ABSTRACT
Olga Malinova’s chapter provides an historical overview of the interplay between civilizational, imperial, and national configurations of the Russian state. The current “civilizational talk,” as Malinova argues, reflects Russia’s imperial legacy as a multiethnic nation, while it is also a way of tackling Russia’s troublesome relationship with the West. For most of the nineteenth century, Russia was imagined as a nation different from the West yet part of the same, universal civilization. The relationship with the West determined debates about the Russian Idea, while the multiethnic character of the Russian Empire was less consequential. A shift occurred at the turn of the twentieth century, when national cohesion became a more urgent issue. In Malinova’s narrative, the Soviet Union marked the eventual turn to a civilizational template, as the Soviet elites sought to combine unity in the concept of the Soviet People, while acknowledging a degree of heterogeneity and national self-determination. The fall of the Soviet Union left the new Russian Federation with both nation and civilization as potential templates for self-understanding, and, as Malinova argues, the use of “mixed templates” will remain the norm for Russian identity-building in the predictable future.
