Russia Doesn’t Currently have an Ethnic Russian National Movement but Will Eventually have a Russian Nationalist Revolution, ‘Russian March’ Veterans Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 4 – Two veterans of the Russian Marches which nationalists organized between 2005 and 2020 say that their country does not currently have a national movement of ethnic Russians, but both believe that one will emerge and that Russia like other countries will have national movement representing its largest nation.

            The Russian Marches were an attempt to create one, both say, but they were subject to repression by the Putin regime for the participation of some in these marches in the anti-government protests in 2012, something the Kremlin couldn’t forgive, and by the nationalist wave that arose after Putin seized Crimea (meduza.io/feature/2025/11/04/vnezapno-samym-russkim-stal-putin).

            The first of the Russian March participants, now speaking anonymously, says that the Presidential Administration “very much feared the emergence of an alliance of liberals and nationalists with the nationalists in the streets as street fighters.” But Putin’s moves against were what disordered and then destroyed Russian national movement.

            “Therefore,” he says, “there is no contemporary national movement.” And he explicitly says that he doesn’t consider the activity of the Russian Community and the Northern Man “a renaissance of the national movement,” although there are positive elements of each and out of them something may yet come.

            The second Russian March participant commenting on this is Sergey Bespalov, who later served as the coordinator of Navalny’s office in Irkutsk. He is optimistic: “Sooner or later in Russia will occur a classical national revolution. Putin has frozen this process for the time being, but it is impossible to defeat it.”

            He suggests that “Russia will become a state of the ethnic Russians or a federation of ethnic Russians and other peoples who populate its territory. People through the world feel they belong to some national group and the same thing will ultimately be true in Russia and this will take some political form.”

            Just what it will look like, Bespalov says, is as yet unknown, although he adds that “personally” he favors a broad federation,” one that won’t frighten the other peoples and make them nervous.