With the war in Ukraine evolving into a protracted ground-based war of attrition, the true origins of the conflict remain contested. Undoubtedly Putin's will was the defining factor, but what motivated that will? And does the Russian imperial spirit have a deeper origin? Lasha Tchantouridzé argues that the current conflict is a result of an unresolved Russian chauvinism that once provoked fear in the hearts of Soviet leadership.

The war in Ukraine serves as an arena where two major unresolved problems of the Russian Revolution of 1917 have come to the forefront. One can be described as the challenge of establishing Russian statehood. The other was known to the Russian revolutionaries as the threat of “great Russian chauvinism.” These two problems were critical for the Russian Marxist-Leninists as they were fighting not only the supporters of the ancient regime but also trying to define statehood for the new communist nation. While many commentators have attributed the invasion of Ukraine to Putin’s imperial tsarist ambitions, this drive comes from a form of Russian nationalism the revolution tried, and failed, to purge.

In his Ukraine invasion speech, President Putin delivered an hour-long example of what Lenin and his followers called “great Russian chauvinism” – an extreme imperial overreach and expansion of Russian power at the expense of smaller nations. Lenin, Bukharin, and Trotsky, among others, believed that great Russian chauvinism was the biggest internal threat to the revolution. From 1921 to 1930, Stalin emphasized the dangers of “great Russian chauvinism” in almost every major speech. Stalin believed the number one objective of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was “a decisive struggle with the remnants of great Russian chauvinism.” 

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In his Ukraine invasion speech, President Putin delivered an hour-long example of what Lenin and his followers called “great Russian chauvinism” – an extreme imperial overreach and expansion of Russian power at the expense of smaller nations.

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It is not unusual for revolutionary problems to remain unresolved for decades if not generations, after the violent uprising and overthrow of the previous regime are accomplished successfully. The question of the Russian state, and closely linked with it is that of the Russian nation. Before the October Revolution, Lenin and his supporters firmly separated “state” from “nation” in their theoretical reasoning. In his State and Revolution, Lenin supposed the old state was to be replaced by something called the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and organized as “democratic centralism.” At the same time, the nation was expected to be liberated from the clutches of the exploitative state and organized into a new unity. What this new “unity” was supposed to be was never defined before the revolution, during the brutal civil war and after the destruction of millions of people that followed it. Eventually, Joseph Stalin, the People’s Commissar of Nationalities, was tasked to settle the question of nations in the Soviet state. 

Stalin’s solution was to replace the old imperial Russian state with an asymmetric federation of states with Russia at its centre. Stalin developed his nationalist theory based on works by Otto Bauer, an Austrian social democrat, and Karl Kautsky, a Czech-Austrian-German social democrat. Stalin’s ideas outlined in his 1913 article “Marxism and National Question” influenced not only the organization of the new Soviet state but also concepts and ideas concerning nationalities used to this day in the Russian language and scholarship. According to Stalin’s theory, the peoples of the former Russian empire were divided into a hierarchy of national development and identity. At the top of this hierarchy was “nation.” Those identified as such were given the status of “the Union Republic” – formally independent states comprising the Soviet Union. Russia was among these, and so was Ukraine, the eastern borders of which have made the current Russian leadership deeply unhappy. 

In his war speech, Putin made ample references to the Russian Revolution and blamed Lenin for “the creation of Ukraine.” Many of Putin’s claims about history have very little in common with evidence or reality, and this one is no different. However, most of his belligerent statements about Ukraine and other post-Soviet states also represent Russian nationalist’s complaints about the Soviet past. While Ukraine and other states were confirmed and strengthened in their current borders by the Soviet regime, it did not do the same for Russia. The Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR) had the weakest and the least defined autonomous government within the Soviet Union. This was partly because Moscow was both the capital of the Soviet Union and the RSFSR – the latter was overshadowed by its senior partner, at least until Gorbachev’s Perestroika. But the main reason for downplaying the statehood and political identity of Russia was the fear of the “great Russian chauvinism.”

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Stalin’s ideas outlined in his 1913 article “Marxism and National Question” influenced not only the organization of the new Soviet state but also concepts and ideas concerning nationalities used to this day in the Russian language and scholarship.

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The borders of the Russian state also remained undefined under Soviet rule. Russian cultural past, except for its religious part, was glorified and promoted by the Soviets, but Russia’s political past and identity were diminished and even ridiculed. Apart from Peter I and Ivan the Terrible, its past rulers were largely condemned as greedy and bloodthirsty tyrants. The Russian collective imaginary was neglected and in its vacuum was replaced by a Soviet imaginary. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, how could Russians understand their own identity?

Unlike its European neighbours, the Russian empire never formed a nation-state. It remained a loose conglomeration of hundreds of distinct nations, held together by the power of the Russian arms and the police state. The empire itself was formally the property of the imperial family. The post-revolutionary settlement that resulted in a multi-layered federation with asymmetric power distribution was an attempt to settle the national question for those peoples that comprised the USSR. The Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the largest unit of the new Soviet state, acquired many autonomous political entities with various degrees of autonomy. Presumably, these were supposed to meet Lenin’s national unity and self-determination standards. However, it did not help the ethnic Russians understand what their state was and where exactly it was on the map.

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Thus, the national question for the Russian people remained unsettled and loose, deliberately so. This was done to thwart the threats posed by “great Russian chauvinism,” or as Lenin frequently called it, “great power chauvinism.” Far from being defeated by the revolution, judging by Russian propaganda, this extreme form of Russian nationalism is as strong as ever. Ironically, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation under Zyuganov has fully embraced what the Russian revolutionaries were so desperate to vanquish. One characteristic feature of the great Russian chauvinism is to depict Ukrainians (and Belorussians) as rural and backward Russians, stubbornly persisting with their backward and corrupted forms of the Russian language. Such sentiments were officially discouraged in the Soviet Union, but they persisted among Russian nationalists not only in the Soviet Union but among the Russian emigres. Michael Ignatieff is a former Harvard Professor, the author of Blood and Belonging, a former leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, and a former President of Central European University. However, regarding Ukraine, his academic views on the subject are not far removed from those of Putin and Russian nationalists.   

The Russian state remained legally and politically undefined within the Soviet Union – ideologically, this was not a problem because the state was supposed to wither away at some point. But it did not; instead, it turned into a much more oppressive and tyrannical set of institutions. The legal and political definition of the Russian state remained blurred, while the identity of the Russian nation remained associated with the new imperial rule. It did not help that the borders of the Soviet Russian republic were frequently changing within the Soviet state.

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In 1954, the Soviet government transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. This act was one in a trend of maintaining the fluidity of the state borders in the Soviet Union.

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In 1954, the Soviet government transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. This act was one in a trend of maintaining the fluidity of the state borders in the Soviet Union. Most importantly, the trend continued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with the Crimea transfer becoming a major stumbling block in delineating permanent state borders of Russia and Ukraine. 

President Putin alluded to the fluidity of the post-Soviet borders in his invasion speech. He argued that the organization of Ukraine’s statehood was not yet settled, it had to be settled, and it could not be properly done without Russia’s input. Putin blamed the Russian Revolution and the Soviet regime for benefitting Ukraine at the Russian expense. At the same time, he scolded Ukraine for the ongoing process of “decommunization” – Ukraine’s national efforts to eradicate harmful remnants of the Soviet past. Putin asked rhetorically: “Why stop halfway?”  sarcastically implying that he intended to “help” Ukraine destroy whatever remained in the country from its Soviet past. 

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A year ago, on September 30, 2022, Putin officially announced the annexation of Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhzhia. Russia has never controlled any of these provinces fully. This year, with the announcement of the annual military conscription, Putin stated that young Russian men would be conscripted from these “new Russian territories” as well. Promoted in Russia under the moniker of Novorossiya, these new territories do not have defined borders: the Kremlin press office has been repeatedly asked by journalists to explain where the Novorossiya borders were, but the question remains unanswered.   

As the contemporary Russian states looks ever more precarious, the beast of Russian Chauvinism looms ever larger in the collective imaginary. Wrapped up in the Ukraine conflict is a deep existential need of the Russian people to forge a new identity through expansion or self-destruct in trying. And for the West, support for Ukraine and thwarting Russia are not just military goals, they should be viewed akin to the policy of appeasement, where failure loses us not just Ukraine, but reawakens the expansionist Russian bear.