the new russian nationalismquestion here of excluding from “nationalism” so- called impe-
rialist or statist currents’. Similarly, Vera Tolz (2001: 18) has
held that the term ‘nationalism’, ‘as it is used in Western schol-
arly literature, is applicable to the Russian case’. Also Emil Pain
and Sergei Prostakov (2014) think that in a Russian context the
expression ‘imperial nationalism’ is not necessarily an oxymoron.
I will follow these researchers and include in my definition of
nationalism both state- centred and ethnocentric nationalisms.
According to Laruelle (2014a: 59), it does not make sense to try
to distinguish between imperialist and ethnonationalist currents
in Russian nationalism, since ‘the main ideologues and politicians
can use at the same time both imperialist and ethnonationalist
arguments’. In my view, however, it is important to keep these
tendencies analytically separate. Even if almost all ‘real exist-
ing nationalisms’ in Russia historically or today are of a mixed
kind, clear differences become evident, with significant political
consequences, when we ask which of these two concerns is the
driving motor behind each of them: the interests of the state, or
the interests of the Russian ethnic group. The most important dis-
tinction, I argue, runs between those that focus on ethnicity versus
those that focus on the state. But since the borders of the Russian
state have changed, we must also hold apart those nationalists
who identify with the current Russian Federation, and those who
orient themselves towards one of its much larger predecessors,
whether the Tsarist Empire or the USSR. For these purposes I will
use the two- axis model proposed by Sven Gunnar Simonsen in
1996 (see Figure 1.1).^2 The two axes should not be understood as
dichotomies but rather as continua, and the four boxes as ideal
types in a Weberian sense.
Until about 1988–9, most Russians, including virtually all
nationalists, took it for granted that ‘the state’ in question was
the USSR. It was only when this state was reeling under the
increasing onslaught of non- Russian nationalism that the term
became ambiguous. In a seminal article in 1989, Roman Szporluk
(1989: 16) referred to those who wanted to preserve the USSR
as ‘empire- savers’ while those few who were willing to contem-
plate a breakup of the unitary state and see the Russian Soviet
Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) as a Russian nation- state –