Civic Myth, Imperial Reality: Putin’s Political Nationalism
In Russia, now in the fourth year of its invasion of Ukraine, the public sense of “we” is shifting from an ethnic-religious basis to a civic and emotional one. Though many expected blood-and-soil nationalism to prevail, it has not. Being Russian is increasingly defined by citizenship, attachment to the state, and a declared feeling of Russianness. That makes the category more elastic for newcomers and for residents of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. At the same time, it is easier to weaponize against dissenters.
These conclusions come from the Levada Center’s new study of Russian identity, conducted as part of the latest round of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The data show a steady reweighting of identity markers: from ancestry and Eastern Orthodoxy toward civic loyalty to the state and its politics.
The pollster compared 2025 answers to those from earlier studies, and the shift is clear. The ethnic markers of Russian identity slipped: those who said ethnic-Russian ancestry matters fell from 81 percent in 2012 to 76 percent in 2025; those born in Russia dropped from 86 to 78 percent; and self-identified Orthodox Christians slid from 69 to 61 percent. Civic and emotional markers grew. “Respect for Russia’s political institutions and laws” rose from 81 to 90 percent, while citizenship edged up from 87 to 89 percent, and “feeling Russian” climbed from 89 to 95 percent, the highest since tracking began in 1996.
Civic-political markers, and especially loyalty to the current order, are at record highs. A majority (54 percent) now say you can become truly Russian through effort, whereas only 36 percent hold a strict “born-there” view. The age gap is clear: older cohorts (55+) lean more on birthplace and ethnicity than do younger cohorts (18–24).
This is likely the result of a deliberate policy. Russia’s state-run media have promoted a model of civic Russian identity, in which political loyalty is the decisive test. If you show allegiance, you are “one of us”; if you fall short, you are an outsider. This serves several strategic aims at once. It facilitates the incorporation of residents of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories and the millions of labor migrants the Kremlin will need in the foreseeable future. It stretches “Russianness” beyond historic ethnic boundaries, turning identity into a tool of territorial and political expansion. It supplies an off-the-shelf ideology for excluding dissenters from the national community.
At first glance, a shift from ethnic nationalism to state-centric nationalism seems at odds with the Kremlin’s anti-immigrant measures and the rising presence of ultra-right groups. Closer examination, however, reveals a division of labor: the authorities selectively tolerate or channel far-right activism to secure the loyalty of a loud but shrinking minority, while keeping it politically marginal. In the official discourse, the Kremlin unambiguously pushes political rather than ethnic nationalism: intense pride in the civic nation, its history and culture, and above all the state itself.
In today’s Russia, loyalty to the state determines the “friend–foe” test. Little wonder, then, that “respect for Russia’s political institutions and laws” now functions as a non-negotiable marker of a “true Russian.” Since 2014, sustained propaganda has recast an ostensibly inclusive civic Russian identity as the bedrock of unity.
This blend of selective inclusion for the loyal and strict exclusion for the disloyal gives Putin’s political-nationalist project a distinctly imperial character. A multiethnic polity is bound not by blood or creed but by hierarchical obedience to a single center. The governing authorities reserve the right to decide who belongs.
This vision is most clearly spelled out in Russia’s Nationalities Policy Strategy (for the period up to 2036), which Vladimir Putin signed in late November 2025. The document defines the foundation of the Russian nation as “civic unity,” meaning “the recognition by citizens of the Russian Federation of the sovereignty of the state, and its state and territorial integrity.” Because the Russian Constitution now treats the annexed Ukrainian territories as integral parts of Russia, any Russian citizen who rejects the annexation, by the document’s logic, fails to “recognize the territorial integrity” of the state. Such a person does not demonstrate the required “civic unity” and thus falls outside the strategy’s definition of the Russian nation. Dissent over the war and the annexations disqualifies a citizen from belonging to the nation itself.
Russians’ sense of national superiority is at a post-Soviet high. The share saying it is better to be a Russian citizen than a citizen of any other country rose from 70 percent in 2012 to 88 percent in 2025, an 18-point jump. Those calling Russia “better than most other countries” surged from 48 to 76 percent. Most striking, the share willing to support their country even if it is in the wrong climbed from 53 to 72 percent.
The change in answers to the latter question is telling. Note that the figures below count only those who “completely agree,” not “somewhat agree.” This is a story about conviction. As the undecided pool shrank, the firmly supportive camp grew. The share who “completely agree” that they should support their country even when it is wrong was going down over the years and reached 17 percent in 2014. By 2025 it had surged to 50 percent. The rise is driven largely by the collapse of the undecided: “don’t know” or ambivalent responses were 31 percent in 2012, 35 percent in 2014, and just 14 percent in 2025. The same pattern appears on the claim that Russia is better than most other countries: from 1996 through 2012, fewer than 20 percent completely agreed. The figure rose to 25 percent in 2014 and reached 54 percent in 2025, while the undecided share fell from 34 percent in 2012 to 14 percent in 2025.
Another survey shows that the share saying Russia should pursue its interests even at the cost of conflict rose from 51 percent in 2012 to 77 percent in 2025. The decisive shift came after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and accelerated after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Two dynamics seem to drive this. Years of state propaganda have entrenched a “besieged fortress” narrative, and escalating repression has steered respondents toward socially approved answers on regime-loyalty questions. Here, too, the hardening of pro-regime opinion has come mostly at the expense of the previously substantial undecided pool.
On questions not seen as direct loyalty tests, the swing toward isolationism is largely absent. For example, the share favoring a ban on foreigners buying property is essentially flat (72 percent in 2012, 73 percent in 2025). What has changed is the opposition to such a ban: it has nearly doubled, from 9 to 17 percent and the longer trend is clearer still compared with 2003 (83 percent for the ban; 7 percent against). This softening tracks with the broader shift toward a civic notion of Russianness. Under that rubric, a foreign property owner could still count as a “true Russian” in theory, provided he or she demonstrates the requisite political loyalty.
The share rejecting import restrictions meant to “protect” the Russian economy rose from 19 percent in 2012 to 26 percent in 2025, while the hard-protectionist bloc held steady at 55 percent. Despite the mass exit of Western firms, the share rejecting the claim that international companies increasingly harm domestic business rose from 11 percent in 2012 to 22 percent in 2025 driven largely by the shrinking ambivalent bloc, which fell from 35 to 22 percent as more respondents took sides. A similar low-risk pattern appears on cultural protectionism. Support for requiring Russian TV to prioritize domestic films and series ticked up only modestly from 58 to 65 percent, while outright opposition climbed from 12 percent to a record 21 percent. Here too the undecided cohort collapsed.
On issues not framed as loyalty litmus tests, the past decade shows a sharper split between conditional “sovereigntists” and conditional “globalists,” driven mainly by the disappearance of the undecided middle.
Even within the sovereigntist camp, views are not monolithic. Support for giving international organizations binding authority on select issues (e.g., environmental protection) increased from 56 percent in 2012 to 70 percent in 2025. At the same time, outright opposition to such supranational enforcement hit an all-time high of 16 percent (up from 7 percent), suggesting a hardened core of uncompromising sovereigntists even as the broader public grows more pragmatically open to limited cooperation. The relatively good news: this hardline camp remains under 20 percent, roughly comparable to the core of firm war supporters who favor continuing the war against Ukraine and oppose any peace talks.
Put simply, when a question is not read as a loyalty test, the picture gets more nuanced. On issues that do not risk branding people “disloyal,” Russians show a modest but steady rise in tolerance and a pullback from isolationism. That leaves a paradoxical two-track reality. Identity is rigidly politicized and increasingly imperial in tone, but everyday life noticeably more open and less xenophobic than a decade or two ago.
This is both the high point and the weak point of Putin’s political nationalism. It has built an identity surprisingly resistant to demographic and ethnic pressure, but it rests on one brittle pillar: sustained public trust in the current political order.
As long as that holds, the system hums. If it cracks through economic shock or elite rupture the whole edifice of “Russianness” could unwind in months. Under the civic-political veneer there is no deep ethnic, religious, or genuinely liberal-civic core ready to hold the polity together in a legitimacy crisis. In that vacuum, long-marginalized ethno-nationalist currents could reappear fast. Putin’s political nationalism is a clever short-term glue for a multiethnic state in self-imposed crisis. But as a long-term foundation for a modern nation-state, it is precarious.