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 an ideology of its own;
3 once nationalism is universally recognized as an organizing principle of self-determination, attempts to limit the right of self-determination will be normatively self-defeating; nationalism is embedded in national identity and is based on the belief that mankind is “naturally” divided into nations and nation-states and that this division is important to human development; it is this quality of national identity, of combining rational and irrational or emotional beliefs that makes the denial of national sentiments so explosive.
Yet nationalism is of great importance even for modern liberal democratic societies, as it functions to secure state patriotism in a world of competing nation-states. As European integration illustrates, a post-nation-state world is not impossible. Until, however, nationalism is deconstructed and un-invented, federalism and civil society an only ease the negative excesses of this political principle. Chapter 5 also explores how federalism, together with civil society institutions, is capable of modifying extremes of the internationally enshrined right to self-determination, keeping together peoples within the same polity and easing inter-ethnic (national) confrontation until the possible development of new non-territorial identities solve the dilemma of competing nationalist projects. Finally, Chapter 5 summarizes the arguments and evidence for using the concept of societal (identity) security as a means of understanding the security concerns of societies, as opposed to states, as well as threats insufficiently evident in existing theoretical frameworks. This is then applied to the existing conflict of Ukrainian and Russian nationalisms and its likely resolution.
1 Benito Mussolini, speech at Naples, 24 Oct. 1922, in Scritti e Discorsi, ii.345, quoted in Nationalism: A Report by a Study Group of Members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs [1939]. Reprints of Economic Classics. New York (1966).
2 The term “nationalist revival” rather than “national revival” is used here to stress the political nature of the former. As Chapter 5 will illustrate national revivals in Eastern Europe became a form of belated nationalist project of economic and social modernization that developed into political movements. “National” and “nationalist revival,” therefore, are equal terms in a wider sense; however, national revival is not always political in the initial stages and therefore not always nationalist in the more narrow sense.
3 Sotsiologicheskiye teorii natsionalisma: nauchno-analiticheskiy obzor. AN SSSR. (Moskva: Nauka, 1991). Also: B. Popov, A. Shkliar, eds., Etnos I sotsium (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1993).
4 G. Mashtakova, “Ih snova khvataet v sherengah po vosem,” in: Moscow News, no.16, 21-28 April 1996, 4.
5 Lola Topchieva, “The Renaissance of Red Russia,” in: Independent, 9 June 1996, 6-7; “The Cossacks,” in: Eastern Europe Newsletter 6, no. 15, 20 July 1992, 5-7.
2 Theories of Nation and National Identity: Comparing Soviet (Russian, Ukrainian) and Western Perspectives
There is a good deal of ambiguous terminology in the study of national and nationalist phenomena not only in the Western tradition, but also in the Eastern European tradition heavily influenced by the Soviet Ethnography. This chapter clarifies key terms, including “nation,” “ethnie” or “ethnic community,” “national” and “ethnic” consciousness. It conceptualizes national
