Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

The majority of Russia’s soft power instruments operate under the guiding concept and associated organizations that go under the name of the Russian World—a portmanteau term for the common post-Soviet space shared by a presumed special spiritual and civilizational community. Although the term might involve a plethora of interpretations, according to Marek Menkiszak of the Warsaw Centre for Eastern Studies, it is generally defined as “the community of Russian-speaking people centered around Russia, who identify with the Orthodox Christian religion and culture and who cherish the same shared values, irrespective of their citizenship and ethnic background.”¹⁷ The Russian World is institutionalized via the Russkiy Mir Foundation, which seeks to attune the Russophone community with Russian soft power and is widely recognized as an instrument of Moscow’s geopolitics. The strategic importance that the Russian government has attached to the foundation cannot be underestimated. Established in 2007 by decree of President Putin, it is a joint venture of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education. It seeks to promote the Russian language and culture across the globe. The foundation estimates that some 35 million individuals in over ninety countries, the majority of which are concentrated in the CIS and the Baltic States, make up the Russian World.¹⁸ Since its inception, the chairman of the management board has been Vyacheslav Nikonov. The grandson of Stalin’s foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov (of the famed secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that sought to divide Eastern Europe between the Nazis and the Soviets), Nikonov served on the staff of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, and as assistant to the chairman of the KGB in 1991–92. He is also a well-regarded political scientist. Under his guidance, the foundation has grown into a powerful organization. For its promotion of Russian culture, financing of various projects in Russian schools, and provision of Russian language and history courses abroad, the Russkiy Mir has been generally well received by the diaspora population.¹⁹ In some regards it can be compared to the British Council or the International Organisation of La Francophonie. However, the main distinction between Russkiy Mir and other similar organizations is its evident political dimension as exemplified by Nikonov’s ties to the Kremlin and the KGB, and its ideology of including in the Russian World only those Russians who maintain loyalty to Russia, thus excluding, for example, Russians who supported the removal of the Soviet monument in Estonia in 2007.²⁰ Likewise it engages in exaggerated media coverage of various “injustices” suffered by the Russian minorities in their countries of residence—activities that have no parallel in the British Council or La Francophonie.²¹

The Russian Orthodox Church has also become an institution of Russian soft power under the leadership of the Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow. Elected in 2009, Kirill, like Putin, is a native of St. Petersburg. He allegedly shares another feature in common with Putin—he has been reported as having had links to the KGB during the Soviet period as code-named agent “Mikhailov.”²² The patriarch has also been criticized by the Western media for his unflinching support for Putin’s regime, including calling the Putin era “a miracle of God.”²³ Likewise, he has endorsed the Russian World policy, explaining in 2014: “the civilization of Russia belongs to something broader than the Russian Federation. This civilization we call the Russian world…. To this world can belong people who do not belong to the Slavic world, but who embraced the cultural and spiritual component of this world as their own.”²⁴ Moreover, the head of the Orthodox Church does not shy away from voicing his view of Russia’s role in international affairs. In an interview in 2014 he declared that “Russia cannot be a vassal. Because Russia is not only a country, it is a whole civilization, it is a thousand-year story, a cultural melting-pot, of enormous power.”²⁵ The patriarch has even been called “the most effective instrument of Russian soft power in the ‘near abroad.’ ”²⁶