SUMMARY:

In his article Eduard Ponarin examines contemporary Russian nationalism as it emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the former Soviet Republics, including the Russian Federation, and suggests possible scenarios for its development. The author starts with a thesis of retarded development of Russian national identity, which was due to the underdevelopment of the Russian empire (viewed from the perspective of modernist theory of nationalism) and the supranational project of the Soviet nation in the USSR. He notes that in the post Soviet period Russians faced the crisis of national identification, which was addressed by numerous concerted efforts to construct the Russian national identity. He contends that historical legacy plays only a part in this process. More importantly, the author argues, the effects of globalization, the process of resettlement of those who identified themselves as Russians from the former Soviet republics to the Russian Federation, and the legacy of Soviet ethnofederalism contribute to the development of contemporary Russian nationalism. Out of these three factors globalization is the main determinant of Russian nationalism, for the latter is primarily a product of activity of intellectual and political elite, which is exposed to the globalized environment and suffers from the loss of social and political status during the current period of transition. Ponarin observes that ressentiment nationalism of the elite has gradually spread across the political spectrum in the 1990s and, though being fixed and shared in its anti-Western part by all self pronounced Russian nationalist, it is still open to different scenarios of development. He argues that post-Soviet Russia could follow the path of nation-state building or it could pursue the imperial tradition. Assessing possible consequences of either of the ways and a combined one (when a modern ethnic project would incorporate the imperial tradition of differentiating the population on the basis of religion), Ponarin evokes the comparative dimension, which includes the cases of Yugoslavia, the French and British empires, and modern Turkey.