Nationalism as opposition in Russia –a historical comparison

During the 19th century, nationalism was generally connected to ideas of democratisation and the contestation of power and status quo. In Russia, there was an ongoing struggle between Official Nationalism, aimed at preserving the empire, and cultural nationalism. This essay is an inquiry into the differences and similarities between how the 19th century Slavophiles and contemporary Russian national democrats, exemplified by Aleksei Naval’nyi, view the Russian nation. The focus is on how the Russian nation is defined, how the two nationalist visions relate to competing views of the Russian nation, and how the idea of a Russian nation is used as part of a vision for social and political change. The essay finds that although “the Other” against which the Russian nation is defined differs in the two historical cases, the use of nationalism to frame an opposition against the regime and to advocate social and political change is persistent across time. However, because of its excluding tendencies, in the cases studied here cultural nationalism is found to be wanting as a basis on which to build a democratic form of government