EUROPE–RUSSIA — How Russia Built the Story Russians Are Asked to Live In

How history, identity and state power help explain Russia’s unexpected resilience—and Putin’s confidence

R.M. Westerink; 24 August 2026

A Puzzle Seen from the West

On 22 August, speaking at the United Russia congress, Vladimir Putin offered a compact statement of the worldview that has sustained his political system through more than four years of full-scale war. He described Russia through a vocabulary of continuous history, national unity, sovereignty, democratic legitimacy, external threat and eventual victory.[1] Russian troops, he said, fight for the Motherland and its interests; the country’s strength lies in the unity of the front and home front; elections demonstrate the maturity of the political system; and United Russia has a duty to do everything necessary for victory.

The speech was striking not because every claim was new, but because of the way its elements fitted together. Russia, in Putin’s account, is simultaneously a democracy, a unified multiethnic society, a country defending its legitimate interests, and a civilization forced to protect itself against outside powers seeking to weaken it. The war becomes evidence not only of danger but also of endurance. Continued fighting becomes confirmation that retreat would be more dangerous than resistance.

Seen from Western Europe, there are obvious contradictions here. Russia invaded a sovereign neighboring country and has attempted to impose its will on Ukrainians while simultaneously presenting Russians and Ukrainians as peoples joined by history, culture and civilization. It claims democratic legitimacy while political competition, independent media and public dissent are heavily constrained. Independent assessments describe a political system dominated by the Kremlin, with controlled national media and extensive restrictions on opposition and anti-war expression.

Cataloguing those contradictions is necessary, but it takes us only so far. The more consequential question is how these claims fit together into a recognizable account of Russia’s past, present and place in the world—and how that account has become embedded deeply enough in Russian society to help the country absorb costs that Western observers repeatedly expected to become politically destabilizing.

That leads to a different question from whether Russian propaganda is true or false: How did the Russian state build a story sufficiently powerful that millions of Russians can interpret sacrifice, isolation and war through it? Understanding that process may help explain one of the more surprising features of the war: Russia’s stubborn resilience.

The Story Came Before the Propaganda

It would be tempting to begin with Putin, state television or the propaganda apparatus created around the war in Ukraine. But that would mistake the amplification system for the origins of the story.

Modern Russian state narratives draw on historical materials that long predate Putin: memories of empire, the Orthodox tradition, the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, Russia’s experience of invasion, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a recurring conception of Russia as both European and somehow more than European—a civilization with its own historical trajectory. Scholarship tracing the evolution from the “Russian idea” to the contemporary “Russian World” shows how older civilizational concepts were gradually incorporated into official state discourse, with the Russkiy Mir Foundation established in 2007 as one institutional expression of that development.[2][3]

These memories do not form one neat ideology. Nor do Russians necessarily interpret them in the same way. What matters politically is that they provide a reservoir from which a coherent national story can be constructed.

Central to that story is the idea of a Russia whose historical significance extends beyond the borders of the contemporary Russian Federation. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians can be presented as branches of a common historical civilization. Kyiv can therefore simultaneously belong to another internationally recognized state and be described as foundational to Russian history. The Soviet past can be criticized for particular decisions while its victory in the Great Patriotic War remains sacred. Imperial, Orthodox, Soviet and post-Soviet elements that would appear contradictory in a conventional political ideology can coexist when they serve a larger narrative of historical continuity.

This is one reason concepts such as Russky Mir—the “Russian World”—matter. They provide a vocabulary through which language, culture, religion, historical memory and geopolitical space can be connected. Recent scholarship describes Russky Mir as a cultural, religious and geopolitical framework with implications for Russian conceptions of sovereignty and for Moscow’s relationship with Ukraine.[2][4]

Thinkers such as Alexander Dugin have articulated radical versions of this civilizational vision, as discussed in our earlier articles. But it would be misleading to imagine Dugin as the architect of contemporary Russian consciousness. His significance is better understood as part of a much larger intellectual and political environment. The Kremlin did not need to persuade Russians to adopt one philosopher’s doctrine. It could selectively draw on already familiar ideas about Russian greatness, sacrifice, encirclement, sovereignty and historical destiny.

The state’s achievement has been to organize these materials into a politically usable story.

Building the Great Russia Story

The resulting narrative is powerful partly because it connects different periods of Russian history that might otherwise remain disconnected.

Imperial Russia provides the memory of great-power status. The Second World War provides perhaps the most emotionally powerful story of sacrifice, existential threat and ultimate victory. The Soviet collapse provides the experience of loss. The difficulties and disorder of the 1990s provide a more recent memory of weakness and humiliation. Putin’s first decades in power can then be presented as the period in which Russia recovered stability, sovereignty and international standing.

Within this historical sequence, the conflict with the West acquires meaning. NATO enlargement, Western influence in former Soviet states, the color revolutions, Ukraine’s westward orientation and eventually the war itself can be incorporated into a longer story in which Russia repeatedly faces attempts to constrain its natural place in the world.

That changes the perceived structure of the Ukraine conflict. From the Western perspective, the basic sequence is relatively straightforward: Russia → invades → sovereign Ukraine.

Within the Kremlin narrative, however, the sequence is reconstructed:
West → penetrates historical Russian space → through Ukraine → Russia defends itself.

Once this second interpretation is accepted, many otherwise difficult claims become mutually reinforcing. Ukraine can be recognized formally as a state while its complete geopolitical independence from Russia is treated as historically artificial. Russia can be the militarily attacking party while understanding itself as strategically defensive. Territorial expansion can be described as protection or reunification.

This does not make the account historically or legally valid. It explains why pointing out the contradiction may have less persuasive force inside Russia than Western observers expect. The disagreement is not merely about individual facts. It concerns the framework within which those facts acquire meaning.

How a Story Becomes an Environment

A national narrative becomes politically important when people encounter it not occasionally, but repeatedly and through institutions they associate with ordinary life. This is where the Russian state’s organizational capability becomes crucial.

Schools help establish the historical narrative. Since the full-scale invasion, patriotic education, revised textbooks and militarized initiatives have expanded substantially. Research on Russian schooling describes the intertwining of loyalty, patriotism, traditional values and state-defined national unity, while also finding that reception among teachers, pupils and parents is not uniform.[5][6]

Television and other state-aligned media continually reproduce the interpretive framework in relation to current events. Public commemorations, particularly those surrounding the Great Patriotic War, connect present sacrifice with perhaps the most powerful collective memory in Russian society.

The Russian Orthodox Church provides another layer of legitimacy. Scholarship on the Church’s role in the war describes how religious and moral language has been integrated with nationalism, anti-Westernism and the defense of Russian civilization. The Church’s importance is not simply that every Russian follows its teaching; it can also function as a source of cultural and symbolic authority within the broader narrative environment.[7]

At the same time, competing interpretations have progressively less institutional room in which to develop. Independent media have been constrained or forced abroad, internet access to critical sources has been restricted, and anti-war speech can lead to prosecution and imprisonment.

Taken together, these mechanisms create something more substantial than a conventional propaganda apparatus. Schools help establish the historical narrative; media and commemorations continually reproduce it; political, cultural and religious institutions lend it authority; and repression reduces the visibility and organizational reach of competing interpretations.

None of these mechanisms would be sufficient on its own. Their importance lies in the way they reinforce one another. The result is not simply a collection of messages. It is an information and meaning environment.

Russians Do Not Have to Believe Everything

This distinction is important because Russian resilience does not require us to assume that the population has been uniformly persuaded.

Some Russians appear genuinely committed to the Kremlin’s account of the war. Others may support Russia and its armed forces while privately disliking Putin or questioning particular decisions. Some may accept the proposition that Russia is threatened by the West without embracing every official explanation of how the war began. Others may be primarily concerned with protecting their families, careers and ordinary lives. Still others may simply withdraw from politics.

Survey evidence illustrates this complexity. Levada Center polling in 2025 found high declared support for the actions of the Russian armed forces while, at the same time, majorities increasingly favored peace negotiations. Support also varied substantially with age, political attitudes and information sources. These results do not give us a simple measure of genuine belief under authoritarian conditions, but they do warn against treating Russian opinion as a single pro-war bloc.

The Kremlin therefore does not need Russians to believe every element of its account. Political resilience can rest on something considerably less demanding. A citizen may distrust individual politicians or dislike the war while still believing that Russia is fundamentally threatened by the West, that Russian soldiers deserve loyalty, or that defeat would leave the country in a worse position than continuing the struggle. Others may conclude that they have little ability to influence events and retreat into private life.

These attitudes can coexist, and together they leave considerably less space for organized resistance than opinion surveys measuring straightforward “support for the war” might suggest.

Repression matters enormously here, but repression alone is an incomplete explanation. A population held together exclusively by fear would be much more fragile than Russia presently appears to be. The more interesting possibility is that coercion operates alongside genuine patriotism, historical memory, social adaptation, political passivity and varying degrees of acceptance of the state narrative. Russia’s resilience may lie precisely in this mixture.

Turning Cost into Meaning

This helps explain something that has repeatedly surprised Western observers.

Russia has incurred extraordinary costs. Soldiers have been killed and wounded. Families have been disrupted. Sanctions have reduced access to Western goods, technology and finance. Parts of the economy have been reorganized around wartime requirements. International connections built after the Soviet collapse have been damaged or severed.

Western strategic reasoning understandably expects such costs eventually to produce political pressure. As the burden rises, citizens should increasingly question the policy producing it. But the relationship is not automatic.

The Russian system inserts something between cost and policy change: meaning.

If economic difficulty is understood primarily as evidence that government policy has failed, it can weaken political authority. If the same difficulty is understood as the consequence of an external attempt to destroy or subordinate the country, endurance can acquire patriotic meaning. In a February 2025 Levada survey, 56 percent of respondents said Western sanctions would strengthen Russia and stimulate its development, illustrating how economic pressure can be interpreted through a resilience narrative rather than only as evidence of policy failure.

The same mechanism can operate with military losses. A dead soldier can represent evidence of a disastrous policy. But within a different narrative environment, the same death can be interpreted as sacrifice in defense of the Motherland. The loss remains real. What changes is its political meaning.

This is where Russia’s narrative system may contribute directly to national resilience. It cannot eliminate material costs, but it can influence how those costs are interpreted.

And once society has adapted to a new level of hardship, that adaptation itself can reinforce the narrative. Sanctions were supposed to cripple Russia; Russia continued functioning. Western companies departed; alternatives were found. The war was expected to become politically unsustainable; the political system endured. Economic research also shows why the picture is not simply one of collapse: wartime demand, wage growth and very low unemployment supported household incomes even as sanctions, capacity constraints and high borrowing costs accumulated longer-term pressures.

Each survival can then be incorporated into the story as evidence that the story was right.
A feedback loop emerges: pressure demonstrates hostility; survival demonstrates Russian strength; demonstrated strength validates continued resistance.

Why Putin Can Remain Confident

Seen from outside Russia, Putin’s confidence can therefore appear puzzling. Russia has suffered major military losses, economic distortions and increased dependence on non-Western partners. Its relationship with Europe has been profoundly damaged, perhaps for generations.

But Putin does not evaluate his position exclusively through those indicators.

From inside the system he leads, other developments may appear equally important. The state survived sanctions that were expected to be devastating. The economy adapted sufficiently to sustain the war. Political opposition did not generate a systemic challenge. Western governments did not intervene directly with their own forces. Relations with China and much of the non-Western world prevented the comprehensive international isolation Russia might once have feared.

Most importantly, Russian society absorbed the transition from relative normality to prolonged war. That does not demonstrate that Putin’s strategy will succeed. It does help explain why he may believe that time is not necessarily working against him.

His confidence may rest not only on military calculations but on a political judgment: Russia has developed a greater capacity to absorb prolonged confrontation than its adversaries expected.

If that assessment is even partly correct, it has strategic consequences. Moscow can hope that Western governments, operating within competitive democracies and rapidly changing political environments, will eventually experience greater difficulty sustaining a long confrontation than the Russian state experiences sustaining its own population. The contest then becomes partly a contest of endurance.

Resilience Is Not Political Health

There is an important limit to this analysis. Explaining Russian resilience should not be confused with declaring Russia internally healthy or indefinitely stable.

Demographic pressures remain substantial. War expenditure can conceal economic weaknesses as well as stimulate particular sectors. Dependence on China creates its own vulnerabilities. Military losses accumulate. Technological restrictions may impose costs slowly rather than dramatically. Elite cohesion can persist for years and then change unexpectedly.

Current economic evidence already points to that distinction. The World Bank has projected much slower Russian growth than in 2024, citing capacity constraints, higher borrowing costs, tighter sanctions and lower energy prices. BOFIT likewise expects continued fiscal and structural pressure even while noting that wartime labor demand and wage growth have supported many households.

Nor does apparent public compliance tell us precisely what Russians would choose under conditions of unrestricted political competition and information. Resilience is not health.

The Russian system has demonstrated resilience. It has not demonstrated invulnerability. But that distinction makes understanding the sources of resilience more rather than less important. Waiting for material pressure automatically to produce political transformation may be a poor strategy if the Russian political system is unusually capable of converting pressure into narratives of endurance.

The Asymmetry We Should Notice

This brings the analysis back to Europe.

The most consequential asymmetry between Russia and the West may not be military.

Russia has spent years developing the institutional capacity to explain the world to its population in strategic terms. It connects history, identity, security, sacrifice and national purpose. The state actively works to sustain that interpretation across generations and institutions.

European democracies operate differently, and for good reasons. They cannot and should not reproduce Russia’s controlled information environment. Democratic pluralism requires competing interpretations, independent media and the freedom to reject official narratives.

But democratic pluralism does not prevent strategic communication.

Europe can still explain why the confrontation with Russia matters, what kind of future it offers its own citizens, why Ukrainians have the right to determine their own political future, and—perhaps most importantly—what relationship Europe ultimately wants with Russian citizens themselves.

That last dimension may become increasingly important.
Russia’s story tells Russians what the West supposedly wants from them: weakness, submission, fragmentation and the destruction of Russian civilization.
Europe has been much less systematic in telling Russians what it actually envisages instead.

That creates an asymmetry worth examining.

The Question This Leaves for Europe

Understanding this system helps explain something that has repeatedly surprised Western observers: Russia's capacity to absorb military losses, sanctions, economic damage and international isolation without producing the political reaction outsiders often expected.

This resilience does not mean that Russian society is immune to pressure, or that every Russian accepts the Kremlin's account of the world. It means that material pressure operates inside an information and meaning environment that has been built and reinforced over many years. Hardship can therefore be interpreted not simply as evidence that policy has failed, but as confirmation that Russia is under attack and must endure.

That makes the narrative ecosystem more than a communications instrument. It has become part of Russia's strategic resilience.

And that leaves Europe with a question of its own.

Europe has invested enormously in military deterrence, economic sanctions and support for Ukraine. But if Russia has also developed the capacity to shape how its population understands the conflict, sacrifice and Russia's place in the world, what is Europe's corresponding capability?

Russia has a story. Does Europe?

 

References

[1] United Russia party Congress - Vladimir Putin took part in the second stage of the 23^rd Congress of the United Russia party. The President addressed the plenary session held at the Megasport Sports Palace. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/80570

[2] Pasquale Annicchino, “The interaction of the ‘Russian world’ ideology, sovereignty, and human rights amidst the Russia-Ukraine war,” Journal of Law, Religion and State 13, no. 2/3 (2025), 160–183. DOI: 10.5117/JLRS2025.2.3.002.ANNI

[3] “From the ‘Russian idea’ to the ‘Russian World’,” Studies in East European Thought (2025). DOI/article: 10.1007/s11212-024-09692-9.

[4] Taras Kuzio, “Pan-Russian World and Ukraine,” in Russia’s War on Ukraine, Cambridge University Press (2025).

[5] Jonna Alava, “From Patriotic Education to Militarist Indoctrination—Disciplinary Power and Silent Resistance in Russia after the Onset of the War against Ukraine,” Post-Soviet Affairs (2025). DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2024.2444600.

[6] I. Fominykh et al., “Patriotic education in Russia: will it achieve loyalty?” Post-Soviet Affairs (2026). DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2026.2643798.

[7] Alar Kilp, “The Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch Kirill Weaponizing Teaching of Human Rights and Ecclesiastical Social Doctrine to Justify the Russian War of Aggression in Ukraine,” Journal of Law, Religion and State 13, no. 2/3 (2025), 131–159. DOI: 10.5117/JLRS2025.2.3.001.KILP.