The Compatriots by Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan

Author:Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

On October 12, 2001, men in the dark suits of the President Protection Service blocked every conceivable entrance to the Hall of Columns in the House of the Unions in Moscow.

The blue-and-white classical building, just a stone’s throw from the Bolshoi Theater, had once been a ballroom venue for the Assembly of Nobility. After the revolution, the hall hosted important state events, including party congresses and funeral services. It was in this hall that Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev lay in state before being taken to their final resting places in the Kremlin necropolis (Lenin’s body was displayed here for five days before being brought to the wooden mausoleum on the Red Square, where a frozen Zarubin would guard it). This evening, however, the Hall of Columns was hosting the First World Congress of Compatriots—an updated version of the previous congresses organized by Tolstoy in the early 1990s. This time, however, Vladimir Putin was in charge. The new Russian president had not approved of Tolstoy’s congresses of 1991–1993, and now, as the title of the event indicated, he wanted to start fresh. Mikhail Tolstoy was not even invited.

The massive chandeliers sparkled brightly, illuminating the twenty-eight gilded columns that gave the hall its name as well as numerous red-velvet curtains and chairs. It was a far cry from Tchaikovsky Hall, a plain space nearby that had long served as a haven for the impoverished Moscow intelligentsia and fans of classical music, where Tolstoy’s congress had been held.

As the ceremonies commenced, Putin took his seat onstage at a long table under the new emblem of the congress. The emblem for Yeltsin’s congress had been made up of three curved lines—the white, blue, and red of the Russian tricolor—with a curve to symbolize the Soviet era’s distortion of the smooth course of Russian history. Putin’s congress adopted a new image. The emblem was a globe with the map of Russia marked in black—a symbol of the president’s international ambitions.

Putin took the pulpit. In the audience, delegates from forty-seven countries hushed. From his very first words, it was clear that Putin saw the huge Russian diaspora as something the Russian state could use to advance its interests. “A strong diaspora can only exist if there is a strong state,” he proclaimed, noting that the Russian-speaking community, including Russian citizens, was the fifth largest in the world.1 His message contrasted sharply with that of Yeltsin and Tolstoy. Yeltsin had wanted to correct the historical injustice that had forced millions of Russians out of the country with no hope of ever returning. Putin, on the other hand, saw this diaspora as a valuable asset for the Russian state. This speech also marked the first time Putin invoked the term Russky Mir (Russian world)—the worldwide community of Russian-speaking people with an identity firmly connected to Russia’s history, culture, and language—which would, in time, become a Russian foreign policy concept.

Unlike Yeltsin, Putin was not interested in asking Russians abroad for help building a democratic Russia. Rather, he wanted to

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