The Trends of Russian Nationalism: from Imperialist to Putinist

Russian history from the Tsarist period, through the Soviet regime and down to the post-Soviet time has been inundated with Russia’s determined nationalistic moves that seek to control a vast territory of diverse peoples or reconstruct sovereign entities under its influence. The Russian nationalistic traits have popularly been treated as an affront to sovereignty integrity and disruption of the world order. The models of Russian nationalism have drawn interests of many researchers among whom have suggested that Russian nationalistic principle, particularly, in the contemporary time is archaic and irrational. This paper was undertaken to examine Russia’s nationalism principle with a view to understanding its course of movements and the reasons for the incurable nationalistic actions. The paper is qualitative, adopted irredentist perspective as its theoretical framework, and employed historical approach as a method of analysis. This paper suggested that what determines the trends of Russian nationalism goes beyond ethnic concerns, Russian anxiety for territorial security is also a prime factor.