There is a national consensus in Russia

The RUSSTRAT Institute presents a transcript of the speech of the editor-in-chief of the REGNUM news agency at the round table “Russia: what image of the future meets the goals of national development?” held on June 1, 2022 in the REGNUM news agency, organised by the RUSSTRAT Institute and the REGNUM news agency.

To begin with, I am convinced that for most of us, the main dates in our history are May 9 and April 12. This is a question about our technological achievements. At the same time, we have an obvious national consensus on May 9. A few years ago, 85% of respondents considered May 9 to be the main holiday. Even the New Year is smaller. A little, but less.

The horror of the situation is that in Ukraine, there were 86% of such citizens who considered May 9 to be the main holiday. But now the situation is on a kink. I will also mention the figures that reflect the consensus. 90% support the "Immortal Regiment". 90% are against the pension reform.

The essence of the pension reform is not in changing the retirement age, but in the fact that, for example, my parents are miners. They retired early and continued to work - and they were the richest people in our area. The new pension term does not provide an opportunity to earn honestly in parallel and finally become rich at least in old age.

Further. 90% are against concessions on the Kuril Islands, but now this issue is already outdated. 90-95% are in favour of Crimea. This is also a consensus. Please note that our polls traditionally show 15% (maximum - 20%) of people who consistently identify themselves as the liberal opposition. There are no more than 15% of them, but it can be 20% on a case-by-case basis. In other words, the consensus also covers this liberal part of our people. At least half of them support common values, and this is the national consensus.

I will return to the polls in detail later, but for now I want to digress on the issue of young people. And a little bit to say about your personal life, I'm sorry. Before my eyes, our young people have produced an undeniable miracle of patriotism and love for the Motherland. Our young people are the ones who are now fighting for the liberation of Ukraine from Nazism. All of them are under the age of 40. It's precisely them!

We thought gadgets were important to them. But no. Patriotism and love for the Motherland are in the tradition of these people, these beautiful young people, our soldiers. Their main traditions are to love and protect their Motherland. It's a miracle that we're seeing this now! There is an extremely critical VTSIOM poll - what percent support the special operation. 70-72%. That's a lot! This is the consensus figure.

I want to say, excuse me, I have the paternal feelings of a father with many children, that my son is now approaching Moscow from Mariupol, where he was a volunteer. I'm proud of him.

Further. In our history of sociological research, there are numerous surveys, but the vast majority of them are surveys of small groups, 1600-2000 respondents. Yes, the samples are representative, and it’s possible to roughly follow them, but in the 35-year history of sociological research in our country, no more than 15 surveys were conducted on a huge sample. That is, 40,000-50,000. About the attachment of Crimea, for example. REGNUM conducted a series of such surveys, where the number of respondents was 50,000 or more. This is a special, very expensive program.

So these "big" surveys impressed me. I was impressed by the huge number of monarchists - 24-25%. I understand that this is not the same "reckless monarchist", of course, this is a different type of monarchist. And then the miracles begin. We asked - which side would you be on in '17? We asked this question in December 2019. For the Bolsheviks! The total number of Bolshevik supporters is about 60%. Again, I don't say that people have a good idea of that reality, but they are driven by a sense of justice. This is important!

What is the percentage of people who believe that a revolution in Russia is likely in the near future? "Revolution is coming soon" - 46%. "It will never happen in our lifetime" – less than 45%. We know that 15% of the electorate always automatically votes for any government. They don't care, as long as everything is good. We know that the main thing depends not so much on the share of voters, but on their mobilisation. I remember very well the experience I had in October ' 93. The streets are empty, there is no police, and active citizens walk freely back and forth and perform. This is what mobilising the electorate is all about.

Further - to the question of the national idea. So, Russia is a multinational state - do you think it is possible to call the inhabitants of Russia a single nation? This is data for 2019, then came the coronavirus. Answer: Yes, we are one nation with different ethnic groups – 41%. "No, we can only talk about the union of peoples, but not about a single nation" - 29.1%. 14.2 % - "it's hard to say, but we are a special nation”. These are "it's hard to say" and "yes, we are all one people" – 55%. That's a lot, it's a dynamic majority. It's good.

Then we study our people. Question: Who is a Russian? Personally, I am a fierce polemicist in this area completely. I experienced different moods in my youth, and now I see people constantly barking on social networks about what kind of nationalism is useful, what kind of harmful. Ethnic - harmful. Political, general cultural, general linguistic, national - useful.

But our people are traditionally bad with terminology and they are not afraid of the word "ethnic". At the same time being a perfect "Mendeleyev table". If these ethnic demands were addressed to them, of course, they would not pass any inquisition. I remember in 2010, in December, there was a mass rally on Manezhnaya Square - after the murder of a football fan.

And so everyone wanted, one way or another, to "snuff the Caucasus". A crowd of young people came out and two leaders of this nationalist movement spoke there. One is Jewish, the other is a person with an Armenian surname. Just to ask him, son, how are you going to win the Caucasus - in yourself, or what? It turned out later that he was angry with his Armenian father.

Who do you think is Russian? 21.6% answered that the one who belongs to the Russian culture. 22.3% believe that this is a state of mind. Citizenship - in the sense that we are all Russian regardless of nationality – 19.3%. And only 34.2% believe that in the general sense, "Russian" is a nationality. But how do they understand nationality? - Here it is already necessary to study further! I understand nationality as personal self-determination. Aleksandr Blok and Vladimir Dal are Russians. And the crazy devil is the one who will deny it.

Question: Do you have any representatives of other nationalities in your family? "It seems so" – 21.5%. "Only one representative" - 11.3% answer fearfully. "No" - strictly answers 38.7%, although this does not mean that they do not exist. Because traditionally, people do not remember their ancestors and grandfathers very well.

I remember very well from the sociological data how the ethnic identity changed in Kuban. In 1905, the Imperial Academy of Sciences recognised the Ukrainian language as a separate language. The census of 1897 defined Russians, Belarusians, and Malorossiyans by their language. By the decision of the International Ethnographic Congress, which was held in St. Petersburg in 1873, language was recognised as the main, if not exclusively the main, sign of nationality.

Against its own census of 1897, the Imperial Academy of Sciences recognises Malorossiyans as a separate nationality, and in the execution of this, all the Southern Russian dialects - Kuban, Donskoy, Voronezh - are painted over with the paint of the Ukrainian language. In the Soviet years, the Kuban people entered with such a shaky identity. And in 1941, they approached the war, despite the Ukrainisation of Soviet Ukraine and the adjacent regions of the RSFSR, already by Russians.

About multiculturalism. Question: How do you feel about interethnic marriages? Calm - 57.1%. This is the powerful and impenetrable foundation of our people. We look further at the nuances. I am generally positive - 16.6%. I personally have a positive attitude, as an Armenian relative, I will tell you this. But an important detail is how many people deny such marriages, how big the potential is.

There is a great sociological basis for those who try to formulate Russian ethnic nationalism in Russia. "Very bad" attitude to interethnic marriages - 4.6%. "Rather bad, because there will be a difference due to mentalities" - 10.9%. These people - they are clearly visible in social networks, they are active, but they are marginal. I'm not saying it shouldn't bother us, it's a disaster.

Question: Do you consider the position of your people in Russia to be oppressed? “Yes, my people are oppressed, their situation is worse than others” - 19.3%. It is necessary to look for how these small shares in other issues suddenly grow to 19.3%. What are they, these people? This must be sought.

Finally, do you consider yourself a nationalist? "Yes" – 4.3%. "Rather yes" - 11.1%. Let's remember that 4.6 and 10.9 have a bad attitude towards interethnic marriages. An absolute match: those who have a bad attitude towards interethnic marriages consider themselves nationalists.

Here, of course, is the problem and the area of responsibility of our media creators. No one bothers to wage a fierce struggle to explain the meaning of the words "nationalist", "political nationalism”, "ethnic nationalism".

I remember when about 14-15 years ago Vladimir Putin, having already nominated Medvedev as his successor, praised him and said "a normal guy, a nationalist”. And Medvedev's staff gasped - my God, how, what to do, where, why?! Because for many, the definition of "nationalist" is marked negatively. Yes, this is true and nothing can be done about it.

Do we need a unified ideology? We are the last Soviet people who found the Soviet Union in adulthood, we remember well and know what the ruling ideology is. Party Committee, lies, hypocrisy, empty talk and attempts at hypocritical dictation.

I even now remembered exactly where my party committee room was located at the history department. They thought they were running the process. And then everyone instantly moved into joint ventures and so on. This is a drift, the drift of the ruling party at the end of Gorbachev's rule was very noticeable. We remember it very well - and it was a shame.

I can't help myself, I don't want such a unified ideology. We swam, we know. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, I see a lot of things, while I work. I read between 1,200 and 1,500 news items a day for work every day. I see who is most fighting for the establishment of a single official ideology in our country. I don't want to have offend anyone, but these are the ones who have already made it up while sitting in their kitchen. I feel like they made it up for themselves.

We are a large multinational country, we are a complex nation. We will never be a nation-state with an ethnic dictate. Comparisons with neo-nazi Ukraine, with the Caucasian states - we must reject immediately and definitively. But this conversation is constantly going on. Good. They've been rejecting the need for a unified ideology all their lives, so I say, okay, guys, I give up.

I am willing to agree that we need to formulate a single ideology, but this should not be a treatise with a large number of pages. No one but the author will study and take notes on this. This means that we really need to define individual concepts that are read on one hand, which should form the basis of the consensus, which, as we see, is there. Sociologically recorded consensus.

Putin once said that our ideology is patriotism. What should the national development goals be subordinated to? I will say that I want, of course, to come up with three points. God loves the Trinity. But I only came up with two. The first is sovereignty and independence. What economic protectionism also serves for is our economic independence. No speculative distribution of our property.

They took billions of dollars' worth of gold and foreign exchange reserves away from us - and no eyelids were batted. Because they were already there. They no longer served us. Firstly. Sovereignty, independence and protectionism that ensures them. We can afford it. We are a big and rich country. If we don't sell ourselves at retail, we will win.

The second point, which I will modestly state not as a slogan, but as a value. Social justice. Our state is a social state. Modern capitalism is already social-liberal, and social policy has existed in the world for 150 years. I am a socialist at heart and by conviction, but some people may be afraid of my socialism.

All right, don't be alarmed, son, don't! Provide us with social justice and everything will be fine. Equal chances! No commercialisation of the public sector, free education, free healthcare, decent pensions. This is the real, practical socialism that we can call social justice. That's all, comrades.

What else do we need?

Thanks for your attention.