Nation-building in post-Soviet Russia: What kind of nationalism is produced by the Kremlin?

Abstract

After collapse and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, post-Soviet Russia faced typical problems of state-building and nation-building. Nations are assumed as political communities of Modernity. They are constructed in the process of nation-building and are based on nationalism, defined as worldview which perceives social reality through the prism of dividing the world into nations-states. Nation-building is a discursive process where state’s activities predefine the type of nationalism being rooted. Using as a starting point ‘civic versus ethnic nationalism’ dichotomy, the article develops a transformed version of this typology, which is based on two dimensions: model of national membership (openness/closeness) and model of interaction among members (universalism/hierarchical particularism). The analysis of Annual Addresses of the Russian Presidents demonstrates that the Kremlin certainly produces open model of national membership. The key feature of ‘Russianness’ in the Kremlin discourse is commitment to the Russian culture where anyone can be recognized as ‘Russian’ as long as he/she shares the Russian cultural values. At the same time, the openness is combined with neglect of ‘civicism’. In contrast to ‘civicism’, which is based on rational notions of equal rights and responsibilities and universalistic patterns of behavior, the Kremlin image of Russian nation focuses on rather sacral idea of ‘the Russian way’, great historical mission as the destination of Russia. Openness of nationalism entails permanent expansion of the nation ‘outside itself’ in order to ‘absorb’ those groups who are able to accept Russian culture. Since the acceptance requires definite period of time, at any point of time Russian nation includes both ‘core of the nation’ and ‘aspirants’ that are in hierarchical order. Consequently, from the point of the second dimension, Russian nationalism falls into the category of hierarchical particularism.