Russia should belong to Russians, and all others dwelling on this land must respect and appreciate this people. – Alexander III.
For the first time in more than a century, the Russians have a state that they can call their own, a state run by and for the Russian people – the hallowed “Russian National State” (RNS) that has been the holy grail of Russian nationalism in the post-Soviet era. At first glance, this seems like a questionable, if not extraordinary, assertion. As I have myself pointed out in the past, Hillary Clinton’s claim in 2016 that Putin is the “godfather of extreme nationalism” is something that is only taken seriously by the political horseshoe that is neoliberalism.txt and the American Alt Right, the sole difference between them being that the former think it bad and the latter think it good, whereas in reality both of them are merely projecting their own parochial fears and fantasies onto Russia. More importantly, this would also seem strange to significant numbers of Russian nationalists, who would immediately bring up Putin’s claim that the slogan “Russia for Russians” – a sentiment that is consistently supported by half of Russians in opinion polls – is the preserve of “fools and provocateurs.”
However, it is actions, not words, that count, though I would note that even so far as words go, Putin now saves his invective for proponents of “Russia only for Russians”; although this is a strawman so far as Russian nationalism is concerned, the quietly inserted qualifier is nonetheless acknowledged and appreciated. As regards actions, the Putin administration in the first half of its third term has adopted the core Russian nationalist program nearly wholesale and embarked on its practical implementation. So broad and all-encompassing is the shift that, just as academics came to classify what happened between Putin’s rejection of Western moral supremacism in the Munich speech of 2007 to the gay propaganda law in 2013 as a “Conservative Turn” (Nicolai Petro), so I believe future historians will classify the 2018-21 period as a “Nationalist Turn.” Thus, just as the First Age of Putinism in the 2000s was marked by unideological technocracy, and its Second Age during the 2010s was defined by conservative retrenchment, so I believe that the Third Age, the 2020s, will be defined by the political ascent of ethno-aware (as distinct from ethno-nationalist) Russian nationalism.