Abstract
The primary purpose of this brief study is to explore the major sources of Russian nationalism, examine its impact on the foreign policy decision-making process, and briefly assess alternative Western responses to the increasingly nationalist character of Russia’s behaviour in the international arena. The scholarly literature is replete with different and often conflicting approaches to the study of nationalism that range from the theories of invented nationalism to anthropological, ethnic, diffusionist and modernisation traditions.1 In spite of the disagreement over the origins of nationalism, most of the existing theories converge in their argument that, whenever nationalist sentiment prevails, the interests and values of the nation take priority over all other interests and values. Seen from this angle, nationalism can be conceptualised as a political doctrine that asserts the primacy of the interests of a particular nation.2 By implication, a nationalist policy is one intended to promote ‘national interests’ (however ill-defined they may be), regardless of the interests and values of other nations. It is upon this conceptualisation of nationalism that this study is based.
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Notes
These traditions are advocated respectively by E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1870: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Louis Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism (New York: Greenwood, 1968); Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983); A.W. Orridge, ‘Varieties of Nationalism’ in Leonard Tivery (ed.), The Nation-State: The Formation of Modern Politics (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981); Hans Kohn, The Age of Nationalism (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962).
John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
Quoted in Lena Jonson, ‘The Foreign Policy Debate in Russia: In Search of a National Interest’, Nationalities Papers 22, no. 1 (1994), p. 190.
Ekho Moskvy, 14 October 1992, quoted in Vera Tolz, ‘Russia: Westernizers Continue to Challenge National Patriots’, RFE/RL Research Report 1, no. 49 (11 December 1992), p. 3.
Hannes Adomeit, ‘Russia as a “Great Power” in World Affairs: Images and Reality’, International Affairs 71, no.1 (1995), p. 57.
Suzanne Crow, ‘Russia Seeks Leadership in Regional Peacekeeping’, RFE/RL Research Report 2, no.5 (1993), pp. 28–32.
Quoted in ‘Certain Forces in the West Oppose Russia’s Growth as World Power’, Interfax News Agency, Diplomatic Panorama, 21 September 1994.
Nezavisimaya gazeta, 10 January 1995, p. 3. This article is based on a report by the Russian Federal Counter-intelligence Service, the successor organisation to the KGB.
Goskomstat Rossii, Rossilskaya Federatsiya v tsifrakh v 1993 godu, (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1994) pp. 13–14.
Izvestiya, 30 March 1992.
ROMIR survey published in ‘Political Attitudes in Russia’, RFE/RL Research Report 2, no.3 (January 1993), pp. 42–4.
See, for example, Stephen Whitefield and Geoffrey Evans, ‘The Russian Elections of 1993: Public Opinion and the Transition Experience’, Post-Soviet Affairs 10, no.1 (1994), pp. 38–60.
‘Weimar on the Volga’, The Economist, 18 December 1993, pp. 45–7. The parliamentary elections of December 1995 reinforced the trend, when more then one-third of Russian voters supported unreformed communist candidates and another fifteen per cent voted for Zhirinovsky’s nationalists: see INTERFAX (Moscow), 29 December 1995.
See Ekkart Zimmermann, ‘Theories of Re-Democratisation: Paths and Promises, or Shadow of the Past? Is There a Weimar-Moscow Syndrome?’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Chicago, 21–5 February 1995.
Igor Torbakov, ‘The “Statists” and the Ideology of Russian Imperial Nationalism’, RFE/RL Research Report 1, no. 49 (11 December 1992). On the rise of Russian nationalism, see Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
The very term ‘near abroad’, which refers to the former Soviet region, is highly nationalist. It can be interpreted to imply that Russia treats other post-Soviet republics as semi-foreign and hence semi-independent entities.
Sergei Morozov’s article in Den’, 21–7 June 1992, cited in Vera Tolz, “Russia: Westemizers Continue to Challenge National Patriots” RFE/RL Research Report 1, no. 49 (11 December 1992), p. 6.
See Alex Pravda, ‘The Politics of Foreign Policy’, in Stephen White, Alex Pravda and Zvi Gitelman (eds), Developments in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), p. 216.
According to Max Weber’s theory of routinisation, the revolutionary spirit typical of a newly-established regime gradually disappears with the progressive routinisation and institutionalisation of politics. The salvationist objectives of the regime, though still referred to on ritual occasions, are replaced by a vision that grows out of the bureaucratic staff’s pragmatic preferences: see Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
Den’, 16–22 August 1992.
Pravda, 30 January 1992.
See Igor Torbakov, ‘The “Statists” and the Ideology of Russian Imperial Nationalism’.
Sovetskaya Rossiya, 12 July 1992.
See Alexei Arbatov, ‘Russia’s Foreign Policy Alternatives’, International Security 18, no. 4 (1993), pp. 5–43.
See Jan Adams, ‘Legislature Asserts its Role in Russian Foreign Policy,’ RFE/RL Research Report 2, no.4 (22 January 1993), pp. 32–6.
Cited in Therese Raphael, Claudia Rosett and Suzanne Crow, ‘An Interview with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev’, RFE/RL Research Report 3, no. 28 (15 July 1994), p. 36 (emphasis added).
Trud, 16 July 1992.
See, for example, Paul Kubicek, ‘Delegative Democracy in Russia and Ukraine’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 27, no.4 (1994), pp. 423–41.
Peter Shearman, ‘Defining the National Interest: Russian Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics’, in Roger Kanet and Alexander Kozhemiakin (eds), The Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, forth-coming), p. 14.
Suzanne Crow, The Making of Foreign Policy in Russia under Yeltsin (Munich: RFE/RL Research Institute, 1993), p. 76.
Rossiiskaya gazeta, 18 November 1992.
Quoted in ‘Russia Has No Special Minority Rights Claim’, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 April 1993.
Pravda, 28 February 1993.
See Henry Huttenbach, ‘Focus on the Caspian: The Pipeline War’, Association for the Study of Nationalities: Analysis of Current Events 6, no. 4 (1995).
The chief of the Russian General Staff, Mikhail Kolesnikov, announced that Moscow was planning to sign bilateral agreements with every former Soviet republic except Ukraine and the Baltic states on the establishment of some 30 military bases throughout the CIS: quoted in Bruce Porter and Carol Saivetz, ‘The Once and Future Empire: Russia and the “Near Abroad”’, The Washington Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1994), p. 87.
The chief of the Russian General Staff, Mikhail Kolesnikov, announced that Moscow was planning to sign bilateral agreements with every former Soviet republic except Ukraine and the Baltic states on the establishment of some 30 military bases throughout the CIS: quoted in Bruce Porter and Carol Saivetz, ‘The Once and Future Empire: Russia and the “Near Abroad”’, The Washington Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1994), p. 87.
Elizabeth Fuller, ‘The Transcaucasus: War, Turmoil, Economic Collapse’, RFE/RL Research Report 3, no. 1 (7 January 1994), p. 57.
Elizabeth Fuller, ‘Grachev Visits Georgia’, RFEIRL Daily Report, 13 June 1994.
Suzanne Crow, ‘Russia Promotes the CIS as an International Organisation’, RFE/RL Research Report 3, no. 11 (18 March 1994), pp. 33–8.
Quoted in Leonid Bershidsky, ‘Georgia Peace Force Riles Duma’, The Moscow Times, 18 June 1994, p. 3. See also Andrei Kozyrev, ‘Vneshnyaya politika preobrazhayushcheisya Rossii’, Voprosy istorii, 1994, no. 1, pp. 3ff.
Anthony Hyman, ‘Russians Outside Russia’, The World Today 49, no. 11 (November 1993), pp. 205–7.
Suzanne Crow, ‘Processes and Policies’, RFE/RL Research Report 2, no. 20 (1993), pp. 50, 52.
Marten van Heuven, ‘NATO Ahead: What New Roles for Russia and the United States?’, Bulletin of the Atlantic Council of the United States, 15 December 1994.
RFEIRL Daily Report, 1 December 1994.
Paul Goble, ‘The Situation in Russia’, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords (October 1993). Briefmg of the Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe, Washington, DC.
Celestine Bohlen, ‘Nationalist Vote Toughens Russian Foreign Policy’, New York Times, 25 January 1994.
See, for example, Vladimir Zviglyanich, ‘Primakov and the Ambitions of a Great Power’, Prism, 26 January 1996.
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Kozhemiakin, A.V., Kanet, R.E. (1998). The Impact of Nationalism on Russian Foreign Policy . In: Ferry, W.E., Kanet, R.E. (eds) Post-Communist States in the World Community. International Council for Central and East European Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26380-6_3
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