the new russian nationalismtaken place from positions A to B on the x- axis in my typo-
logy and from positions I to II on the y- axis. This development
did not gain speed until after the breakup of the Soviet Union
and can be linked to two issues that resulted from this dissolu-
tion: the ‘new diaspora’ in the 1990s, and flow of unskilled
labour from former Soviet Republics into Russia after the year
2000.
Russian nationalism before the nation- state
Tsarist Russia was an empire in name and self- understanding as
well as in actual fact. Regime legitimation – often called ‘official
nationality’ (Riasanovsky 1959) – was of a dynastic, statist kind,
emphasising loyalty to the Tsar. Also virtually all nationalist
currents among the intelligentsia were located on the ‘empire-
oriented’ axis in my matrix.
Geoffrey Hosking (1998: 19) holds that the huge efforts
expended on building the vast Russian Empire impeded attempts
to create a Russian nation. Likewise, Astrid Tuminez (2000:
25) argues that since ‘the state developed as a multiethnic,
authoritarian empire, the idea of nation both in ethnic and civic
terms never gained widespread influence’. Only towards the
end of the nineteenth century did the Russian state introduce a
policy of Russification toward some of its non- Russian subjects,
but the effects were limited. ‘Russia remained a state where the
sense of nation (both ethnic and civic) was weak, and nation-
alism that effectively bound state and society did not exist’
(Tuminez 2000: 39).
After the first Russian revolution in 1905 came the emergence of
a Russian nationalism with a strong emphasis on blood, descent
and ethnicity. The extremist pro- tsarist groups (often referred to
as ‘the Black Hundreds’) ‘defined membership in the nation chiefly
in ethnic terms – only ethnic Russians were bona fide members of
the nation’ (Tuminez 2000: 126; see also Laqueur 1993). At the
same time such moderate great power nationalists as Petr Struve
and Petr Stolypin tried to combine a civic and ethnic strategy of
nationalism (Struve 1997; Hosking 1998: 32; Tuminez 2000:
128) – but this could not save the empire.