MOSCOW - It is often difficult to untangle the welter of competing agendas among Russian nationalists, a cacophony of ideas that was on display on Tuesday in the central event of their year: the Russian March, held on Unity Day, which marks the battle in 1612 when Russians united to expel the Polish Army from Moscow.
Fervent supporters of the Kremlin's policy toward Ukraine marched in the lead of the column, while the rear was composed of activists horrified by what they described as a Russian assault against fellow Slavs in that country. Between them came monarchists, groups bellowing anti-immigrant chants, socialists, Russian Orthodox believers and even some hooded pagans.
Perhaps most noteworthy, however, was the number of those who chose not to be there at all. At most a few thousand attended the rally. Organizers had anticipated that it would draw 10,000.
There were several reasons for the relatively low turnout. The government marginalized the event by relegating it to a remote southeastern suburb. The Kremlin also honored the holiday by organizing its own rally, We Are One, in front of the Bolshoi Theater in central Moscow. It was led by the usual list of government stalwarts: fading crooners, Olympic athletes and a cosmonaut, among others.
But perhaps the main reason is that President Vladimir V. Putin has adopted some central tenets of the nationalist agenda, even as he presents himself as a bulwark against its more unsavory, even 'dangerous,' ideas.
Or as Andrei Sinitsyn, a columnist for the business daily Vedomosti, wrote on Wednesday, the nationalist agenda has been 'nationalized.' For years - or at least the years when they were allowed to march through downtown Moscow - nationalists of all stripes were considered by the government to be a useful way to head off the revolution that senior officials were convinced Western powers were constantly trying to hatch.
But there has always been a certain level of unease between Mr. Putin and the nationalists, not least because some are prone to participate in rare but explosive public protests against him.
'President Putin, as 'the main nationalist,' doesn't agree with such voices of the holiday,' Mr. Sinitsyn wrote. 'Nationalism should be returned to the government, and it will decide how to implement and celebrate national unity.'
Mr. Sinitsyn was referring to remarks Mr. Putin made late last month at the annual gathering of international Russia experts known as the Valdai Discussion Club. 'I am the biggest nationalist in Russia,' Mr. Putin said. 'However, the greatest and most appropriate kind of nationalism is when you act and conduct policies that will benefit the people.'
Other strains of nationalism were unacceptable, he said. 'If nationalism means intolerance of other people, chauvinism, this would destroy this country, which was initially formed as a multiethnic and multiconfessional state.'
To put it more succinctly, Mr. Putin likes the kind of nationalism that allows him to annex Crimea from Ukraine ostensibly to protect ethnic Russians. He likes the kind of nationalism that spills over into foreign policy, as it has all year, in which he can tell the Western world that it has dismissed Russia for too long and that Moscow plans to reassert itself as a nuclear superpower.
Mr. Putin also endorses the kind of nationalism that reinforces traditional values. That was on display this week, too, when a statue honoring the former Apple chief executive Steven P. Jobs in the form of a six-foot iPhone was dismantled because Mr. Jobs's successor, Timothy D. Cook, came out as gay.
The parts of the nationalist agenda that Mr. Putin seeks to avoid include immigrant-bashing and calls for a more equitable distribution of wealth - as during Communist times.
'There are different kinds of patriots,' noted Tatiana Stanovaya, an expert on Russian domestic and foreign policy. Imperialists, for example, support the resurrection of the empire in all its multicultural glory, while hard-core nationalists push for the supremacy of only ethnic Russians.
The strategy of choosing part of the nationalist agenda seems to be working, with Mr. Putin still enjoying the robust poll numbers he gained after the annexation of Crimea in March.
Surveys indicate that fear of immigrants has waned slightly, while support for the Russian March dropped to 31 percent this year from 40 percent last year, according to a poll by the Levada Center, a nongovernmental Russian research organization.
Part of Mr. Putin's nationalist agenda includes burnishing Russian history under the czars.
Toward that end, state-run television ran a new movie called 'Sunstroke' by the director Nikita Mikhalkov during prime time on Tuesday. (A close ally of Mr. Putin, the main state-run news channel publicized the movie broadcast all day.)
The prerevolutionary scenes in the movie - a love story set along the Volga River - were filmed in vibrant colors, while the postrevolutionary scenes appeared uniformly gray.
'It was to manifest how Russia was once brilliant in the past and became bad in Soviet times,' said Vladimir A. Ryzhkov, an opposition politician.
'It was the time of the czar, the church, the bureaucracy and high culture, a time when an autocratic, czarist regime brought stability,' he said. 'The ideology of this movie is promoting old Russia as an ideal for current Russia.'
The problem for Mr. Putin at the moment, Mr. Ryzhkov and others noted, is fitting the Ukraine policy into that nationalistic ideal without provoking more Western economic sanctions.
The September agreement that brought a cease-fire and the outline of a potential peace deal to eastern Ukraine appears to be unraveling, not least because Russia supported elections last Sunday in the breakaway city-states of Donetsk and Luhansk that the Kiev government had declared illegal. Minor skirmishes also occur daily despite the cease-fire.
Many Russians, including much but not all of the nationalist camp, support the idea of extending diplomatic recognition to the two areas, which Mr. Putin called Novorossiya, or New Russia, after a czarist-era name for a larger region that included them.
Mr. Putin is under some public pressure to make the move. Gennady A. Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party and a deputy in Parliament, called for recognition during the official rally in front of the Bolshoi Theater.
Yet Mr. Putin knows that nationalism as foreign policy can go only so far. Russia is already suffering because of low oil prices and from sanctions that have restricted its access to financial markets, fueling inflation and leading to a more than 20 percent devaluation of the ruble since August.
Recognition of the separatist region would surely bring even harsher Western measures.
But the nationalist fervor he has stoked seems to urge him toward making that step. As one sign in the official march read, 'The bear is the master of the taiga.'
Said Ms. Stanovaya, 'He is between two fires now.'
Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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