the ethnification of russian nationalismtural as well as the cultural preconditions are in place: ‘Russia
is more culturally homogenous than many other large and even
small countries considered to be nation- states’ (Tishkov 1995:
49). Tishkov acknowledges that Russia indeed is a multi- ethnic
federation but the ties that bind the various groups together are
strong. The all- encompassing knowledge of the Russian language
throughout the country’s population provides the means for per-
vasive social communication and facilitates the development of
a strong common, supra- ethnic national identity as rossiiane.
Tishkov strongly urges the depoliticisation of ethnicity in Russia,
but he does not challenge the existing system of ethno- territorial
autonomy. As Oxana Shevel (2011: 183) has remarked, it may
therefore be difficult to see exactly how his rossiiskii nation
concept differs from the more traditional concept of the multina-
tional rossiiskii people.
Tishkov noted with satisfaction that some of his notions
found their way into official Russian statements and documents
in the Eltsin era – in particular in the president’s address to
the Federal Assembly in February 1994, when Eltsin defined
the nation as ‘co- citizenship’ (sograzhdanstvo) (El’tsin 1994;
Tishkov 1995: 48). Tishkov eventually became disappointed
with Eltsin’s inability to follow through with these ideas, but he
regained hope when Vladimir Putin took over. Putin, Tishkov
today declares, is finally realising his, Tishkov’s, rossiiskii
nation project.^3 Tishkov has published several books in which
he declares that the rossiiskii nation (natsiia) or the rossiiskii
people (narod) – he uses the two concepts interchangeably – is
already an established fact (Tishkov 2010, 2011, 2013). No
need for any Russian D’Azeglio after all, then. Indeed, Tishkov
pushes the genesis of the rossiiskii nation far into the past: both
the Romanov state and the Soviet Union were nation- states, he
has insisted (Tishkov 2010: 7). The fact that the official name
of this nation has undergone alterations over time and in the
communist period was referred to as ‘the Soviet people’ should
not confuse us: the main thing is that also in its Soviet version
this was a supra- ethnic concept. With this approach, all modern
states would qualify as nation- states, irrespective of their state
ideology or cultural consolidation.