(Co-author: Graeme Robertson) Recent Russian election campaigns and post-election contestation have been characterized by a pervasive rhetoric of ethnonationalism, anti-migrant xenophobia, and other forms of chauvinism. This appears to mirror the proliferation of xenophobic frames and vocabulary in everyday Russian discourse, both political and non-political. Alongside this development, the ruling elite have successfully mobilized conservative religious and social sentiment in order to marginalize their political opponents. Evidence from surveys conducted by the authors in Moscow and other large cities, however, suggests that xenophobia operates differently from other valence issues, bridging political camps rather than dividing them. The politicization of xenophobia, then, risks becoming a competition not between chauvinism and cosmopolitanism, but over who can most effectively mobilize nationalist sentiment for electoral gain. >>
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