"May Be No Better Introduction to What This Kind of Dark, Surrealist Statism Feels Like"

"What was true of the Soviet Union in its death throes in the late 1980s seems even more applicable to Putin's Russia today, where policies are justified with paeans to an official nationalism known as Russkii mir, or 'Russian world.' This Kremlin-sanctioned worldview suggests Russia is no ordinary nation-state but a unique, conservative 'civilization,' historically distinct and even genetically superior to its European neighbors. Since returning to the presidency in 2012, Putin has increasingly invoked this civilizational discourse to champion the interests of ethnic Russians, Russian speakers, and civilizational compatriots beyond Russia's geopolitical borders. Russia's 2008 war in Georgia, 2014 annexation of Crimea and proxy war in Donbas, and the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have all been justified in terms of Russia's supposedly unique civilizational mission. Consequently—rather than just a fig leaf for the Kremlin's neocolonial ambitions—Russkii mir is a concept worth comprehending in its own right."

Mark Lawrence Schrad at Politico explores Russian nationalism through the 1989 Soviet movie City Zero.