When Russian Values Go Abroad: The Clash Between Populism and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Straddling the line between East and West both geographically and ideologically, the Russian Federation has a unique relation with populism. Vladimir Putin and his allies have been able to garner populist support for their increasingly centralized government and its active, interventionist foreign policy by relying upon traditional Russian cultural values, as well as a populist desire to see Russia return to the world stage as an economic and military superpower. Russian traditions have led to populist support for Putin for nearly eighteen years; however, his refusal to fully support ethnic Russians in Ukraine is now changing that relationship. The Russian government must now answer to the people regarding its goals in backing the Assad regime in Syria and supporting-overtly or otherwise-separatists in the Donbass, rather than assuming the Russian people will naturally understand how those goals advance their interests.The Western perception is that Russians believe that Russia deserves to be a regional power in Eurasia because the Soviet Union encompassed many of the states in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Within Russia, the opposite perception is true. Russians in the Soviet Union did not feel as though they enjoyed a privileged position within the Union; rather, Russia was the only republic that lacked its own capital, and the Soviet government spent less time encouraging Russians to embrace their nationality than they did encouraging other nationalities to embrace theirs.2 Every Soviet passport, for example, included a citizen's nationality, which ranged from current sovereign states to substate nationalities like Tatar or Chechnyan. The break between citizenship and nationality still exists today, and Russian nationalists believe that one of the government's primary concerns should be to promote the interests of ethnic Russians, both within the Russian Federation and outside of it. Then-President Dmitry Medvedev endorsed this belief in 2008, when he outlined Russia's five foreign policy principles, including the "unquestionable priority … to protect the life and dignity of [Russian] citizens, wherever they are."3 Although Medvedev is now prime minister, he and Putin still constitute the core of Russian leadership, and neither has indicated that this principle has changed.