The Construction of Collective Identity on the Example of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict in Social Networks

From the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the agenda of Russian nationalism has changed. Anti-immigrant sentiment was replaced by anti-Western sentiment. Discussions about the “Russian national state” (in European manner) became irrelevant, however, imperial ambitions were on the rise. The idea of ​​the Russian nation (and who belongs to it) turned out to be very unstable. In this study, we examine how Russian national identity is constructing during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in social networks in order to answer the important question: “What does it mean to be Russian?”. It turned out that Russian national identity is based on the opposition between the natural and artificially-constructed community (traditionally defined as the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft) in the request for the authenticity as contrary to modernity.