3 - The Emergence of the Russian Hawks as an Idea Network (1985–1999)

Summary

Chapter 3 argues that, starting from 1985, the Russian hawks consolidated as an idea network built around their common opposition against perestroika. Modernist conservatism served as the ideological magnet of this eclectic group aggregating national-conservative intellectuals with pro–status quo members of the Soviet political and military establishment. The newspapers Den (1990–93) and Zavtra (1993–) became the intellectual and social fabric of the group’s identity and cohesion, which were maintained across the 1991 regime change. The chapter also demonstrates that some of the hawks’ ideas spread in the ruling elites’ discourse as early as the mid-1990s to legitimate the authoritarian nature of the turn to a superpresidential system and to foster the construction of post-Soviet state patriotism.