Certainly, there are those who voluntarily and consciously went to war, already possessing an ideology. There are the convinced rightists (Orthodox, monarchists, imperialists). There are the leftists (Stalinists, anti-globalists). There are left-rightists — National Bolsheviks. By the way, Prigozhin articulated, in many respects, exactly the left-right discourse — justice and strength. There are right-leftists — Eurasianists. There are no liberals in any form. This is the ideology of the front and it cannot be ignored. There, as Semyon Pegov accurately writes, ‘people and soldiers stand side by side’. If a liberal ends up on the front, he simply stops being a liberal and immerses himself in the illiberal ideology of the Russian Front. Most of the convinced liberals either fled at the very beginning of the Special Military Operation, or hid and engaged in subversive activities in the rear.

But most people — primarily the mobilised, but not only, come to the front without ideology. They are sent by the state, which they obey. In the first stage, this lack of ideology led to a mass of deserters, who, having faced the wild element of war, realised that they were not ready to die and did not understand what for. Probably, some officials also moved to the front and new territories out of obedience. Not for the sake of an idea, but because the state said so. And theoretically, if the state had said stop, we change the war to peace, they would have done so — without reasoning or condemning.

However, this is theoretical and at the very beginning. When a Russian person, even ideologically neutral, gets into a war, especially one like now, a people’s patriotic war, he irrevocably changes. His life is permeated with an idea. The Russian Idea. And now he cannot be so easily called back, pretending that nothing happened. Since there is a war, then until victory. Thus, the obedient state official becomes a Russian hero with a high degree of self-awareness. He was sent to war, but this gesture has no reverse force. A Russian person in war becomes a subject. You cannot become a liberal in war. But you can certainly become right, left, right-left, and left-right. But there is one important point: the majority of those sent to war will hardly strictly follow the dogmatic right or left, including the masses of red-white contradictions. Some, yes, but the majority, no. It is in this environment of Russian warriors (soldier-people) that a new Russian ideology will be born. It will rather be right-left or left-right, but not dogmatically, but intuitively.

On the fronts of Ukraine, the whole of Russia is now fighting — ancient and modern, imperial and Soviet. And the ideology of such a war must naturally be all-Russian.

Everyone was struck by the story of our soldier, severely wounded and left in the grey zone, who, despite everything, survived and, before that, helped a mortally wounded Ukrainian as best he could, ate snow with a spoon, and still crawled to his own. The might of the idea, the depth of heroism, and the seriousness of the Russian ideology are revealed in such superhuman feats. Ten days bleeding, filled with shrapnel tearing flesh, in blood and explosions eating snow with a spoon.

Only the spirit is capable of this.

translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister