ABSTRACT
In the Age of Democratic Revolutions, the struggle for constitutionalism, popular sovereignty and representation was pursued in different countries and on different arenas, yet it was inspired by the same ideas. These ideas are typically associated with the civic or liberal concept of the nation, but are also seen as republican ideas. Students of nationalism commonly identify modern republican thought as a basic component of the civic idea of the nation that emerged in the West. This chapter shows that the idea of the nation that emerged in Russia in the beginning of the nineteenth century was in fact inspired by republican thought. It suggests that republicanism did not lose its political significance with the American and the French Revolutions. Patriotism, or love of country, is one of the key elements of republicanism. It was prominent both in the revolutionary vocabulary of the late eighteenth century and in the liberal nationalism of the nineteenth century.
