the new russian nationalismit can be argued that the empire- focused nationalisms initially
gained strength, becoming more articulate and better organised,
in the perestroika period – as ‘empire- saving’ – and in its immedi-
ate aftermath – as ‘empire- nostalgia’. Below I will present the four
major trends in post- Soviet Russian nationalism in the categories
defined above.
USSR- focused statism
The unprecedented upsurge of ethnic nationalism among non-
Russians during perestroika did not initially trigger a similar
movement among ethnic Russians. Instead, as the nationalist
effervescence led to demands for secession in the Union repub-
lics, ethnic Russians responded by creating organisations aimed
at preserving the unitary state. Notably, in many republics these
organisations were called ‘intermovements’, short for ‘interna-
tional movements’, a name chosen in deliberate contrast to the
nationalist movements among the non- Russians (Kolstø 1995).
In the Congress of People’s Deputies – the new superparliament
established by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 – the ‘Soiuz’ (= Union)
group of deputies fought tooth and claw to keep the Soviet Union
together (Dunlop 1993: 147–51).
In his heated disputes in the 1980s with Alexander Yanov
about the character of Russian nationalism, John Dunlop had
claimed that the ‘culturalists’ were the stronger force and would
carry the day. Yanov for his part predicted that the anti- regime
culturalists (or nationalism ‘A’ in his terminology) would even-
tually be won over by hard- core anti- Western isolationism
(‘nationalism B’), finally merging into military imperialism
(‘nationalism C’) (Yanov 1978: 19). Perestroika and its immedi-
ate aftermath seemed to prove Yanov right. In the late 1980s
and early 1990s several Russian nationalists whom Dunlop
had identified as leading vozrozhdentsy (Dunlop 1985: 88)
such as Vladimir Osipov and Igor Shafarevich, made common
cause with the ‘empire- savers’. In 1992, both of these former
dissident anti- communists were among the signatories when
the leading red–brown organisation, the National Salvation
Front, was established. Their names appeared alongside those