Paul Goble
Staunton, Sept. 8 – Many outlets have suggested that the Moscow Procession on Sept. 6 which was led by Patriarch Kirill and attracted some 100,000 people who marched behind the newly discovered relics of Dmitry Donskoy was an outpouring of extreme Russian nationalism (e.g., doxa.team/news/2026-09-07-moscow-krestny-hod-ultrapravye).
But the authoritative SOVA human rights monitoring group says that only about two percent of that total consisted of representatives of extreme nationalist groups such as the Russian Community, the Northern Man, and Forty of Forties and that most of them did not participate as groups but as individuals (sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/news/racism-nationalism/2026/09/d54483/).
That doesn’t mean that the other participants were not animated by Russian nationalist thematics – Patriarch Kirill certainly was – but it does mean that their nationalism at least as expressed on this occasion was far more the tradition kind focused on the history of the country and deferential to the state rather than promoting a narrow “Russia for the Russians” agenda.
Such Moscow processions have a long history. The first “all-Moscow” one took place in 1525. They were an annual event in tsarist times but suppressed by the Soviets, but they were revived in 2025 when officials said that 40,000 people took part (nazaccent.ru/content/45911-v-obshemoskovskom-krestnom-hode-prinyali-uchastie-100-tysyach-chelovek/).
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