A blind and militant attachment: Russian patriotism in comparative perspective

Abstract

Much of the literature on patriotic sentiment in post-Soviet Russia leans on the results of public opinion surveys administered to Russian citizens. Absent a comparison group, such evidence, while helpful, can leave one adrift in trying to assess the significance of any particular polling result. Here, we draw on a shared set of questions from multiple waves of the Inter-national Social Survey Program's National Identity and Role of Government modules, as well as the World Values Survey, to benchmark the responses of Russians to those of citizens in a diverse group of middle and high income countries. This exercise highlights that while Russians are not unusual in the degree to which they have a benign attachment to and/or pride in their country, they stand out for espousing a patriotism that has remained consistently blind and militant since at least the mid-1990s. We speculate as to the underlying cause and highlight a potential consequence: the nature of Russian patriotism has lowered the cost to the Russian leadership of military aggression.

Pre-war experimental evidence that Putin’s propaganda elicited strong support for military invasion among Russians

“…We show that ordinary people in authoritarian Russia are “prudent” ( 20 , 21 ) in the sense that they discriminate between the severity of different types of threats and do not appear particularly belligerent in the absence of threats. These findings resonate well with recent experimental research on citizens in the communist one-party state of China ( 22 , 23 ) but contrast findings from survey-based research, which argues that Russians score higher on measures of so-called “blind and militant patriotism” in comparison to populations in other countries ( 24 ).…”

“…These findings resonate with recent experimental research on authoritarian China, showing that the Chinese are not all that different from citizens in democratic Western states ( 22 , 23 ). Research that is based on ordinary surveys has highlighted how Russian citizens are more committed to so-called “blind and militant patriotism” ( 24 ), at least in comparison to new and old democracies in the Western world. Yet, our experiment shows that strong baseline preferences for this malign form of patriotism do not necessarily in and of themselves translate into high baseline support levels for military aggression.…”