Home » Fatherland and Strong State

Fatherland and Strong State

Myths about defending “Russian identity” and “the interests of the Russian Nation” are widespread in both government policy and within the far-right. As a result, it would be wrong to think – in the light of the Soviet Union’s role in smashing Hitler fascism – that it would be difficult to create national myths. It is difficult to find any reason other than “defence of the fatherland” for the heroic stories about the “Great Patriotic War“ against the German Nazi invaders that are being shown on TV almost every night in today’s Russia. In fact, the presentation of the war has politically mutated from Stalin-era ultra-patriotism to being supposed evidence of Russian superiority and propaganda for a “strong state”. In this atmosphere, nationalism replaces federalism and the mood of democratic freedom that characterised the country’s development between the late 1980s and early 1990s. The rapid decline of Russia’s infant democracy in the 1990s emerged from the government’s handling of the war in Chechnya and parliament’s extension of the powers of the secret services. Now, sham elections are staged without any real alternatives while restrictions on the independent media have created a climate of paralysis and fear. High-ranking politicians and MPs feel free to stir up racist prejudices against people from other former Soviet Republics. For example, in 2006, they banned people from Caucasus from continuing to work as market traders. State racism and nationalism make it possible for the right-wing extremists and their nazi allies to organise racist campaigns and assaults and murder in the slipstream.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <u> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <pre> <blockqoute> <img>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Images can be added to this post.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
                      ____        _   _____   _  _   
  _ __ ___    _ __   |___ \      | | |  ___| | || |  
 | '_ ` _ \  | '_ \    __) |  _  | | | |_    | || |_ 
 | | | | | | | |_) |  / __/  | |_| | |  _|   |__   _|
 |_| |_| |_| | .__/  |_____|  \___/  |_|        |_|  
             |_|
Enter the code depicted in ASCII art style.