Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T19:03:00.072Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

7 - Rallying ’round the leader more than the flag: Changes in Russian nationalist public opinion 2013–14

Mikhail A. Alexseev
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Henry E. Hale
Affiliation:
George Washington University
Pål Kolstø
Affiliation:
University of Oslo
Get access

Summary

From May 2013 to November 2014, Russia's domestic and international environment underwent a tectonic shift. As hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens in neighbouring Ukraine rose up against the Moscow-backed and increasingly authoritarian government of Viktor Yanukovych and ultimately ousted him in early 2014, the Kremlin and the media it controls ratcheted up anti-Western rhetoric, dramatically increased its use of nationalist themes, and even employed military force in a sudden operation to annex the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and its port of Sevastopol, which Ukraine had since independence rented out to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The Kremlin then expanded its activity with a separatist insurgency in parts of eastern Ukraine. The Russian state, after almost a quarter century of retreat and recovery, finally appeared to be striking back to restore what many Russians saw as its rightful place in the world.

Theories of nationalism indicate that such events would have a profound effect on Russia's national and state identity among the general public – particularly given the intense use of state-backed symbolic politics (Suny 1993; Billig 1995; Kaufman 2001), the invocation of emotive mythology and rhetoric (Breuilly 1993), the direct contestation of state borders (Brubaker 1996), the putative need to respond to invasive international influences (Greenfeld 1992), the mobilisation of nationalist collective action (Hechter 1995; Wintrobe 1995), and changing social categorisations (Horowitz 1985). With these factors suddenly becoming more prominent during 2013 and 2014, one would expect significant shifts in support among the Russian public for various ‘institutionalized forms of [nationalist] inclusion and exclusion’ (Wimmer 2002: 9) – that is, attitudes as to which groups to include or exclude from the nation or the state. Indeed, there is a significant literature that argues state leaders often anticipate such upswells of nationalist and patriotic sentiment and sometimes even launch wars precisely in order to generate ‘rally-around- the- flag’ effects that can squelch dissent and boost support for a leadership whose popularity is flagging (see Levy 1989).

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Russian Nationalism
Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–2015
, pp. 192 - 220
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×