8 - The Russian and Soviet Empire

Summary

Empires and nations pull in different directions. Empires are founded on principles of institutionalized differences and distinctions, both laterally between peoples or geographies and vertically between those on top whose superiority grants them the right to rule over others and those below whose inferiority condemns them to be ruled by others. Nations, in contrast, are imagined and affective communities that promote, at least rhetorically if not always in practice, the commonality, horizontal equivalency, and homogeneity of the population that constitutes the nation. A nation at its inception is a political claim that a shared culture, ethnic, political, or religious, gives a people the right to self-rule, and possibly to sovereignty and statehood. At one end of the political spectrum, empires operate through hierarchy and difference between subjects and rulers, while at the other end, nations function on the basis of equality and shared nature, whether ethnic, religious, or political, of their citizens.