What Are "We"?: Russian National Consciousness in Its Historical Context from the Middle Ages to Modern Times

Abstract

The process of the formation and development of Russian national consciousness covers centuries, its roots extending back to the prestatehood period. In the period of transition from a clan society to the early feudal Old Russian state, Kievan Rus', ethnic consciousness was embodied in the concept of a common origin and affiliation with a particular tribal association living in its own territory. We the Poliane and they the Drevliane (Severiane, Viatichi, etc.) were gradually united by the commonality of the ideal of the "Russian land," of Rus' as a state and as the territory in which the people lived. In terms of ethnic consciousness, the establishment of princely (later grand-princely, and later still tsarist and imperial) rule over the population and the territory could both embody the ideal that united the ethnos and act in an isolating manner, divorced from the interests of the people and the state. But not only geographical space served to unite the Old Russian nationality that was being formed. Language, faith, the historical memory of the past, and a shared fate—everything that might be called historical space contributed to the formation of the fatherland in which the ethnic consciousness of the future Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian peoples developed. For this reason, the recent disintegration of the [Soviet] Union does not imply rejection of the historical past we shared with the peoples who belonged to it, quite apart from the millions of ethnic Russians who now find themselves in the near abroad.