Two recent stories offer a revealing — and, to some, unsettling — view of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s emerging state ideology. The new Putinism, you might call it, seems to be a fusion of two older Russian ideas: nationalism, sometimes with an anti-Western tinge, and conservative interpretations of Orthodox Christianity. Both stories portray the coalescing, Kremlin-pushed ideology as a response to rising dissent and, more broadly, an effort to fill an ideological vacuum that has to some extent remained since the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago.

The Financial Times’ Charles Clover chronicles the new ideology’s emergence in the typically vibrant city of St. Petersburg, “long regarded as Russia’s liberal window to the west” but now “the testing ground for a new wave of conservative, Orthodox church-going, pro-Kremlin patriotism that has gripped much of Russian officialdom.” Clover cites recent censorship of classic Russian works by Vladimir Nabokov and Sergei Rachmaninoff, as well as new law that forbids “yelping” and “stomping” at night, possibly aimed at curbing protests.