When does patriotism turn into nationalism? The rapid social mobilisation in support of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 caught many observers off-guard and spurred a lively debate about the influence of nationalism in domestic and foreign policy. Surprisingly, observers paid little attention to the Kremlin's promotion of patriotism, focusing instead on the attitudinal or intellectual sources of the ‘new Russian nationalism’. For over a decade, the Kremlin had invested significant resources in patriotism through the media, education and policy, seeking to unify society around the themes of shared statehood, sacrifice and achievement. However, as patriotic programmes grew in complexity, they also created the space, opportunity and infrastructure for the populace to use patriotic observance to celebrate dominant ethnicity. This chapter argues that the emergence of nationalism in Russia may be understood in terms of the ethnicisation of everyday patriotic practices.

I begin with a brief discussion of the divergent ways that scholars have analysed patriotism and nationalism. Next I examine the historical relationship of patriotism and nationalism in Russia and the Kremlin's recent articulation of patriotism as state doctrine. I then consider vernacular understandings of the relationship of patriotism to nationalism, scrutinising how patriotism is understood and infused with ethnic meaning in the daily lives of Russians. Recognition of the place of dominant ethnicity in discussions of patriotism can shed light on the extent to which Russians’ sense of patriotism is (to paraphrase Stalin) patriotic in form, but nationalist in content.

Thinking theoretically about patriotism and nationalism

Despite considerable disagreement about the nature of the relationship of patriotism to nationalism, most scholars agree that the two concepts are closely related. Constructivist theories of nationalism see the relationship between concepts as relational and continuous. For Benedict Anderson, patriotism is the opposite of racism (rather than nationalism), observing that ‘nations inspire love, and often profoundly selfsacrificing love’ (Anderson 2006: 141). Michael Billig took the point further in suggesting that patriots are but nationalists who perceive their own nationalism as quintessential, beneficial and necessary (Billig 1995: 55). In Rogers Brubaker's formulation, patriotism and nationalism are overlapping and flexible political languages, encompassing ‘ways of framing political arguments by appealing to the patria, the fatherland, the country, the nation’ (Brubaker 2004: 120).