Rebel comrades: How Russian imperial nostalgia found its Confederate soul

There’s something fitting about the term “vatnik” — derogatory Russian slang for pro-Kremlin loyalists — because whether by accident or design, it translates eerily well to a concept from another place and time: the "cotton rebel."

You see, vatnik originally referred to a quilted cotton jacket, the kind worn by Soviet workers, soldiers and prisoners alike. But over time, it came to symbolize a particular kind of person: the diehard, unthinking supporter of an authoritarian regime. The one who cheers for repression, worships the state and believes everything their TV tells them.

And in a twist of historical irony, the word cotton — or, more precisely, cotton rebels — was once used to mock the Confederate South in the United States. The Southern economy was built on cotton, of course — and on the labor of enslaved human beings — and the Confederates were convinced that their entire way of life was not only righteous but essential to the world. They believed they were feeding and clothing America, that they were the economic backbone of civilization, and that because of this, they were destined to win.

Sound familiar?

It should. That’s exactly the worldview that fuels Russian imperialism today.

The Rebel flag over Donbas

When the pro-Russian “Novorossiya” separatists in eastern Ukraine started waving a flag that looked suspiciously like the Confederate battle flag, a lot of people — including me — were baffled. What the hell does Donbas have to do with the American Civil War? Why would Russian-backed militants adopt the symbol of Southern slaveholders?

At first, I dismissed it as stupidity, just another case of people grabbing random symbols without understanding them. But then I dug deeper.

Even before the war in Donbas, the Confederate flag had a niche following in certain Russian circles. Not because of any deep understanding or appreciation of American history, but as a symbol of resistance against the United States itself. The Confederacy, in their eyes, represented the “vetus ordo seclorum” — the Old World Order. The order, that is, of a world before liberal democracy, before globalization, before the collapse of empires.

It was a banner for those who reject modernity, for those who dream of a world ruled by “traditional values” and authoritarian strongmen. In short, it was a flag for vatniks.

In defense of slavery

Here’s where it gets even weirder.

Among Southern intellectuals and their supporters in antebellum America, there were those who defended slavery not just on racial grounds, but as an inherently superior social system. Some argued that slavery was actually better than the free labor market because it provided “stability.” Enslaved people, under this wisdom, had guaranteed food, housing and protection. They didn’t have to worry about finding a job or feeding their families — their masters took care of everything.

This line of thinking might also sound disturbingly familiar to anyone who has encountered recent Russian propaganda.

That’s exactly how Russian state media justifies that nation’s own authoritarian regime. Democracy is chaos. Freedom is instability. The West is collapsing because of its liberal decadence. Only a strong leader can protect the people from anarchy.

This is why both those nostalgic for the Soviet Union and the czarist monarchy in Russia can look at the Confederate battle flag and feel a weird sense of kinship. It’s not just about racism. It’s about the belief that hierarchy, submission and obedience are the natural state of the world. That some people are meant to rule, and others are meant to serve.

The "vatnik" mindset: Fighting for your exploiter

Watching “Gone With the Wind” really drove this home for me.

It’s a brilliant work of cinema that romanticizes the Old South, turning it into a tragic lost world. One scene that stuck with me: As Union troops besiege Atlanta, shells are exploding, people flee in panic. The heroine — daughter of a plantation owner — gets caught in the chaos and stumbles upon a group of formerly enslaved people from her father’s cotton fields.

They’re ragged, exhausted, barely able to stand. They’ve been conscripted to dig trenches to defend the city. And then, with pathetic enthusiasm, one of them tells her:

"Don’t worry, ma’am! We won’t let those Yankees into the city!"

That’s the vatnik mindset in a nutshell.

The Confederacy convinced millions of poor white men — most of whom never owned slaves — that they had to fight and die for the interests of the plantation elite. And then, to make the whole thing even more grotesque, the Confederate regime, which built its entire ideology on the supposed inferiority of Black people, had no problem rounding them up and forcing them to dig trenches in a desperate attempt to save the very system that enslaved them.

In much the same way, the Russian state has convinced its vatniks to fight and die for oligarchs who wouldn’t let them within five kilometers of their palaces.

The Confederate South believed it was too important to fail. The vatniks of today believe Russia is too special to lose. And both groups, blinded by propaganda, willingly march into the meat grinder for rulers who see them as nothing more than disposable labor.

History repeats — or at least rhymes

And here we are, watching history rinse and repeat, except that this time the Confederacy isn’t just a relic of the past — it’s alive and well, just waving a different flag. There’s much the same blind loyalty, the same cultish devotion to leaders who couldn’t care less if their followers live or die. The same desperate clinging to a myth of lost greatness, blaming outsiders for their own decline.

Donald Trump stands on stage, grinning and talking about how "smart" and "strong" Vladimir Putin is, while his crowds — decked out in red hats instead of gray uniforms — roar their approval. They see no contradiction in waving American flags while praising a dictator who wants to dismantle everything their country was built on.

As for Putin, he plays them like a fiddle. He feeds them the same old lies about protecting tradition, fighting “globalists” (which mostly means Jews) and defending sovereignty. The same fairy tales Confederate leaders used to sell slavery as a noble cause. The same propaganda that got Russian soldiers to march into Ukraine believing they were "liberators."

The vatnik movement is global now. The lost-cause nostalgics, the grievance-driven mobs, the people who would rather burn the world down than admit they were duped. They think they’re fighting for freedom, for some mythical golden age, but in reality they’re just digging trenches for their own destruction.

The Trumps and Putins of the world will keep cheering them on, keep using them, right up until the moment they’re no longer useful. Then, just like the Confederate slave conscripts, just like the Russian cannon fodder in Bakhmut, they’ll be discarded — forgotten, broken and left to rot in the very ruins they helped create.

Defining the future downward

Here’s another delicious slice of irony. Trump and his gang prance around, pretending they’ve come to slay the bureaucratic Leviathan, to liberate the people from the tyranny of big government. Small government! Deregulation! Cut the red tape! Let the people be free! And the libertarians — bless their hearts — clap their hands like trained seals, trying to convince themselves this circus is the real deal.

But what does Trump actually do? He rules like a king, to use his own word. Not like a cautious statesman trimming the excesses of government, but a tantrum-throwing autocrat tossing out executive orders like confetti, sticking his nose into everything, firing off demands, threatening companies, punishing opponents and literally portraying himself as a monarch. His idea of governance isn’t streamlining the state — it’s turning it into his personal fiefdom.

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And the crowd that follows him doesn’t look much like rugged, self-sufficient, Ayn Rand-reading Atlases shrugging off the system, do they? No, they look suspiciously like the same old mob every strongman attracts — not demanding freedom, but demanding vengeance. Punish them! Feed us! They don’t want the state to be smaller; they just want it wielded like a club, and used to smash their enemies.

There’s another layer of irony at work when MAGA Americans call Trump their "daddy" while accusing his critics of being communists. The whole “Big Daddy” concept — deeply rooted in Southern culture — is essentially about longing for a dominant patriarch, a figure of unquestioned authority who brings order, control and tradition. That is precisely the psychological mechanism behind Russia’s “Russkiy mir,” where people yearn for a strongman to protect the imagined moral and national order. Both reflect a deep discomfort with pluralism, autonomy and shared power. So when Trump’s fans idolize him with the same devotion Russians have toward Putin, all while screaming about communism, the absurdity is hard to miss.

So spare me the talk about rebellion, draining the swamp, breaking the chains. This isn’t a revolution against tyranny — it’s just another desperate bid for a tyrant of their own.

It's the same story with the Russian vatniks. They, too, pretend to be some kind of rebellious, anti-globalist resistance, fighting the evil Western empire, reclaiming sovereignty, rejecting the corrupt elites. But what do they actually worship? A bloated mafia petro-state where one man decides everything, where bureaucrats and siloviki gorge themselves on stolen wealth, where the government doesn’t shrink but suffocates everything beneath it. Just like the MAGA faithful, they don’t want freedom — they want a strongman to crush their enemies and hand them scraps from the table.

The vatniks and the MAGA warriors are not fighting for the future — they’re dragging it down. They are not the revolutionaries storming the gates of power and breaking free from oppression; they are the ghosts of dead empires, clawing at the ankles of the living, trying to pull them back into the dirt. They are the Confederates, still dreaming of plantations. They are the Soviet nostalgics, longing to be ruled by Stalin’s iron hand. They are hopeless reactionaries, desperately trying to resurrect a world that has already buried them.

The real rebellion is moving forward. It’s building, innovating, creating something better. It’s Ukrainians defending their right to exist, the younger generations around the world rejecting tyranny, the people choosing democracy even when it’s messy, hard and frustrating.

So the next time someone tries to tell you about the “rebellious spirit” of the MAGA horde, picture that trench-digging cotton worker from “Gone With the Wind,” proudly defending the same system that destroyed him.

That’s what makes the vatnik mindset so uniquely tragic. It’s not just about servitude or oppression, it’s about actively defending the forces that will exploit you, abandon you and bury you.