the new russian nationalismConclusions
In the Tsarist Empire, ethnic Russians were not dominant, demo-
graphically or politically. In the 1897 census the share of Great
Russians in this state was only 44 per cent, and Russians did not
enjoy any particular prerogatives such as privileged access to jobs
in the civil service. Educated members of certain non- Russian
groups, such as Germans and Poles, were far more likely to land
attractive jobs in the state apparatus. Many Russians were no
doubt proud to be subjects of the Tsar and identified with the
state, but this was a dynastic state, and not ‘their’ ‘nation- state’ in
any sense. Certain elements of a Russification policy were intro-
duced in the final decades of the empire, but this affected the life
of the non- Russians more than the Russians.
In territorial terms the Soviet Union represented a continua-
tion of the Russian Empire. While the nationalities policy of the
Bolsheviks differed radically from that pursued by the tsars, it
was no more conducive to the formation of a Russian national
identity. The federal structure of Soviet Union gave all the major
non- Russian nationalities an ethnic homeland that bore their
name and also to some extent their cultural imprint. In all Union
republics and autonomous republics, education was available in
the titular language, at least in elementary school if not necessar-
ily at higher levels. Titulars were also overrepresented in top jobs
in the republics, in the party and government structure (Hodnett
1979). All Soviet citizens carried with them at all times their inter-
nal passport in which their natsionalnost (read: ethnic identity)
was recorded. This meant that also non- Russians living in other
parts of the country, having a personally ascriptive identity that
corresponded with one of the republics, would naturally identify
with this federal unit.
All of this was different for the ethnic Russians. The first ‘R’
in the RSFSR was not russkii but rossiiskii, and this vast con-
glomerate republic was not intended to be or understood as
a homeland for ethnic Russians. As a federation in itself with
a large number of ethnically defined sub- units, RSFSR was in a
sense a copy of the Soviet Union writ small; however, it lacked
some basic attributes of Union republics, such as a separate party