PostPravda.Info is launching a new project called War Dictionary. Its goal is to “correct” or clarify concepts that, for example, politicians often misunderstand. These misunderstandings lead to errors, which frequently result in the loss of lives, tragic consequences on the front lines, and in the future, may even cause a global war. “One such mistake is related to the misunderstanding of Russiaâs nature and the reasons behind the ongoing war,” says the author of War Dictionary, Professor Nikolai Karpitsky, a Russian opposition figure who has been in hiding in Ukraine since 2015.
As the Russian philosopher explains, today Russia is waging war against Ukraine while simultaneously claiming that it is actually opposing the “collective West.” Meanwhile, many Western politicians believe that this war is simply a misunderstanding and that peace can be easily negotiated.
So, let’s consider what the word “Russia” really means. Can it be used as the name of a country, just as we call France, Poland, or Ukraine? Or does it refer to any territory that the Kremlin has brought under its control? Perhaps it is an empty term and a product of political ideology? “This term is crucial to understanding the war, which is why it has been addressed first,” explains Professor Nikolai Karpitsky.
War Dictionary: Russia
The word “Russia” has two meanings. It is both the name of a modern or previous state entity in northern Eurasia and an ideological construct that replaces the concept of a country. A country is part of the world and is distinguished based on the common historical or cultural destiny of the peoples who consider it their homeland or ancestral home. For this reason, different state formations emerging on the territory of a country share the same name and are viewed as a single nation.
The Modern Russian State â The Russian Federation
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia became the name of the largest Soviet republic to gain independence. However, imperial sentiments quickly triumphed in the collective consciousness, and the collapse of the USSR came to be understood not as a liberation from the Soviet Empire but as a tragedy related to the loss of lands belonging to Russia. This was aided by the fact that the Russian government officially declared itself the successor to the Soviet Union. This sentiment became a precondition for justifying the seizure of neighboring countries’ territories, which, in the collective consciousness, is seen as a just war for the return of lost lands.
Today, Russia has lost the key features of a state. Notably, the unity of the legal sphere has been practically destroyed, with arbitrary power replacing law. Regional elections have been canceled, and the central government has lost legitimacy following the re-election of the president in violation of the Constitution. Not only is there an absence of a legal system, but there is also a lack of such an important state characteristic as universally recognized borders. The Russian government effectively nullified them when it announced the annexation of several Ukrainian territories, including those it does not control.
Country of Russia
In the collective consciousness, Russia is a vague and broad concept that can encompass various territories, which do not share a common historical or cultural destiny, such as Dagestan and Chukotka. This understanding of Russia differs from that of any other country, which is typically defined as a territory based on the people who have lived there for a significant period, according to historical standards.
In such cases, a territory is understood as a country with the same name as its nation or a union of nations with a shared historical destinyâItaly, Germany, Poland, Iran, China, India… Various states with different names may historically arise on the territory of a country, but all will be associated with that country. Sometimes, a country can stand out as the historical territory of a nation that later united other nations into a broader state, as in the case of England, which is part of the United Kingdom.
However, it is impossible to historically identify such a primary territory associated with the Russian nation that could be called a country named “Russia.” In Russian social consciousness, there is a complete absence of the idea of a primary territory of the nation, distinct from other territories acquired throughout history. Furthermore, the territory of the medieval Tsardom of Moscow, which could formally be associated with the original homeland of Russians, does not have a distinct name.
In Ukraine, this territory might be referred to as “Moscovia,” but such a concept does not exist in Russian collective consciousness. The other lands and peoples currently united under the Russian state are not bound by any common cultural or historical destiny.
Kyivan Rus cannot be the historical homeland of modern Russia, as its successor is an entirely different countryâUkraine. The Tsardom of Moscow arose through the subjugation of neighboring peoples and the genocide of the population of Novgorod, which differed from the Muscovites in language, social organization, and self-identity. Therefore, the lands of Pskov-Novgorod are mistakenly associated with the historical original homeland of Russia.
As a result, it is unclear where to draw the boundary of this ancestral homeland. The average Russian does not know where the border begins between the lands of other nations that were conquered; for example, they are convinced that the Volga River is inherently Russian. Thus, the concept of Russia as a country remains undefined and is therefore replaced in the collective consciousness by an ideological construct.
Russia as an Ideological Construct
This concept stems from the principle of defining a country not by its culture or the people inhabiting it, but by power. In Russian mass consciousness, Russia is associated not with a specific country but with an ideological constructâspecifically, any territory that is or was controlled by the central government.
The boundaries of this image of Russia are not clearly defined and depend on the perspective of the bearer of mass consciousness: Russia, in its current state, includes the entire territory of the Russian Federation and the occupied regions of Ukraine; from the perspective of the recent past, it includes all the countries that were part of the USSR; from the distant past, it even includes Poland, Finland, and Alaska. As a result, Russia is equated with the Soviet Union, Peter the Great’s Russian Empire, the Tsardom of Moscow, and Kyivan Rus, which contradicts historical scholarship.
Russia and Russian Nationalism
Based on this ideological construct, a specific form of nationalism has developed in the mass consciousness of Russians. Since Russia is considered any land controlled by the authorities, it is expected that the authorities will transform these lands to make them suitable for Russian-speaking people, meaning they will provide conditions for everyone to understand the Russian language. This nationalism can take a radical form, in which other languages are seen as relics of the past that can be tolerated, except for Belarusian and Ukrainian, which are considered false or harmful languages because their existence challenges the unity of Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians as one nation. This form of nationalism is reinforced by the false notion that Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are one nation, or at least descended from one nation.
Thus, the modern understanding of Russia has been shaped not by cultural and historical experiences but by ideology and correlates not with a country but with territory controlledâor once controlledâby the central government. This serves as justification for new wars of conquest, including Russia’s current war against Ukraine. It means that the very concept of Russia encompasses ideological attitudes that are destructive and push toward further wars. Awareness of this has led to Russia being frequently referred to as “Mordor” in everyday communication in Ukraine, a term borrowed from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
