Happy Monday!
If you follow terrorism and extremism in Russia closely, you may have stumbled across mentions of the Citizens of the USSR. You may also have not heard much about them, beyond the name, a cursory characterisation, and details of whatever punishment is being handed down to the latest member to fall foul of the law. This week, I’ve been reading Mikhail Akhmetyev’s book on the topic, so I thought I’d share a few insights into the Citizens of the USSR movement that he details.
With that in mind, here’s what you’ll find this week:
- Who are the Citizens of the USSR?
- A movement without a defined ideology
- Opposition from the right
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Who are the Citizens of the USSR?
The Citizens of the USSR can best be characterised as a loose movement of people who do not accept the legitimacy of the modern Russian Federation and instead look back to — yes, you guessed it — the Soviet Union as the true legal authority. It first emerged in the mid-1990s, but its main growth took place in the 2010s, something Akhmetyev and movement members explicitly link to the socioeconomic challenges that followed the 2008 financial crisis and the post-2014 sanctions. Indeed, people who have experienced financial difficulties and failed small businessmen are heavily represented among the membership. The young, however, are not: Most are of or approaching pension age, whereas under 35s are a rarity. Men and women are represented fairly evenly and Citizens can be found in most parts of Russia — even if the size of the movement is impossible to estimate with any degree of accuracy.
There are obvious parallels between Citizens of the USSR and the “sovereign citizens” movement in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and, most particularly, the United States, as well as with the Reichsbürger movement in Germany. Although these all look towards different state models in the past, they share a rejection of the legitimacy of the modern entity in which they currently reside. However, the Citizens do not have a centralised leadership or consistent organisational structure, and in some cases may not be organised at all. This makes for a more eclectic movement than some who deliberately pursue “leaderless resistance” — where cells may be organised in a similar way around a common idea but operate entirely autonomously.
A movement without a defined ideology
Eclectic is certainly a word that can be applied to the ideas held by Citizens of the USSR. Indeed, this is perhaps one of the most interesting features of the movement: It does not have a clear ideology and its name is in important ways misleading.
In my book on the North Caucasus insurgency, I use a deliberately broad approach to ideology, defining it in its simplest terms as a vision of how the world is, how it should be, and what people should do to bridge the divide between the two. This definition seeks to lower the bar by breaking the (often implicit) link between the ideological and the intellectual/doctrinal so that we can account for groups like the Caucasus Emirate (which was, with few exceptions, distinctly not intellectual!). Yet the Citizens of the USSR do not meet even this lowered threshold to allow us to talk of a common ideology uniting the movement.
The movement houses a broad range of ideas, from a rejection of taxation and debt (convenient for those facing financial difficulties) to global conspiracy theories (one such being that the Russian state is a commercial enterprise owned by the British monarchy). But even conspiracy theories are, while prevalent, far from universally held. There is a vague nostalgia for the Soviet period — for the USSR as a superpower, for a self-sufficient economy, for a more just and equal society — and some people use “Soviet” documents or appoint themselves to Soviet-sounding roles. Yet there is no link to Communist ideology, nor is there a strong push for a stronger welfare state.
In other words, it is difficult to point to an even nominally consistent shared vision of how the world is, how it should be, and what people should do to bridge the divide. Once you get past the rejection of the modern Russian state, there is no agreement even about what is wrong and who is to blame. There are commonalities and frequently encountered ideas rather than universally held beliefs. Indeed, one suspects that many members wouldn’t actually like the Soviet state any more than they do the Russian one — unless one counts its more bureaucratic and petition-oriented dimensions rather than any notional Communist premise.
Opposition from the right
Akhmetyev is explicit that the Citizens belong on the right of the political spectrum. In this, he takes issue with the only other semi-serious treatment of the movement, a popular scientific account by Roman Silantyev and Olga Strekalova, who position it as left wing (anyone familiar with Silantyev and the methodological and ethical rigour of his work might understand why I approach anything he produces with a healthy degree of skepticism!). In addition to the difficult socioeconomic situation of the 2010s, Akhmetyev highlights another factor in the movement’s growth: the “conservative turn” that followed the 2011-2012 protests and Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency — and the expectations that this turn raised and then disappointed.
In this regard, the growth of the Citizens of the USSR is emblematic of a wider phenomenon: opposition to the state coming from the right of the current authorities, with groups seeking a more conservative rather than more liberal state. We can point to groups like the Russian Volunteer Corps, which is fighting for Ukraine and promotes right-wing conservative views” and became disillusioned with the post-2014 promotion of the “Russian world” **idea. Or to Chechen opposition groups like 1ADAT or various jihadist actors, who advocate a conservative Islamic society from different points on the ideological spectrum. Or even to groups like Wagner, which have criticised the war in Ukraine — not for taking place, but for not going far enough fast enough.
None of these groups are strong enough to bring down the Russian state. But what they perhaps serve to emphasise is that the alternative to Putin’s Russia is not guaranteed to be something that is politically, socially, or economically liberal. Instead, it might be something conservative and backward-looking — even if not of the tinfoil hat variety promoted by the Citizens of the USSR.
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