Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War

Taras Kuzio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000534085
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

This book is the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the 2014 crisis, Russia's annexation of Crimea and Europe's de facto war between Russia and Ukraine. The book provides a historical and contemporary understanding behind President Vladimir Putin Russia's obsession with Ukraine and why Western opprobrium and sanctions have not deterred Russian military aggression.

The volume provides a wealth of detail about the inability of Russia, from the time of the Tsarist Empire, throughout the era of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and since the dissolution of the latter in 1991, to accept Ukraine as an independent country and Ukrainians as a people distinct and separate from Russians. The book highlights the sources of this lack of acceptance in aspects of Russian national identity. In the Soviet period, Russians principally identified themselves not with the Russian Soviet Federative Republic, but rather with the USSR as a whole. Attempts in the 1990s to forge a post-imperial Russian civic identity grounded in the newly independent Russian Federation were unpopular, and notions of a far larger Russian 'imagined community' came to the fore. A post-Soviet integration of Tsarist Russian great power nationalism and White Russian émigré chauvinism had already transformed and hardened Russian denial of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a people, even prior to the 2014 crises in Crimea and the Donbas. Bringing an end to both the Russian occupation of Crimea and to the broader Russian–Ukrainian conflict can be expected to meet obstacles not only from the Russian de facto President-for-life, Vladimir Putin, but also from how Russia perceives its national identity.

Part I

Theorical and Comparative Perspectives

1 Civic, ethnic, or civic-ethnic states

A discussion of theoretical concepts

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191438-2

There is no Ukraine. There is Ukrainianism. That is, a specific disorder of minds. Surprisingly brought about by extreme degrees of fascination with ethnography. Such bloody local history. Confusion instead of the state. There is borscht, Bandera, and the bandura. But there is no nation. The brochure ‘Independent Ukraine’ exists, but Ukraine does not. The only question is if Ukraine is still there, or not any longer?… I believe there is no Ukraine yet. But over time, it will appear… However, what kind of Ukraine will it be, within which borders will it exist and even, perhaps, how many Ukraine's there will be are open questions. Russia will have to participate in one way or another in solving these issues.

Former Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, Vladislav Surkov (2020)

Since 1991, Russian political leaders and intellectuals have failed to develop a vision for a post-imperial Russian nation-state. Instead, they have aligned with Russian nationalists in supporting a Russian ‘imagined community’ which is larger than the Russian Federation, using Benedict Andersen’s (2006) theory of nationalism. Andersen (2006) believes ‘imagined communities’ are socially constructed in the modern era by people who see themselves as part of a larger nation which is grounded in ancient myths. In Russia’s case, the ‘imagined community’ was never the Russian SFSR or the Russian Federation but believed to be much larger in the form of the USSR, the CIS, a pan-Russian nation and the Russian World, and the Eurasian Union.

Importantly, during Putin’s presidency Russian views of Ukraine and Ukrainians have regressed to Tsarist imperial and White Russian émigré denials of the existence of Ukraine and the chauvinistic view of Ukrainians as one of three branches of the pan-Russian nation. Putin’s regime has become increasingly authoritarian at home and militaristic abroad. During the same period of time, Ukraine has followed the trajectory of central-eastern European post-communist states in pursuing civic nation building and democratisation within its borders inherited from the former USSR. Russia and Ukraine have approached nation building and minority rights in very different ways. Russia believes Ukraine should pursue the eastern Slavic nationality policies undertaken in the USSR and continued in Lukashenka’s Belarus. Ukraine has implemented what Stephen Shulman (2005) describes as ‘ethnic Ukrainian’ in contrast to ‘eastern Slavic’ nationality policies, while Ukrainian history has been written based on the civic nation-state model commonly found in European historiography (i.e., histories of countries are those of the territory of nation-states). This chapter integrates the ethnic versus civic state debate within Russian and Ukrainian political thinking, nation and state building and national identities.

Pluralism and multiculturalism have not always had support on the left and among liberals. American progressive thinkers promoted national integration before 1914 to integrate the influx of large numbers of immigrants to the USA (Lieven 2016, p.10). Since the 1960s, North American and Western European nation-states have increasingly defined their nation-states in a pluralistic manner. The majority of scholarly contributions in this field have discussed this normatively, arguing in favour of pluralism and multiculturalism (Kymlicka 1996, 1997; Rex 1997; Smolicz 1988, 1998) or against and in support of assimilation and integration. This dichotomy has come under criticism from a wide variety of theoretical and comparative perspectives (Delafenetre 1997; Fierlbeck 1996; Hjern 2000; Kukathas 1992; Lecours 2000; Nickel 1994; Parekh 1995, 1997; Snyder 2000). Following the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London in July 2005 the British Labour Party moved the UK away from multiculturalism to integration.

Challenging the traditional static view of Western civic states is a growing body of scholarly work which argues that the growth of pluralism within nation-states is a long-term trend which has been taking place since the late 18th century (Breton 1988; Brown 1999; Foner 1998; Kaufmann 1999, 2000a, 2000b, Kuzio 2001a, 2002; Smith, R.M. 1997; Yack 1996). This body of scholarship disagrees with the static model developed by Hans Kohn (1940, 1944, 1982) of a Western civic versus Eastern ethnic nationalism (Kuzio 2002) which is still used by some policy makers, scholars and journalists (see Ignatieff 1993; Freedland 1998).

This chapter is divided into four sections. The first discusses the relationship between nationalism and the nation-state through a dynamic model of a balance between ethno-cultural and civic elements which are changing over time. The second integrates this discussion with Russian nationalism supporting a larger ‘imagined community’ (Andersen 2006) of empire or union over a nation-state. This section points to the weakness of Russian liberalism and the inability to establish national democratic groups – reoccurring themes throughout the book – which have been therefore unable to oppose and compete with great power nationalism. The third section debates how insecure nationalisms have competed with the growth of inclusivity and pluralism in nation-states. Insecure Russian nationalism pervades President Putin’s political system and drives its military aggression against Ukraine. The final section discusses the ways in which nation-states have become more inclusive and pluralistic in citizenship and the vote, immigration and multiculturalism and applies the evidence to Russia and Ukraine.

Nationalism and nation-states

The static model

The framework developed by Kohn (1944) of a Western civic nationalism different in origin, essence and form to that of Eastern ethnic nationalism was the standard framework to understand nationalism for much of the post-war era. Kohn’s (1944) static framework argued that Western states were civic from their inception in the late 18th century.

Kohn (1940, 1944, 1982) believed Western nationalism was inherently different because it evolved in conjunction with political rights and was therefore civic. This civic nationalism owed more to territorial than ethno-cultural factors. It was also inclusive in the sense of allowing anybody within the given territory of a nation-state to become a citizen, irrespective of ethnicity, race or gender. The civic nationalism that developed in Kohn’s West was individualistic, liberal, rational and cosmopolitan. The roots of Western nationalism lay in the age of enlightenment, liberty, the rule of law and individualism. In the American and French revolutions, individual liberty played a predominant role in mobilising revolutionaries. The American national idea, for example, was based on individual liberty and tolerance which overcame ethnic differences (Kohn 1982, p.64).

Eastern nationalism was defined by Kohn as backward looking, prone to conflict, tribal and irrational. Eastern nationalism was primitive because it focused its energy on building a new national identity and was tied to religion, language and nationality. It lacked a ‘high culture’ and therefore focused upon ethno-cultural issues (Gellner 1983; Smith, A.D. 1996, pp.77–83).

Kohn (1940, 1944, 1982), Gellner (1983) and other scholars believed it was inevitable that the East would tend towards creating authoritarian and culturally repressive systems while the West would establish liberal democratic states. This trend was also inevitable because of backward socio-political and socio-economic levels of development in the East which lacked a large bourgeois and was more closely bound up with absolutist regimes.

As seen since the fall of communism in 1991, this has not been the case and central-eastern Europe, the three Baltic states, and Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia have created democracies. However, Kohn’s framework is possibly applicable to Russia and most former Soviet republics which have become authoritarian regimes.

Eastern nationalism was more prone to ethnic conflict because it inevitably had to resort to a greater degree of historical myth making, which we see in Russia (see Chapters 6 and 7). Nationalistic regimes sustain themselves with domestic and foreign enemies (Shevtsova 2014), again an inherent feature of Putin’s Russia. In a climate of state sponsored Ukrainophobia, Russian occupation authorities in Crimea are perennially in search of Ukrainian ‘spies’ and ‘diversionary’ agents (Moyseyeva 2021). Russia has initiated or supported through proxies eight military conflicts in Azerbaijan, Georgia (in the early 1990s and 2008), Moldova, Chechnya (in the 1990s and early 2000s), Crimea, and eastern Ukraine. Putin has plunged Russia into three wars and caused the worst crisis in relations with the West since World War II. Russia’s enemies include an internal ‘treacherous’ opposition in the pay of Western intelligence agencies while on the external front, Russian leaders promote a state under siege from the West with whom it is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. Russia’s information war heavily targets Ukraine (Kuzio 2016).

Kohn (1982) believes the East was rife with border conflicts because the boundaries of nation-states did not coincide with ethnic groups and there were demands for border changes. Russian nationalists never viewed the borders of the Russian SFSR or Russian Federation as those of the Russian ‘imagined community’ (Andersen 2006), view Ukraine and Belarus as ‘Russian’ lands and Eurasia as its exclusive sphere of influence.

Kohn (1982) did not necessarily see the expansion of Western empires in negative terms. If the West possessed a ‘superior civilisation’ and a civic nationalism, contact between Western civic states and colonies would be beneficial to the latter. ‘Through contact with the modern West, Asian civilizations and peoples were revitalized,’ Kohn (1982, p.84) believed. England’s liberal civilisation, ‘infused a new spirit into Asia and later into Africa’.

Praise for Western colonialism is no longer acceptable in Western scholarship. This is not the case in Russia where Russian state officials and nationalists continue to claim the Tsarist Empire and the USSR were beneficial to the non-Russian peoples. Putin (2021) believes the Tsarist Empire and the USSR were beneficial to Ukrainia...