• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.23-65
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• 2009

This study originates from the examination of both Soviet Russia's and contemporary Russia's tabula rasa that numerous comprehensive national exertions have been trying to overcome, relying on the creation of numerous national emblems, political symbols, and even folkloric materials. With this mind, this work substantiates how the political and cultural symbols have been created in the contemporary socio-political and socio-cultural discourse in Russia. As with the political symbols that most recently been studied by Lee Trepanier, it must be recognized that contemporary social movements and political discourses have failed to "articulate a concrete political vision that reflects a consensus among elites, nor have any gained popular support" as the author confessed already. Concomitant to this general consensus, as Roy Medvedev has put it, we can contend that "today's leaders in Russia have no new ideology, and the mass of the people have no strong new national idea."