A Growing Militarism? Changing Meanings of Russian Patriotism in 2011–2017

Since the early 2000s, the Kremlin has sought to make patriotism an overarching national ideology for Russia. In recent years, the state-promoted patriotism has become increasingly militaristic and the external threats have been more and more emphasized in the Kremlin’s discourse. At the same time, some streams of literature suggest that the majority of Russians have actually embraced the state’s vision of militaristic patriotism and the regime-promoted idea of strong political leadership over a democratic rule. Drawing on previous research and fresh and nationally representative survey data, we examine how public perceptions of patriotism relate to the state-promoted patriotism and preference for political authoritarian leadership in contemporary Russia. Our results indicate that while the Kremlin-promoted militaristic component of patriotism has slightly increased among the Russian public after the political events of 2014, it still differs from the state-imposed patriotism in many ways and remains more diverse across Russian society. Furthermore, the notion of patriotism in the mass opinion has remained by and large the same despite the ‘rallying around the flag’ after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.