Being a Liberal in Contemporary Russia

Events unfolding in Ukraine since the end of 2013: the "Euromaidan" movement, the fall of President Yanukovich, the annexation of Crimea, and the war in the Donbas have been accompanied in Russia by great tension. One's relations to the "nation" or "fatherland" has become crucial to the constitution of political cleavages . One is either a "liberal" or a "patriot": two fundamental categories that immediately make sense to those involved in Russian politics. As a first approximation, "liberal" will designate the proponents of democracy, rule of law, and market economy. The term will not be limited to the opposition to the regime of Vladimir Putin: some liberals have moved from support to opposition - or the other way round. Russian liberals should not be assimilated to "liberals" in either the American, British or European sense.

As the question of the "nation" structures the main political cleavage in Russia, I propose to study how liberals relate to this concept, with reference to the Russian "political field", defined by Pierre Bourdieu as "the site in which, through the competition between the agents involved in it, political products, issues, programmes, analyses, commentaries, concepts and events are created" (Bourdieu 1991). I will seek to answer this question: how have Russian liberals coped with the uses of "patriotism" and "nationalism" as tools of social consensus ?