Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

Russian compatriot policies are both distinct aspects of Russian reimperialization and at the same time underlie all seven stages of the proposed trajectory. Compatriot policies have been little studied before and are in many ways the main focus of this book. As a result, Russian compatriot policies and related foreign policy, national security, and citizenship strategies will be assessed in detail in the next chapter. Having demonstrated the final aims of compatriot policies in the imperial revival project, the following chapter will trace how the Russian diaspora and Russian speakers have been conceptualized, politicized, and securitized as compatriots to become an instrument of Russia’s foreign policy since the 1990s.

CHAPTER THREE The Origins and Development of Russian Compatriot Policies

…the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. And for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory.

—Vladimir Putin, State of the Nation Address, 25 April 2005

THERE IS NO CONCEPT more nebulous but potentially more important for the geopolitics of the former Soviet space than that of “Russian compatriots.” Compatriots have served an important role in Russia’s quest to reestablish itself as a great power on the world stage. Since the 2000s, compatriot policies have served an integrative function: that of uniting the Russian people and the foreign lands where they reside under the flag of the Russian Federation. Moscow has spent decades trying to define the concept of a “compatriot,” despite its geostrategic importance for Russia. While the term “compatriot” generally refers to a “fellow countryman or countrywoman,” the Russian word, sootechestvennik (literally “those who are with the fatherland”), has come to refer most often to ethnic Russians and Russian speakers residing outside the Russian Federation and encompasses ethnic, cultural, linguistic, political, and even spiritual connotations. Its usage has been broad and mutable. Almost any Russian speaker who resides outside of Russia, or even anyone who was born in the Soviet Union, has been at some point defined by Moscow as a Russian compatriot. Even Russian ethnicity or Russian language is not a prerequisite for belonging to this category. Anyone hailing from some 185 ethnic groups that have historically resided in the territory of the Russian Federation or the Soviet Union could be deemed a compatriot.