness of the Powerful”,
in A Decade of Transformation: Communist Successor Parties in
Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Andras Bozoki and John
Ishiyama, (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), 240–67. On the LDPR
see Andreas Umland, “Zhirinovskii as a Fascist: Palingenetic Ultra-
Nationalism and the Emergence of the Liberal-Democratic Party of
Russia in 1992–93,” Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und
Zeitgeschichte 14, no. 2 (2010): 189–215, and same author,
“Zhirinovsky in the First Russian Republic: A Chronology of
Events 1991–1993,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 19, no
2 (2006): 193–241.
7. See for instance, among the most recent publications, Andreas
Umland, “Pathological Tendencies in Russian ‘Neo-Eurasianism’:
The Significance of the Rise of Aleksandr Dugin for the
Interpretation of Public Life in Contemporary Russia,” Russian
Politics and Law 47, no. 1 (2009): 76–89; Anton Shekhovtsov and
Andreas Umland, “Is Dugin a Traditionalist? ‘Neo-Eurasianism’ and
Perennial Philosophy,” The Russian Review 68, no. 4 (2009): 662–78;
Andreas Umland, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Transformation from a Lunatic
Fringe Figure into a Mainstream Political Publicist, 1980–1998: A
Case Study in the Rise of Late and Post-Soviet Russian Fascism,”
Journal of Eurasian Studies 1, no. 2 (2010): 144–152.
8. On Dugin’s connections with military circles, see John B. Dunlop,
“Aleksandr Dugin’s ‘Neo-Eurasian’ Textbook and Dmitrii Trenin”s
Ambivalent Response,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 25, no. 1–2
(2001): 91–127.
9. Yevgeni Fedorov, “Tsel’ natsional’no-osvoboditel’nogo dvizheniia–
vosstanovlenie suvereniteta, poteriannogo v 1991 gody” (The goal of
the national liberation movement is the re-establishment of the sover-
eignty lost in 1991), Natsional’no-osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie,
undated, http://rusnod.ru/nod2.html.
10. List of the result available on the Civic Chamber’s website, https://
oprf.roi.ru.
11. Marlene Laruelle, forthcoming.
12. Anne L. Clunan, The Social Construction of Russia’s Resurgence:
Aspirations, Identity, and Security Interests (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2009).
13. Luke March, “Nationalism for Export? The Domestic and Foreign-
Policy Implications of the New ‘Russian Idea,’” Europe–Asia Studies
64, no 3 (2012): 401–25: Mikhail Suslov, “Geographical
Metanarratives in Russia and the European East: Contemporary
Pan-Slavism,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 53, no. 5
(2012): 575–95.

14. Heiko Pääbo, “War of Memories: Explaining ‘Memorials War’ in
Estonia,” Baltic Security and Defence Review 10 (2008): 5–28; Eva-
Clarita Onken, “The Baltic States and Moscow’s 9 May
Commemoration: Analysing Memory Politics in Europe,” Europe–
Asia Studies 59, no. 1 (2007): 23–46.
15. The illegal entry of Nashi members onto Estonian territory in Soviet
military uniforms merited their being arrested, expelled, and above all
prohibited from having a Schengen visa for ten years. See Marlene
Laruelle, “Negotiating History: Memory Wars in the Near Abroad
and Pro-Kremlin Youth Movements,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal
of Post-Soviet Democratization 19, no. 3 (2011): 233–52.
16. See Marlene Laruelle, “Inside and Around the Kremlin’s Black Box:
The New Nationalist Think Tanks in Russia,” Stockholm Papers,
October 2009.
17. Alan Ingram, “A Nation Split into Fragments: The Congress of
Russian Communities and Russian Nationalist Ideology,” Europe–
Asia Studies 51, no. 4 (1999): 687–704.
18. Dmitri Rogozin, Kongress russkikh obshchin. V bor’be za interesy
sootechestvennikov. Daidzhest materialov Rosinformbiuro KRO (The
Congress of Russian Communities. Fighting for compatriots. Digest
of the KRO information bureau), 1994, at http://www.rau.su/obser-
ver/N18_94/18_21.htm.
19. Wayne Allensworth, The Russian Question. Nationalism,
Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); Eduard Ponarin, “Alexander
Solzhenitsyn as a Mirror of the Russian Counter-Revolution,”
PONARS Policy Memo no. 150 (2000).
20. Wayne Allensworth, “Aleksandr Lebed’s Vision for Russia,”
Problems of Post-Communism 45, no. 2 (1998): 51–58.
21. Timothy J. Colton, “Understanding Iurii Luzhkov,” Problems of Post-
Communism 46, no. 5 (1999): 14–26.
22. Marlene Laruelle, In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and
Politics in Contemporary Russia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2009), 102–17.
23. Sergey Lebedev, Russkie idei i russkoe delo. Natsional”no-patrioti-
cheskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v proshlom i nastoiashchem (Russian
ideas and the Russian question. The national-patriotic movement in
Russia, past and present) (Saint Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2007), 402–404.
24. Laruelle, In the Name of the Nation, 128–29.
25. Sergey Glaz’ev, “K voprosu ob ideologii organizatsii” (The question
of the organization’s ideology) at http://glazev.ru/print.php?
article=87.
26. Ibid.
27. Laruelle, In the Name of the Nation, 102–16.
28. Vladimir S. Malakhov, “Russia as a New Immigration Country:
Policy Response and Public Debate,” Europe–Asia Studies 66, no.
7 (2014): 1062–79.
29. Caress Schenk, “Controlling Immigration Manually: Lessons from
Moscow (Russia),” Europe–Asia Studies 65, no. 7 (2013): 1444–65.
30. Sofia Tipaldou and Katrin Uba, “The Russian Radical Right
Movement and Immigration Policy: Do They Just Make Noise or
Have an Impact as Well?” Europe–Asia Studies 66, no. 7 (2014):
1080–1101.
31. See Laruelle, In the Name of the Nation, 102–17.
RUSSIA AS A DIVIDED NATION 97
32. Pal Kolstø, Russians in the Former Soviet Republics (London: Hurst
& Company, 1995); David Laitin, Identity in Formation. The
Russian-speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca/London:
Cornell University Press, 1998); Charles King, ed. Nations Abroad:
Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet
Union (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
33. The following section is based on the systematic analysis of Materik
since 2001. Materik is the news portal of the Institute of CIS Countries,
available at http://www.materik.ru. I have studied all of them but the
archives have been stored online only since 2008. This analysis is
supplemented by several interviews conducted by the author with
Konstantin Zatulin and his colleagues at the Institute of CIS Countries
between 2002 and 2005.
34. Itogovye materialy. Kongress sootechestvennikov prozhivaiushchikh
za rubezhom () (Moscow: Drofa, 2001), 6.
35. Ibid.
36. Russkoe slovo (Russian word), no. 1 (2003): 14.
37. “O merakh po okazaniiu sodeitstviia dobrovol”nomu pereseleniiu v
Rossiiskoi Federatsii sootechesvennikov, prozhivaiushchikh za
rubezhom. Ukaz prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 22 iuniua
2006” (On the measures for providing help to the voluntary return
in the Russian Federation of compatriots living abroad. Presidential
ukaz of June 22, 2006), Rossiiskaia gazeta, June 28, 2006, at http://
www.rg.ru/2006/06/28/ukaz-pereselenie.html.
38. The repatriation program was largely a fiasco: foreseeing a possible
repatriation of several million persons, the program in fact enabled the
return, between 2007 and the end of 2013, of 162,000 persons. See
Ekaterina Trifonova, “Strana perezhivaet vplest pereseleniya sootechest-
vennikov iz Tsentral’noi Azii,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, February 20,
2014, at http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2014/0587/gazeta016.php.
39. On Russia’s citizenship policy, see Oxana Shevel, “The Politics of
Citizenship Policy in Post-Soviet Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 28, no.
1 (2012): 111–47.
40. See the foundation website at http://www.russkiymir.ru/fund/about.php.
41. See the agency website at http://rs.gov.ru/about.
42. “Federal’nyi zakon o gosudarstvennoy politike Rossiiskoi Federatsii
v otnoshenii sootechestvennikov za rubezhom,” March 5, 1999, at
http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/ns-dgpch.nsf/1a268548523257ccc325726f
00357db3/8440d36903c217a4c3257776003a73f5!OpenDocument.
43. Marlene Laruelle, “The Three Colors of Novorossiya, or the Russian
Nationalist Mythmaking of the Ukrainian Crisis,” forthcoming in
Post-Soviet Affairs 31 (2015).
44. “Address by President of the Russian Federation,” March 18, 2014,
at http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6889.
45. “Direct Line with Vladimir Putin,” April 17, 2014, at http://eng.
kremlin.ru/news/7034.
46. “Address by President of the Russian Federation,” March 18,
2014.
47. Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “The Pussy Riot Affair and Putin’s
Demarche from Sovereign Democracy to Sovereign Morality,”
Nationalities Papers 42, no. 4 (2014): 615–21. See also Marlene
Laruelle, “Beyond Anti-Westernism. The Kremlin’s Narrative About
Russia’s European Identity and Mission,” PONARS Eurasia Policy
Memo no. 326 (June 2014).
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