What makes Russians proud of Russia?

The internationally recognized Russian sociological and polling research centre Levada recently published answers to the question asked in the headline. The results have been widely shared on Russian social media.

Looking at the above illustration, it is hard not to see a correlation between the points of Russian national pride and the narratives promoted by the dominating state media where Russia is presented as a vast and important country with a strong military, a major role on the international scene, huge natural resources and first of all a great history.

“Nothing was made by us and nothing depends on us”
However, there is also another side to that story. Opposition leader Alexey Navalny reacted to the results on his blog by questioning if anything at all in modern Russian society can be considered a success:

“Among the things we are proud of, nothing was made by us and nothing depends on us: History, natural resources, the size of the country,” Navalny writes, and continues: “The things we should and could have turned into points of pride when we had trillions of petrodollars falling from the sky, have instead become things we are ashamed of”.

Navalny ends his blog by quoting a popular Russian anecdote:

– What are the main achievements of Putin’s 17 years in power?
– He defeated Hitler; added Siberia to Russia; sent Gagarin into space; taught Plisetskaya how to dance ballet and inspired Pushkin to write poetry.

This week also saw the Levada Centre finding itself under pressure when pro-government Russian NGO Anti-Maidan proposed that the research institution should be investigated under the draconian “foreign agent” law due to its long-term academic cooperation with colleagues from the University of Wisconsin.