The Russian nation was never born — it has always been manufactured. In tsarist times, it was a “triune” invention: Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belarusians. In the Soviet Union, it was the vanguard of the “Soviet people.” Under Putin, it has become a kind of political cement — a binding agent for the crumbling imperial brickwork of Eurasia.

Now, as the old ethnic formula collapses under demographic pressure, the Kremlin enters a new phase of nation-building: one less about blood and more about language, loyalty, and television.

Ideology as Identity

Modern Russia can no longer reproduce a majority ethnic Russian population. Ukraine is lost, Belarus is wobbly, and internal cohesion is evaporating. The solution? Construct a nation not from history, but from ideology. If someone speaks Russian, watches Russian TV, and praises the leader — they qualify.

Thus emerges the new “Russian”:

Ethnically Uzbek, Chechen, or Buryat.
Culturally molded by propaganda.
Politically useful as soldier and voter.

This isn’t a national community — it’s a utility class, repackaged as a people.

Chechnya’s Role: The Face of Loyalty

General Apti Alaudinov has become a face of this new nationhood. His statements — like calling Ukrainians “our blood brothers” — are less compassionate than performative. He represents a model citizen of the empire: loyal, charismatic, fluent in the language of state-sanctioned empathy.

In this vision, loyalty replaces lineage. A person’s ethnic origin matters less than their function: speak the right language, wear the right patch, believe in the myth. In a deeply fractured country, this is the only glue left.

Why the Cement Cracks

Yet the project is flawed at its core. A nation can’t be conjured from fear, resentment, and television alone. It needs cohesion — cultural, historical, emotional. Russia’s current project lacks all three.

Without an integrating mythology — like victory in WWII or a credible vision of the future — what remains is militarism, propaganda, and demographic exhaustion. Cement mixed without proper binding agents won’t hold.

Demographic decline, economic decay, and the corrosion of education ensure that any new “Russian identity” will be fragile. It is not a rebirth, but a taxidermy.

A People Without a People

What the Kremlin calls a nation is in fact a brand. The “Russian” label is being slapped onto anything that obeys — guest workers, paramilitary youth, or pacified minorities.

Russia is not building a nation. It is digesting its population, forcing everyone into a single mold that no longer fits even itself. The result will not be unity — but entropy wrapped in a flag.

In the end, the so-called “Russian nation” is not a community. It is an imperial method for managing human material. And even that, now, is coming apart at the seams.

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