Nationality Policy: Russian Nation vs. Russian People?

Abstract

In January 2020, President Putin initiated a major constitutional reform. One of the changes concerns the question of the national identity of Russia's multi-ethnic state and more specifically, the role of the ethnic Russians in the context of all peoples in the Federation. Article 68 of the constitution defines Russian as the official state language, but the new version adds as an explanation for this special status that Russian is the language of the "state-forming people." This noteworthy wording corroborates a development which has been going on for ten years. The changes include the concept of Russkii Mir, the idea of the multi-national nation of the "Russian Federation with an ethnic Russian cultural core" and the frequent use in official contexts of the phrase "ethnic Russian (russkii)" instead of "multi-national Russian (rossiiskii)."