In 2000, Shchedrovitsky presented the main ideas of the "Russian world" concept in the article "Russian World and Transnational Russian Characteristics",[10] among the central ones of which was the
Russian language.[2] Andis Kudors of the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, analyzing Shchedrovitsky's article, concludes that it follows the ideas first laid out by the 18th century philosopher
Johann Gottfried Herder about the influence of language on thinking (which has become known as the principle of
linguistic relativity): the ones who speak Russian come to think Russian, and eventually to act Russian.[2]
Putin era
Russia's president
Vladimir Putin visited the
Arkaim site of the
Sintashta culture in 2005, meeting in person with the chief archaeologist
Gennady Zdanovich.[11] The visit received much attention from Russian media. They presented Arkaim as the "homeland of the majority of contemporary people in Asia, and, partly, Europe". Nationalists called Arkaim the "city of Russian glory" and the "most ancient Slavic-Aryan town". Zdanovich reportedly presented Arkaim to the president as a possible "national idea of Russia",[12] a new idea of civilisation which
Victor Schnirelmann calls the "Russian idea".[13]
Eventually, the idea of the "Russian world" was adopted by the Russian administration, and
Vladimir Putin decreed the establishment of the government-sponsored
Russkiy Mir Foundation in 2007. A number of observers consider the promotion of the "Russian world" concept an element of the
revanchist idea of the restoration of Russia or its influence back to the borders of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.[14][15][16]
Other observers described the concept as an instrument for projecting Russian
soft power.[2] In
Ukraine, the promotion of the "Russian world" became as early as 2018 strongly associated with the
Russo-Ukrainian War.[17][18] According to assistant editor Pavel Tikhomirov of
Russkaya Liniya [
ru], the "Russian world" for politicized Ukrainians, whose number constantly increases, nowadays is "simply '
neo-Sovietism' masked by new names". He reconciled that with the conflation of the "Russian world" and the Soviet Union within Russian society itself.[19] The
Financial Times described "Russian world" as "Putin’s creation that fuses respect for Russia’s Tsarist, Orthodox past with reverence for the Soviet defeat of fascism in the Second World War. This is epitomised in the
Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, 40 miles west of Moscow, opened in 2020."[20]
Russian Orthodox Church
On 3 November 2009, at the Third Russian World Assembly, newly enthroned
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow defined the "Russian world" as "the common civilisational space founded on three pillars:
Eastern Orthodoxy,
Russian culture and especially the language and the common historical memory and connected with its common vision on the further social development".[21][22]
Russkiy Mir is an ideology promoted by many in the leadership of the
Russian Orthodox Church.[23] Patriarch Kirill of Moscow also shares this ideology; for the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russkiy Mir is also "a spiritual concept, a reminder that through the
baptism of Rus', God consecrated these people to the task of building a Holy Rus."[24]
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine
In the wake of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the
Declaration on the 'Russian World' Teaching that was published on 13 March called it an "ideology", "a
heresy" and "a form of
religious fundamentalism" that is "
totalitarian in character".[25] As many as 500 Eastern Orthodox scholars allegedly were signatories.[26][27] They condemned six "pseudo theological facets". Those condemnations concern: replacing the
Kingdom of God with an earthly kingdom; deification of the state through a
theocracy and
caesaropapism which deprives the Church of its freedom to stand against injustice; divinization of a culture; Manichaen demonization of the
West and elevation of
Eastern culture; refusal to speak the truth and non-acknowledgement of "murderous intent and culpability" of one party.[27]
In the Declaration document, it is said to be an "Orthodox ethno-phyletist religious fundamentalism".[25]
The Russo-Ukrainian War is said to implement the idea of Russian world.[28][29][30]The Economist states that the "Russian world" concept has become the basis of a crusade against the
West's
liberal culture and this has resulted into a "new Russian cult of war". It says that
Putin's regime has particularly debased the "Russian world" concept with a mixture of obscurantism, Orthodox dogma, anti-West sentiment, nationalism,
conspiracy theory and security-state
Stalinism. It based this analysis on Putin's first public speech after
24 February 2022, wherein he praised the Russian army, using Jesus' words on love as a laying down of one's life. He also referenced
Fyodor Ushakov, an admiral who is the Orthodox patron saint of the
Russian Navy. Putin recalled Ushakov's words: "the storms of war would glorify Russia". The Economist also pointed to
Patriarch Kirill's declaration of the godliness of the war and its role in keeping out the West's alleged decadent
gay culture, and to the priest
Elizbar Orlov who said that Russia's "
special military operation" in Ukraine is cleansing the world of "a
diabolic infection".[31]
On December 25, 2022, in an interview for the national television, Putin, apparently for the first time, openly declared that Russia's goal—not only culturally, but territorially "to unite the Russian people" within a single state.[32] In June 2023 President Putin said those who had died in the invasion "gave their lives to Novorossiya and for the unity of the Russian world".[33]
Shnirelman, Victor A. (2012). "Archaeology and the National Idea in Eurasia". In Charles W. Hartley; G. Bike Yazicioğlu; Adam T. Smith (eds.). The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia: Regimes and Revolutions.
Cambridge University Press. pp. 15–36.
ISBN9781107016521.
Further reading
Koryakova, L. (1998a).
"Sintashta-Arkaim Culture". The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads (CSEN). Archived from
the original on January 7, 2006. Retrieved 16 September 2010.