Violating prohibitions of tradition: real Frontiers and imagined borders of Nationalism Studies

Kyrchanoff Maksim W.

VIOLATING PROHIBITIONS OF TRADITION: REAL FRONTIERS AND IMAGINED BORDERS OF NATIONALISM STUDIES

Kyrchanoff M. W.

Kyrchanoff Maksim W. Voronezh State University, Voronezh, Russia, 394000,

Pushkinskaia 16, e-mail: maksymkyrchanoff@gmail.com

The author analyzes theoretical and methodological problems of modern historiography of nationalism. Nationalism Studies are among the dynamically developing areas of Humanities. The author tries to answer the question why the nationalisms of the minor nations are more popular among historians than the nationalisms of the greater nations. The author believes that the origins of these theoretical and methodological contradictions can be localized and mapped in the early history of the academic Nationalism Studies. Marxist theories of nationalisms and nations became historical precursors of modern Nationalism Studies. The author believes that Marxist attempts to classify and typologize nationalisms, to imagine bourgeois nationalisms and nationalisms of the oppressed nations preceded academic classifications of nationalism as civil and ethnic trends and ideologies historically. The author suggests that some academic and pseudo-academic journals try to imagine the nationalisms of the greater nations as new subjects of academic studies, but this attempt was unsucc essful because the "new imperial history" actually became a private case of constructivism and modernism. The author believes that political conjuncture stimulates formal debate and inspires a new agenda in Nationalism Studies, but there are no real changes because the academic community is too stable and conservative.

Keywords: nationalism, Nationalism Studies, modernism, constructivism, "minor" and "greater" nations

Nationalism - universal actor: political stimuli of new agenda.

The English and French revolutions, which have dubious and contradictory reputations of the bourgeois ones, inspired the rise and progress of nationalism in Europe and the Americas, and the political events of the 19th century cemented the status of nationalism as an important factor in political processes and turned it into the actor of international relations. Almost immediately after its inception, nationalism became the object of numerous studies and political speculations. It is extremely difficult to overestimate the role of nationalism in the formation of the modern civilization because the state borders and nation-states of the modern world became the consequences of widespread triumph and the rapid rise and further developments of nationalism. The referendum on the exit of Britain

from the European Union in 2016, the political events in Catalonia in the autumn of 2017 that forced the central authorities to abolish the autonomy of the region - all these factors indicated that the nationalisms of the great nations were forgotten too early and empires with the imperial ambitions of political elites did not become the property of history.

Nationalism Studies: heroes and outsiders.

Nationalism Studies in this intellectual situation in the Western and partly Russian academic discourse developed unevenly. National historiographies of nations and states became the consequences and results of the development of nationalism and the successes of nationalist modernizations and transformations prefer to analyze the history of nationalisms of the minor nations and oppressed groups. The range of opinions and interpretations in this situation can vary from socially and economically determined Marxist historiography to various neo-Marxist trends, including modernism and constructivism. International historiography also prefers to analyze these nationalistic experiences, histories, ideologies and movements. The history of Nationalism Studies has its heroes and marginal outsiders. If the number of academic texts on the Ukrainian, Latvian, Tatar and any other nationalisms of minor and historically oppressed unequal groups is relatively large, then Russian, German, Castilian, and British nationalisms became the central themes of nationalism less often than those nationalisms that were their historical opponents.

What is this article about?

The author will analyze some features of modern historiography of nationalism and collective preferences of historians of nationalism in the formation of a collective agenda and the choice of subjects and problems for their studies in this article. An analysis of the dominance of modernist and constructivist approaches in studies focused on the analysis of nationalisms of the minor nations is the main objective of this article. The tasks of the article are following: the study and comparison of quantitative indicators in modern studies of nationalism in the context of leading interdisciplinary journals; analysis of the reasons of the sustained interest in the formally liberating nationalisms of oppressed groups; analysis of the reasons for the marginalization and ignorance of histories of nationalisms of the dominant nations and ethnic groups in the modern historiography of nationalism.

The minor nationalisms as the central heroes.

The modern historiography of nationalism is extremely extensive and academic texts focused on the histories and developments of nationalism in the 18 - 21 centuries are methodologically and theoretically diverse. Several

theoretical approaches, including primordialism, constructivism, modernism, and ideologism, arose in Western Nationalism Studies. Academic Nationalism Studies almost exist and develop in ideologically and politically motivated external conjuncture. The historical logic of the development of nationalism and the political processes in Europe and the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries and the events in Asia and Africa in the 20th century turned the nationalisms of the minor nations and politically unequal and oppressed ethnic groups and communities into the most attractive objects of academic research.

Modernist and constructivist approaches became classical in Nationalism Studies and they historically arisen and formed their reputation because several generations of historians preferred to study how nationalisms created nations and the ideas of political independence and state sovereignty progressed from Latin America to Southeast Asia, from the Baltic and Scandinavian peripheries of Europe to the postcolonial societies of Africa. One feature united all these geographically remote and formally very different nationalistic experiences: nations became the inevitable consequences of the development, success and triumph of the nationalism of the minor oppressed groups that were very active in the struggle for independence and the right to be nations and nation-states.

Assuming that someday the universal world history of nationalism will be written, it will inevitably be a modernist and constructivist history of the nationalisms of the oppressed groups that were ambitious and resolute enough to change their unequal statuses and become political nations and nation-states. Statistically and quantitatively, Nationalism Studies of formally minor nations prevail among the corpus of numerous texts on the history of nationalism. Formally, the modern globalizing world proclaims the primacy of rights and freedoms, but numerous historians of nationalism prefer to analyze the nationalistic experiences of those communities and groups that were victims of national discrimination and oppression. On the one hand, national historiographies reproduce and cultivate ethnocentric versions of history, which turns nationalism into one of the main actors of the historical process. On the other hand, the international informal community of historians of nationalism also prefers to study different models of nationalist modernizations that transformed oppressed and unequal groups into modern nations and nation-states.

The Latvian, Lithuanian, Tatar, Catalan, Galician, Chuvash or Welsh nationalisms are equally attractive to historians of nationalism because the history of these nationalisms actualizes common features and patterns simultaneously, evidencing the historical inevitability of the crisis of traditional societies and identities and their transformations into nations and nation-states. The nationalisms of the minor nations that were victims of

oppressions and discriminations monopolized the status of the most attractive objects for academic analysis of nationalist experience. The unwritten general history of nations and nationalisms will be modernistic and constructivist inevitably in this intellectual situation. European, American and non-Western nations as imagined communities and invented traditions inspired by nationalist modernizations will be its main characters, but the nationalisms of the greater nations with their imperial experiences and heritages will be inevitable victims of intellectual marginalization.

Different journals - the same heroes...

These general trends in the development of nationalism studies significantly influenced, on the one hand, academic interdisciplinary journals focused on nationalism, defined the trajectories of their development. On the other hand, the classics of the Nationalism Studies preferred to analyze the nationalisms of the minor oppressed groups. Individual trajectories of academic biographies of the founding fathers (Gellner, 1987; Gellner, 1995; Anderson, 2006; Anderson, 2005) of modern interdisciplinary Nationalism Studies actualize the collective preferences of the community to study nationalisms of the minor nations precisely, ignoring or underestimating the role of the greater nationalisms. The first specialized journals appeared in the 1970s. "The Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism" was published from 1973 to 2004. Another journal, "Nationalities Papers", was founded in 1971. "Ethnicities", "Ethnopolitics", "Ethnic and Racial Studies", "Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe", "Nationalism and Ethnic Politics", "National Identities", "Nations and Nationalism", "Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism" are the leading international and interdisciplinary journals in modern Nationalism Studies.

"Voprosy natsionalizma", "Ab Imperio", "Rossiiskii zhurnal issledovanii natsionalizma", "Neprikosnovennyi zapas", "Krytyka", "Arche" and other journals of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans form regional agendas in the Nationalism Studies, but methodologically and theoretically the intellectuals of these regions reproduce Western conceptual approaches to nationalism. These journals prefer to position themselves as academic and therefore constructivism and modernism became for them universal languages that define the mode of nationalism's history writing. Most of these journals focus on the analysis of nationalisms of nations, who were non-citizens of empires and suffered from discrimination. Some of these journals serve national discourse in historical and political memory. "Voprosy natsionalizma" and "Ab Imperio" are exceptions from this logic of Nationalism Studies. "Ab Imperio" specializes in studies of imperial history and actualizes the historical roles and factors of

Russian national ism, and "Voprosy natsionalizma" does not hide their ideological preferences.

Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism: roots of the canon.

The history of the "Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism", published from 1973 to 2004, actualized the theoretical and methodological contradictions between the minor and greater nationalisms as objects of academic studies. Thirty-one volumes of this journal were published by 2004. The death of Thomas Spira (1923-2005), the mastermind and editor of this journal, caused the termination of the regular publication of this journal. The history of this first journal focused on the analysis of the history of nationalism actualized the methodological problems in interdisciplinary Nationalism Studies. 447 articles and reviews were published in the "Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism" from 1973 to 2004.

Thematically, the texts focused on the history of regional and peripheral nationalisms dominated in this journal, where articles on the nationalisms of the greater nations were extremely rare. Articles on nationalisms of the formally greater nations dissolve in the contexts of more frequent studies focused on regional anti-imperial and liberation nationalisms. Only 45 articles, a little more than 10%, out of 447 were focused on the problems of history and ideology of American (Allen 1987; Berens, 1975/1976; Berens, 1979; Bouchard, 2002; Bumsted, 1979; Klein, 1979; Kuehl, 1974/1975; Lunde, 1981; Merritt, 1979; Nagel, 1974/1975; Osofsky, 1973/1974; Sahadeo, 2004; Stein, 1973/1974; Stuart, 1979; Turner, 1986; Van Alstyne, 1979), German (Burkhardt, 1974/1975; Buse, 2004; Buse, 2003; Buse, 1987; Fletcher, 1982; Hoover, 1987; Keyserlingk, 1978; Low, 1990; Low, 1975/1976; Olson, 1973/1974; Wagner, 1973/1974), Russian (Arel, 2003; Black 1973/1974; Comrie, 1989; Dunlop, 1984; Jelavich, 1989; Kirchner, 1988; Pospielovsky, 1984; Ruud, 1973/1974), British (Heathorn, 1996; Hoover, 1993; Johnson, 1992; Walker, 1986), Chinese (Low, 1982; Yip, 1982; Yip, 1983; Yip, 1983), French (Ryan, 1973/1974; Fink, 1983) nationalisms.

Other journals are focused on the academic analysis of nationalism, including "Nationalities Papers", "Ethnicities", "Ethnopolitics", "Ethnic and Racial Studies", "Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe", "Nationalism and Ethnic Politics", "National Identities", "Nations and Nationalism", and "Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism" were not an exception to the universal logic proposed by "Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism". "Nationalities Papers" and "Ethnopolitics" are journals of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. "Nationalities Papers" brings together scholars worldwide working on nationalisms, ethnicities, ethnic

conflicts and national identities in Central Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Caucasus, the Turkic world and Central Eurasia.

"Ethnopolitics" is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for serious debate and exchange on important issues that have had a decisive impact during the last decades of the 20th century and continue to be of great importance in the new millennium. "Ethnopolitics" covers all geographic areas and try to maintain a fair balance between analyses of theoretical problems and case studies in a comparative and singular perspectives. "Nationalities Papers" publishes contributions on theories of nationalism, comparative studies of nationalism, and trans- and supranational aspects of interethnic relations and national identity. "Ethnopolitics" focuses on the different aspects and dimensions of analysis, management, settlement, and prevention of ethnic conflicts, on minority rights, group identities, the intersection of identity group formations and politics.

"Ethnopolitics" declares the necessity of studies of minority and majority nationalisms in contexts of transitions to democracy and stability of states and regions where different nationalisms are active1. Formally, Western journals focused on Nationalism Studies tend not to limit themselves in states and regions, analyzed in the articles, they accept for publication and simulate a variety of topics, but the nationalisms of the minor nations inevitably dominate. The origins and causes of this situation are diverse, but the author presume that it is logical to map them in the early history of the interdisciplinary analysis of nationalism or even in the birth traumas of the academic perception of nationalism that arose historically as a late and remote periphery of the Marxist ideological approach to the national question.

Nationalism Studies and their Marxist origins.

Modern Nationalism Studies relate to Marxism genetically and classics of the genre, including Ernest Gellner (Gellner, 1983), Eric Hobsbawm (Hobsbawm, 2012), Benedict Anderson (Anderson, 1983) tended to the Marxist methodology. Vladimir Lenin (Lenin, 2013) and Iosif Stalin (Stalin, 2013) proposed an ideologically motivated explanation of nationalism in the first quarter of the 20th century.

Their ideas took into account social and economic factors and significantly influenced further academic studies of nationalism. Probably Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin did not realize and understand themselves that their ideas later will became very popular among liberal historians of nationalism and nations several decades later. They suggested that

1 Ethnopolitics, http://nationalities.org/publications/ethnopolitics; Nationalities Papers, http://nationalities.org/publications/nationalities-papers

nationalisms can be divided into bourgeois ones and nationalisms of oppressed nations. If bourgeois nationalisms were imagined as politically and ideologically incorrect and alien by left politicians, then the nationalisms of the oppressed nations were perceived as potential correct. The compromise and alliance of the nationalists of the Bolsheviks after the revolution did not look unnatural in this intellectual context. This dichotomy of nationalism in Soviet ideology, on the one hand, became a pseudo-ritual mantra of the communist ideological faith.

On the other hand, attempts to typologise social and political phenomena, including nationalism, forced Western intellectuals involved in the Nationalism Studies to classify objects of their academic interests. They could not do it so radically and decisively as the Soviet authors did. Therefore, the Western Nationalism Studies operated with more neutral concepts, including civil and ethnic nationalisms. This dichotomy predetermined the preferences of subsequent generations of historians of nationalism significantly who made a methodological and politically and ideologically motivated choice between the nationalisms of the minor oppressed groups and the nationalisms of the greater nations that had their own political institutions and played the role of oppressors and enemies of the minor alternative nationalisms.

Civil vs ethnic.

Russian post-Soviet journals were not able to avoid contradictions between the minor and greater nationalisms as objects of academic studies. This dichotomy and dependence of academic preferences became the result of a semi-unconscious division of nationalism into right and wrong. Roger Brubaker (Brubaker, 1998) tried to challenge this extremely stable stereotype, but his vivid and interesting conclusions and ideas remained unnoticed and ignored because the basic trajectories of the development of international interdisciplinary Nationalism Studies remained stable and practically unchanged, and the nationalisms of the minor nations retained their status of the priority research object, consistently reproducing a political myth and an ideological stereotype about the dangerous and predominantly ethnic nationalism of the greater nations.

Civil nationalisms are imagined as correct ones that emerged as a consequence of national and liberation movements seeking to liberate the minor and unequal oppressed groups, turning them into nations and national or nationalizing states. The nationalisms of the greater nations, unlike the nationalisms of the minor ones, got negative reputations in historiography and the origins of this situation can be localized in the historical era of active political and ideological confrontation of imperial and liberation nationalisms. When the nationalisms of the minor nations combined with

social-political ideologies and liberation movements, the nationalisms of the greater nations became political and social class enemies and opponents for them simultaneously.

Different journals - the same heroes: the post-Soviet case.

Methodological and theoretical prejudices and disregards for the academic studies of the greater nationalisms have political origins and ideological backgrounds. Formally, "Ab Imperio" and "Voprosy natsionalizma" are very different journals, but they symbolize the two poles that arose in the post-Soviet studies of nationalism. "Voprosy natsionalizma" in the modern intellectual situation became an attempt to combine academic and nationalist discourses. The journal did not become a collection of marginal nationalist publications, but its publishers and editors try to promote the image of a nationally oriented intellectual magazine.

Konstantin Krylov, the editor of "Voprosy natsionalizma", declares: "the essence of the journal and its mission is the creation of a theoretical body of Russian nationalists, primarily the Russian national liberation movement or the National Democrats... and the creation of a research journal... all Studies in this area are conducted by people engaged and malevolent and we need some alternatives, including an academic one. and finally, it is a historical magazine, one of its missions is to acquaint our readers with little-known pages of the history of Russian social thought and Russian politics also. All three missions are in rather complex relationships"1. "Ab Imperio" positions itself as an academic journal and its editors declare that it is «an international humanities and social sciences peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the studies in new imperial history, and interdisciplinary

and comparative study of nationalism and nationalities in the post-Soviet

2

space»2.

"Voprosy natsionalizma" in this intellectual situation became the first academic and pseudo-academic attempt to shake the pride of the minor nationalisms and overcome prejudice against the nationalisms of the greater ones, but these efforts of Russian intellectuals were almost vain and hopeless because they had an exclusively local effect. Despite the fact that the inspirers of "Voprosy natsionalizma" believed that it would become the intellectual mouthpiece of Russian nationalism, they were smart enough to abandon radical autarky. Therefore, "Voprosy natsionalizma", apart from articles on Russian nationalism, its cultural and intellectual histories, the archaeology of ideas and the modern nationalist agenda, were opened to articles on foreign nationalistic experience, but the influence of modernism

1 Krylov, Konstantin. Ot redaktora, http://vnatio.org/

2 Program Statement, https://abimperio.net/cgi-bin/aishow.pl?state=portal/journal/mission&idlang=1

and constructivism was so great that the authors of journal preferred to write about the nationalisms of peripheral minor nations in the contexts of social and cultural constructivism.

Thematically, "Ab Imperio" specialize in problems of imperial history primarily in its numerous and sometimes mutually exclusive contexts of Russian nationalisms and nationalisms of ethnic minorities. Despite the desire to study the various forms and dimensions of the Russian imperial political, social and cultural experience, "Ab Imperio" publish texts focused on particular cases of non-imperial and anti-imperial nationalism which imagined and invented nations as parts of a political alternative project of a nation-state. Editors of "Ab Imperio" imagine it as "a journal for slow writing"1. "Voprosy natsionalizma" as a nationalistic magazine actualizes the European intellectual levels of Russian nationalist discourse in this situation.

On the one hand, "Voprosy natsionalizma" became an interesting and successful intellectual project, but they could not overcome the birth trauma and inertia of intellectuality, which prevented the journal from becoming truly academic. The subjective choice of authors also assists to the marginalization of "Voprosy natsionalizma" because journal cooperates with academic authors and frankly marginal figures. The desire to position "Voprosy natsionalizma" as a magazine of Russian nationalists about Russian nationalism stimulates the marginalization of the journal and predetermines the fact that serious authors tend to ignore it. In contrast to the "Ab Imperio," it became a magazine with universalist claims when "Ab Imperio" consciously and intentionally reduces the phenomenon of the empire to post-Russian political, cultural and intellectual spaces. "Voprosy natsionalizma" periodically forced to actualize the problems of the history and ideology of foreign nationalisms with an extremely wide geography (Ivashkin, 2011; Shlykov, 2011; Seriogichev, 2011).

Despite these contradictions, "Voprosy natsionalizma" could become a serious and pretentious attempt to actualize the problems of history and the actual state of Russian nationalism as the invisible and silent nationalism of the majority. The methodological and theoretical language in particular and the ideological message of "Ab Imperio" in general distinguishes it from "Voprosy natsionalizma" radically. If the first journal is primarily an intellectual project, the second one became more political and ideological because its editors do not hide their Russian nationalistic preferences and sympathies. "Ab Imperio" in contrast to "Voprosy natsionalizma" openly plays its academic and intellectualist reputation and braves, for example, the fact that "in 2013 'Ab Imperio' published just under 25% of all submitted

1 Zdravstvui, brat. Pisat' ochen' trudno, https://abimperio.net/cgi-

bin/aishow.pl?state=portal/iournal/call&idlang=2

articles, including those that were completely rewritten by the recommendations of external reviewers"1.

Despite the fact that "Ab Imperio" is formally a Russian journal and it publishes texts in Russian, academic discourse, it belongs to, has much in common with the Western historiography of nationalism and the texts published by it in Russian have more in common with translations from English. In fact, "Ab Imperio" imitates the Russian academic jo urnal, being Western in form and content. Despite these significant differences, actually "Voprosy natsionalizma" and "Ab Imperio" have a lot in common because they became a kind of cultural reservations for their authors. "Voprosy natsionalizma" stimulates the image of a moderate nationalistic magazine, and the reputation of "Ab Imperio", published with the grant support of various funds, is too flawless among liberal Russian scholars, but the magazine is not very popular among Russian nationalists.

If "Voprosy natsionalizma" publish texts focused on the minor nationalisms of the West, preferring to publish mostly articles on the phenomenon of Russian nationalism, then "Ab Imperio" on the contrary deliberately avoids publishing studies on the nationalistic experiences of the minor nations. "Voprosy natsionalizma" became an attempt to talk about the experience of the minor nationalisms in the language of Russian nationalism as a nationalism of a great nation, when "Ab Imperio" was an attempt to academicize the political language of nationalism by covering and disguising it in formal decorous and garments of academic "new imperial history". "Ab Imperio" in this intellectual context carefully and consistently adheres to the principles of thematic purism. "Ab Imperio" and "Voprosy natsionalizma" could not keep the ideological purity in particular, although it is unlikely that the editors had this task in general.

Attempts to publish a journal devoted to the nationalism of the greater nation solely, for example, Russian nationalism in its historical dimension, or modern national-democratic version, were doomed to failure and collapse. The origins of this fiasco root in the methodology because constructivist and modernist approaches dominate in interdisciplinary and international Nationalism Studies. The methodological language and the political and ideological message of modernism turned out to be so universal, inevitable and ubiquitous that the nationalisms of the greater nations as objects of academic analysis lose, on the one hand, in competition with the anti-imperial nationalisms of the minor nations, but when historians begin to study the nationalisms of the greater nations, they, on the other hand prefer to put them in the Procrustean bed of modernism and constructivism between Scylla of imagined communities and Charybdis of invented traditions, which

1 Avtorskoe soglashenie, https://abimperio.net/cgi-bin/aishow.pl?state=portal/contributorr#1&idlang=2

automatically deprive them their primordial sacredness and converted into special and even private cases of nationalism because its tendencies are universal and do not depend on the formal size of nation.

Imitating it, simulating it: dead ends of post-Soviet historiography.

In fact, a new imperial history in the post-Soviet Humanities in general and Nationalism Studies, in particular, became a localized imitation and simulation of the constructivist and modernist approaches. The new imperial history did not offer and could not propose new modes and languages of imagination and invention of empire, nation and nationalism because it became the secondary private case of the theories proposed in the 1980s by Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson.

The new imperial history used the approaches proposed for analyzing nationalisms of the minor nations, transplanting them primitively into the contexts of the history of the Russian Empire and post-imperial spaces. Attempts of "Ab Imperio" to revive interest in the history of the greater nationalisms were originally doomed to failure because inspirers of this project used the language proposed originally for the analysis of nationalisms that developed and existed in other systems of coordinates. Actually, the transplantation of the constructivist and modernist approaches to the analysis of the history of the Russian Empire as a formally national political project of the greater nation desacralized the history of the Russian political nation and deprived it of pseudo-religious holiness. The methodological triumph of modernism integrated histories of modern empires and nationalisms of the greater nations into constructivist perceptions of nationalism.

The historiographical destiny of nationalisms of formally imperial nations actualizes the universality of the modernist and constructivist approaches in modern interdisciplinary international Nationalism Studies. Brazilian and Ottoman Empire became the first victims of modernization and triumph of the political nations and nation-states. The crisis of archaic and traditional imperial identities and forms of organization of political and cultural spaces organized and inspired euthanasia of Brazilian and Ottoman Empires. The Brazilian and Turkish political classes attempted to institutionalize nation-states in their Western version.

These political aspirations and ideological ambitions predetermined the historiographical destinies of empires and the imperial political and cultural heritages. Constructivist and modernist languages of the imagination of nationalism and the nation became the only languages of understanding and rethinking the imperial heritage in Brazilian and Turkish nationalisms. Despite the universality of modernism and constructivism, these theoretical languages in invention and imagination of empires and imperial political and

historical experiences and heritages continue to be marginal in the same intellectual backgrounds of numerous and mutually exclusive legacies of the Russian Empire. Russian intellectuals chose to abandon the deconstruction of the imperial legacy and they were not able to imagine and invent the Empire and imperial experiences and they did not replace the empire and the principles of national and religious oppression and inequality by values of the nation-state. Actually, a new imperial history in this intellectual situation became a primitivized simulation and imitation of constructivism and modernism, despite the fact that it uses their theoretical and methodological principles and approaches.

Historiographical romancing the nationalism.

In fact, historians were among the most active and productive scholars of nationalism, but their involvement in academic studies of nationalism and direct participation in them, participation in the reproduction of formally scientific knowledge about what nationalism was and what it does not guarantee the objectivity of their results. A history is doomed to be nationalistic in the era of national states and historians in this intellectual situation inevitably begin to develop nationalist myths and stereotypes. History as the collective view of the past actualizes the contradictions in the imagination of identity and its inevitable invented traditions in a nation-states or nationalizing states. Historiography also mutated into the subject of politics, but the great times of historiography occur during the collapse of empires, or after heterogeneous empires ceased to exist and disintegrated into nation-states or nationalizing states with mutually exclusive versions of historical memory.

The role of historians and other intellectuals as formators of nations and identities becomes apparent and visible in transit societies, but historians, as representatives of a fairly conservative community, will again learn their craft only in exceptional cases and situations. The methodological and terminological models of nationalism history writing as the historical and social consequence of modernization, the collapse of empires and the progress of nation-states were very stable in the international historiography of nationalism and did not change until the early 1990s. Despite ideological contradictions and methodological features and differences, Western and Soviet historiographies of nationalism had a lot in common because they preferred to study the nationalisms of the minor nations and avoid the nationalisms of the greater ones, although the legitimization of this choice had different justifications. Imagination and the invention of history in transit societies in particular and democracies, in general, can cause and stimulate mobilization, legitimization, the politicization of national identity.

History was always used to legitimize political processes and states. Therefore, the formation of identity expresses itself in the interpretation of historical events, including the history of nationalism of the minor and the greater nations. History in these intellectual situations inevitably migrates from the sphere of pure science and moves to the centre of historical, political and ideological debates. Therefore, the history of nationalisms is the history of those who write about these nationalisms of the minor and the greater nations. Historians can play an outstanding role among the creators and adherents of nationalism, and their political heirs are forced to study their heritage and deconstruct the imagined historiographical narratives that became myths and common places in national memory.

The histories of the minor and the greater nationalisms in these cultural and intellectual situations became objects of intellectual manipulations, speculations and deconstructions. The participation of intellectuals in the imagination and invention of nations as communities and traditions, their undoubted contributions and impacts to the triumph of national myths and their later deconstruction determined the main vectors and trajectories of the development of the interdisciplinary Nationalism Studies. Participation of the first nationalists who were historians of their nationalism and nations, they belonged to, in the nationalist awakenings influenced significantly the fact that their modern remote post-post-modernist heirs and successors prefer to analyze the nationalisms of the minor nations and ignore the experience of nationalisms of the greater ones because the academic tradition and political inertia imagines the minor nationalisms as more politically correct and attractive objects of academic analysis.

The unrequited incentives of the sleeping nationalisms.

The political dynamics of the 21st century refuted the optimistic assumptions of liberals who believe in the triumph of the free world. Their collective belief that nationalism and ethnic conflicts will remain in the 20th century and become the heritage and heritage of history became illusory and insolvent. The war between Georgia and the Russian Federation in 2008 confirmed the fears of regional post-Soviet nationalists that Russian political elites perceive Georgia as a zone of Russian political influence exclusively. The events of 2014 - 2017 once again actualized the problems of nationalisms of the minor and the greater nations, their simultaneous coexistence in modern political realities as various political alternatives of two mutually exclusive objects of academic analysis in modern interdisciplinary Nationalism Studies. The international events of 2014 once again in the actual history put forward the potential of nationalism as a form of political and social movement in contexts of its confrontation with expansionist desires of other nationalisms as a form of imperial ideology.

The British referendum of 2016 made more visible the selfish backgrounds and roots of British nationalism, which preferred to ignore the interests of the minor regional nationalisms including Scottish and Welsh. The 2017 referendum in Catalonia proved that the successful democratization of Spain is no more than a political illusion and Castilian nationalism is not ready to tolerate ideological opponents represented by regional nationalisms. The ideological hysteria of the Spanish mass media also attests to the considerable potential of Castilian nationalism and the ability to consolidate society in the context of the threat of Catalan separatism.

The political hysteria in contexts of Ukrainian events also actualized the collective preferences of elites to use nationalism as a factor of political mobilization and consolidation. Political dynamics in Russia after the critical historical moment when Vladimir Putin became President constantly actualized the role of the ephemeral Russian nation and chimaeras of the Russian world. Vladimir Putin's regional policy in the national regions became a number of attempts to return to the strategy of Russification and ignorance of the rights of non-Russian nations and national languages became the core principles that determined the main directions of regional policy in the national republics.

The periodic attempts of the modern Russian ruling elites to tear down the leaders of post-soviet states actualizes that the Kremlin is not able to part with the principles and values of nationalism that are extremely attractive to it. These political processes practically did not affect the development of Nationalism Studies because the objects of research remained virtually unchanged and the nationalisms of the greater nations did not enter the number of central themes for historians of nationalism. Despite the activation of nationalisms of the greater nations, Russian, English, Spanish or German nationalisms are not among the priority topics of modern interdisciplinary Nationalism Studies. The modern community of historians of nationalism is not yet ready to formulate and propose a new agenda that would make it possible to study the minor and the greater nationalisms simultaneously, despite the fact that the constructivist and modernist approaches acquired a universal character and can be used to analyze the history of any nationalism.

Preliminary conclusions.

The modern historiography of nationalism and nations is predominantly modernistic and constructivist. Most of the texts on nationalism are focused on the history of nationalistic experiences and modernizations of the oppressed minor ethnic groups that transformed into political nations and nation-states. The reasons for the popularity of the minor nations as objects of analysis are controversial and contradictory. On the one hand, it is logical to assume that the history of nationalism provides

historians with numerous examples how the minor oppressed ethnic groups changed their statuses and became political nations and successful imagined communities and invented traditions.

On the other hand, the political map of modern Europe became the result of the successful developments of peripheral nationalisms and the majority of European states became the results of nationalist and liberation movements that turned oppressed nations and national minorities into political modern nations. The political map of Latin America also emerged as a result of the nationalist and liberation struggle, and the history of the region also provides historians with examples how the oppressed peripheral social groups transformed into modern nations. These nations in the 20th century became the objects of the permanent research interest of representatives of the academic community.

The history of modern Nationalism Studies raises questions why nationalism and nationalist transformations and modernizations of the minor nations are more popular than the nationalisms of the greater nations? Why is the nationalism of the formally oppressed groups is more attractive as a subject of academic studies than the nationalisms of the oppressors? Why the political events of 2014 - 2017 in the contexts of the activation of Russian, British and Spanish nationalisms did not inspire a wave of new interest in them and did not become the beginning of a turn in contemporary Nationalism Studies? Probably the domination of the minor nations as the main objects of analysis in Nationalism Studies was the result of the triumph of modernism and constructivism as universal languages for analysis of nationalism and its history writing.

Modernist approaches offered an extremely convenient methodology, which proved to be universal in Nationalism Studies of the minority groups and nations as consequences of political, social, cultural and intellectual changes. The methodological language of modernism as a form of nationalisms histories writing became universal code for analysis of the experience of nationalisms in different regions from Ukraine to Portugal, from Mexico to Argentina. Despite this, the political dynamics of 2014 -2017 actualizes the further historiographical destinies of the nationalisms of the great nations in modern interdisciplinary Nationalism Studies. Why Russian, Spanish or British nationalisms cannot compete with Basque, Catalan, Ukrainian, Latvian, Welsh or Chuvash nationalisms?

Nationalism Studies offers a universal methodological instrumentarium that can be used in the analysis the nationalisms of those groups that had imperial statuses and dominated over the minor nations, and they became more attractive than nationalisms of the greater nations including Russian or Spanish ones. It is difficult to answer the question why the nationalist wave in Spain, Russia or the UK did not become an incentive

for academic analysis of Russian, Spanish or British nationalisms. It is logical to assume that the minor nationalisms created negative images of the nationalisms of the dominant nations, they competed with, but it is unlikely that the mythical Catalan or Tatar lobbies in the historiography of nationalism obstruct the analysis of Spanish or Russian nationalisms.

The invisibility of the nationalisms of the greater nations in the international historiography of nationalism actualizes the question of the readiness of intellectuals who belong to these groups to analyze formally their nationalisms in the contexts of the modernist and constructivist theories of nationalisms and nations, because the primordial myth begins to compete with the logic of the theory of social and political modernization in this situation. It is logical to assume that the nationalisms of the graters nations will be marginal targets of Nationalism Studies as long as the traditions of political and ethnic primordialism will dominate in these communities and ethnic stereotypes and images of the Otherness will be the defining factors in the attempts of formerly oppressed groups to imagine and reinvent themselves as nations.

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НАРУШАЯ ЗАПРЕТЫ ТРАДИЦИИ: РЕАЛЬНЫЕ ФРОНТИРЫ И

ВООБРАЖАЕМЫЕ ГРАНИЦЫ В ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯХ

НАЦИОНАЛИЗМА

Кирчанов М.В.

Кирчанов Максим В., Воронежский государственный университет, 394000, Россия,

г. Воронеж, Пушкинская 16 Эл. почта: maksymkyrchanoff@gmail.com

Автор анализирует теоретические и методологические проблемы современной историографии национализма. Исследования национализма принадлежат к числу динамично развивающихся направлений гуманитарного знания. Автор пытается ответить на вопрос почему национализмы малых наций более популярны среди историков чем национализмы больших наций. Автор полагает, что истоки этих теоретических и методологических противоречий можно локализовать и картировать в ранней истории академического изучения национализма. Марксистские теории национализмов и наций стали историческими предшественниками современных исследований национализма. Автор полагает, что марксистские

попытки классифицировать и типологизировать национализмы, вообразить буржуазные национализмы и национализмы угнетенных наций исторически предшествовала академическим классификациям национализма как гражданских и этнических трендов и идеологий. Автор предполагает, что некоторые академические и псевдо-академические журналы пытаются вообразить национализмы больших наций как новые предметы академических штудий, но эта попытка оказалась неудачной, потому что "новая имперская история" фактически стал частной версией конструктивизма и модернизма. Автор полагает, что современная политическая конъюнктура формально стимулирует дебаты и вдохновляет новую повестку дня в исследованиях национализма, но реальные перемены отсутствуют, потому что академическое сообщество стабильно и консервативно.

Ключевые слова: национализм, исследования национализма, модернизм, конструктивизм, "большие" и "малые" нации

Список литературы