New Wine in an Old Wineskin: Slavophilia and Geopolitical Populism in Putin’s Russia

The chapter argues that discourses of Slavic solidarity in Putin’s Russia have been experiencing a certain renaissance in the context of the crystallisation of the regime’s ideology. This ideology is based on conservative communitarianism, which among other things implies that the world consists of a number of autonomous ‘civilisations’. The Slavs, in this view, represent one of these civilisations, characterised by a unique set of values, incommensurable with ‘Western’ values. This chapter demonstrates that contemporary iterations of Slavophilia constitute a non-classical, identity-based ideology that portrays the Slavs as eternal victims of external aggression. Securitisation of the Slavic identity serves as a useful device for legitimising Russia’s special role in the Balkans.