Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug.31 – Moscow is now working to combat regional identities in predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays with new “Russia” propaganda centers. Five have been opened so far, and 13 more are planned in the next several years, an indication that the Kremlin is concerned about regional and not just ethnic identities.
These centers, the Horizontal Russia portal says, are intended to replace regional narratives with all-Russian ones, often at the cost of destroying much-loved institutions like the aquarium in Vladivostok to house the new facilities, by controlling propaganda messaging and reducing regional identities to folklore (semnasem.org/articles/2026/08/31/konvejer-regionalnoj-identichnosti).
Local people, even veterans returning from Putin’s war in Ukraine, have objected without success; but observers in the places where these propaganda offices have opened and are targeting regional identities, many in the population are angry because the money being spend on these centers should go to solving local problems.
Consequently, as so often with Putin’s programs, this one appears to be backfiring because its intention to replace all regional identities with an all-Russian one is only highlighting the ways in which Moscow is a threat and making people in the regions more conscious of what sets them apart from the center.
The establishment of these centers and the population’s reactions are thus a useful measure of just how strong regional identities are, identities that seldom attract the same scrutiny that ethnic ones do but that may be powerful and play a key role in re-enforcing ethnic identification.
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