war are nevertheless made as a precaution is called a “No War Community.” The notion of “societal security,” it is argued, is useful for monitoring conditions under which nationalism might call for war. These include migration, horizontal and vertical competition among peoples of the same region, and depopulation of a country. The political rhetoric and the actual policies of ruling elites, however, are still a decisive factor, as war is only one among many available policy options.
Together, Chapters 2 and 3 will clarify how theories of nations and nationalism developed in the FSU, and how they have affected nationality policy in the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the FSU, particularly in Russia and Ukraine, the two biggest countries of the region. A strong inclination toward primordialism in post-Soviet scholarly works as well as policy planning led to the dominance of ethno-geopolitics in the academic and political circles of some countries of the former USSR. Just as the theoretical notion of “societal security” was meant to draw attention to the lack of understanding of relations among societies, as opposed to states, in the West, ethno-geopolitics draws attention to relations among “imagined” ethnic communities in Eastern Europe.
Chapter 4 examines how ethno-geopolitics developed within the discipline of Soviet Ethnography, and how it continues to influence thinking among post-Soviet scholars and policy makers in Russia and Ukraine. Soviet Ethnography, which reached its zenith under the “leadership” of academician Yulian Bromley in the 1970s and 1980s, is now largely ignored in the West. However, it still provides an important framework for Russian and Ukrainian academic thought and policy planning.
The “socio-spherical” approach that dominated Soviet Ethnography was close to the “modernist” paradigm in the Western tradition. But it also featured elements of “primordialism.” “Modernist” and “primordialist” approaches in the Western tradition encompass other schools of thought such as “instrumentalism,” “functionalism,” “constructivism” and “perenniallism,” and logically could be related to what in Soviet terminology was called “socio-spherical” and “bio-spherical” approaches.3
As the current literature on nationalism in Eastern Europe emphasizes, Soviet ethnography was not only an academic discipline, but also a tool to justify and fortify Soviet nationality policy. It might be seen as having directly influenced the creation and “constitutionalization,” not only of numerous Soviet nationalities, but also ethno-national borders from the oblast level up to the republic or, in the case of Russia, the federation level. The heritage of such academic thinking and policy is now often deemed responsible for the ferocious conflicts in the Northern Caucasus and, even, for the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a whole. Yet there has been little research on the extent to which Soviet Ethnography continues to influence current academic thought in Russia and Ukraine. The influence of Western theories in this area has been limited and academic traditions today in Russia and, to a lesser degree, Ukraine are influenced by the “bio-spherical” theories developed by Lev Gumilev and the “new Eurasians.” The latter only dramatized the old Soviet paradigm and, to a great extent, led to the revival (or creation) of ethno-geopolitics.
Chapter 4 examines the relationship between Soviet Ethnography and Soviet nationality policy, and compares it to the current vision of Russian and Ukrainian policy makers and scholars. It also examines the methodological foundations of ethno-geopolitics as a theory, and the implications of ethno-geopolitics as a policy concept.
The Cossack revivals in Russia and Ukraine will be the focus for examining inter-ethnic conflicts within the FSU. Chapter 4 therefore provides a historical background of Cossack movements in Russia and Ukraine. In doing so, it illuminates the relationship between ethno-geopolitical discourse, paramilitary movements and the assertion of national identity.
One of the reasons for the growth of the Cossack movements, as some scholars have indicated (Dawisha and Parrot 1994; Plokhy 1993), is the direct and indirect interest of national elites in using these movements in political and military discourse. Presidential decrees in the NIS established a semi-legislative basis for Cossack activity where the Cossack revival has developed most of all, that is, in Russia (1992 and 1996) and Ukraine (1995, 1999, and 2001). In both countries there was a tendency to subordinate Cossack units to the military authorities despite the Cossacks’ historical tradition of autonomous self-government. The active participation by Russian Cossacks in armed inter-ethnic conflicts in the territories outside of the Russian Federation (Moldova, Georgia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Donbas, etc.) shows the potential danger for regional security.4 This is especially true if one takes into account the danger of involvement by regular armies, as has happened, for instance, in Abkhazia, Trans-Dnestria and Donbas. Another important factor is the direct involvement of security forces and intelligence services in Cossack leadership via retired officers.5 A central question with which this research is concerned is the influence of the ruling elite rhetoric on the development of the Cossack revival, and vice versa.
A comparison of the distinct Cossack revivals in Russia and Ukraine also emphasizes how different theories of nationalist movements can underpin different national policies and, ultimately, different socially constructed realities. Theory and practice in regards to nation and nationalism still go hand in hand in territories where historical revivals, typical in other regions of Europe in the nineteenth century, have only now emerged. So, for instance, in Russia, a Cossack movement established Russian Cossacks as an “ethnic community” with a tendency toward, on the one hand, local self-government and, on the other, Russian supra-state expansionism. Clearly, the dominant perceived threat to Russian Cossacks is the one directed against them as an ethno-cultural community, in addition to other threats directed against Russia as a Supra-ethnos Russian civilization.
The post-Soviet Ukrainian Cossack movement evolved as a public organization and did not develop an ideology separate from that of a moderate Ukrainian nationalism. As a result, Ukrainian Cossacks perceive any external or internal threat directed against Ukraine as one directed against them. The co-existence of Russian and Ukrainian Cossack movements, often in the same geographic and political space, has led to confrontation and nationalist conflict between them. This is a consequence of the inter-nation-state conflict on a regional scale that became clear from Russian designs on Crimea starting in the early 1990s.
The empirical research undertaken for this study, and detailed in Appendix 1, demonstrates the utility of the notion of societal security for explaining the reassertion of national identity in Ukraine, in a situation in which Russian and Ukrainian national projects are competing for the same target audience at the same time. It traces the Cossack revival in Ukraine as a form developing both a national identity and a social structure to fill the void of civil society in post-communist space, and explores social phenomena related to societal security tensions.
The mobilization of people into “patriots’ groups” around the idea of revived Cossackdom suggests that there was a threat to societal security in Ukraine practically since the achievement of formal independence in 1991. Yet the usefulness of the “societal security” concept is that it puts the state-society relationship in a new light, by showing that the security concerns of these two do not necessarily coincide. This theoretical assumption allows this study to compare the different ideological orientations of Cossack groups to each other and with respect to state ideologies, showing the existence of different discourses of societal (in)security or (in)securities in the region.
Chapter 5 suggests the outlines of a normative theory of nationalism and the issues it might address. Some of the basic assumptions of such a theory would include the following:
1 Although often based on pre-modern cultures, nationalism is a distinctly modern political principle that links society and polity in a nation-state;
2 distinctions drawn among varieties of nationalism, such as “cultural” and “political,” “civic” and “ethnic,” “liberal” and “conservative,” while not without some merit, do not in fact constitute real alternatives; nationalism is a political principle used by many ideologies and is not necessarily