Eric Candle May 23, 2009:

territorial integrity (1)"Прежде всего, государственник - этот человек, целью которого является сохранение территориальной целостности России",
http://www.panorama.ru/works/vybory/party/p-ovr.html
(2) "strong state" is important if "territorial integrity" is not threatened

Angela Greenfield May 23, 2009:

meaning of the Russian word http://www.slovopedia.com/15/195/1501989.html

Rachel Douglas May 23, 2009:

"strong state" etc. Two points of discussion, since they were raised:

"Strong state" does not necessarily mean "excessively strong state." In the context of post-Soviet Russia, where many advocated drastic reduction of the role of the state, "государственник" came to mean a proponent / advocate / partisan / devotee / what have you ... of a strong role of the state in society, including _especially_, though not exclusively, in economic and industrial policy. The juxtaposition of государственники v. рыночники is well known.

I would be very hesitant to use "state supporter," not only because it sounds weird ("a true patriot and genuine state supporter"), but because in political contexts, such as this one clearly is, the combination "state supporter" very often is part of the phrase "state supporter of terrorism", so much so, that one can "hear" "of terrorism", or at least the question "of what?", as a natural continuation.

Michael Korovkin May 23, 2009:

To my detractor Lina Episheva (in relevance) In your disagreement you said "state supporter" ’вообще нигде не встречается’. I was so surprised that went against my own rules, looked into Google and found 4800, as they call them, "hits" there.
What else can I say? Just enter "state supporter" and you'll see.
As for your explanation about them being a party and therefore entitled to the denominator "statesman", well, I repeat, it's not any party member but only the one with a relatively high formal/structural position may be the one entitled to the name statesman ("may be" because even among prime ministers nowadays there are e few real statesmen). It's not a simple concept to explain but as Misha justly noted it has nothing whatsoever to do with the persons supporting the (idea of) the state. All of it is just to help a colleague, so, please, do not take any of it personally. Whe cares, eh?