Imperial nationalism as the driver behind Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

AbstractThe roots of Russia's invasion of Ukraine are to be found in two areas. The first is the revival of Tsarist imperial nationalist and White Russian émigré nationalist denials of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Russian imperial nationalists believe the eastern Slavs constitute a pan Russian nation of Great Russians, Little Russians and White Russian branches of one Russian nation. The second is the cult of the Great Patriotic War and Joseph Stalin and the revival of Soviet era discourse on Ukrainian Nazis (i.e., nationalists). A Ukrainian nationalist in the Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin's Russia is any Ukrainian who seeks a future for his/her country outside the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Russian World and who upholds an ethnic Ukrainian (rather than a Little Russian) identity. The Russian World is the new core of the Eurasian Economic Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin's alternative to the EU's Eastern Partnership. In the contemporary domain, Ukrainian nationalists are Nazi's irrespective of their language preference or political beliefs and if they do not accept they are Little Russians. Putin's invasion goal of denazification is a genocidal goal to eradicate the ‘anti‐Russia’ that has allegedly been nurtured by Ukrainian nationalists and the West.