Abstract

In this article, we link Russia’s discourse on traditional values with the global culture wars by showing that the Russian traditional values discourse owes much of its content and strategic formulation to the global culture wars. Going back much further than the recent elaborations of the Kremlin, we look at the origins of debates about public values inside Russia from the period of the perestroika, when Russian actors were socialized into the reality of culture wars by Western activists approaching post-soviet societies with a missionary zeal. The article reconstructs the emergence of the discourse of traditional values inside Russia and points out its hybrid nature as a mix of notions about Russian culture, religion and history and Western Christian Right ideas. Based on documents, literature and qualitative empirical research with moral conservative actors in and outside Russia, we show that the traditional values around which Russia’s leadership has built its anti-Western national security doctrine actually mirrors the global dynamics of the culture wars.