Source: PostPravda.info 16.09.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/russian-imperial-consciousness-pacifism-and-necro-imperialism/
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/russian-imperial-consciousness-pacifism-and-necro-imperialism/
Illustration: “Homeland—A Swamp,” from the series “Monument to a Special Military Operation,” 2025. Facebook page “Party of the Dead”
Russian imperial consciousness is a spectrum of different positions that gradually transition into one another. At the opposite poles of this spectrum are, on the one hand, necro-imperialism and, on the other, imperial pacifism. Both positions took shape as early as the Soviet period but acquired entirely new forms in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In his essay, prof. Nikolai Karpitsky traces the zigzags of Russian imperial consciousness between necro-imperialism and imperial pacifism.
Imperial Consciousness in the Soviet Era
The Bolshevism that came to power in Russia was based on the ideology of class struggle. Its driving force was hatred of the enemy, who embodied evil by virtue of his very class nature. The individual was not regarded as the highest value; society was. Any human sacrifice could be justified in the name of social goals.
This attitude was connected with a cult of death that can be traced in Soviet symbolism: the emblem of the USSR in the form of a wreath reminiscent of a funerary wreath, Lenin’s mausoleum and the veneration of his mummified body, as well as the glorification of death in films and songs. Ultimately, this attitude led to total repression, much of which was irrational in nature.
However, the Communists could secure mass support only through an appealing vision of the future. A future dominated by a cult of death, in which people faced new waves of repression, could appeal to no one. After all, death essentially means the negation of the future. The Soviet authorities therefore needed an image of the future that would be attractive both within the country and beyond its borders.
For this reason, they proclaimed their ultimate goal to be the construction of an ideal society – communism – in which everything would be free of charge. Money and other attributes of the state were supposed to be abolished and, as Vladimir Lenin promised, gold would be used to build public toilets.
Thus, two opposing tendencies emerged in the Soviet Union: a practical one, associated with violence, repression, war, and the cult of death, and a utopian one, associated with ideals of progress, peace, and social justice. Since both tendencies stemmed from the same source, adherents of progress and social justice who became enthusiastic about communist ideology could easily become instruments of the USSR’s repressive machinery or terrorists in other countries.
The communist project promised the abolition of the state, but the transitional period envisioned the expansion of the Soviet Union until the last country on the planet became socialist. In other words, it was an imperial project disguised as a utopia.
In the late Soviet Union, this aggressive imperial project was increasingly promoted under the guise of the struggle for peace. After all, if the victory of communism was historically inevitable, it was enough simply to wait until all countries became socialist. On the one hand, the Soviet Union proclaimed a policy of peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries; on the other, it continued to wage wars in different parts of the world, supporting any dictatorial regimes that declared their commitment to socialism.
Soviet schoolchildren were taught a version of history that had been completely rewritten to conform to this ideological framework. According to this version of history, Russia had constantly expanded its territory by peaceful means and had never attacked anyone. Any military aggression by the Soviet Union, such as the invasion of Afghanistan, was presented as a peacekeeping operation.
Most Soviet citizens liked the pacifist rhetoric of the Soviet authorities. They wanted a stable and peaceful life in a vast country that, at the same time, everyone was supposed to fear and respect. On the one hand, they adhered to an imperial position; on the other, they did not want any wars. I propose calling this internally contradictory position “imperial pacifism.”
Many Russians inherited precisely this position. In order not to lose their support, Vladimir Putin prohibited the use of the word “war” to describe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, officially adopting the term “special military operation.”
The contradiction between the repressive practices of the Soviet Union and its pacifist utopia generated internal tension within Soviet ideology. Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to overcome this contradiction by reforming the Soviet Union from the standpoint of imperial pacifism. To this end, he proclaimed the policy of “glasnost,” allowing criticism of the repressive and necrophilic practices of the Stalinist period while at the same time doing everything in his power to preserve the Soviet Union.
However, imperial pacifism was utopian in nature and had never previously been embodied in state practice. The attempt to implement it led to a crisis of the state and to people’s disillusionment with the communist project – in both its repressive and its pacifist forms. Ultimately, this became one of the factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Transformation of Imperialism After the Collapse of the Soviet Union
In the mid-1990s, imperial pacifism predominated in Russian public consciousness. The First Chechen War sparked a mass anti-war movement. Yet even among opponents of the war, most opposed Chechnya’s independence. They believed, however, that war was an even worse alternative and therefore that peace had to be pursued even with a sworn enemy. Only isolated individuals openly supported the Chechen people’s right to self-determination.
During this period, a nationalist interpretation of the imperial myth began to take shape. If the ideology of the Soviet Union was based on internationalism and Russia itself was understood as one of fifteen Soviet republics, then in the mass consciousness of post-Soviet Russia it increasingly appeared as though the other fourteen republics had seceded from Russia itself. Nostalgia for the Soviet Union gradually transformed into a dream of restoring the Russian Empire. As a result, a much more aggressive nationalist understanding of imperialism emerged, and war came to be regarded as a legitimate means of returning breakaway territories to the so-called “Russian world.”
A proponent of this ideology, Vladimir Putin was one of the initiators of the Second Chechen War, which began in the autumn of 1999 and was, this time, supported by Russian society on a massive scale. Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev and the ideologues of perestroika, Putin, as a typical representative of the security services, did not understand why imperial pacifism was needed in the first place. To consolidate his own power, he skillfully exploited a series of covert operations involving the bombings of residential buildings in Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 1999. More than three hundred people were killed in these explosions, and more than a thousand others were injured.
A fifth covert operation, in Ryazan, was prevented, and those who had directly planted the explosives in the basement of a residential building were detained. It turned out that they were members of an operational group from the Moscow branch of the FSB. Most Russian residents ignored media reports about this fact and supported the new war in Chechnya, which was conducted with particular brutality toward the civilian population.
I personally witnessed how educated, cultured people who had advocated peace only recently began saying that Chechnya should be burned to the ground. The problem was not that they were unaware of the FSB’s alleged involvement in the terrorist attacks, but that they wanted the Chechens themselves to be responsible. The image of the enemy constructed around the Chechens set in motion a process in the public consciousness that displaced imperial pacifism with a more aggressive form of imperialism – necro-imperialism.
Imperial Pacifism in Ukraine After the Collapse of the Soviet Union
During the Soviet period, many people found the possibility of living in a vast country while preserving their national identity and culture appealing. The loyalty of the populations of the republics that made up the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, was largely sustained by the fact that imperial pacifism was promoted in the form of internationalism. And indeed, before Russia’s invasion, there was strong sympathy for Russia among Ukrainians. However, these sympathies did not mean either a rejection of Ukrainian identity or a desire to become part of Russia.
Modern Russia, by contrast, pursues a policy of aggressive imperialism in the form of Russian chauvinism, while Russian propaganda spreads the false narrative that a Russian identity predominates among Ukrainians and that they want to live as part of Russia. In Ukraine, this narrative appears absurd because the overwhelming majority of the population, including Russian-speaking Ukrainians, have always retained a Ukrainian identity. In Russia, however, most people consider this narrative truthful and use it to justify the war against Ukraine.
In order to create at least some basis for public support for a Russian occupation within Ukraine itself, Kremlin propagandists constructed false narratives claiming that Nazis had come to power as a result of the Maidan Revolution and were subjecting Russians to repression. In this way, they attempted to transform the remnants of Soviet-style imperial pacifism into an aggressive form. They succeeded only partially, however. The majority of residents in all regions of Ukraine, including those regions that had been the political base of pro-Russian politicians, supported resistance to Russian military aggression.
A Country Where Necro-Imperialism Has Triumphed
With Putin’s rise to power, necro-imperialism began to take shape as a state system. At the initial stage, during Russia’s economic recovery and growth, people saw their incomes rise, which corresponded to the image of the future associated with imperial pacifism. However, the contradiction between utopia and reality resulted in protests that reached their peak in 2011–2012.
The seizure of Crimea was presented as a victory achieved without military action, which once again corresponded to the assumptions of imperial pacifism: on the one hand, there was a military victory; on the other, there seemed to have been no war. This prompted mass support for the occupation of Crimea among both proponents of imperial pacifism and necro-imperialism. However, the subsequent war once again intensified this contradiction, which was resolved by the complete victory of necro-imperialism as a result of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Now, in Russia, any manifestation of pacifism, even in its imperial form, is treated as a criminal offense punishable by lengthy prison sentences.
Russia’s Peaceful Forces – Who Are They?
Russian necro-imperialism assumes that war has value in itself because it simplifies the world and strengthens central government. However, this necrophilic mindset is not an innate human trait, and the longer the war continues, the more strongly imperial-pacifist sentiments will manifest themselves in society.
I believe that even now, if a referendum were held, a majority of Russians would vote for peace with Ukraine. But this does not mean that they support Ukraine. It merely means that they believe it is necessary to coexist with the Ukraine that actually exists, even though most of them continue to view it with hostility.
Does this mean that there are no freedom-loving people in Russia who reject imperialism and support Ukraine? Of course not. However, there is a fundamental difference between a person independently and freely making a moral choice and determining their position in life and the opinions of particular groups of people being shaped by social circumstances. Isolated individuals cannot create a social movement on their own; support from particular social groups is also necessary. Although there are many people in Russia who support Ukraine and wish for its victory, they do not constitute a social movement. At the same time, social conditions have emerged that are strengthening imperial-pacifist sentiments among various segments of society. This is precisely why the Russian authorities are adopting prohibitive and repressive measures to prevent these sentiments from developing into a social movement.
Some Russian opposition politicians are attempting to capitalize on these imperial-pacifist sentiments. For example, on June 12–13, 2026, they held a congress in Berlin for the “Peaceful Russia” party, which represents a small group of émigrés and can hardly claim to speak on behalf of Russian society. Within Russia itself, the emergence of even such associations is currently impossible.
Alexei Navalny made the greatest contribution to shaping imperial pacifism as a political position. His July 20, 2017, debate with Igor Girkin, a representative of aggressive imperialism and a terrorist who led the seizure of Sloviansk in 2014, is particularly illustrative in this regard. Subsequently, both participants in the discussion were subjected to repression by the Russian authorities, which indirectly attests to the sincerity of their convictions, while Alexei Navalny was even killed in prison.
Alexei Navalny did not support Ukraine. However, he tried to convince Igor Girkin that Russia’s war against Ukraine was detrimental to Russia itself and that it would therefore be better to live peacefully with the Ukraine that actually exists. For Igor Girkin, these arguments were of no significance because, from the perspective of necro-imperialism, peaceful life in Russia has no value in itself: Russia’s value lies in its strength, which it demonstrates through war.
When a viewer asked Navalny whether he considered Igor Girkin a war criminal, he replied: “…as for war criminals, that is a precise legal term. So, if he killed non-combatants, if he committed certain acts that are explicitly listed in legal documents, then any person, including Igor Ivanovich, would be subject to judicial proceedings… That is a matter for the courts, not Alexei Navalny.” In other words, Alexei Navalny did not consider the terrorist seizure of an entire city itself to be a war crime, and he also stated that it was not his responsibility to assess the very fact of the torture and killing of Sloviansk residents, of which he could not have been unaware.
Alexei Navalny and Igor Strelkov (Igor Girkin) during the debate on July 20, 2017. Screenshot from the “Navalny LIVE” livestream. Source: The official debate page on Navalny’s website
The point is that both Alexei Navalny and Igor Girkin viewed the events in Donbas from the standpoint of Russia’s interests, although they understood those interests differently. Alexei Navalny’s faith in his political ideal – the “Beautiful Russia of the Future” – was undoubtedly sincere, since he was prepared to sacrifice his freedom for it. In its utopian character, this ideal resembles the vision of a future communist society, for which sincere communists were likewise prepared to make sacrifices.
But perhaps I am being unfair in calling the pacifism of Russian opposition politicians imperial? Let us consider, for example, the position of one of Russia’s most consistent pacifists, Lev Shlosberg, who also sacrificed his freedom for his convictions. On August 17, 2026, he was sentenced in Russia to 11 years in prison.
From a pacifist standpoint, Lev Shlosberg condemned not only Russia’s aggression but also Ukraine’s efforts to extend retaliatory military operations onto Russian territory. “There is no such thing as self-defense in the form of conducting military operations on the territory of another country… Self-defense is always limited to the borders of one’s own country,” he argued. “…I am against the killing of Ukrainian soldiers. I am against the killing of Ukrainian civilians. I am against the killing of Russian soldiers and against the killing of Russian civilians.” In his view, military action should simply be stopped, after which the status of the occupied territories could be discussed for decades. By deciding to stay in Russia – and thereby ending up in prison – Lev Shlosberg has proven that he believes what he says. However, it seems to me that he is deceiving himself. After all, it is obvious that as long as a total war of annihilation is raging, it is not national borders that matter, but only the front lines.
Let us imagine German pacifist anti-fascists during the Second World War who condemned extending military operations onto German territory and proposed simply stopping them, followed by decades of discussions about the status of the occupied countries. I would still call such pacifism imperial because, in essence, it would be defending the territorial integrity of the Third Reich.
Imperial pacifism is utopian: its victory can only be temporary, after which a militaristic revanche will follow. Therefore, I believe that lasting peace can be achieved not through imperial pacifism but through the deconstruction of Russia as an empire.
