Social structure of the nation: the ordering principle of national attributes

Since we have suggested earlier that nationalism, at least etymologically, is an almost spontaneous ‘ism’ of the nation as a whole, usually manipulated by the state and/or the party, we may pose a conventional question: What is a nation? What is the substratum of nationalism? These questions are answered invariably in terms of the nation’s cohesive properties. Semantics differ but there is consensus on the national unity as an essence of nationality or nationhood.