The theme of nationalism is especially interesting in these two articles. While the currents of Russian nationalism seem sinister when mediated through a Western lens in these articles, what role could an increasing patriotism play in Russia’s future? Tayler’s picture of an apathetic or jaded Russian populace, which has “stopped feeling outrage and resigned [itself],” predicts a potential rise in “Russian nationalist sentiment,” which will “find expression in ever-more-bellicose pronouncements from the Kremlin, especially if the West and NATO” keep encroaching upon its “former spheres of influence” (Tayler). Meanwhile, Ioffe’s portrait of Navalny as a corruption-fighting champion of transparency also sheds light on his “pragmatist”‘s nationalism. Are these trends reconcilable with the progress he and others are trying to effect? Navalny’s “advocating the repatriation of illegals…and the use of pistols against lawless undesirables” (Ioffe, 32) is characteristic of sentiments that often devolve into dangerous ideology (though he maintains that he is “not an ideologue.”)
“‘When we make these questions taboo and don’t discuss them, we hand over this extremely important agenda to the radicals,’ Navalny says” (Ioffe, 32). How could issues of immigration, among others, be addressed more productively? In a culture so “isolated and infused with a messianic sense of its own superiority over the West” (Tayler), xenophobic, and concerned with ethnicity, the repetition and continued normalization of these attitudes remains disturbing.
