Theories of Nationalism and their East-European Applications

Week 1
Are nationalisms actually modern? Are they universal or exceptional? What links to western medieval traditions?

Mandatory readings:

Smith A.D. Nationalism and Modernism. A critical survey of recent theories of nations and nationalism. London: Routhledge, 1998 (Chapter 1, The Rise of Classical Modernism; chapter 7, Primordialism and Perennialism; Conclusion. Problems, paradigms and prospects) [pdf]
Greenfeld L., Nationalism: five roads to modernity // Nationalism. Critical Concepts in Political Sciences. Ed. by J. Hunchinson and A. Smith. Vol. 2. London-New York: Routhledge, 200?, p. 558-586 (or: Greenfeld L., Nationalism: five roads to modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992, p. 1-26 (Introduction) [pdf]
Gorski Ph.P. The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modertnist Critique of Modernist Theories of Nationalism //American Journal of Sociology, 105 (2000), March, # 5, p. 1428-1468 – available in Jstore… [pdf]
Wodak R., de Cillia R., Reisigl M., Liebhart K., The Discoursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh University Press,1999 (Chapter 1, Introduction; chapter 2, The Discoursive Construction of National Identity) [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Among questions to be addressed:

1.  What does it mean, to approach strictly historically  the theme of “nation-nationalism-ethnicity”?
2.  How, where, when and why did the ethno-national (protonational, proto-ethnonational) discourses - that’s discurses claiming that a polity, in ideal, should overlap with a natio/gens conceived as ethno-cultural units, distinct in their cultural identity from other units-nationes/gentes   - emerge in Christian cultures of Europe?
3.  Are they, historically, genetically universal or exceptional (European? West European?) If European, how to explain the “European exception”?– arguments pro and contra..
4.  What links to the Christian traditons? And do the East-West confessional differences matter? –arguments pro and contra…
5.  What do medieval and early modern Central European cases (Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia) supply for analysing problems raised by Ph. Gorski and other people who doubt that national discourses are essentially modern?
6.  «Nation as discourse»: what does it mean? What examples?

Week 2
Pro patria mori  and “proto-nationalism” in the West and in the East of Christian Europe.
 
Mandatory readings:
Kantorowicz E.H. Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought // American Historical Review 56 (1951). P. 479-484 [pdf]
Reynolds S. Medieval origines gentium and the community of the realm // Nationalism. Critical Concepts in Political Science. Vol. 2. Ed. by J. Hutchinson and A.D. Smith. London-New York: Routhledge, 2001. [pdf]
Bryer A. The Late Byzantine Identity. An Abstract // Byzantium.Identity, Image, Influence. XIX International Congress of Byzantine Studies. University of Copenhagen, 18-24 August, 1996. Major Papers. Edited by K. Fledelius. Copenhegen, 1996. P. 49-50 [pdf]
Chrysos E. The Roman Political Identity in Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium // Byzantium. Identity, Image, Influence. XIX International Congress of Byzantine Studies. University of Copenhagen, 18-24 August, 1996. Major Papers. Edited by K. Fledelius. Copenhegen, 1996. P. 7-16 [pdf]
Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire. Ed. by H. Ahrweiler and A. E. Laiou. Dumbarton Oaks:  1998 (Preface, p. VII – IX; Ahrweiler H. Byzantine Concepts of the Foreigner: the Case of the Nomads, p. 1-15) [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Among questions to be addressed:
1. What is “natural” and what is “cultural” in human attitudes to patria? How historically significant this problem is?   
2. What main elements did Kantorowicz detect in the genealogy of the pro patria mori concept? In other words, how did he explain the emergence of such mental construct?
3. Has Kantorowicz convinced you? Your arguments pro et contra? And how to continue the research enterprise launched by Kantorowicz? In what respect his conception needs, might be, a revision?
4.  What role was played by the representations of peoples’ origins (origines gentium) in the construction of western medieval ‘strategies of ethnic distinctions’? What is the essence of these representations? How are they linked to the Christian discourses?
5.  In what respects Reynolds’ article has continued and deepened (revised?) Kantorowicz’s approach? In what respects is Reynolds’ article and its stuff useful to approach the problem of genesis and nature of nationalisms? 
6. What’s peculiar in the byzantine “strategies of distinction”? In what respects was the “Byzantine model” of integration and “accommodating cultural differences”  different from that of the medieval and early modern West (NB: especially - summary in the Inroduction by Ahrweiler and Laiou…)
7. The Byzantines very stubbornly called themselves ROMAIOI, not Greeks… May it be explained by something else than by the “imperial memory” of the Byzantine culture? + What is strange and very different from the West in the Byzantine equations: Romaioi=Christians; ethnies = barbarians? How the “romanness”= “byzantinness” was understood in this context? What is peculiarly non-western in it?

Week 3
«Strategies of distinction» in European medieval and Early Modern cultures. Vienna school of historical ethnography.

Mandatory readings:
Pohl W. Introduction: Strategies of Distinction // Strategies of Distinctions. The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300 - 800. Ed. by W. Pohl with H. Reimitz. Leiden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 1998. P. 1-15 [pdf]
Pohl W. The Politics of Change. Reflections on the Transformation of the Roman World  // Integration und Herrschaft. Etnische Identitäten und  Soziale Organisation im Frühmittelalter. Hrgs. von W. Pohl und M. Diesenberger. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie, 2002 (=For-gen zur Geschichte des Mittellaters. Bd. 3). S. 275 -288 [pdf]
Hastings A. The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 1997 (chapters “Religion further considered” and “Ethnicity further considered”). [pdf] [pdf]
Bouchard M. The Medieval Nation of Rus’: The Religious Underpinnngs of the Russian Nation // Ab Imperio, 2001, N 3. P. 97-121 (Comments by Garipzanov I. Searching for «National» Identity in the Middle Ages (the Response of a Europeanist) // Ab Imperio, 2001, N 3. P.143-146. [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course

Questions to be addressed:
1. What approaches have been suggested to analyze the phenomenon of ethnic distinction? What is meant under “strategies of distinction”?
2. How the basic problem, which stands in center of Vienna’s research school attention, is related to nationalism studies?
3. What we don’t  understand still (among many other things) in the emergence of «strategies of distinction» which were behind the early medieval “barbarian” kingdoms?
4. What stereotypes about these kingdoms (in terms of cohesion, integration factors, ethnic foundations) have been called in question by the ‘Vienna school”?
5. What place should be given to religious components in the analysis of medieval “strategies of distinction”?
6. How to move forward? Especially in terms of comparison? And in terms of religious studies?
7. How the experience of medievalists and medieval studies might be used for better understanding of modern nationalism and nationhood?
8. How the discourse of nation is connected to Christianity, according to Hastings? What makes a difference between Christianity and Islam?
 

Week 4
«Holy Russia», «Russia as New Israel», «Moscow as the III Rome»: «protonationalism» in Muscovite Russia, XVth – XVIIth centuries

Mandatory readings:
Raba J. Moscow - the Third Rome or the New Jerusalem? // Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 50 (1995), p. 297-307. [pdf]
Rowland, Daniel. « Moscow – the Third Rome or the New Israel?» // Russian Review, 55, no. 4 (1996). P. 591-614. [pdf]

Cherniavsky M. «Holy Russia: A Study in the History of an Idea // American Historical Review 63 (April, 1958). P. 617-637  (or: Cherniavsky M. «Holy Russia» // Cherniavsky M. Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths. New York: Random House,1969. P. 101-127 [pdf]
Averintsev S. The Idea of Holy Russia // Russia and Europe. Ed. by P.Dukes. London: Collins and Brown, 1991. P. 10-23 [pdf]
Optional readings: will be suggested during the course.

Among questions to be addressed:
1.  What is “ethnic”, and what is religious in the concept of “Holy Russia”? Was the “Holy Russia” discourse a “national” or proto-national discourse? an «ethnic» one? How much is the Byzantine background helpful in search for understanding “Holy Russia” paradox?
2. Averincev wrote, looking for the explanation of the concept “Holy Russia”: «In the language of early Christianity, retained in both the Orthodox and Catholic tradition, the Christians are the kin and the people of God. Their existence as a people was thought of in just as literal and speicific terms as that of the chosen people of the Old Testament; but this time the chosen people are gathered in from ‘every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation’ (Revelations 5:9) to unite all humanity, ‘and there shall be one fold and one shepherd’.  This idea was taken seriously.  The ethno-cultural antagonisms that flared up from time to time were perceived  and expressed as heresies. The universality  of the Christian Empire, in theory, should correspond to the universality of the Christian faith just like the caliphate in the Islamic conception. If in both cases political practice gradually diverged from the theoretical ideal, that theory retained its rights and continued to pass judgement on the practice. For medieval man this was an incontrovertible truth» (Averintsev S. The Idea of Holy Russia, p. 14) – was he right indicating this path?
3.  Was “Moscow – III Rome” an “imperialistic” or imperial idea? If yes – of what sort? How did I. Raba proceed in reconstructing the content of “Moscow – III Rome” theory? 
4. How much weighty was the discourse of “Moscow – the New Israel” in Russian image of self in the XVIth-XVIIth centuries (articles by Raba and Rowland)? Is it an “ethnic” or “national” concept? 
5. How the peculiarities of the Byzantine-Orthodox proto-national discourses could (it might be) explain  strange features in these concepts of “Russianness”?   What is common and what is different in how the discourses of “ethnic” election were constructed in Muscovite Russia and in the West (Hungary, England, Dutch Republic) in the 16th –17th centuries?

Week 5
Gente Ruthenus,  natione Polonus. Pre-national discourses in Poland and Ruthenia (Ukraine and Belarus’), XVIth – XVIIth centuries

Mandatory readings:
Tazbir J. Polish National Consciousness in the 16th to the 18th Century // Harvard Ukrainian Studies, X (1986) N ¾ , p. 316-335 [pdf]
David Althoen, „Natione Polonus and the Narod Szlachecki. Two Myths of National Identity and Noble Solidarity”, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 52, 4 (2003): 475-508. [pdf]
Walicki A., Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: the Case of Poland. University of Notre Dame Press, 1994 (first: Oxford, 1982), p. 65-85. [pdf]
Plokhy S. The Origins of the Slavic Nations. Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine,and Belarus. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006 (chapter on “Ruthenian nation”) [pdf]
Chynczewska-Hennel T., The National Consciousness of Ukrainian  Nobles and Cossacks from the End of the 16th to the Mid-17th century // Harvard Ukrainian Studies, X (1986) N 3/4, p. 377-392 [pdf]
Kohut Z. E. The Question of Russo-Ukrainian Unity and Ukrainian Distinctiveness in Early Modern Ukrainian Thought and Culture // Culture, Nation, and Identity. The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945). Ed. by A. Kappeler, Z.E. Kohut, F.E. Sysyn, and M. von Hagen. Edmonton-Trotonto: CIUS Press, 2003. P.57-86 [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course...

Questions to be addressed:
1.In what respects discourses of Polish national identity, in the XVIth - XVIIIth centuries, were medieval or modern?
2.  How the discourses of proto-national identity in Poland were related to estate privileges of nobility?
3. What terms are most appropriate when speaking about stuff, presented by Chynczewska-Hennel in her article? – Consciousness? Representations? Discourses? Concepts? Self-awareness?….   National? Ethnic? Regional? Political? Religious? Estate (=estate consciuosness/discourse)? 
4. To what point the defense of Orthodoxy (pp. 383-390) might be viewed as expression of Ukrainian/Ruthenian national consciousness? What is (may be) wrong with that part of author’s argumentation? 
5. Orthodox faith = Greek faith = Ruthenian faith: what is strange in such equation? What is wrong (may be) with the current interpretations of it?
6. How the development of Ukrainian proto-national discourses were connected to that of Polish, Belurussian, Lithuanian, Russian discourses? How to single out an Ukrainian discourse (Ukrainian self-awareness) from all of them?

Week 6
From pre-modern to modern identity discourses  in Poland, Russia and Ukraine, XVIIIth - XIXth centuries

Mandatory readings:
Walicki A., Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: the Case of Poland. University of Notre Dame Press, 1994 (first: Oxford, 1982), p. 65-85 [pdf]

Kohut Z. A Dynastic or Ethno-Dynastic Tsardom? Two Early Modern Concepts of Russia // Extending the Borders of Russian History. Essays in Honor of A. J. Rieber. Ed. by M. Siefert. Budapest-New York: CEU Press, 2003. P. 17-30 [pdf]
Bushkovitch P. What Is Russia? Russian National Identity an the State, 1500 – 1917 // Culture, Nation, and Identity. The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945). Ed. by A. Kappeler, Z.E. Kohut, F.E. Sysyn, and M. von Hagen. Edmonton-Toronto: CIUS Press, 2003. P.144-161 [pdf]
Plokhy S. The Origins of the Slavic Nations. Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine,and Belarus. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006 (chapter in “Little Russia” concept) [pdf]

Rowley D. Imperial versus national discourse: the case of Russia // Nations and Nationalism 6(1), 2000, 23-42 [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Among questions to be addressed:

1. Notions on nation and nationalism, used by Walicki and notions and typology which he borrowed from previous scholarship – are they adequate? Compare, please, Walicki’s statements on the Polish “proto-civic” idea of nation, and how the idea of nation in the XVIIth century Poland was characterized by J. Tazbir…

2. Are you convinced by Walicki’s arguments to prove his thesis on the progressive romantic nationalism in Poland in 1780s – 1830s? Was the Polish nationalism of this epoch an ethnic nationalism?
3. Z. Kohut qualified the Muscovite proto-national discourses as pre-modern. What is unlike modern discourses in them? What did change in the Russian concept of self in writings of such people as I. Gizel’?
4. In what respects discourses of «Russianness» in imperial Russia were different from western parallels? What solutions to the “anormality/ies” of the Russian national and proto-national discourses did Bushkovitch suggest?
5. Rowley claims that Russian ethnic nationalism remained highly underdeveloped till the second half of the XXth century. Is he totally wrong?
6. Why was it so difficult the work out a discourse of Ukrainian  Ethno-National Identity/Identities in the Early Modern Period?

Week 7

Orthodoxy as “Russianness”? Religion and Russian Identity in Romanovs’ Empire (1800s-1860s).

 Mandatory readings:

Knight N. Ethnicity, Nationality and the Masses: ‘Narodnost’ and Modernity in Imperial Russia // Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices. Edited by Hoffmann D.L. and Kotsonis Y. Macmillan, 2000. P.  41-67 [pdf]

Paul W. Werth, “Orthodoxy as Ascription (and Beyond). Religious Identity on the Edges of the Orthodox Community” // Orthodox Russia. Belief and Practice under the Tsars. Ed. by Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H.Greene. Pennsylvania State UP, 2003. P..239-251. [pdf]

Aizlewood R. Revisiting Russian Identity in Russian Trought: From Chaadaev to the Early Twentieth Century // Slavic and East European Review 78 (2000), # 1. P. 20-43 [pdf]

 Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Week 8

Christians into Russians? Russian Nationalism in Late Imperial Russia and on the  Eve of 1917 Revolition.

Mandatory readings:

F.M. Dostoevky. Pushkin. A Sketch  in 1880 // Russian Intellectual History: Ed. by  M. Raeff  New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1986. P. 288-300 [pdf]

Renner Andreas. Defining a Russian nation: Mikhail Katkov and the 'invention' of national politics // Slavonic and East European review., 2003 , vol. 81 , # 4. P. 659-682 [pdf]

Hosking G. Empire and Nation-Building in Late Imperial Russia // Russian Nationalism. Past and Present. Ed. By G. Hosking and R. Service. London: MacMillan Press, 1998. P. 19-34 [pdf]

Löwe H.-D. Russian Nationalism and Tsarist Nationalities Policies in Semi-Constitutional Russia, 1905-1914 // New Perspectives in Modern Russian History. Ed. by B. McKean. Macmillan, 1992. P. 250-277 [pdf]

Weeks Th. R. Official and Popular nationalism: Imperial Russia, 1863 -1914 //Nationalismen in Europa. West- und Osteuropa im Vergleich. Hrsg. von Ulrike v. Hirschhausen und Jörn Leonhard.  Wallstein Verlag, 2001. P. 411-432 [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Week 9

Non-Russian Nationalisms in Romanovs’ Empire (Poland and Ukraine).

Mandatory readings:

Brian Porter, Thy Kingdom Come: Patriotism, Prophesy, and the Catholic Hierarchy in Nineteenth-Century Poland”, The Catholic Historical Review 89.(2003), #2. P. 213-239. [pdf]

Brian Porter, The Catholic Nation: Religion, Identity, and the Narratives of Polish History // Slavic and East European Journal, 45, (2001), # 2. P. 289-299. [pdf]
John-Paul Himka. The Greek Catholic Church and Nation-Building in Galicia, 1772-1918 //  Harvard Ukrainian Studies, VIII, (1984), # 3 / 4 .P. 426-452.

John-Paul Himka, Relgion and Nationality in Western Ukraine. The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movenent in Galicia, 1867-1900. London, Ithaca: McGill UP, 1999). P.163-167.[pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Week 10

Nationalisms and anti- Nationalisms from above: the Soviet experiment, 1917-1991

Mandatory readings:

Slezkine J. The USSR as a Communal Appartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted  [pdf]

Ethnic Particuliarism // Slavic Review, 53(1994), # 2. P.414-452

Martin T. An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism //A State of Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin. Edited by R. G. Suny and T. Martin. Oxford University Press, 2001. P.67-91 [pdf]

Arto Luukkanen, In Quest of Values: Religion and Nationality in the Early Soviet Period, // The Fall of an Empire, the Birth of a Nation. National Identities in Russia. Ed. by Chris J.Chulos and Timo Piirainen. Aldershot, Burlington, USA, Singapore, Sydney: Ashgate, 2000.P.51-74. [pdf]
Brandenberger D. National Bolshevism.Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002. P. 1-24, 43-62 (Introduction; chapter 1 and 3). [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Week 11

Nationalism and the Collapse of the USSR.

Mandatory readings:

Suny R. The Revenge of the Past. Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford UP, 1993. P. 127-160 (chater 4: Nationalism and Nation-States: Gorbachev’s Dilemmas) [pdf]

Brudny, Yitzhak M. Reinventing Russia. Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953-1991. Cambridge (MA), London: Harvard University Press, 1998. P. 1-27, 192-225 (chapter 1, Russian Nationalists in Soviet Politics; chapter 7, The Zenith of Politics by Culture, 1985-1989) [pdf]

Hosking G. Rulers and Victims. The Russians in the Soviet Union. Harvard Univ. Press, 2006. P. 1-9, 70-89, 304-337,404-409 ( Introduction; chapter 3, Soviet Nationality Policy and the Russians;chapter 9, The Rediscovery of Russia; Conclusion) [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Week 12

Russian, “Russlandic” (rossijskij) and other post-USSR Nationalisms (1991-2009)

Mandatory readings:

Brubacker R. Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe. Cambridge University Press, 1996. P. 1-23. [pdf]

Dixon S. The Past in the Presence: Contemporary Russian Nationalism in Historical Perspective //Russian Nationalism. Past and Present. Ed. by G. Hosking and R. Service. London: MacMillan Press, 1998. P. 149-178 [pdf]

Piirainen T. The Sisyphean Mission: New National Identity in Post-Communist Russia // Imperial and National Identities in Pre-revolutionary, Soviet and Post-soviet Russia. Edited by Ch. J. Chulos and J. Remy.  Helsinki, 2002 (Studia Historica, 66). P. 151-171 [pdf]

Verkhovsky, Aleksandr. The Role of the Russian Orthodox Church in Nationalist, Xenophobic and Antiwestern Tendencies in Russia Today: Not Nationalism, but Fundamentalism // Religion, State, and Society 30 (2002) , #. 4. P. 333-45 [pdf]

Optional readings: - will be suggested during the course.

Studies of reference:

Greenfeld L. Etymology, Definitions, Types // Encyclopedia of Nationalism. Vol. 1. Academic Press, 2001, p. 251-265  [pdf]

Hroch M., Maleckova J. “Nation”: A Survey of the Term in European Languages // Encyclopepia of Nationalism. Ed. by A.S. Leonssi. London: Transaction Publishers, 2001. P. 203-208 [pdf]

Bulmer M. Ethnicity // Encyclopedia of Nationalism. Ed. by A.S. Leonssi. London: Transaction Publishers, 2001. P. 69-73 [pdf]

Greenfeld L., Nationalism: five roads to modernity // Nationalism. Critical Concepts in Political Sciences. Ed. by J. Hunchinson and A. Smith. Vol. 2. London-New York: Routhledge, 200?, p. 558-586 (or: Greenfeld L., Nationalism: five roads to modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992, p. 1-26 (Introduction)

Smith A.D. Nationalism and Modernism. A critical survey of recent theories of nations and nationalism. London: Routhledge, 1998 (Chapter 1, The Rise of Classical Modernism; chapter 7, Primordialism and Perennialism; Conclusion. Problems, paradigms and prospects)

Wodak R., de Cillia R., Reisigl M., Liebhart K., The Discoursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh University Press,1999 (Chapter 1, Introduction; chapter 2, The Discoursive Construction of National Identity)

Hastings A. The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 1997. Chapter 7 (Ethnicity further considered); chapter 8 (Religion further considered)  [pdf]

Özkirmli U. Theories of Nationalism. A Critical Introduction. London: Macmillan Press, 2000. P. 12-165, 190-211 (chapter 2, Discourses and Debates on nationalism; chapter 3, Primordialism; chapter 4, Modernism; chapter 6, New Approaches to Nationalism)  [pdf]

Özkirmli U. Contemporary Debates opn Nationalism. A Critical Engagement. Plagrave, 2005. P. 1-33 (chapter 1,Introduction; chapter 2, What is Nationalism?) [pdf]

Further Information:

If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact  me before or during the course, at the following address: dmitrievm@ceu.hu.