The New Russian Nationalism Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism

the ethnification of russian nationalism

Russian society, indeed, a ‘myth’; and David Rowley (2000) ten
years later followed up by asserting the absence of nationalism in
Russian history.
In fact, however, the apparent discrepancy among those who
assert and those who deny the significance of Russian national-
ism stems from the differing definitions employed. Rowley and
Motyl claimed that most of what had passed for Russian nation-
alism on closer scrutiny proved to be imperialism, and, argued
Motyl (1990: 162), ‘nationalism and imperialism are polar types’.
Scholars who adhere to this view equate nationalism with ethno-
nationalism. While that is an extremely important variety of this

• ism, it is not the only possible one. The pioneers of nationalism
  studies such as Karl Deutsch (1966) and Ernest Gellner (1983)
  regarded as nationalism all strategies aimed at homogenising a
  country’s population so as to create a common identity, attached
  to the state. The ‘ties that bind’ do not necessarily have to be eth-
  nicity or a myth of common descent.
  It is only if we equate nationalism with ethnonationalism that
  political, state- based nationalism in multi- ethnic states becomes
  a contradiction in terms. Perhaps one reason why Rowley and
  Motyl did so with regard to Russia is that, almost without excep-
  tion, the nationalisms of the other, small- and medium- sized
  nations in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union have belonged
  to the ethnonationalist variety (see, for example, Simon 1991;
  Carrère d’Encausse 1993). This is not surprising. As long as there
  was no Belarusian, Uzbek or Chechen state, nationalism among
  Belarusians, Uzbeks, Chechens and so on focused on the ethnic
  group rather than on the state. Indeed, in a typology attributed to
  Hans Kohn (1971),^1 nationalism among state- less, state- seeking
  groups has been characterised as ‘Eastern’ in contradistinction
  to ‘Western’, state- focused nationalism. While this distinction
  may help to explain the trajectory of nationalism among stateless
  nations in the eastern part of Europe, it is unsuited for analysing
  nationalist thinking in East European nations that identify with
  one of Europe’s old states, such as the Poles, the Hungarians and
  the Russians.
  Marlene Laruelle (2010a: 3) argues that since ethno- centrism
  and nationalism are not synonymous terms, ‘there can be no