ABSTRACT
THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD IN RUSSIA HAS REACHED THE quarter of a century milestone. The identity crisis widely acknowledged in post-Soviet research in its first two decades opened the way for policies aimed at the consolidation of an encompassing all-Russian (rossiiskaya) national identity1 as a source of nation-building. Contention over political separatism and various regional scenarios of the politics of identity2 are being superseded by the ‘Russian (russkii) question’. Meanwhile strengthening ethnic identities look up to religious, language and cultural landmarks as reference points. The nation-building agenda is thus having to take in different repertoires of contention, and bridging cleavages within Russian society is not only and not primarily a question of elite-tailored politics of identity. It is about the formation and assertion of inclusive identities innate both to the Russian cultural tradition and to the needs of a community confronting the challenges of modernisation. In a multi-ethnic society like Russia, promoting inclusive identities is a core question for
social modernisation. This agenda includes consolidating the nation as a political community sharing fundamental citizenship values. The 1993 Constitution sees the country as a ‘multinational people’—a notion that finds differing interpretations in political and academic circles. There is, however, no consensus over the contents of such basic concepts as nationality and ethnicity, or on the use in public discourse of terms such as ‘nation-state’, ‘national republics’ (for which the official name is ‘national-territorial formations of the
Russian Federation’), ‘nations’ or use but present in the media. Bearing in mind the differences in institutional design and in political tradition, even an adequate translation of terms designating these nationally biased realities is sometimes problematic. Thus, ‘national’ traditionally designates ‘ethnic’ in Soviet public discourse and is still used mostly in this way (the entry ‘nationality’ in home passports stood for ethnic group until it disappeared altogether from the Russian citizens’ new passports in the 1990s amid enduring controversies over this decision). Such difficulties go far beyond the question of using appropriate and precise terminology.
They point to a theoretical challenge in adapting the characteristics of a nation-state which has formed the political discourse on the nation in the past two centuries to fit a transforming post-empire polity well into the twenty-first century, one that is ‘nationalising’ in a global and conflict stricken world. In more general terms, ‘it is as if Russians have periodically sought to locate and relocate themselves on conceptual maps originally devised by and for other people and other places’ (Franklin & Widdis 2006, p. 5). The nation as ‘a sorting device’ with criteria ‘varied across time and context’ is a theoretical frame that can be effectively adapted to diverse institutional environments (Verdery 1993, p. 37). However, it appears that the unquestionable treatment of the ideal type of nation-state as a pivot tailored to fit any transforming polity facing a modernisation agenda is an approach that needs reframing. The Russian case is a good advertisement for this cause.
