Ideology, identity, and memory:: a new Russian Idea?

The Russian Idea is a hackneyed slogan, but it is enjoying a boom in contemporary Russia. The term is being interpreted in the most diverse ways imaginable, in contexts ranging from philosophical treatises to everyday political jargon. However, it is not the purpose of this article to draw up an inventory of these usages. Instead, the article shows that the resort to the Russian Idea is part of the post-Soviet construction of identity and the associated search for norms and moral concepts. Selected examples are examined in order to answer the question of whether the Russian Idea is serving the goals of the search for identity or of a state-patriotic ideological construct, and of whether, thanks to the historical "meaning" mediated by the Russian Idea, these two aspects might be very closely associated with one another.