Russian Nationalism, Past and Present Geoffrey A. Hosking, Robert Service St. Martin's Press, 1998 - 217 Seiten Many politicians and journalists in the West seem to believe that most Russians have always at heart been nationalists in the search of demagogues to lead them. But are they? For most of their history, until recently, Russians have had an identity based less upon nationhood than upon a peasant culture and a rural version of Orthodox Christianity. Even their rulers have seldom been all-out nationalists. The tsars never forgot that they governed not a nation but a vast land-mass empire; and just as they aimed to foster loyalty to the imperial regime, so communist leaders -- including even Stalin, who was the most Russifying of them -- wished to engender an allegiance to the USSR and Marxism-Leninism. The result is that Russians, as they emerge from communist rule, are engaged in a process of self-discovery. They argue about what forms of politics and economy that will be best for them. But more than that, they ask the question: what is Russia? |
