Whatever wording is used to describe Russia’s current status within the “transition paradigm” (whose epistemological usefulness as of late has come to be increasingly questioned) – a “phony” or “imitation” democracy, a country that is stuck in the murky zone between autocracy and democracy, or an outright authoritarian system – there appears to be a consensus that Russia represents a classic case of a failed transition from totalitarianism to democracy.

What accounts for this sorry outcome? Some analysts tend to resort to old clichés, pointing to President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin pals’ KGB pasts and to the proverbial Russian penchant for a strong leader. Other Russian specialists search for deeper roots—such as Russia’s dearth of experience in representative governance and the populace’s general unfamiliarity with the principle of self-rule, the most basic principle within any democracy; the ignorance of civil rights; and the lack of any real notion of private property or rule of law compounded by a traditionally ineffective and often corrupt judiciary.

All these aspects of Russia’s historical-cultural inheritance have undoubtedly contributed to the country’s post-communist trajectory. I would argue, however, that at the heart of Russia’s failure to build a democratic polity following the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, is the fundamental, and so far unresolved, problem of national identity. Russia’s peculiar feature has been the country’s chronic inability to forge national and social cohesion—in other words, to build a political or civic nation—that is the key to the success of any democratic transformation.

Nation-building before democracy-building

There is an established school of thought that emphasizes the existence of an intimate link between nation-building and democracy. Before any society has a chance to become a democracy, it has to become a nation. On the other hand, political (civic) nations emerge only in societies firmly based on the principles of social contract and people’s sovereignty. Only under these conditions can a people perceive itself as a true source of power and the state bureaucracy—as a part of the people (“us”) that is vested with authority to run state affairs in the common (public/national) interest. Only in such a case is the entire community capable of imagining itself to be a cohesive entity—a unified “we.” This is how the civic nation is born, and this type of “imagined community” indeed represents something more tangible than a mere “figment of imagination.”

In Russia, more than in other countries, taking official documents and self-descriptions at face value can be very misleading. Whatever discursive realities are advanced by the 1993 Constitution that characterizes Russia as a “democratic federation” and “civic nation,” Russian national identity remains highly ambiguous, and the construction of the Russian nation appears to be a work-in-progress.

Although the Constitution implies that the Russian (rossiiskaya) nation consists of the citizens of the Russian Federation that emerged as a sovereign state from under the rubble of the Soviet collapse, there exist at least four other ways of conceptualizing the Russian nation.

First, the still rather numerous champions of Russia’s “imperial mission” argue that the notion of Russianness is forever blended with the notion of empire: there can be no true Russia without a multiethnic Eurasian empire led by Russia.

Second, there is a school of thought that conceives Russia as a community of the eastern Slavs—a view that advocates the integration of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and northern Kazakhstan. The supporters of this approach who are quite influential within the Russian bureaucracy assert that Russians are the “divided nation.”

Third, there is a vision of “Russia” as a vaguely defined community of Russian-speaking people who, irrespective of their ethnic origin, perceive Russian culture as their own.

Finally, there emerges an alarming tendency of conceptualizing Russia in terms of ethno-nationalism. The growing popularity of the slogan “Russia for the Russians,” attacks against representatives of national minorities and the emergence of organizations formed to fight “illegal migrants” are all symptoms of this trend.

Russia: a (still) non-existent nation

The disagreement as to what constitutes Russianness, coupled with the ambiguous attitude of the Kremlin leadership which asserts that the Soviet collapse was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” presents a significant obstacle to building a civic nation in Russia. Furthermore, despite the existence of formal institutions in the present-day Russian Federation (Constitution, elected president, national parliament, local legislative assemblies, etc.), the overwhelming majority of Russians do not identify with them, suspecting, quite rightly, that these institutions are a mere façade that camouflages the re-creation of a post-Soviet collection of “networks of personal dependence.”

Since Russia’s civic institutions do not function properly, the holders of formal Russian passports cannot regard themselves as full-blown citizens. But in a country where there are no true citizens, there can be no true civic nation either. Lacking the demos (people) with its sense of civic loyalty that binds together members of society and the ruling elite, Russia’s democratization process appears to be a non-starter.


* Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist and researcher who specializes in CIS political affairs. He is currently a fellow researcher at the Uppsala University, Sweden, working on Russian internal and external policies.

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