Like ‘Soviet’ in USSR Times, ‘Russian’ Today is a Constructed and Imposed Identity rather than an Innate One, Shamolin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 2 – “’Russian’ like ‘Soviet’ is not an innate quality” in people, Roman Shamolin says. Rather, it is “nothing but a learned way of describing life” that the leaders of the country impose on the vast majority of people who don’t form it on their own but are prepared to accept what the authorities tell them.

            Putin often suggests that Russian identity is something that has always existed and in the form as it exists now, the anthropologist from Novosibirsk says. But that simply isn’t the case. Instead, it has changed as leaders have selected on or another possible model to impose (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/09/02/chto-znachit-byt-russkim).

            What it meant to be a Russian in tsarist times, in Soviet times and now, Shamolin points out, has varied enormously, not so much because those bearing that national self-identification have changed as because the state, dealing with a relatively passive population, has imposed its evolving understanding of what kind of Russianness works best for the regimes.

            A collective identity like “Russianness” is “formed in a very different way than individual identities are, not through personal experiences and experimentation but rather through the assimilation and repetition of ideas that are promoted by the authorities and that most people are inclined to accept.

            In tsarist times, to be Russian was to be Orthodox and loyal to the tsar rather than a member of a nation, Shamolin argues; In Soviet times, “with its focus on internationalism, specifically Russian things did not go beyond an interest in the distant past and folklore.” Now, of course, it means something much more significant.

            But what it does mean at present, the anthropologist says, is something that is the result of the decision of the authorities to stress only one of the two aspects of Russianness talked about in the 19^th century, the way such Russianness makes Russians relatives of Europeanness or the way it makes them separate.

            Consequently, Shamolin concludes, it is a fundamental mistake to accept the idea that Russianness is innate rather than the product of state policy or that it does not have the chance to change. Indeed, that is the most likely fate of any proclaimed identity, however ancient and unchanging its advocates claim.