Religion and state identity-building in the New Russia

Abstract

The Russian Federation (New Russia) is known for diversity in almost every aspect. Managing diversities has been both a crucial political project and a major challenge, particularly accompanying the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Along with the breakdown of the Soviet Union, existing Soviet narratives and identities that had served as the glue for decades were lost. Counter narratives and identities of the 1980s and early 1990s almost exclusively focused on ethnic and religious diversity and became the ideology of the independence movements that promoted the building of titular nation states. For some ethnic groups who have not felt represented in the emerging 15 independent republics, including the New Russia, those events paved the way for separatist movements that led, overall, to political trauma of gradual territorial disintegration and instability, and in some cases escalated into terror attacks, counter-terror measures, and even bloody civil wars.