A Political Nation is Emerging in Russia But One that isn’t Conscious of Itself but is Both Something the Kremlin Doesn’t Want and that Many Should Fear, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 6 – Putin has consistently worked hard to “ensure that Russia has no civil society, no ‘nation’ of citizens,” Sergey Shelin says; but the first signs of such a political nation, “albeit one that is deformed and quasi-fascistic, have emerged” in response to the Kremlin leader’s war in Ukraine.

            When Putin talks about national unity, he means something very different than the unity of the people of his country as a citizenry; and he has limited its rise. But despite his efforts, there is clear evidence that ever more Russians are identifying with and supporting what they view as their “own” army (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/11/06/natsiya-kotoraya-sebe-neponyatna-a-rezhimu-nezhelatelna-a210600).

            In many countries people begin to think of themselves as a political nation when they are at war and focus on the need to help their “own” soldiers win; and as they do that, they come over time to view themselves as a political nation. That is beginning to happen in the Russian Federation, although the process is far more advanced in Ukraine, the commentator says.

            When Russians were asked an open-ended question by VTsIOM about what they consider the basis of “the unity of their people,” 25 percent pointed to a shared territory, nine percent to a shared history, and eight percent a shared pride in their country, Shelin says. Only three percent mentioned shared interests or civic values.

            Other more exact closed-end polls in which respondents were asked to choose among a list of unifiers found the same thing. Again and again, the commentator says, Russians “themselves failed to identify any sense of civic-mindedness within themselves,” despite a war that has now lasted almost five years and requires some support “from below.”

            And such support exists. Indeed, “voluntary or at least semi-voluntary assistance to the army is not uncommon in the Russian Federation,” Levada Center surveys show, although there are very few such people in Moscow and other large cities and far more in the regions and republics which have provided the most soldiers for the war in Ukraine.

            For Russia as a whole, the share of people regularly involved in volunteer work in support of the army is perhaps only two or three percent, but “it is nonetheless quite significant for a population which has shown a traditionally limited capacity for collective action” on its own, Shelin argues.

            Indeed, according to him, “voluntary and active solidarity with "one's own" army—an army currently attempting to seize another country—is clearly present in Russia, even if it does not encompass the majority. Even more to the point, there are no other visible forms of collective civic engagement.”

            Shelin says that this is “the Z sector in the provinces” and consists of people “acting on their own initiative and not by order from above.” In fact, “the regime does not encourage them particularly effectively or skillfully, and, for the most part, they do not hold the regime in any great affection.”

“It is here—not in the capitals or among the intelligentsia—that we see the first living shoots of a Russian political nation, whether we like what it looks like or not,” Shelin says, noting that “personally, I do not like them given their proto-fascist character and the lack of any real self-consciousness of themselves as a nation.”

“But it is precisely these forces that will emerge and claim the right to speak first once Putin is gone—when the screws are loosened, or perhaps even torn off entirely,” he concludes. And they will matter because “neither those who have emigrated nor the ‘interna’" émigrés pose any real competition to them.”