Putin, Propaganda, Medieval Russia and Covid-19

In April 2020, Vladimir Putin, discussing the Coronavirus crisis, explained to the Russian public “everything passes, and this will pass. Our country has repeatedly gone through serious trials: both the Pechenegs and the Cumans tormented us – Russia dealt with everything. We will defeat this coronavirus infection. Together we will overcome everything.” Western observers are perplexed by the reference to medieval tribes, but the Putin government has consistently made use of references to Russia’s medieval past as a propaganda and educational tool. Read on to find out why Russians aren’t as confused by references to ancient tribes as westerners might be!

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Vladimir Putin's government has consistently used the past as an opportunity to selectively create and recreate a desired national identity. The almost unlimited power of Putin the Duma, the almost entirely state-owned nature of the media, and the power of the government over the education system has enabled the regime to support a form of nationalism informed by myriad national myths stretching from the foundation of the very first Russian state to the Soviet era. The Putin-era's obsession with the national pride of the past is evident on TV and the streets of Moscow in reinstated, grandiose Victory Day parades, histrionic outpourings of grief over the Siege of Leningrad, the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, and the renaming of Independence Day as 'Russia Day'. In the wake of the turbulent 'Wild East' of the 1990s and under the purported threat of terrorist attacks, the loss of national structural integrity through devolution or independence of Caucasian regions, and the pressure of a buoyant China to the East and united Europe to the West, the power of the old to reassure and unify is a vital tool in the filling of an ideological vacuum with Putin's self-selective Russian national idea. Where the role of other media is well explored in academia, this essay examines the place and role of medieval Russian literature in Putin's national equation, concluding that it is an oft-neglected but essential aid to the regime in creating and affirming Russian unity, and that its treatment is both commensurate with and equal to that of other historical and literary topics.

Discussion of the place of literature in post-Soviet Russia has tended to focus on the dichotomy between the recently passed 'old guard' , the classics of the Golden Age and modern works (often the lack of work of high standing or quality). A common topic is the falling number of regular readers: Russia, the nation of readers, has become a nation of TV watchers and, increasingly, internet users. Without a doubt, the issue of nationalism and literature have been closely linked in the 2000s. The infamous trial of neo-Fascist Eduard Limonov in 2002 led the accused to compare himself to Nikolai Chernyshevsky - 'We are no criminals, but honest Russian patriots' - and pro-Putin youth group Idushchie vmeste ('Marching Together') have arranged book swaps where works by 'deleterious' writers could be exchanged for approved ones. The influence and importance of medieval works seems to be little explored. The status of the works of most relevance here – the Primary Chronicle, Ilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace, and the Lay of Igor's Campaign – is generally assumed to be that of museum pieces: interesting but of little relevance to current political or cultural developments. Nevertheless, recent incidents suggest the growing desire of the government to present these texts within the framework of a unifying national idea. Here I present them as an interpretive tool for the literary, historical or political scholar interested in how the new Russian forms his or her identity – and has it formed for them.

The campaign prior to the 2012 Presidential Elections of March 2012 gave Putin – the inevitable winner – a chance to publicise a reaffirmed and increasingly conservative vision of Russian cultural history in a frenzy of television appearances, high-profile speeches, newspaper articles and online publications. January 2012 saw the publication of a series of essays by Putin on various themes in national newspapers. “Russia: The National Question” / “Rossiia: Natsional'nyi vopros”, published in the independently-owned Nezavisimaiia gazeta, outlined the then-Prime Minister's purportedly new approach to immigration and ethnicity.  In a somewhat convoluted and contradictory argument which apparently heavily plagiarised the work of sociologist Valery Tishkov, the article claims that 'the colossal flow of immigration' from famine and war-struck regions into Russia threatens the nation. Europe, it continues, is countenancing the failure of multiculturalism and condemns 'forced assimilation' as a catalyst for disloyalty. Fundamental to Putin's argument is the idea that the nation-state as idea – crucially, the 'the state historically built exclusively on the basis of ethnic identity' - is in crisis. Putin sharply criticises xenophobic nationalists who would see the end of the country itself before it admits immigrants, and attributes the Russian problem to the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the claim that 'internal animosity and strife' can only be overcome by the 'strong will of the people', Putin suggests that he is the unique voice of the people (thus the only figure capable of resisting the trenchant threat of the immigrant horde).

Thus Putin's essay simultaneously attacks ultra-nationalists and multiculturalism while promoting a multi-ethnic, unified state through the lens of a nationalistic understanding of culture. In a nod to Russian history, he references the Mongol hordes, the chaos of 1917 and the turbulent 1990s, suggesting that he holds the key to establishing a strong Russia: 'The core, the binding fabric of this unique civilization – is the Russian people, Russian culture.' In spite of the claim to 'national unity', what Putin has in mind here is in fact Russian unity: a concoction of European Russian history led by white, European Russians, rather than any ethnic or religious minorities. The vacuum of cultural history is filled here with two principle references to literary concepts. Firstly, Putin proposes a plan to compile a list of 100 books that 'must be read by every Russian high school graduate'. The proposal is by its very nature culturally reductive, but I deal with the medieval components in a later section of this essay, since the list has subsequently been released and deserves independent examination. Secondly, Putin makes explicit reference to both the Primary Chronicle and Ilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace to support the idea of a Russian 'multi-ethnic' state, as a place of 'ongoing process of mutual development'. In fact, the manner in which he quotes these texts is both misleading and contrary to his argument. By their very nature, these texts prioritise white, Orthodox and European Russians over their ethnic minority countrymen, and suggest a Russian Orthodox messianism totally out of character with the state Putin is purporting to develop.

Putin's reference to the Primary Chronicle reads as follows: 'the multinational character of the Old Russian state is described in the Primary Chronicle as such: 'For the Slavic race in Rus' includes only the Polyanians, the Derevlians, the people of Novgorod, the Polotians, the Dregovichians, the Severians, and the Buzhians, who live along the river Bug and were later called Volhynians. The following are other tribes: Chud, Merya, Ves', Muroma, Cheremis', Mordva, Perm', Pechera, Yam,' Litva, Zimegola, Kors', Narva, and Liv'. These tribes have their own languages”'. He further supposes that this foundational inclusivity is a 'special quality of Russian statehood'. Aside from the further cultural implications of using the Primary Chronicle in this context, the quote is entirely misleading. The text of the second sentence should read 'the following are other tribes which pay tribute to Rus'. The omission vastly alters the balance of power between the supposedly united tribes: they are not equal but subservient to the Slavic-speaking tribes. Accordingly, the nation may not have been, as Putin rightly asserts, one of 'racial purity', but it was one of racial hierarchy.

The textual gesture here must be read as more symbolic than factual, in spite of the implication to the contrary in Putin's article. The Chronicle's early segments – from which Putin's quote is drawn – are in essence not historiographical but mythical in nature, regardless of the chronicle's supposed annual recording function. The text in fact begins in the era of pre-time, starting with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, a Genesis-like foundation that lends the nation of Rus' the veneer of a 'chosen people', and includes clearly apocryphal tales like that of the visit of Saint Andrew to the country. The Chronicle itself is the source of the Russian nation's foundational myths, rather than of historical facts. For instance, the sections dealing with the Baptism of Rus' imply that the time has come for the Russian people to glorify their ruler, Vladimir, as the bringer of religious enlightenment to his people. The role of hyperbolically mythologised but strong-willed decision-makers is central to the Chronicle: the links with Putin's centrality as prime decision-maker in 21st century Russian Federation needs no explanation. By linking himself to the age of mythical foundation, Putin suggested that Russia has the chance, under his command, to enter a new era of idyll and prosperity.

In spite of the omission of the key part of the second sentence, and the especially mythical status of this early part of the Primary Chronicle, one might argue that Putin's citation is the suggestion of the idea of multi-nationalism on which the Russian state's historical successes (of which the Putin's regime makes so much symbolic use) were built. Logically, it would follow that the text of the Primary Chronicle surrounding the quote is thus the story of the flowering of the nation before the Mongol invasion destroyed it. In fact, the narrative immediately proceeds to inform how the Rus' political will was imposed by force on the fractured tribes of the proto-Slavic world. As it moves into the epoch of determined time, listing entries by the date of their occurrence, the Chronicle documents how 'Oleg began military operations against the Derevlians, and after conquering them he imposed upon them the tribute of a black marten-skin apiece', and followed the next year with the military conquering of the Severians. Early Rus', according to the Primary Chronicle, was not a period of inter-Slavic flowering but an era of brutal internecine strife. The supposedly inspirational foundation myth presented in “The National Question” is entirely and deliberately misleading; the omission of a key turn of phrase and the presentation of an illustrative quote bereft of context demonstrates little more than Putin's conscious shaping of cultural identity through the judicious choice and reshaping of cultural heritage.

Moreover, one might question how relevant the quote is to the demographic qualities of the 21st   century Russian Federation. The issues facing the country's 'colossal immigration' – to quote Putin – have little to do with Severians, Polovtsians or Buzhians, tribes long since subsumed into the mass of white, European Russians. The mass of visible immigrants into Russia (i.e. excluding white, ethnic Russians moving from former Soviet Republics) are from the Caucasian Central Asian republics. It is these migrants that are most commonly passed up for jobs, subject to verbal abuse in public and educational institutions or violent attacks as extreme as murder. The unspoken truth of Putin's “National Question” - and its answer – is that it completely fails to address or acknowledge the difficulties regarding the reception of Muslim immigrants. By citing two texts of a fundamentally Orthodox Christian nature, written by monks for pious believers, Putin not only, as shown, establishes a hierarchy of nations with European Russians at the top, but completely excludes Muslims from even occupying a place on that hierarchy. This echoes the highly pro-Orthodox nature of the Putin regime's desired culture, which xxx I shall examine throughout this paper.

The quote from Ilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace (written sometime between 1037 and 1050) is perhaps even more disingenuously presented in “The National Question”. Putin claims that 'The theory of a 'Chosen People' is rejected in one of the earliest Russian philosophical-religious works, the Sermon on Law and Grace, which preaches the idea of equality before God'. This slight interpretation of the Sermon, here supposedly repudiating ultra-nationalists' ideas of racial superiority, could not be further from the truth of a comprehensive reading of the text, which would in fact suggest quite the opposite. Here I briefly present the salient details of the text's historical context, followed by a detailed examination of Putin's claims to its message. While the Sermon is broadly historiosophical, dealing with the conversion of the Rus’ to Christianity, the role of Vladimir I in that event and the importance of his son Iaroslav I in the present, it is delivered in a highly panegyric style: it clearly serves a political purpose beyond that of a didactic sermon.

The religious elements of Ilarion's sermon emphasise the superiority of the New over the Old Testament, expressed in terms of the title’s opposition of ‘Law’ and ‘Grace’. He then describes the coming of Christianity to Rus’ thanks to Vladimir I, stating Rus’ superiority over ancient Israel in the opposition of the ‘font of the gospel’ to a dried up ‘lake of the law’. The text ends with a highly panegyricised encomium to Vladimir, which links the old ruler, ready to rise from sleep, to the flourishing Kiev of the present and its current master, Iaroslav. The fledgeling Rus’ state now appears independent and, thanks to the almost teleological firmness with which the spread of Christianity and the triumph of old over new are presented, morally and politically irreproachable. The use by Putin of another foundational text is significant, since the references to both the Primary Chronicle and the Sermon allude to the entering of a new period of national flourishing at the behest of a single ruler. In addition, the presentation by Ilarion of a supercessionist view of history, with the right to rule of the present prince constantly affirmed, further suggests the inevitability of a Putin electoral victory for those familiar with the text.

In regards to the claim Putin makes, Ilarion's treatment of non-Russian nationalities is highly one-sided, almost totally inimical to a rejection of the idea of a 'chosen people'. He begins by comparing the pre-Christian state of humanity - bathed in ‘darkness’ and devil worship – with the enlightened nature of God’s salvation brought to Earth. Judaism, in Ilarion’s eyes, was defined by the domination of Law over man. Law - Judaism - meant the preeminence of law over man, but through Christ’s act of salvation, Grace dominates in the present. The text is liberally furnished with a series of antitheses, both religious and non-religious in nature, which textually echo the antithesis of Old and New Testaments, Law and Grace, divine and human, bondage and freedom: the Russian, therefore, ought to be read as the new, the free, the religious, the morally correct. The Jewish, on the other hand, is undesirable, ancient and outmoded. Contrary to Putin's suggestion, this is a text of one ethnic nation's cultural superiority over all others, painted in binary opposition: hardly surprising from a text written by a religious leader in a recently-baptised country subject to constant, dangerous internecine strife.

Of more relevance to our real reading of Putin's regime in terms of the usage of these texts ought to be the centrality of the strong leader to the text. Ilarion places - as does the Primary Chronicle  - Vladimir at the centre of the process of Christianisation. He took the lead in the baptismal event, and, accordingly, Ilarion ascribes to him the qualities of other, more well known, baptisers: Peter and Paul, who brought Christianity to Rome; John the Theologian, who brought it to ‘Asia and Ephesus and Patmos’; Thomas, for India; Mark, for Egypt. ‘Every nation’, he claims, ‘honours and glorifies its teacher’: the implication is that Vladimir ought to be raised to the laudatory heights of these forefathers. If we read Putin's employment of the text beyond the parameters of the unequivocally erroneous 'chosen people' assertion,  one must come to the conclusion that the link to this foundational period of laudable rulers, baptisers and flourishing Kiev is a desirable one for a Putin regime that has staked its entire reputation on its ability to turn the chaos of the 1990s into economic and cultural stability.

While the use of the Primary Chronicle and the Sermon on Law and Grace is evidently downright misleading in “The National Question”, yet indicative of the Putin regime's treatment of history, the mooted idea for the introduction of the idea of a list of one hundred books to be read by every schoolchild is of more interest in the long-term. Putin's suggestion to 'survey our cultural authorities and formulate a list of 100 books […] to be not just memorised in school, but read independently' has moved from proposal to reality. While details of at which age the books are to be read and how they are to be presented in the classroom remain scanty as of the time of writing, the Ministry of Education released the list, preceded by a foreword brandishing the unilateral consultation that produced it, in January 2013. The list has appeared to produce little controversy in the public sphere, yet it is highly representative of the Putin-sponsored nationalism evident in “The National Question” and throughout the regime's interference in the cultural sphere. In the educational sphere, the government has displayed a keen interest in standardising the examination and learning process,   an area in which it has almost absolute control. It is able to manipulate syllabi and curricula (of both the list of one hundred books and the EGE) according to its own demands. The treatment of medieval literature in Russia's educational institutions, especially in primary and secondary schools, is another indication of the extent to which old texts are relevant to the officially approved sense of nationality in the 21st century.

The “List of 100 Books on the History, Culture and Literature of the Peoples of the Russian Federation” by the wording of its title suggests the multi-national inclusiveness promulgated by Putin in “The National Question”. However, the composition of the list suggests this is another example of semantic misdirection. In fact, it is filled with European Russian authors (the expected Dostoevsky and Tolstoy), embellished with the ornamentation of establishment-friendly Soviet Muslim writers: Chinghiz Aitmatov's works may be Muslim in setting, but they were readily accepted by the Soviet literary community; Rasul Gamzatov was awarded the Stalin Prize in the 1950s and the Lenin Prize in the 1960s. The list has a veneer of multi-nationalism but is restricted to insiders and government-friendly works. Indeed, the inclusion of comparatively minor works such as Ivan Il'in's On Russia (also quoted briefly in Putin's “The National Question”) seems odd when considered against the absence of the 20th century's greatest anti-authoritarian texts: Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, Zamiatin's We and Bulgakov's Master & Margarita. Although doubts about the widespread usage of the list in schools remain, the list is a clear representation of the Putin government's vision of culture and history: forgetting the undesired by omitting it from the educational process, while presenting a deliberately deceptive version of what is included.

More broadly speaking, the compilation of a centralised and reductive representation of the history of Russia's most important cultural sphere by a government ministry after an opaque consultation process signifies a return to a Soviet-style process of social engineering through culture. The appropriation of the literary form by Putin in “The National Question” is, indeed, reminiscent of Zhdanov's speech at the 1934 Writers' Congress. Zhdanov claimed that the foundational work of a new age had been completed under the 'guiding genius' of Stalin, that the Soviet Union would be a 'bulwark' in a time of international strife, and that literature ought to act as an educational tool to shape mores and work: not much different from Putin's narrative of a newly stable country under a strong leader, faced with the assault of immigration where Europe and the USA are crumbling under it, which needs literature to 'shape public opinion and give behavioural models and norms'. The list here does not give civic but patriotic education; its composition, formulation and presentation are in keeping with the Putin regime's general approach to literature.

While one might assume medieval literature might be entirely absent from a list which by all popular rights (i.e. if it were truly formed from public opinion divined through an openly consultative process) ought to be filled with Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy and Pushkin, and of more recent authors, Akunin, Pelevin and Ulitska (of those seven, the last four are completely absent).  Medieval literature is, if anything, overrepresented here. Its places on the list are filled by the presence of the Primary Chronicle – the importance of which to the regime has already been discussed – and two books edited by D.S. Likhachev, Tales from the Russian Chronicles, 12-14th Centuries / Rasskazy russkikh letopisei XII-XIV vv., which generally occupies the same importance here as the Primary Chronicle, and “The Lay of Igor's Campaign” and the Culture of its Time / “Slovo o polku Igoreve” i kul'tura ego vremeni.

The Lay of Igor's Campaign, the anonymous epic tale of the failed incursion of Igor Sviatoslavich against the Polovtsians of the Don region, written in an Old East Slavic dialect and purportedly belonging to the 15th century, appears to occupy a place of peculiar prominence in Putin's newly revitalised education system. It is the sole medieval text on the syllabus of the EGE (Edinyi gosudarstvennyi ekzamen - Unified State Exam), a standardised, government-administered series of school-leaver tests that since 2009 have been the only official means of university enrolment. By comparison, the reading list for the 19th century runs to dozens of books – thus the choice of this work amongst the dozens of existing, significant texts from the medieval era must be significant. However, the choice of Igor's Campaign for the EGE, which is compiled centrally by the Ministry of Education (although exactly who writes the syllabus or exams is unclear even according to the materials of FIPI, the official education watchdog), is both educationally questionable and highly politicised in nature.

Although the Lay of Igor's Campaign is, according to Cizevskij, an 'exceptional monument' of Russian literature, one of 'high poetic standing', but its unusual quirks in comparison to other contemporary works ought to make its study emphasise its sui generis nature. As Cizevskij puts it, 'The tale stands too much on its own for us to reach a final conclusion, on the basis of this unique example, about the form of works lost to us [from the 12th century]'. Where the Russian medieval literary tradition was steeped in hagiographic works, abstract representations of an individual's saintliness couched in the language of the Church, religious metaphor and the hand of the Divine, Igor's Campaign is fundamentally lacking in religious notes. Its East Slavic vocabulary is totally distinct from other works of the period. Although one might suggest that the lack of Church Slavonic is a boon for schoolchildren, the workload of the medieval section of the EGE is light in comparison to later periods. One might expect they would cope with at least a brief introduction to more representative works: the Primary Chronicle; the Sermon on Law and Grace (or one of many other homiletic works); or a saint's life in the mould of Nestor's work on Theodosius and Boris and Gleb, or Epiphanii Premudryi's vitae.

The status of Igor's Campaign as a sui generis work thus makes it an unlikely and unrepresentative candidate to be the prime representative of medieval literature on both the list of one hundred books and the EGE reading list. However, its innate literary qualities make it entirely commensurate with the narrative of national unity, external threat and Russian achievement that Putin favours. The  story of Igor's campaign may relate its military failure, but it is a triumph of nationalist sentiment related through Russian folk motifs. Dmitrii Likhachev, the editor of the recommended volume, proposes the poem as a national poem akin to the Song of Roland or the Song of the Nibelungs.  Although its literary devices are quite distinct from those works, and it deals not with the distant but the recent past in a manner not altogether removed from the reality of events, the prevalence of a uniquely Slavic textual quality in the work (compared to the Byzantine-influenced alternative works I listed above) makes it something approaching the earliest known Russian national epic. Its operatic adaptation by Borodin further pulled the story into the realm of nationalist cornerstone.

The history of scholarship and treatment of Igor's Campaign further boosts its nationalist credentials. Heated debates over its possible status since its discovery in the 18th century were rejected during the Soviet period, when challengers such as André Mazon and Aleksandr Zimin were correctly but, crucially, publicly opposed by official writers. The text's status as national epic, as a foundational text in the Russian literary tradition, was officially enforced, adding more credence to the argument that Putin's cultural policies are contiguous with those of his Soviet predecessors.

The text of Igor's Campaign is filled with elements that serve neatly, if read through the lens of Putin's selective historical-cultural  vision, to emphasise Russia's isolated and threatened position. Igor 'leads his brave troops against the Kuman land in the name of the Russian land'. What, one asks, does the 'Russian land' mean to the schoolchild of the 21st century? The answer is found in other parts of the text, which support the assertion that Putin's claims to multi-national acceptance in the “National Question” are a superficial effort to cover his regime's actions with the veil of non-nationalist sentiment. The Russian land here is defined by its opposition to the Kuman/Polovtsian people (an ethnic group included in the sentences Putin misquotes from the Primary Chronicle), not its ethnic inclusiveness. The Kuman come through the Russian land 'as grief', 'pagans', spreading 'like a blood of pards'. The Russian land, meanwhile, is twice explicitly described as 'behind the culmen': it is isolated, behind, separated.

The symbolic geography of Igor's Campaign is suggestive not just of a natural state of isolation, but of more recent historical events. The presence of the Don river, which the titular Prince Igor sets out to defend, implies Russia's natural border with the Caucasian regions – and the threat of Islam – that lie beyond. In a speech to his men, Igor claims that: 'I wish either to lay down my head or drink a helmetful of the Don'. Later, it is the Don that calls the Rus' forces to battle. Especially given the focus and publicity afforded to immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia, this is of clear significance in the 21st century. Moreover, from the perspective of Putin's general perspective on historical appropriation, the Don was the sight of Operation Uranus, the symbolic and highly celebrated end of the Siege of Stalingrad. According to this representation,  the symbolic border of the Christian nation thus excludes the southern territories with Muslim majorities.

Generally, what Anatoly Khazanov calls Putin's 'partial rehabilitation' (although given the evidence here, especially the parallels between Zhdanov and Putin's speeches, that rehabilitation may turn out to be substantially more than 'partial') of Soviet symbolism extends to suggesting Russian acts of conquering were actually civilising acts. In the manipulation of the quote from the Primary Chronicle, the use of the supracessionist Sermon on Law and Grace and the emphasis on Igor's Campaign suggest a keen desire to push medieval literature under this umbrella. The strong narrative of a nation-under-threat is reiterated outside literature in, for instance, making a national 'Unity Day' a celebration of repelling external invaders by placing it on the day of an anti-Polish uprising: that move was hailed as 'divisive and accentuating ethnic divisions'. The use of the fundamentally isolationist Igor's Campaign and the focus on its historical lessons in schools is thus representative of the broad move to present a Russia under threat from the outside, one in need of unity, cohesiveness and 'Russianness', in spite of the claims that Putin made to foundational or present ethnic inclusivity in “The National Question”.

The presentation of Igor's Campaign in Russian schools – encouraged by the official materials from the Ministry of Education – focuses little on its provenance or its dissimilarity to contemporary medieval works, instead stressing its national historic qualities. Questions from the actual exams focus on the text's historical message, its links to folklore and modern military literature. If this text is to represent to schoolchildren the entire history of literature in medieval Russian history, the learner will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that Kievan Rus' was a place under constant threat from outside forces, one that required the hand of a strong leader to shield it. From the perspective of pure literary education, the focus on Igor's Campaign would leave the student with little idea of the uniqueness of the folk motifs or the unusual non-Church Slavonic lexis that exist here. Nor, indeed, would he or she have any idea of links that do exist (for example, the sharp antithetical metaphors that the text shares with Ilarion's work) with other texts. Thus if the purpose of secondary education is to either provide the child with a general education fit for life or to act as preparation for higher university study, the syllabus here fails on both counts. The example of medieval literature in Russian education thus demonstrates the subversion of reading lists and syllabi to a broader political purpose: the instilling of desirable – ethnic Russian – patriotic virtues.

Interference in the educational field is not limited to secondary teaching. As of September 2012, the teaching of a 'Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture' (FOC) course for fourth and fifth grade students, with a curriculum designed by the Orthodox Church itself and approved by the Ministry of Education, was made mandatory in all Russian schools. Although taught by non-church teachers, and nominally secular nature, it prevents an almost unadulterated Orthodox vision of early Russian history lifted verbatim from the myths of the Primary Chronicle and the numerous vitae available from the medieval period (with language moderated according to its target audience).

The Church hierarchy has played an important role in restoring Russia's unified identity in the post-Soviet era. While according to the 1993 Constitution citizens have the right to freedom of conscience, according to a 1997 law the Orthodox faith is one of three 'traditional' faiths enjoying special privileges, and occupies the first place in the list of Russia's religions. In the 2000s, the Church has become increasingly close to the State: Putin has appeared in public on multiple high-profile occasions with the Patriarch. His use of medieval texts in “The National Question” betrays a fundamentally Orthodox-oriented worldview that by its very nature excludes the possibility of a Muslim or Buddhist hand in Russian history or identity. Meanwhile, the Patriarchs have made no secret of their desire to educate the citizens of the Russian Federation in schools and universities. The hand of the Orthodox Church looms large in the design of the FOC course: church leaders have attended teachers' training courses, the largest of which will be held in April 2013 at the symbolic heart of Russian Orthodox Nationalism's victory over outside invaders, the rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow.

During a trial period from 2004 onwards, the most widely used textbook for the FOC course was Alla Borodina's The Foundations of Orthodox Culture / Osnovy pravoslavnoi kul'tury, a highly nationalistic work that makes such inflammatory xenophobic claims as the following: 'Some “new residents” of Russia did not always behave as nobly as did the Russians on the territory of a traditionally Orthodox state'. Joachim Willems provides an excellent summary of the book's historical sources and its factual pitfalls, but the book has since been replaced by a Ministry-approved work.

A.V. Kuraev, the author of The Foundations of Orthodox Culture / Osnovy pravoslavnoi kul'tury (which confusingly shares a title with Borodina's work), is an Archdeacon who supposes that the teaching of FOC is a 'pre-emptive strike, though education, against extremism'. Given the context of the other works studied and the evidently deceptive nature of Putin's claims to support multi-ethnicism, this means non-Orthodox, non-white Russian immigrants. Accordingly, his textbook presents almost verbatim the Primary Chronicle account of the conversion of Rus' and intimates an inextricable link between nasha rodina – our motherland – and Christianity. This extends to the inclusion of the nationalist Aleksei Khomiakov's poem On Russia / O rossii (1839), which calls for the invasion of non-Orthodox Constantinople. The course, although simplistic (hardly surprising, given it is designed for ten and eleven year olds), presents the basic features of Putin's Russian nationality: an early formative period lifted from medieval Russian literary works, presented as a period of growth due to internal harmony facing down numerous external threats, followed by a ruinous era of internecine strife and lack of leadership.

Even at the youngest ages, the citizen of the Russian Federation of 2013 is exposed to a targeted, shaped and pruned culture designed to instil a sense of patriotic virtue. Even lesson plans are beginning to bend under the weight of governmental expectation. A sample lesson plan for the 6th grade on the Primary Chronicle from a popular online teaching portal explicitly gives one of the lesson goals as 'the instilling of patriotic feelings'. Others on The Lay of Igor's Campaign seek to 'encourage patriotism'. Medieval literature's purpose in the classroom and in the public sphere is thus inextricably linked to Putin's goal of historical patriotism amongst the Russian population. The nature of the policy and the materials studied mandates ethnic exclusion, not inclusion.

The treatment of this old literature – in Putin's Russia, not a museum piece or a historical curiosity, but the cornerstone of a myth of a threatened, isolated nation whose greatest successes occur under a strong leader. This involves the selection of a national historical narrative that prioritises the white, European Russian in schools, history and politics, and forms part of a trend under Putin to emphasis the russkii – the ethnic Russian – over the rossiiskii – that pertaining to the state of the Russian Federation. Note that in “The National Question”, Putin uses the word rossiiskii just three times (independent of the phrase Rossiiskaia Federatsiia), yet russkii appears almost forty times. Thus his 'solution' to the national problem is exclusively directed towards the ethnic Russian, not to the immigrant or the citizen of different ethnicity.

The use of literature is especially poignant in a nation for which the written word has been always been a means of presenting the culture's 'historical imagination'. Throughout modern history, Russians have turned repeatedly to literature as their source of national identity and cultural mythology: Putin's trick is to direct them, by sleight of hand, towards an earlier, foundational myth based on medieval ideology. This reductive quoting and selecting of foundational literature in essence eschews Nikolai Berdiaev's comment that 'there are two dominant myths which can become dynamic in the life of a people – the myth about origins and the myth about the end. For Russians, it has been the second myth, the eschatological one, that has dominated'. Here, if Putin and his regime are to start, as they indicate a desire to, a new period of origins, of Vladimirs, Iaroslavs and military triumphs, they must abrogate the apocalyptic cultural mindset of the Russian population. In order to do so, Putin must organise cultural and patriotic education along the lines of how Dmitrii Likhachev and Nicholas Rzhevsky described traditional hagiography, which does not so much 'communicate the facts of […] existence as use ceremonial aesthetic forms to embellish the few facts that are known'.

Bibliography

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Borodina, Alla. Osnovy Pravoslavnoi Kul’tury, 2002.

Breck, John, John Meyendorff, and Eleana Silk, eds. The Legacy of St. Vladimir: Byzantium, Russia, America. St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990.

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