The annual focus on “Imperial Borders and Liminalities” logically puts the problem of Russian (russkii) nationalism in the forefront of discussions on the nature of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union and on the development of a multinational society and state in respect to which Russian nationalism positions itself as a “center” and the Russian nation as the core and constituent element of state-building. Not long ago historiographic revisions shattered the fundamental Russo-centric assumption, according to which both the Russian empire and the Soviet Union (granted there were differences between the two), were considered to be Russian national states. With the “discovery” of the multinational character of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union came the awareness of the ambiguity of the relationship between empire and nation. Having ceased to be the universal signifier of Russian (rossiiskaia) history, Russian nationalism acquired new meanings, and it became necessary for scholars to pose new questions questions about its development and dynamics. A perspective thus emerged which construes Russian nationalism and nationhood as one of the actors at play in the space of imperial history. Did this actor play a central role in the history of the empire through all the phases of its course? Has the Russian nation, with a consolidated identity and an unequivocal vision of its historical mission, emerged in the Russian empire and the Soviet Union to act as a cementing, core element of empire? How did the competition with the empire and challenges of empire’s ethnic minorities influence the Russian national project (projects?). Was Russian nationalism a state ideology? How does the contemporary political situation frame a retrospective analysis of Russian nationalism? Do historians consider it necessary and important to move from traditional interpretations of Russian nationalism as a rightwing ideology and official policy to studies of Russian nationhood, i.e. a system of political and cultural practices, which makes it possible to imagine a Russian national community?
It can hardly be disputed that answers to all these questions should be sought in the context of modern theories of nationalism. However, having been shaped by Western European historical experience (an exception to this rule is M. Hroch’s study of national movements based on Central European cases), these theoretical perspectives exclude from the analysis some important dimensions of the history of Russian nationalism, namely the context-specific features of a continental empire and European periphery. Western theories of nationalism are conducive to the conceptualization of nationalism as a political principle that underwrites the existence of liberal democracy. These theories allow for an understanding of the connection between nation-building and modernization, where the latter is understood as the process of the creation of horizontal comradeship and homogenous linguistic and cultural space. The application of these theoretical models makes possible an explanation of the relative weakness of Russian nationalism (as a result of socio-economic and political backwardness). The radical version of this structuralist approach construes Russian nationalism as a historical phantom, a function of imperial politics with no foundations in the socio-institutional and political milieu. The paradox of the structuralist approach to Russian nationalism is encapsulated in the impossibility of a contextual explanation of the nature and empowerment of Russian nationalism, which revolutionized relationships between the state, society, and non-Russian nationalities in late imperial Russia and rendered it possible for the Soviet Union to identify with Russian national culture and the national narrative of statehood.
In respect to analytical frameworks of studies in Russian nationalism, there are encouraging opportunities for historians today to creatively reflect in a post-structuralist mode on the paradoxes of Russian nationalism and its context. Given the uneven relationship between Russian history and modernity, the field of Russian nationalism studies may benefit from the current turn in theories of nationalism from classical modernist (and ontological) assumptions about nation-formation as a process leading to materially entrenched social and political bodies of nations to studies of nationhood as a system of discourses and practices that frame and change social relations in the national locus. The result of this theoretical turn is the uncoupling of structural preconditions, liberal-oriented perspectives, and nationalism studies and a possibility to suggest unconventional answers to questions of nation-formation beyond West European context, of which Russia is not a part.
Consequently, a new research agenda has been formed. Which cultural tropes and political practices define nationhood and partake in the formation of a national identity? There emerges a possibility to assert alternative and different conceptions of Russian nationhood and to analyze contestation between them for the right to represent the Russian nation. An analysis also becomes possible of the ruptures and the bifurcation of national identity canons, which are crucial for understanding the course of Russian history. Another by-product of this theoretical turn is a reconfiguration of the key debate between modernists and critics of the modernist theory of nationalism (for example, John Armstrong and Anthony Smith). An analysis of nationhood instead of nations and nationalism should necessarily bridge the gap between the pre-modern and modern, for discourses on nationhood are intertextually linked to the historical semantics of pre-modern epochs.
Articles presented in the current issue of Ab Imperio are brought together by their focus on the analysis of different canons and tropes of Russian nationalism. They all approach historically emerging cultural and ideological frameworks (chronologically the articles cover the span of time from pre-Petrine Muscovy to the beginning of the 20th century), in which the Russian nation was “imagined” and which determined social and political practices of the Russian monarchy, bureaucracy, society, and intellectual elite. The authors of these articles follow different paths in relating the problem of Russian nationalism to the imperial context, yet these contributions allow, granted the abstract and relative character of this generalization, to define three paradigms, which determine studies of Russian nationalism today. The first assumes that Russian nationalism, due to the specific features of Russian political history, was closely intertwined with imperialism and, correspondingly, that the process of nation-building is impossible to distinguish from the process of empire-building. The second view, in contrast, insists on the fact that the national identity of Russians was underdeveloped and suppressed because of the prevalence of the imperial mode in the formation of the Russian state. The third and compromise approach sees Russian nationalism as a modern phenomenon developing in the context of a multinational empire and often in opposition to challenges of non-Russian nationalisms. Bringing together all three paradigms in one issue of the journal bears the promise of fruitful discussion because it shows the limits of viewing Russian nationalism in isolation and makes one reflect on the multitudinous and non-linear nature of processes of “searching for the center”. Such a combination of articles demonstrates the need to take into account various historical factors – the imperial one first of all – which determined the historical boundaries of the Russian national project.
In this issue we conceived of our main editorial goal as a broad representation of the different canons and practices of Russian nationalism, their contingent nature, their interdependence, and their dependence on external factors. The virtual round table, which opens the historical section, offered the participants an opportunity to reflect upon theoretical and methodological problems in the study of Russian nationalism, as well as to attempt to map Russian nationalism “centers”, both in geopolitical terms (imperial borderlands versus imperial center) and in symbolic terms (e. g., the icon as a locus of the Russian national consciousness).
The Methodology section of this issue was planned to present a “genealogy” of critical reflections on Russian nationalism in both Russian and Western scholarly traditions. It opens with a reprint of the work of an outstanding historian of Russia A. E. Presniakov. This work, designed as an introduction to the innovative course of lectures delivered by Presniakov in 1907 – 1908, has been practically forgotten today (its last publication was in 1938). Undoubtedly influenced by the turn of the century debates on the nature of the Russian state (national or multinational?), Presniakov critically analyzed the traditional “scheme of Russian history” as an instrument of construction of the national past. The court literati of the 15th century created this scheme, which survived with little modifications until the beginning of the 20th century. Given the political intentions of the authors of that scheme, it constructed the continuity of Russian national history from Kievan Rus’ to the imperial period, thereby relegating to the margins alternative paths of Russian history (the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and of South-Western Rus’) and creating a homogenous perspective of Russian history. Taking seriously the challenge of Ukrainian historiography (represented by M. Hrushevsky) to the dominant “scheme”, Presniakov called for a critical re-consideration of the categories of nation/people/nationality as well as for a reconceptualization of the Kievan period as a pre-modern and pre-national history. Presniakov thus stressed the plurality and possibility of alternatives of the historical experience and the necessity to de-centralize the Russian historical narrative.
The Russian translation of the article by Raymond Pearson “Privileges, Rights, and Rusification” (original publication 1989), which follows Presniakov’s work, approaches the problem of the transformation of the Russian empire under the impact of Russian nationalism. In that sense, Pearson sees empire and nationalism as historical interlocutors. Pearson notes that despite its imperial “behavior”, in the process of modernization, the Russian empire progressively perceived itself as a national state. From Pearson’s point of view, the policies of Russification were determined by structural social transformations and were therefore a part of the modern Russian national project. This project was, in turn, based upon confessional, linguistic, and territorial definitions of the nation. Despite such a deterministic view, Pearson proposes a detailed and nuanced analysis of the specificity of Russian nationalism, which was imbued with an autocratic conception of the relationship between state and society. This conception prevented a formulation of the titular nation’s rights.
The last publication in the methodology section is an interview with Benedict Anderson, who remains, perhaps, the only author of a classical theoretical work on nationalism which used examples from Russian history to metaphorically designate a specific reactive type of “official nationalism.” The interview sheds light on the origins of “Imagined Communities,” later interpretations of this book, problems of studying nationalism in the context of empire, the discipline of empire and nationalism studies and many other issues relevant for students of empire, nationalism and Russian history. Hopefully, this interview will make today’s historians, who are “modernizing” their study of Russian nationalism, ponder the genealogy and life of those concepts and approaches which are perceived today as given, as a scholarly arsenal that has lost the immediate connection with those intellectuals who created it.
Finally, in this issue we embarked on an analysis of the contemporary relationship between “the national” and “the imperial” in Russia as reflected in the formula of a “liberal empire” championed by A. B. Chubais during the ongoing election campaign. This formula combines, quite unusually, national optics in the perception of modern Russia and imperial tropes, which provide Russian nationalism the legitimacy it is longing for.

Editors of Ab Imperio:

I. Gerasimov
S. Glebov
A. Kaplunovski
M. Mogilner
A. Semyonov