Nationalism as Social Consensus: The Patriotic Brand

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The Kremlin does not utilize the reference to the nation only as an instrument by which to control the political spectrum. It also has a social function, that of creating a twofold consensus: one between citizens themselves, and another between citizens and the political elite. The first consensus is aimed at ending the ideological polarization that threatened Russia at the beginning of the 1990s and at recreating unity in a country that today is extremely divided socially. In fact it appears that there is not one but multiple Russias coexisting on the same territory in heteroclite times and social and cultural worlds: despite reductions in poverty, the social inequalities are widening; the oligarchy lives in a globalized world entirely disconnected from the rest of the country; the aspirations of the middle classes are far removed from the daily preoccupations of the rural population and parts of the provinces; and the national republics and the minorities all see the Russian state in different lights. The second consensus is born of the Kremlin’s primary goal to remobilize a Russian society accustomed to living in an environment divorced from politics. United Russia and the presidential administration are convinced that the political, social, and economic status quo currently in their favor is possible in the long term only if citizens also remobilize, in their daily life, to support the rebirth of Russia as a great power and therefore to support the party that embodies this revival.