Mapping national identity narratives in Ukraine

Since 1991, the absence of the concept of a Ukrainian nation and national identity has led to a controversial, often ambivalent process of identity formation. The aim of this paper is to analyze and map the widely shared concepts about national identity that exist in Ukrainian society after 20 years of independence. Analysis of 43 interviews with Ukrainian political and intellectual elites reveals five different shared narratives: (1) dual identity; (2) being pro-Soviet; (3) a fight for Ukrainian identity; (4) a recognition of Ukrainian identity; and (5) a multicultural-civic concept. Each narrative is characterized by three main features: a coherent structure with strong internal logic and justification of its legitimacy; connection to a specific conception of power and morality; and an opposition to other narratives. All these features lead to the perception of society as a zero-sum game where one narrative must prevail over all others. At the same time, all these features ensure that there can be neither an overwhelming victory of one narrative over others nor a satisfying compromise between them. The results shed light on the complex process of narrative construction of identity and power in newly independent states.     

Speaking to Posterity: Shame,Humiliation, and the Creation of Chiang Kai-shek's Nanjing Era Legacy

Abstract

This article analyzes how Chiang Kai-shek and his secretaries formulated and reformulated Chiang's use of shame and humiliation (chi) to legitimate his actions to posterity using as case studies three moments in the Nanjing era: the Ji'nan and Mukden Incidents; and the New Life Movement. It argues that the presence of an external threat facilitated Chiang's use of chi to pursue his political agenda whereas internal threats (and lack of external ones) hindered it. Because Chiang faced both types of threats, his use of chi often appeared contradictory as he sought to consolidate power and to frame the discourse on national avengement. The resulting public face he and his secretaries projected to posterity suggests an important response to divided sovereignty and external aggression (and hence a particular formulation of the national identity), and reveals the limits and possibilities of shaping a leader's political legacy based on that response.     

AARON AVSHALOMOV AND NEW CHINESE MUSIC IN SHANGHAI, 1931–1947

Abstract

In this article, I position Russian composer Aaron Avshalomov (1894–1965) within the pre-1949 Shanghai music community at a crucial juncture in modern China’s cultural development. First, I examine Avshalomov’s eclectic background and identity as Chinese-acculturated foreigner, Russian-Jewish immigrant, and multifaceted musician, which uniquely situated him among Shanghai’s influential foreign artists for experimentation with new blends of Chinese and Western music from 1931 to 1947. Second, I discuss how this exploration facilitated his contribution to the forging of a new, “national” Chinese music. Third, I describe Avshalomov’s musical style by offering examples of Chinese-Western fusion composition. Finally, I demonstrate that Avshalomov was historically significant via the influence he had on Chinese musicians and through his foreshadowing of future musical developments. He thus serves as an individual exemplar of hybrid identity, creativity, and agency within a city and newly forming tradition that were also characteristically multivalent.     

‘My Poor People,Where Are We Going?’: Grounded Theologies and National Identity in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Although Islam is described as a fundamental aspect of Kyrgyz national identity, its theological aspects are generally elided in nationalist discourse. However, as Islam becomes more prominent in Kyrgyz society, anxieties about ‘Arabisation’ and the weakening of national traditions permeate popular and political discourse. These anxieties operate simultaneously in the national and religious registers, suggesting the extent to which theological beliefs inform national identity, even in secular states. Examining a recent controversy over veiling in Kyrgyzstan, this article argues that theology is both linked to nationality and also a site of contestation over the terms of nationalism itself.     

New directions in Russian international studies: pluralization,Westernization, and isolationism

The essay argues that Western scholars can improve their understanding of the post-Soviet Russia by studying the discipline of new Russian international relations (IR). The other objective of the essay is to move away from the excessively West-centered IR scholarship by exploring indigenous Russian perceptions and inviting a dialogue across the globe. The essay identifies key trends in Russian IR reflective of the transitional nature of Russia’s post-Soviet change. It argues that Russian IR continues to be in a stage of ideological and theoretical uncertainty, which is a result of unresolved questions of national identity. For describing Russia’s identity crisis, the authors employ Erving Goffman’s concept of stigma defined as a crisis of a larger social acceptance by Russia’s “significant other” (West). The essay suggests that, until this crisis is resolved, much of Russian IR debates can be understood in terms of a search for a national idea. It also introduces the authors of the issue and summarizes their contribution to our understanding of Russian and Western IR.     

Knowing Me,Knowing You: Media Portrayal of the EU in Kazakhstan

Abstract

The dichotomy of Self/Other prevails in shaping identity. This article asks how and to what extent the elements of the EU’s image produced by media discourse shape the national identity of Kazakhstan. It contends that a state’s identity can be formulated not in opposition—that is, not ‘Us against Them’—but rather, ‘Us as One of Them’. It argues that, in the case of Kazakhstan, the predominantly positive media discourse about the EU ‘Other’ contributes to a positive formulation of the Self via the legitimisation of the domestic regime on the national and international levels.     

The mioritic nation – an alternative approach to Moldovan national identity

Moldova has been widely argued to be a failed nation-building project, with two national identity discourses coexisting within Moldovan society and amongst Moldovan elites: Romanianism and Moldovanism. Challenging the dominance of these discourses in the literature, this article argues that in spite of its absence from the nationalism debate in Moldova, the ballad Miori?a is a key element for the Moldovan articulation of national identity. The analysis employs a discursive approach focused on language as a constituting phenomenon and draws from Miori?a's appeal to the grass roots level, its banality in day-to-day life, and, more importantly, its promotion by Moldovan cultural elites. This latter part focuses specifically on the writings of novelist Ion Dru??. Dru?? places Miori?a at the very center of his construction of Moldovan national identity. He highlights its links with Moldovan history, culture, religious thinking, and geographical space, both reproducing a structure similar to the two national identity discourses, Romanianism and Moldovanism, and building on their similarities. But more importantly, Dru??'s representation of national identity sheds light on the possibility of an all-encompassing Moldovan identity, overcoming the existing cleavage, and a series of mechanisms that can be employed to achieve this.     

National Identity: Civic,Ethnic, Hybrid,and Atomised Individuals

We challenge the civic–ethnic dichotomy drawn by previous authors and propose a four-category typology of identities based on out-group tolerance and in-group attachment. Drawing from work on national identity formation and nation-building, we test hypotheses about the processes that cause individuals to adopt one identity over others using survey data based on representative samples of five ethnic groups in Ukraine. We find that the effects of socialisation processes vary greatly depending upon ethnic group. Our results challenge some long-held assumptions about the potential destabilising effects of ‘ethnic’ identities and the degree to which ‘civic’ identities correspond to values and behaviours supportive of democracy.     

Russian-speaking Belarusian Nationalism: An Ethnolinguistic Identity Without a Language?

Abstract

This essay examines the development of a form of Russian-speaking Belarusian national identity. While Belarus’s early post-Soviet nationalists relied upon Belarusian as the central pillar of national identity, this has been challenged by more ‘pragmatic’ nationalists using the ‘language of the people’, namely, Russian. Analysing history textbooks and popular history books that represent three key identity projects in Belarus, this study sheds light on the specific programmatic ideas of a new Russian-speaking Belarusian nationalism. Despite the emergence of the geopolitically-motivated Russian World (Russkii Mir) concept, some Russian-speaking nationalists have articulated a programme that paradoxically draws upon Russian neo-Eurasianist thought, but which is simultaneously anti-Russian.     

Editor's Notes

Professor Wenfang Tang's article, Nationalism and ElectoralOutcome in Taiwan: The Impact of Identity Fence-sitting on VotingBehaviour, examines the impact of the electorate's sense ofnational identity on voting behaviour, based on public opinionsurvey data amassed over the four Taiwan elections from 2000to 2004. The concept of national identity combines an individual'ssense of either ethnic Taiwanese or Chinese identity and correspondingadvocacy of either Taiwan independence or reunification withChina. The article focuses on national identity ‘fence-sitters’—thesection of the electorate undecided as to its sense of eitherChinese or Taiwanese identity, consequently an advocate of neitherindependence nor reunification. Professor Tang's     

New approaches to North Korean politics after reunification: The search for a common Korean identity

Whilst most of the literature focusing on the Korean peninsula has concentrated on how to achieve unification through confidence-building measures, dialogues, negotiation and diplomacy, little attention has been paid to how a unified Korean identity, a core component of any potential reunification scheme could develop and be sustained. The paper addresses this gap by: (1) defining what national identity is, and how Korean identities have been formed, (2) outlining how both South and North Korea have understood and used the concept of national identity, (3) suggesting possible grounds on which the two Koreas could build a new, common national identity.     

Explaining Kazakhstani identity: supraethnic identity,ethnicity, language,and citizenship

The demographic composition of Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union presented a dilemma to the new Kazakhstani government: Should it advance a Kazakh identity as paramount, possibly alienating the large non-Kazakh population? Or should it advocate for a non-ethnicized national identity? How would those decisions be made in light of global norms of liberal multiculturalism? And, critically, would citizens respond to new frames of identity? This paper provides an empirical look at supraethnic identity-building in Kazakhstan – that is, at the development of a national identity that individuals place above or alongside their ethnic identification. We closely examine the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan to describe how Kazakhstani policies intersect with theories of nationalism and nation-building. We then use ordered probit models to analyze data from a 2014 survey to examine how citizens of Kazakhstan associate with a “Kazakhstani” supraethnic identity. Our findings suggest that despite the Assembly of People’s rhetoric, there are still significant barriers to citizen-level adoption of a supraethnic identity in Kazakhstan, particularly regarding language. However, many individuals do claim an association with Kazakhstani identity, especially those individuals who strongly value citizenship in the abstract.     

Prince Adam Czartoryski as a liminal figure in the development of modern nationalism in Eastern Europe at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

In Polish history, Prince Adam Czartoryski is almost universally regarded as one of the most important Polish statesmen and patriots of the first half of the nineteenth century. In Russian history, on the other hand, he is remembered chiefly as the Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire, and a close personal friend of Tsar Alexander I. How did Czartoryski reconcile his commitment to the Polish nation with his service to the Russian Empire (a state which occupied most of Poland)? This paper will attempt to place Prince Adam's friendship with Alexander, and his service to Imperial Russia, in the broader context of national identity formation in early nineteenth-century eastern Europe. It will be argued that the idea of finding a workable relationship between Poland and Russia, even within the framework of a single state for a “Slavic nation,” was an important and forgotten feature of Polish political thought at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By answering the question of precisely how Czartoryski was able to negotiate between the identities of a “Polish patriot” and “Russian statesman,” the paper will shed light on the broader development of national identity in early nineteenth-century Poland and Russia.     

One Woman’s View of the Early Chinese Communist Movement: The Autobiography of Mme. Zhang Guotao

Abstract

Wei Baqun, leader of the influential Donglan Peasant Movement in southern China in the 1920s and 1930s, was attacked by his Nationalist enemies as a real and dangerous Communist long before he joined the Chinese Communist Party. Meanwhile, some of his Communist comrades were reluctant to admit him into the Party or to recognize him as a genuine Communist even after he joined the Communist Party. But after his death, they all began to promote him as a perfect Communist. Through an analysis of Wei Baqun’s life and revolution, this article shows how controversial and conflicting perceptions of the political identity of a political leader could exert strong influence on the political career of the leader and on local and national politics in revolutionary China. The article also attempts to explain why the confusion and controversy over Wei Baqun’s identity dissipated after his death.     

Lewis Namier: Nationality,Territory and Zionism

The historian Sir Lewis Namier, born Ludwik Bernstein in Russian Poland in 1888 and brought up in east Galicia, was an unusual figure amongst Jewish theorists of nationalism. His father’s family were assimilated Jews, and Namier grew up in a household that was thoroughly Polonised. Though registered as Jewish, he was not circumcised and was brought up in ignorance of Jewish traditions; his parents and sister subsequently converted to Catholicism. Unlike other Jewish intellectuals, he had no love for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy nor for German culture in general, and as a young man was an ardent pan-Slavist. Education at Oxford also imprinted in him a lifelong admiration for the British Empire, which he regarded as a force for good because it embodied the libertarian ethos inherent in Britain’s national traditions. In his early writings, he defined nationality principally by race, and took religion, and attachment to a particular territory, as the principal markers of racial identity. This analysis derived chiefly from his observation of the history and geopolitics of central and eastern Europe, but he was also able to apply the same calculus to the “Anglo-Saxon” empires of the Atlantic world. These ideas, which he refined in later life but never abandoned, also fuelled a growing attachment to Zionism, accelerated by his own experiences of anti-Semitism, and his observation of the maltreatment of Jews in eastern Europe, of which he became increasingly aware through his role as an expert adviser in the British Foreign Office in 1916–1920.     

Russia in the European Home? Convergence,Cosmopolitanism and Cosmism in Late Soviet Europeanisation

The aim is to present a conceptual and historical reconstruction of Gorbachev's notion of a ‘European home’, its underlying philosophy of history as well as its relation to Russian cosmism. The concept is contextualised within the convergence debate of the post-war period, in which a rapprochement between communism and capitalism was posited. The essay concludes with reflections on what the conceptualisation can tell us about the fall of communism and what impact the concept has had on today's search for a common European identity. An argument is advanced that the notion contained paradoxes that contributed to the dislocation of post-Soviet Russia from Europe.     

The Concepts of State and Society in Defining Russia’s Domestic Political Unity: A Research Note

Abstract

Vladimir Putin’s long period in power has so far raised scant discussion about the political concepts that underpin real state and societal unity, and especially about the domestic political implications of these concepts. Despite this, key concepts of his political regime, such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘sovereign democracy’, have frequently been used in Russian political discourse. This essay examines the way the current Russian administration has used concepts that stress strong societal unity, and the creation of a stable state and societal unity to support the development of real functioning dynamics in the society. It charts the shift from ‘sovereign democracy’ to ‘sovereignty’ around 2011–2012 as a key discursive concept in moving towards a more isolationist international stand and consolidating Putin’s power by emphasising Russia’s unique political tradition, which requires a strong leader as the basis of national unity and to ensure Russian sovereignty.     

Biopolitics,borders, and refugee camps: exercising sovereign power over nonmembers of the state†

This article addresses the relationship between the concepts of national identity and biopolitics by examining a border-transit camp for repatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers in Germany. Current studies of detention spaces for migrants have drawn heavily on Agamben’s reflection on the “camp” and “homo sacer,” where the camp is analyzed as a space in a permanent state of exception, in which the government exercises sovereign power over the refugee as the ultimate biopolitical subject. But what groups of people can end up at a camp, and does the government treat all groups in the same way? This article examines the German camp for repatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers as a space where the state’s borders are demarcated and controlled through practices of bureaucratic and narrative differentiation among various groups of people. The author uses the concept of detention space to draw a theoretical link between national identity and biopolitics, and demonstrates how the sovereign’s practices of control and differentiation at the camp construct German national identity through defining “nonmembers” of the state. The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the Friedland border transit camp and on a discourse analysis of texts produced at the camp or for the camp.     

Russian Economic Nationalism during the First World War: Moscow Merchants and Commercial Diasporas

While accounts of the end of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires have often stressed the rise of Turkish and German nationalisms, narratives of the Romanov collapse have generally not portrayed Russian nationalism as a key factor. In fact, scholars have either stressed the weaknesses of Russian national identity in the populace or the generally pragmatic approach of the government, which, as Hans Rogger classically phrased it, “opposed all autonomous expressions of nationalism, including the Russian.” In essence, many have argued, the regime was too conservative to embrace Russian nationalism, and it most often “subordinated all forms of the concept of nationalism to the categories of dynasty and empire.” Recently, two authors have challenged the predominantly pessimistic portrayals of the extent of Russian national identity in late imperial Russia, focusing on peasant responses to the First World War. Scott Seregny makes a strong case that while peasants may not have been full “Russians” by 1914, the spread of politics and literacy to the countryside through the zemstvos was rapidly integrating peasants into a broader civic identity. Josh Sanborn argues that even though responses were varied and in fact protest against the war quite frequent, the important thing is that both positive and negative responses were expressed within a single national political framework and discourse. In response, S. A. Smith grants that the war strengthened rather than weakened national identity, but thinks Sanborn and Seregny underestimate the degree to which nation, empire, and class pulled in different directions from 1916, concluding that “by the summer of 1917, politics had become polarized between an imperial language of nation, used mainly by the privileged and educated strata, an anti-imperial language, used mainly by the elites of the non-Russian nationalities, and a language of class, used mainly by the subaltern classes.”     

Collective memory and reputational politics of national heroes and villains

The politics of memory plays an important role in the ways certain figures are evaluated and remembered, as they can be rehabilitated or vilified, or both, as these processes are contested. We explore these issues using a transition society, Georgia, as a case study. Who are the heroes and villains in Georgian collective memory? What factors influence who is seen as a hero or a villain and why? How do these selections correlate with Georgian national identity? We attempt to answer these research questions using a newly generated data set of contemporary Georgian perspectives on recent history. Our survey results show that according to a representative sample of the Georgian population, the main heroes from the beginning of the twentieth century include Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Ilia Chavchavadze, and Patriarch Ilia II. Eduard Shevardnadze, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and Vladimir Putin represent the main villains, and those that appear on both lists are Mikheil Saakashvili and Joseph Stalin. We highlight two clusters of attitudes that are indicative of how people think about Georgian national identity, mirroring civic and ethnic conceptions of nationalism. How Georgians understand national identity impacts not only who they choose as heroes or villains, but also whether they provide an answer at all.