Loving Motherland Is Believing To The Future

Loving Motherland Is Believing To The Future
In recent years, the Russian government has promoted patriotism as a means to unify society and secure the legitimacy of Putin’s regime. This paper considers the effectiveness of this campaign by examining everyday understandings of patriotism among Russian citizens. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted in two regions in –2015, patriotism is lived and experienced among ordinary Russians as a personal, normative, and apolitical ideal that diverges significantly from official patriotic narratives. At the same time, Russians are convinced that the majority of fellow citizens are patriotic in the ways envisioned by the government. As a result, the government’s use of patriotism is more effective in raising barriers to collective action than cultivating legitimacy. At the same time, everyday forms of patriotism encourage citizens to sacrifice public choice and to tolerate authoritarian rule.
The cult of World War II once again occupies a hegemonic position in the frigid, increasingly militaristic cultural climate of modern-day Russia. A matter of great pride for the overwhelming majority of Russian people, the war serves as a model for group solidarity and a means of social control. It is used as a positive, character forming experience as each new generation is initiated into it through popular culture. Three recent films, the duology We are from the Future and The Fog, take on the role of the « ceremony masters » for contemporary Russian youth in its rite of passage. Essentially the vehicles of state propaganda, the films not only explore the idiosyncrasies of the proverbial Russian character, while reviving military traditions and encouraging civic responsibility, but also reflect the deep-seated anxieties of Russian society regarding its younger members. A keen observer of Russian society once remarked that when Russians speak of the War, they mean only one war, the Great Patriotic War of 1941-19453. Though it ended sixty-six years ago, its echo reverberates across time and space transcending political and cultural borders erected in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. It continues to excite popular emotions, as well as serve as a pawn in political and ideological battles of the ruling elites in the post-Soviet space. And even though various groups nowadays attempt to ascribe to it a distinct national colouring, for the majority of Russians it was a war fought by “us” (my) or “our lot” (nashi), a spontaneous reference devoid, at least on the surface, of any particularistic connotation. It is this unity of purpose, a “patriotic consensus” that many believe is lacking in modern-day Russia, something that has disintegrated together with the Soviet Union and that needs to be recovered in order for the nation to regain its social identity and preserve its political integrity.

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