The Russian world is the social totality associated with Russian culture; it comprises both the Russian diaspora and the Russian culture together with its influence in the world. The concept is based on the notion of "Russianness", and both are ambiguous.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin visited the Arkaim site of the Sintashta culture in 2005, meeting in person with the chief archaeologist Gennady Zdanovich. The visit received much attention from Russian media. They presented Arkaim as the "homeland of the majority of contemporary people in Asia, and, partly, Europe". Nationalists called Arkaim the "city of Russian glory" and the "most ancient Slavic-Aryan town". Zdanovich reportedly presented Arkaim to the president as a possible "national idea of Russia", a new idea of civilisation which Shnirelman calls the "Russian idea".
Major authors behind the resurrection of the concept in the post-Soviet Russia include, Yefim Ostrovsky, Valery Tishkov, Vitaly Skrinnik, Tatyana Poloskova and Natalya Narochnitskaya. Since Russia emerged from the Soviet Union as still a significantly multiethnic and multicultural country, for the "Russian idea" to be unifying, it could not be ethnocentric, as it was in the doctrine Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality of the late Russian Empire. In 2000 Shchedrovitsky presented the main ideas of the "Russian world" concept in the article "Russian World and Transnational Russian Characteristics", among the central ones of which was the Russian language. Andis Kudors of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, analyzing Shchedrovitsky's article, concludes that it follows the ideas first laid out by the 18th century philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder about the influence of language on thinking : the ones who speak Russian come to think Russian, and eventually to act Russian.
Putin era
Eventually, the idea of the Russian world was adopted by the Russian administration, and Vladimir Putin decreed the establishment of the government-sponsored Russkiy Mir Foundation in 2007. A number of observers consider the promotion of the Russian world concept as an element of the revanchist idea of the restoration of Russia or its influence back to the borders of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. Other observers described the concept as an instrument for projecting Russian soft power. In Ukraine, the promotion of the Russian world has become strongly associated with the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. According to assistant editor Pavel Tikhomirov of, the Russian world for politicized Ukrainians, whose number constantly increases, nowadays is "simply 'neo-Sovietism' masked by new names". He reconciled that with the conflation of the Russian world and the Soviet Union within Russian society itself.
On 3 November 2009, at the Third Russian World Assembly, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow defined the Russian world as "the common civilisational space founded on three pillars: Eastern Orthodox Church| Orthodoxy, Russian culture and especially the language and the common historical memory and connected with its common vision on the further social development" Russkiy Mir is an ideology promoted by many in the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. "This ideology, concocted as a reaction to the loss of Russian control over Ukraine and Belarus after the fall of the Soviet Union, seeks to assert a spiritual and cultural unity of the peoples descended from the Kievan Rus, presumably under Russian leadership." Patriarch Kiril of Moscow also shares this ideology; for the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russkiy Mir is also "a spiritual concept, a reminder that through the baptism of Rus, God consecrated these people to the task of building a Holy Rus." On 31 January 2019, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow declared concerning the religious relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and Ukraine: "Ukraine is not on the periphery of our church. We call Kiev 'the mother of allRussian cities.' For us Kiev is what Jerusalem is for many. Russian Orthodoxybegan there, so under no circumstances can we abandon this historical and spiritual relationship. The whole unity of our Local Church is based on these spiritual ties."
