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Russian Nationalism and the Duma Elections

Mark Adomanis considers the implications of the recent Duma elections in Russia: Why does the relative weakness of liberal opinion matter? Well firstly it suggests that we should be a bit wary about the supposed prominence of sophisticated urban youth in their early 20?s: from a political and demographic standpoint they are highly unrepresentative of […]

Mark Adomanis considers the implications of the recent Duma elections in Russia:

Why does the relative weakness of liberal opinion matter? Well firstly it suggests that we should be a bit wary about the supposed prominence of sophisticated urban youth in their early 20?s: from a political and demographic standpoint they are highly unrepresentative of Russian society.* It also suggests that the result of any democratic breakthrough would very likely be the opposite of what Westerners expect: rather than a more pro-Western and economically liberal Russia, a more representative government would almost certainly be more overtly nationalist and left-wing. It’s really not an accident or a “mistake” that the parties that benefited the most from the decline in support for United Russia were A Just Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation: there seems to be a resurgence of Russian leftism.

Adomanis is right about this, but I wonder why more Westerners haven’t grasped the relationship between increased democratization and rising nationalism and populism. Generally, the more democratic that other states become, the less likely they are to favor U.S. policies and economic neoliberalism, and the more likely they are to develop local versions of an illiberal political culture. We have been watching a strange spectacle over the last few days of Western critics of Putinism rejoicing because political movements that are even less sympathetic to liberal political values have benefited from popular discontent.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that Alexei Navalny, the opposition blogger, has ties to Russian nationalists. Seth Mandel worries that these ties will hinder his movement:

But Navalny also threatens to hold back the Russian opposition with his casual association with, and his movement’s possible co-option by, the country’s vicious nationalists.

It is more likely that Navalny’s nationalism is part of what has made his criticisms have greater political impact, but it’s not as if Navalny is the first Russian opposition figure to cultivate ties with nationalists in the name of rejecting Putin, since the latter are increasingly antagonistic to Putin. As Adomanis wrote earlier this week:

As I’ve written recently, Putin’s relationship with Russian nationalism is a pretty complicated topic and Putin is actually increasingly opposed by Russian nationalists and has lost credibility among them. The idea that Putin can simply flip some sort of switch and gain the support of nationalists is a pretty silly one, and the Kremlin has been deliberately moving away from Russki nationalism for several years now.

Naturally, opponents of improved U.S.-Russian relations here at home have seized on the election outcome as an excuse to call once again for scrapping the “reset,” and I suspect that is why there is so much hawkish enthusiasm for the so-called “awakening” in Russia.

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