Nationalism in Russia and Yugoslavia: comparative and historical perspective
A report by Andrey Shcherbak at the regualr LCSR seminar
On June, 20, 2013 Andrey Shcherbak (Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research) delivered a report on “Nationalism in Russia and Yugoslavia: comparative and historical perspective” at the LCSR regular weekly seminar.
The collapse of USSR and Yugoslavia was accompanied by the rise of nationalist movements, separatism and ethnic violence. The project is aimed at explaining the reasons of nationalism upsurge in two communist federations and clarifying the difference between roots of the phenomenon in two states.
Andrey distinguishes two types of nationalism – cultural and political. Cultural nationalism is defined as support of the titular official language, the expansion of its teaching in schools, introduction of incentives for representatives of non-titular nation to learn the titular language. Political nationalismis viewed as demand for declaration of national sovereignty and recognition of the right to national self-determination (up to secession).
Researcher uses comparative historical approach to find out if cultural nationalism affects political nationalism. In order to test the hypothesis that present political nationalism is predicted by developments in the past, Andrey splits history of Yugoslavia (1941-1995) and USSR/Russia (1917-1991) into five periods.
Following D. Treisman’s and E. Giuliano’s approach he constructs indices of nationalism on factual basis: index of political nationalism for two historical periods in USSR/Russia (1917-25 and 1986-2000) and Yugoslavia (1941-45 and 1987-95) and index of cultural nationalism for three periods (USSR – 1925-39, 1940-55, 1956-85; Yugoslavia – 1946-62, 1963-73, 1974-86). Dataset includes 57 cases (union republics, autonomous republics, autonomous provinces etc.): 49 for USSR/Russia and 8 for Yugoslavia.
Using structural equation modeling Andrey builds two statistical models: one model only for USSR/Russia and another one for both countries. He adds independent binaryl variable – religion (orthodox/other religions) to control the possible primordialist explanation for development of nationalism.
Analysis of USSR/Russian cases proves that there is relationship between cultural and political nationalism and religion actually has some predictive power, but there is a radical change between periods 1926-39 and 1940-55. Inclusion of Yugoslav regions changes model and shows that cultural nationalism is not so predictive for political nationalism, and in Yugoslavia, political nationalism is predicted by earlier political nationalism. It can be explained by the fact that perhaps, USSR/Russia and Yugoslavia patterns of the relationship between political and cultural nationalism differ.
Andrey is planning to incorporate into his models another independent variable – formal status of ethnic region in the official Soviet/Yugoslav administrative hierarchy for every historical period.
by Ekaterina Turanova