Boundaries of Russian Patriotism (the Case of Non-Reactive Classic Research)

Affiliation: S.I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the RAS, St. Petersburg Branch
Address: Russian Federation, St. Petersburg

Journal name

Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya

Edition

Issue 6

Pages

134-146

Abstract

The article addresses patriotism in connection with manifestations of the Internet users’ Russian identity. To obtain consistent results related to Russian patriotism as a combination of collective and individual views, we used two opposite approaches for gaining quantitative and qualitative data. A virtual study examines 10 national and nationalist Russian communities based on the Vkontakte network with a total number of participants about 1.07 million people. The research reveals unifying elements of collective ideas that demarcate group identity in Russian communities due to the conventional rapprochement between the terms "nationalism "and "patriotism". The empirical facts of non-reactive research and classical survey were fully comparable to typical collective representations. The survey (600 Internet users) revealed an internally contradictory interpretation amongst categories "patriotism" and "nationalism", as well as their full or partial synonymity, also present in Russian Internet communities. It is argued that Russia is predominantly associated to great-power attributions and minimal orientation to cultural or economic values. Negative interpretation of patriotism and citizenship is caused by the perception of these categories as an expression of "loyalty" to the government, and not to the Fatherland. The study revealed a weak gender-and-age correlation of collective ideas, which indirectly indicates the patriotism is included into the content core of the Russian Internet users’ national identity. The authors’ methodology for studying the phenomena of patriotism, nationalism and citizenship, based on the content analysis of verbal constructs, has been tested.

Keywords

patriotism, nationalism, ethnic identity, civic identity, non-reactive strategy, virtual space, social desirability effect, "we"-concept, geopolitical distance

Acknowledgment

The paper was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research via grant No. 19-011-00219.

Received

29.06.2021

Publication date

29.06.2021

Number of characters

33954

Cite

GOST	Sikevich Z., Fedorova A. Boundaries of Russian Patriotism (the Case of Non-Reactive Classic Research) // Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya – 2021. – Issue 6 C. 134-146 [Electronic resource]. URL: http://ras.jes.su/socis/s013216250014126-1-1-en (circulation date: 16.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S013216250014126-1
MLA	Sikevich, Zinaida, Fedorova, Anna "Boundaries of Russian Patriotism (the Case of Non-Reactive Classic Research)." Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya 6 (2021):134-146. DOI: 10.31857/S013216250014126-1
APA	Sikevich Z., Fedorova A. (2021). Boundaries of Russian Patriotism (the Case of Non-Reactive Classic Research). Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya (6), pp.134-146 DOI: 10.31857/S013216250014126-1

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