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Conflicting “Homeland Myths” and Nation-State Building in Postcommunist Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Vera Tolz
Vera Tolz*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and Contemporary History, University of Salford, Great Britain
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Extract

The second disintegration of the empire this century has reopened the debate over Russian state and nation building with direct implications both for Russia's reform process and for its relations with other newly independent states. In December 1991, the Russian Federation was transformed into an independent state as a historically formed regional entity, not as a nation state. Scholars argue that the Russian empire was built “at the cost of Russia's own sense of nationhood.” In the past, the efforts spent conquering and ruling vast territories and diverse populations diverted the Russian people and their leaders from the task of consolidation and nation building. This was true not only in the prerevolutionary but also in the Soviet period, during which the majority of Russians saw the entire USSR rather than the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) as their homeland. Now, after the disintegration of the USSR, the questions arise whether the majority of Russians can accept the borders of the Russian Federation as final, and, if not, what the alternative myths of Russia's national homeland are? The answers to these questions determine whether Russians will ever be able to define themselves other than as an imperial people.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , Summer 1998 , pp. 267 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1998

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References

The author would like to thank Yoram Gorlizki, J. F. Brown, Taras Kuzio, Maureen Perrie, Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, Wendy Slater, and the anonymous reviewers for Slavic Review for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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