In 1996 the first President of New Russia Boris Yeltsin gave a task to his employees – to find a national idea for the country.
Here is a scan of Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russian Gazette) as of July 30, 1996.
The author of the best idea was promised 10 million rubles which was $2,000 as of 1996.
But there wasn’t just a newspaper challenge.
The whole year a group of specially selected people chosen by Yeltsin worked in the former Stalin’s country house in Kuntsevo
to formulate a statement, a motto, a message which could unite such a big and controversial country.
They achieved nothing.
They didn’t know then that Yeltsin’s successor (Puting) will not continue looking for a Holy Grail of propaganda,
but during the next 22 years of his rule he will start from fighting for economic development,
make a stop at Orthodoxy and Stalinism and finally come to… homophobia as the main value for Russia in the 21st century.
Let us follow this fascinating journey.
HOW DID THIS SEARCH START
Where did this obsessive need to find the Russian national idea come from?
Thanks to Yeltsin's biographer Timothy Colton we, at least, can say why Putin’s predecessor needed it.
On July 12, 1996 after his win in the election, Yeltsin addressed his campaign team.
He said that unlike the Russian Empire and the USSR, New Russia lacks “national idea” or “national ideology” and “this is bad”.
The President asked everybody to think about it and promised to check the results a year later.
That is to say, Yeltsin, who had been a professional party employee, couldn’t work without any ideology.
Most likely, he couldn’t even imagine it was possible. And not just him.
The same thing could be said about all the Russians who had just witnessed the USSR collapse.
Literally yesterday, we were building communism, and today supermarkets are being opened in the place of bankrupt plants.
Moreover, the unifying collectivist values are being substituted by the opposite ones – by individualism and personal well-being.
Such rapid changes scared the citizens and the people in power.
And it’s understandable.
It’s easy to imagine that a huge country starts to fall apart – not even because of external reasons,
but because of the absence of the ideological glue which united 190 nations in 89 regions.
Moreover, having no new ideology, the Russians tried to get back to the old one.
In the parliamentary election of 1995 the Communist party won with Zyuganov in its head.
He had all the chances to win the presidential election in 1996. It was a miracle he didn’t.
So, Yeltsin’s motivation was quite understandable.
Apparently, he tried to give the Russians a common inspiring idea which would overshadow the ideas
of communism and let people move forward without looking back.
But how to find such a marvel?
What should it look like? Maybe, it should be a comprehensive economic doctrine like the Marxist-Leninist theory?
Or on the contrary, should it be a capacious 3-4-words motto like “Liberty, equality, fraternity”
which the French have since the Revolution? Nobody knew the answer.
And at that point, the main thinkers of the country faced the first difficulty.
Basically, they were given a task like in an old fairy tale “Go there, I don’t know where, bring that, I don’t know what”.
So, in the years to come it was a cats’ concert. There are just some of the ideas:
“People’s power and free labor”
“Be the first always and everywhere”
“We’re not worse than them!” (about economically developed countries)
“Historicism, improvement, spirituality, democracy”
“Pushkin” (yes, just like that – the most comprehensive option)
“Make people the owners of natural resources”
Is it inspiring? Does it make you feel patriotic? Not really.
All those dusty phrases can’t even become a campaign motto, let alone a national idea.
Yes, the French Revolutionary motto also has three words, but they have history.
When you say “Liberty, equality, fraternity”, you imagine a fight for independence, revolution, national tragedy,
and a national victory, social system’s changes and new values adopted by the society.
Russian thinkers took the form but cut off the meaning. For example, what is “historicism” as a national idea?
What is the meaning of this? Will the whole country study history? Or “Pushkin”?
Yes, he is a poet of national and international significance. He may be called our pride, our value.
But not our idea, to be sure. We should note that there were decent attempts to formulate a national idea.
Gennady Zyuganov made a formula with 4 components: “The wish to have a strong government,
the saving of unique Russian civilization, social justice and democracy”.
But all in all, the national idea became such a hard task that the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia
Vladimir Zhirinovsky was against this search.
And the future Putin’s spiritual father archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) hinted that it’s unnecessary to trouble ourselves
with a specific wording: “Any idea can become national if the government decides so”.
He forgot to mention TV.
Years later, we can say for sure that he was wrong.
For example, the idea of war with Ukraine didn’t become either national or people-approved,
though the government wanted it badly.
It means you can’t take any idea and implant it into people’s heads even if you have trillions of rubles for propaganda.
To make the national idea take root, you should build it on the existing ideological base
or at least you shouldn’t juggle controversial abstract notions.
But how can we talk about consistency when Putin himself thinks that the national idea is a high rate of economic growth,
or patriotism, or the fight against parents’ numbering or LGBT propaganda?
No wonder, all those philosophers, thinkers and political experts couldn’t develop any unified ideology.
And most of the time they are busy predicting Putin’s wishes and not people’s mood.
So, what is a national idea?
According to philosophers and historians, a national idea is a set of meanings which explain what journey our nation did in the past,
why it exists now and where it wants to go in the future.
A national idea should give a person the reason to feel pride and explain some of their features, for example,
through culture or temperament.
Speaking the language of marketing, a national idea is a unique sales offer of a nation to the outside world and to itself.
Here we are and we are unique, we’ve made a long historic way and we’ll take a special place in the future.
And here we have the first difficulty. I’ve already mentioned that there are 190 ethnic groups in Russia.
And if there is a task to unite the country, you should find an idea that all the citizens relate to, no matter what ethnicity they are –
a Buryat, a Chuvash, a Russian, a Tatar, a Nenets, a Chechen or a Jew.
A common Russian idea. You know, there is a base for that.
The USSR has left a promising heritage to Russia – one language, one history.
Voluntary and forced rotation of youth ensured that every family has relatives and friends
in distant regions or neighboring countries.
And state orders and planned economy ensured all of us had a common past – a heavy table-book,
flower-print lampshade in the kitchen, a carpet on the wall and a cotton Father Frost under the Christmas tree.
Moreover, thanks to the Soviet cinema we have a common cultural background.
When you say at the party, “What a disgusting thing is your fish jelly” (iconic quote from a Soviet film “Irony of Fate”),
everyone understands what you’re talking about even if there’s no fish around.
Or when a complete stranger who doesn’t speak French at all understands you when you say
“Monsieur, je ne mange pas six jours”.
It means that a picture of a common blossoming future was enough to become a national idea.
It’s not a difficult thing to create such a picture – let’s say, we’ll be in the top-5 of the biggest economies in the world,
we’ll resolve the demographic crisis, and an average salary will be $4,500.
Isn’t it an inspiring motive to continue living and working in your native country?
Even with such initial data they could launch a propaganda machine and let the Russians feel valuable and united.
There’s just a small complication. Any idea needs time to settle in people’s heads.
It’s not enough just to say it out loud and let people deal with it.
There should be systematic work with the audience,
a constant reminder why exactly we are together and what a cool thing that all of us are here now.
FROM ECONOMY TO ORTHODOXY
But instead of systematic work over the idea of a wealthy life and higher level of well-being (which isn't bad),
Russian propaganda has passionately followed Putin for 20 years with his constantly changing guidelines.
At first, all of that was about economic growth, well-being and purely material values.
The reports about GDP growth, investments attraction, fight against inflation and ruble strengthening were on TV
and on the first pages.
And that's a good thing!
No one talked about religion and spiritual bonds then. Here we are, in 2010 the Orsk eparchy website asked,
“Is our President a religious man?”
And in 2012 after the scandalous performance by Pussy Riot, Putin decided that he didn’t mind the support of the Church
and the religious people.
And Putin really needed the support. Putin was accused of cheating in the elections, there was a wave of protests in the country.
Any Russians who were unhappy with what’s going on were called “liberals”, and the Church stood against “liberal values”.
We can say, it was an ideal situational ally.
So, there was a new agenda for Russia. Instead of economic growth – Orthodoxy.
Let those material values, high salaries and economic growth burn in hell.
Let’s go for spiritual values! Patriarch Kirill became a TV-show star and a hero of all the news programs.
And the government started to encourage the Church and everything that is connected with it.
The bureaucrats transformed into a congregation and started attending services, city administrations started
giving the most delicious pieces of land for churches’ building.
The Church got itself its own lobby in the government, although nominally, according to the Constitution,
Russia is still a secular state.
They even started supporting the Cossacks as a fighting Orthodox unit.
So, Russia met the new 2012 with a President who tried to sit on two chairs.
On the one hand, economic and scientific development, on the other hand – Orthodoxy and autocracy.
And he might have found a balance between them, like the leaders of many Catholic countries do, but he chose the third way.
I’d like to underline it again, all of that is happening within 10 years!
FROM ORTHODOXY TO STALINISM
After using the Church’s potential to strengthen his political position, Putin got obsessed with another idea.
He was taken by the USSR’s history.
And not as a list of facts, but as a vast field of various estimations and more convenient interpretations.
After all, the facts can be “amended” to make them fit the desired picture. Those “amends” became completely absurd.
For example, the creation of the USSR according to Putin is a good thing.
But the fact that de-jure the republics had equal rights, including the right to exit the USSR – this is bad, it’s a bomb ticking.
The persecution of the Church is bad, but the fact that the Communist ideology reminded Putin
of the Christian one is a good thing.
On the one hand, Lenin was a bad guy because
(according to Putin) he created Ukraine and even gave it the right to leave.
However, don’t you dare to remove Lenin’s monuments.
Otherwise, we’ll come and get those back. Meanwhile, Nicholas II, Lenin and Stalin made Russia great.
But Stalin’s political repressions were bad, there’s no excuse.
However, we’ll close “The Memorial”, they talk too much about the repressions – we don’t like it.
The Russians were regularly given a new interpretation of history. Today we are saying that the main value of Russia is Christianity.
Tomorrow – that we miss the USSR. The day after tomorrow – that the USSR is a new Christianity.
After that Lenin is a bad guy. Then he is good. Then Stalin is bad. Or he is good because he won the war.
If you miss one week of news programs, you will miss five more versions.
As a result, the government achieved the impossible while looking for a national idea uniting the whole country.
They’ve managed to get rid of the common past.
For the last 10 years the large audience of the governmental TV-channels was divided into supporters and opponents
of those conflicting versions depending on which version was closer.
There is just one point where all the versions of the past coincide – the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Although there might be different interpretations of this historic period in the media and, let’s say, in Putin’s head,
no one can deny the fact of victory.
But it’s one thing to admit that yes, we won due to incredible heroic efforts and tremendous losses.
And it’s a completely different thing to shout “We can repeat”,
make this celebration “with tears in our eyes” a massive feast and tell each other that we’ll make the rest of the world look like
a pile of ash.
Under Putin’s rule Russia made the journey from the point “we’re grieving and we won’t let that happen again”
to the point “we’ll repeat and we’ll show you” within less than 10 years.
After propagating this very motto, we ended up in the place where we are now.
But even this victory obsession failed to become “the banner of national identity”.
It’s more of a voluntary-compulsory official event.
As a result, instead of a simple and clear national idea we’ve got a Frankenstein monster.
This arm is from Orthodoxy, this leg is from Communism, our head is from autocracy,
and our a*s is in the economy – it’s not from anywhere, this is our own.
For some time propaganda tried to revive this monster,
and then it gave up and started giving random narratives without any unifying common idea behind it.
Until Putin got a new favorite idea – traditional values and spiritual bonds.
FROM STALINISM TO SPIRITUAL BONDS
In 2012 Putin diagnosed a horrible disease in the Russian society – the lack of spiritual bonds.
There was an explanation of what those spiritual bonds were. According to Putin, it’s mercy and compassion.
Don’t you agree that today it sounds terribly unlike Putin? As if his speechwriter is, well, me, for example.
Meanwhile, there was no serious reason to accuse the Russians of the lack of mercy and compassion.
The victims of airplane catastrophes were mourned, victims of natural disasters were supported, and human life was valuable.
So, the Russians thought the accusations in the lack of empathy might not be a spit in the face but at least
some strange nonsense they shouldn’t pay any attention to.
As a result, the idea failed completely because of its complete abstractness and because its creators were really far away
from the context.
Putin said “spiritual bonds” and the Russians made it a meme. Well, that was awkward.
There were some embarrassing attempts to explain what spiritual bonds are.
Quite fruitless as well as the attempts to find a national idea.
It wasn’t clear whether it was about being a virgin until the wedding, or about Pushkin (again) – who the hell knows.
Then propagandists decided to go in another direction – they started avoiding words “mercy and compassion”
and replaced them with such abstract words as “traditional values” which can be about anything –
Domostroy (a 16th century set of household rules) or homophobia.
They chose the last one. In 2013 they started an active “dehomofication” of Russia.
We don’t know who was the first to set such a course, but it’s quite obvious why Putin liked it so much.
He grew up in the backstreets of working districts of Leningrad with those peculiar notions of good and bad.
And now this bada*s is creating the country’s policy according to those notions, the culture of violence and deliberate machismo.
Of course, he hasn’t officially called gay people “fags”, but honestly, even if he does, no one will be surprised.
Propagandists adjusted quickly and made LGBT propaganda the face of those “spiritual bonds”.
Now, it all fits: ‘Why gay people are so scary? ‘They destroy spiritual bonds’ ‘What are spiritual bonds?’
‘This is what gay people want to destroy’
Everything is really smooth. You can put anything in this scheme. ‘Why do we have bad relationships with Europe?’
‘There are gay people there.’ ‘What’s wrong with them?’ ‘They destroy our spiritual bonds.’
Or ‘Why is the law against home violence so bad?’ ‘It destroys our spiritual bonds’ ‘Why do we need bonds like that?’
‘So that there were no gays’ It’s clear there’s no logic in that.
But that’s how propagandists’ logic was built.
Be lenient to them – they had to persuade people who loved the band TATU that LGBT is the main threat to the survival of Russia.
In 2019 Putin created the new flagship of traditional values.
There is just a small part of headlines about the most important problem of the Russians
(judging by the number of mentions in the media).
Parent No. 1 and parent No. 2. And note, those are for different years – 2019, 2020, and finally 2022.
And we haven’t even reached the second Google page. He definitely can’t let it go.
And it’s not because of some really important event. But Putin got stuck on a completely regular piece of news.
Here it is – in France in early 2019 the Parliament changed wordings in school documents so that
it was easier for same-sex couples and guardians to sign the documents.
It was about the permissions for tours or lesson schedules – anyway, it was some minor bureaucratic problem
which even shouldn’t be solved by the Parliament.
The French Minister of Education said that such matters didn’t even concern legislation, there was nothing to discuss.
And even in Russia in such documents they write “a parent” or “an official representative”.
Because the school needs information about the adults responsible for the child.
It can be a mother and a father, or a mother and a stepfather, or a variant of same-sex family which is really popular in Russia –
a mother and a grandmother.
And the school doesn’t care who sleeps with whom.
Of course, nobody has canceled the words and the notions of “a mother” and “a father”.
But Putin was so stuck there that he even used it to justify the war in Ukraine.
He says it just like that – we’ve taken Kherson to prevent these perversions. It’s not our path.
The Russian Orthodox Church supports it, justifying it with the fight against gay pride.
In case you don’t understand how the invasion of the neighboring country can make Russia free from sexual minorities,
don’t get upset – no one understands it.
WHY WILL NOTHING COME OUT OF IT
So, what’s 20 years later? What was the result of the national idea search?
There is no result. 20 years later the only thing Putin and his propagandists managed
to achieve is to make people pay no attention to what they say.
That even your yesterday dinner will be with you longer than another brilliant idea will live in the news agenda.
That the only useful strategy for your brain which will save your nerves and time is to completely ignore all their suggestions.
And surely, there is no point to suddenly love or hate someone (especially hate) if they tell you to.
People are so sick of them juggling abstract notions that another accusation on TV that you live
in the wrong way doesn’t even cause a discussion in the Internet.
And people stopped creating memes about that. People just don’t care, they don’t even want to joke about it.
And it’s the highest level of indifference.
Yes, Putin’s power really believes that people can be united not for but against something.
Putin is trying to sell Russian people contempt for the European values as a unifying idea either by parasitizing
on nostalgia and imperial greatness or by scaring them with NATO expansion and imaginary Russophobia
of the imaginary collective West.
But fortunately, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, first of all, because in the 21st century
you can’t make whatever-phobia a national idea.
And secondly, because people can’t be friends against someone just out of spite for long.
Even if you’ve been telling everyone that the ring of enemies is closing around your Motherland for 8 years.
Even if you dehumanize those enemies every day.
The Russians were taught to hate the Ukrainians for a year, and they danced under a popular song "Ukraine is still alive"
in the center of Moscow on New Year’s Eve.
Fortunately, people aren’t motivated by abstract scary things – people are more complicated.
People need faith in the future and the opportunity to plan this future. And what’s more important – to influence it.
Any normal government needs responsible and initiative citizens who will make plans for the future –
they will book their August holidays in January,
and in June they will select educational courses and activities for their kids for the next academic year.
They will find bold and unusual solutions wherever they work.
The government needs talented artists, poets, writers who will freely criticize the government and the country
because it’s the most effective way to identify problems and make life better.
The government needs dreamers who will inspire people around them and also pragmatists who will implement them in life.
And what no normal government needs is people’s disconnection, phantom traditional values,
normalization of violence and hatred which eats the society from the inside.
Long story short, everything Putin has been strengthening for the last 20 years.
So, if the time to find the national idea has come, the search won’t be difficult.
Anything Putin has been destroying meticulously can become a reference point.
It might be the recognition that human life is valuable and every person is irreplaceable.
It’s the equality of all the citizens regardless of their sex, age, nationality, faith or sexual orientation.
It’s a strict compliance with human rights laws and the superiority of the law, it’s the right of speech
and the opportunity to be heard.
It’s working social lifts and social institutions, equal opportunities for everyone.
It’s respect for history as for known facts instead of using it for manipulations.
The increase of the Russians’ level of life.
Finally, it’s a guarantee of such a future where people would be able to make long-term plans for their future.
All those ideas are bound to fail in Putin’s Russia.
Caring about citizens and their interests is something indecent and harmful in Putin’s Russia,
moreover it might be dangerous for the regime. But we’ll like it for sure.
Till tomorrow!