“Патриотический примордиализм”: воображение этничности и нации в постсоветском Азербайджане. Социологическое эссе

The last years of existence of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, as well as the two Post-Soviet decades, became the time of invariable interest and steadfast attention to the phenomena of ethnic and national identity. The growth of this interest, of course, cannot be a great surprise. The collapse of the Soviet Union, for the majority of Azerbaijanis, including (but not only) politicians, experts and social researchers, was directly connected with the nationalistic movements in the former Soviet republics. More than two decades of the nation-state construction process have already passed at present. And now we may observe how the idea of construction of the civil nation comes into a great contradiction with the inculcation of the Soviet tradition, which aimed to represent the Azerbaijani nation in ethno-cultural terms (“titular nation”, etc.) and institutionalized ethno-national personal identities. The “Soviet type” of essentialist national discourse is still produced by the Azerbaijani scholarly communities, mass media, politicians, etc., and still remains very popular on the level of ordinary people’s everyday life as well