Introduction

Abstract

In the early 1990s, Russia was depicted in the western media as a country in the midst of major social upheaval owing to its transition to a market economy. The image was one of Mafioso businessmen and oligarchs getting rich at the expense of a society that was wracked by misery, undermined by corruption, prostitution, and drug abuse, and that had abandoned its children and elderly persons. In the first decade of the twenty-first century Russia’s image — no longer one of pity — continues to be simplified: the country wields oil and gas as a weapon, is full of racist skinhead violence, has a KGB-suecessor security service with growing influence, and has returned to the Cold War.¹ These images, while not false when taken separately, are nonetheless incomplete. Moreover, their juxtaposition is arbitrary and does not allow for an accurate understanding of the past two decades of development in Russian society. With the western media portraying Russia as a country struggling with its old imperialist demons, it pays to return once again to a detailed examination of the question of nationalism in politics.