Pride of the nation: Searching for a new national idea, the Kremlin hedges its bets on patriotism

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – Dec. 17, 2012)

On the day that President Vladimir Putin called the nation to patriotism last week, Josef Stalin, wearing his recognizable overcoat against the frost, had a lot of “foreign stuff” to gripe about.

“How can you talk of patriotism?” he said, puffing on a smokeless pipe as he stood at the entrance to Red Square. “My granddaughter came all the way from Lipetsk to see the Lady Gaga concert. Who is Gaga? All that foreign stuff is being hyped through the Internet for our children and grandchildren.”

Stalin, who is actually a retired actor named Anatoly Tokar impersonating the Soviet leader for tourists, was not alone in his confusion about Putin’s recent rhetorical overtures to patriotism.

Patriotism, Putin said, should be the “consolidating base” of government policy. “To be a patriot doesn’t just mean to love and respect your country and your history… it means serving your society and country.”

Putin’s state of the nation address last week ­ the first since his election for a third nonconsecutive presidential term in March ­ sought to beef up state patriotism in an apparent bid to reclaim his government’s waning legitimacy in the wake of a year of opposition protests.

The problem, critics say, is that the government is appealing to a kind of patriotism that doesn’t really exist in Russian society: one based on service to the country rather than on belonging. This tactic could potentially backfire by widening the gap between the government and the people who believe that the country’s ruling elite serves only its own interests and cares little about the common good.

Belonging problems

“Patriotism is a lot like being a football fan,” said Konstantin Krylov, a nationalist activist and philosopher who heads the Russian Public Movement, and member of the recently elected oppositionist coordination council. “Imagine being a fan of a [European] team. It’s fun, but it also makes sense, because your team wins.”

“Now imagine if you’re a fan of a team that almost never wins,” he went on. “It gets lucky sometimes, but only because all the others were out of luck. But it’s never won the world championship or anything. That’s what’s happening with Russian patriotism.”

Polls show a population that seems to be proud of a country that doesn’t quite exist any longer ­ and ashamed of a dismal present, suggesting a patriotism that can only have a past tense.

While 76 percent of respondents said they were proud to be Russian citizens, according to a recent poll by the Levada Center, an independent polling agency, 52 percent said they were ashamed for Russia over its “current situation” ­ an apparent reference to rampant corruption, social inequality and bureaucratic neglect of the public, most frequently cited as Russia’s worst social ills.

Many continue to believe in the sacrificial feat of World War II, when the Soviet Union helped defeat Nazism, but lost more lives than any other European nation ­ including Germany ­ in the process.

Some 80 percent said they were proud of Russia’s history, a turbulent mix of triumphs and tragic waste of human capital in the 20th century.

Tokar, Stalin’s impersonator, said he wasn’t quite sure what kind of patriotism Putin was talking about.

“Patriotism is for a person [who knows] that he is protected and supported by his government,” Tokar said, the last traces of the Georgian accent he was putting on for tourists gone. “What patriotism is there now?”

Lenin’s holy relics?

If Putin mentioned patriotism seven times during his speech ­ calling on lawmakers to ban state officials from holding their savings abroad and to force businessmen to conduct their transactions under Russian jurisdiction ­ then he was also addressing a country deeply split over the meaning of patriotism and increasingly confused about its national idea.

Putin’s recent statements have also sought to underline not just patriotism, but an oft-criticized tradition of the government’s almost religious sacredness.

Meeting with supporters on Dec. 10, two days before his state of the nation address, Putin let slip a reference to Vladimir Lenin’s tomb on Red Square that struck a particularly controversial chord for a government that is increasingly seen as conflating religious and secular power.

“Even the Communist ideology came out of religious postulates,” Putin told his supporters. “They say that [Lenin’s] Mausoleum doesn’t conform with traditions. Why? Look at the relics at the Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra [monastery].”

That comparison was noted by many commentators as yet another one of Putin’s trademark jests, but the president didn’t come up with that parallel out of nowhere.

“To regain legitimacy, [the government] is going back to moral values, to Christian and Orthodox values, which were reconceptualized into Soviet values,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist and former member of the ruling United Russia party, who took part in the meeting with Putin as a delegate.

Recent polls show that the government’s fears of losing legitimacy are not entirely unfounded. Following his election in March, Putin’s credibility rating slipped to a record low ­ falling from 41 percent in January to 34 percent in November, according to the Levada Center. Levada head Lev Gudkov pointed out in November that Putin’s ratings had been declining steadily since the autumn of 2008.

The Kremlin’s trend of tapping into its centuries-old “symphony” with the Orthodox Church has been gaining momentum since earlier this year, when three members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot went on trial after their attempt to confront that symphony head on with their “punk prayer” in Christ the Savior Cathedral.

In the scandal that ensued, the government’s official stance was that society’s moral and religious values ­ and not the Kremlin ­ were the real plaintiffs in the trial.

Polls suggested that the statesanctioned prison term fell short of popular sentiment. Some 35 percent said they felt the women deserved the two-year prison sentence they received, while 43 percent felt two years in prison was too lenient a punishment. Just 14 percent said the sentence was excessive, according to a Levada Center poll conducted in September.

That sentiment reflected what appeared to be a conservative backlash from below, such as controversial calls to revive Cossack patrols and backing anti-gay propaganda laws.

“People have lost their orientation, knowledge of good and bad, topics that were taboo are coming to the open…. People feel as though there is no truth,” Kryshtanovskaya said.

Alienating patriots

If an American patriot can be seen with a flag on his porch, the practice is virtually unheard of in Russia, not least due to the government’s de facto monopoly on state symbols, and, by proxy, on patriotism.

“Even in the 19th century, ‘patriot’ connoted ‘troublemaker,'” Krylov said, adding that the Russian government has traditionally sought to quell genuine patriotism to prevent it from posing a threat to its rule.

Paradoxically, in the attempt to exploit conservative values as base for the new boost of patriotism in Russia, the government may actually be alienating the potential patriots it is trying to woo.

“The reaction to his words for the average person watching television would be, ‘He’s saying all the right things,’ but there is no emotional connection to Putin’s appeals,” Krylov said. “This is typical for official Russian patriotism.”

The fact that social stratification increased more rapidly under Putin, even as average salaries continued to rise, coupled with the rampant lack of accountability among officials and particularly among the security services, fuels public distrust. A new call from above asking citizens to love their Motherland and to serve it better is likely to ultimately be rejected, analysts said.

Tokar, Stalin’s impersonator, held out his Samsung smartphone to show pictures of a historical movie he starred in. He was proud of that, just as he was proud of his history.

“Please don’t write anything bad about me,” he said in parting. And though it came from a man who looked like Josef Stalin, it sounded far more like a plea than an order.