Nationalizing states revisited: projects and processes of nationalization in post-Soviet states

Abstract

This paper analyses Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan as nationalizing states, focusing on four domains: ethnopolitical demography, language repertoires and practices, the polity and the economy. Nationalizing discourse has figured centrally in these and other ‘post-multinational’ contexts. But nationalizing projects and processes have differed substantially across cases. Where ethnonational boundaries have been strong, quasi-racial and intergenerationally persistent, as in Kazakhstan, nationalization (notwithstanding inclusive official rhetoric) has served primarily to strengthen and empower the core nation. Where ethnonational and linguistic boundaries have been blurred and permeable, as in Ukraine, nationalization has worked primarily to reshape cultural practices, loyalties and identities, thereby in effect redefining and enlarging the core nation. Where boundaries have been strong, yet show signs of being intergenerationally permeable, as in Estonia and Latvia, nationalization was initially oriented towards protecting, strengthening, and empowering the core nation as a sharply bounded collectivity, but has subsequently become more assimilationist and culturalist.

Keywords:

• Nationalism
• language
• Estonia
• Latvia
• Kazakhstan
• Ukraine

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Philippe Duhart and Matthew Baltz for research assistance, to anonymous referees for their suggestions and to the UCLA Academic Senate for research support. I benefited from the opportunity to present earlier versions of the paper at the Central Eurasian Studies Society conference, Harvard University, the Slovak Society of Social Anthropologists, the University of Chicago and the University of California, Santa Barbara; thanks to Steve Hanson, Hilary Silver, Michele Lamont, Martin Karnofsky, Andrew Abbott and Cynthia Kaplan for making these presentations possible and for their comments.

Notes

1. For a differing interpretation, stressing the primacy of domestic politics over international embeddedness and focusing on the issue of irredentism in post-communist Eastern Europe and Eurasia, see Saideman and Ayres (2008).

2. A similar argument applies, mutatis mutandis, in the Yugoslav and, to a considerably lesser extent, Czechoslovak cases.

3. Although I limit my attention in the text to the post-Soviet context, nationalizing dynamics have been evident in the Yugoslav and Czechoslovak successor states as well, and figured centrally in the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. For a discussion of the destabilizing interplay between the incipient Croatian nationalizing state, the incipient Serb national minority in Croatia and the incipient ‘kin’ or ‘homeland’ state of Serbia, see Brubaker (1996b, pp. 69–75).

4. Laitin's important 1998 study addresses the same four countries, but his focus is on the Russian-speaking minority population, not on the nationalizing states per se.

5. It does not include, for example, the domain of symbols and narratives (see illustratively Wilson 1995; Wanner 1998; Schatz 2004; Graney 2007; Marples 2007).

6. Preliminary census results are reported on the website of the Statistical Agency of Kazakhstan, http://www.stat.kz/p_perepis/Pages/n_04_02_10.aspx [Accessed 28 July 2010].

7. One factor that might lead to continued differential Russophone outmigration – among young people who have acquired Estonian or Latvian citizenship and know English – is the opportunity to work and eventually resettle in other EU countries. (Estonia and Latvia became EU members in 2004, and the last transitional restrictions on free mobility expire in 2011.) Children of Russophone families, especially those whose Estonian is less than fluent, might be more inclined than others to pursue such opportunities (Hughes 2005; Siiner 2006, pp. 171–2). This is consistent with Laitin's data showing a stronger orientation to Europe on the part of Russian than Estonian youth in Estonia: ‘It seems that Estonian independence opened up Europe for Russians, while it opened up Estonia for Estonians’ (Laitin 2003, pp. 213, 219–20).

8. According to data on mixed marriages from the 1989 census (the most recent available), 22 per cent of all married couples in Ukraine were mixed Ukrainian-Russian couples – twice the share of Russian-Russian couples (Stebelsky 2009, p. 97).

9. The study of Russian remains obligatory in Ukraine (Besters-Dilger 2007) and Kazakhstan (William Fierman pers. comm.).

10. Ministry of Education statistics, reported by Stephen Bloom (pers. comm.).

11. On the influence of international organizations on Estonian and Latvian citizenship and language policies, see, for example, Jurado (2003) and Kelley (2004). The influence of international organizations is evident at the margins, but the changes introduced in response to such pressures – especially in the context of applications for EU membership – have been modest.

12. On the 1993 referendum supporting territorial autonomy for the small Russian-majority region in northeast Estonia, see Smith (2002).

13. Commercio (2010, ch. 7) suggests that pressures for economic nationalization in Kazakhstan have eased in recent years, allowing Russian-speakers a niche in the private sector, even though management positions tend to be monopolized by Kazakhs.

14. Boundaries appear to be sharper in Estonia than in Latvia: Russophone populations are less integrated in Estonia on a variety of dimensions, including intermarriage (Steen 2000, pp. 81–3).

15. The rhetoric of assimilation – globally out of fashion and locally inconsistent with the quasi-primordialist understanding of nationality that is part of the Soviet legacy – has not been used in any of the successor states. But policies and processes can nonetheless be characterized as assimilationist in the sense specified in the text. For the most sustained treatment of assimilation in the post-Soviet context, see Laitin (1998).

16. Kuzio (2001) suggests that the concept of nationalizing states divides Europe into a civic west and an ethnic east and ignores cross-regional commonalities in forms of nation-building. Having myself criticized at length the civic-ethnic distinction (Brubaker 1999), I do not believe the first charge is warranted. As for the second, Kuzio is of course right that many other states have sought actively to homogenize their populations, and that many other states have ethnic cores. My argument is not that homogenizing policies or processes are distinctive to the post-Soviet or East European context. It is that the specific political and institutional legacy of multinational predecessor polities helps explain the prevalence in the successor states of a distinctive kind of nationalizing discourse. As I have shown, nationalizing discourse, policies and processes take quite varied forms in Soviet successor states. Yet there is nonetheless a family resemblance deriving from the Soviet legacy that warrants taking the successor states as a legitimate domain – though not, of course, the only legitimate domain – of comparative analysis.

17. Hale's (2008) study of separatism in the late Soviet context argues similarly against attributing primary importance to pre-existing ethnic divisions or deeply held ethnic identities.