Official Nationalism Research Articles

Sound Presentation of the Silent History: Orature in Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins

Abstract: In her novel The Stone Virgins , Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera provides a model of orature writing by using sound in the interaction between literature and history as well as literature and politics. This essay will principally draw on the ideas of Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong’o as well as Roland Barthes’ ideas about listening to analyze this effect. As a medium of oral tradition that carries traditional aesthetic and cultural values throughout the text, sound and its spatiotemporal framework establish an interpretative community among the author, the character, and the reader. In this community, silence—an extreme state of sound—and distorted sound highlight the individual memories of the suppressed people and form a contrast with the collective national memory that is put under the framework of the history of patriotism by official nationalist discourse. To reconstruct the suppressed history of the common people, Vera adopts the performance mechanism of orature by sound and thereby presents the inner monologue of the characters, which helps restore the subjectivity of the oppressed and sends out a call to the reader to participate in the reconstruction of a new history with the people as subjects. Vera’s sound presentation of the silenced Zimbabwean history is an important example of orature writing, showcasing a strong sense of historical responsibility among Zimbabwean writers and contributing to the formation of originality of African Europhone literature.

A Basque Media War: Who is Ireland’s Friend, Who is Ireland’s Enemy? The Easter Rising’s Influence, Context and Development in the Basque Country

This paper examines the inner debate in Basque nationalism resulting from the Easter Rising between 1916 and 1918. Basque nationalists firmly believed that the Irish Revolution would affect the British war effort, the outcome of the Great War and hence Basque political vindication itself. The official nationalist leadership and its organ, Euzkadi, supported Great Britain, arguing a British military triumph in Ireland and in the Great War would bring a worldwide era of autonomy for national minorities. Pro-independence militants, however, not only expressed solidarity and outspoken support towards the rebels, but also associated their victory with a post-war scenario favourable to independence movements. This study focuses on the two competing Basque nationalist interpretations as presented in the media. Simultaneously, traditionalist parties (i.e. Carlists and Integrists) exacerbated nationalists’ differences in order to weaken a direct political rival.

«Теория официальной народности» С. С. Уварова как проекция консервативной доктрины российского государства

The search for a unifying principle to strengthen modern Russian society forces us to turn to the historical foundations of the formation of a national ideology. For the Russian Empire, since the XIX century, such a unifying beginning has been the conservative doctrine, reflected in the so-called “theory of official nationality”, proclaimed by a prominent Russian statesman, senator, Minister of Public Education, real privy councilor of the Russian Empire, Sergei Semenovich Uvarov. Uvarov believed that the government of the country should “be carried out in the united spirit of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality”. Contemporaries called these three elements the triune beginning of the historical existence of the Russian Empire. The love of faith, as S.S. Uvarov believed, is characteristic of the Russian people since ancient times. And to deprive him of this faith would be to tear out his heart. Autocracy is an integral component of the political existence of the Russian state. Nationality according to Uvarov is an indicator of the individuality and originality of Russia, a magnitude that is not subject to any progressive changes. In general, the Minister of Public Education calls these constants national principles, emphasizing that following these constants is the only way to the civilizational maturity of the Russian state. Many researchers still consider the “theory of official nationality” to be the source of a viable ideology of modern Russia. Thus, despite the fact that the “theory of official nationality” is still perceived as a model of reactionary views developed by S.S. Uvarov constants can still be useful to Russian society today in the formation of a unified national idea, the formulation of new geopolitical tasks of the country.

Внутренняя колонизация России и формирование нации: в контексте земельных взаимоотношений русских с калмыками в конце XIX – начале XX в.

The article is dedicated to the relations between Russian peasants and Kalmyks at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. “Life of the Kalmyks of the Stavropol province before the publication of the law on March 15, 1892” by the Orthodox missionary and ethnographer Ya.P. Dubrova [5] is the basis of the work. The analysis was carried out on the method­ological basis of decolonial theory (V. Mignolo, E. Dussel, A. Quijano, M. Tlostanova), as well as the theory of internal colonization of Russia (V. Morozov, A. Etkind). The first paragraph provides an overview of the academic research on the topic. Core provisions and approaches are identified. The problem of insufficient consideration of the aspect of ethnic differences in the theory of internal colonization of Russia is highlighted. The second paragraph examines the national policy of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. The mechanisms for constructing colonial hierarchies between the higher and lower classes, as well as ethnic Russians and foreigners are shown. The theory of na­tionalism by the British sociologist B. Anderson provided the way to classify social phe­nomena as signs of official and civil-republican nationalism. Fragments of Dubrova’s book are presented and analyzed, demonstrating the problems of relations between Rus­sian peasants and Kalmyks in the Russian Empire. The third paragraph presents an analy­sis of Soviet-era nationality policies. Within the framework of the concept of Soviet modernity by M. David-Fox, the preservation of the subaltern position of Russians is shown. At the same time, the status of ethnic Russians as a “savior people” is demon­strated – the most important plot of the Soviet colonial matrix. Finally, conclusions are presented.

Further New Perspectives on Dostoevsky: ‘Winter Notes on Summer Impressions’. An Intermedial Approach to Dostoevsky’s London Visit

Abstract The article examines F. M. Dostoevsky’s visit to London in the summer of 1862, in the course of his first trip abroad, which resulted in the writing of Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. A Summer-Long Feuilleton. The task to untangle the impact of numerous impressions on Dostoevsky’s creative process is initiated and the newly arisen circumstances that he encountered on his return to St. Petersburg highlighted. Winter Notes is viewed as a groundbreaking work in Dostoevsky’s canon that contains the seeds of future great works, though not primarily in accordance with the multiple ideologically based readings that have sought to define it. Instead Winter Notes is recognised for its author’s aesthetic explorations into poetics within the confines of Tsarist censorship which required that ‘Official Nationality’, the imperial ideological doctrine be upheld. Dostoevsky’s visit to the 1862 International Exhibition and its art galleries is addressed for the first time on the basis of his brother Mikhail’s letters and other evidence. The exhibition building and the works of William Hogarth, John Martin and J.M.W.Turner are singled out. Their imprint on Dostoevsky’s feuilleton is observed through the stages of impressions gained via intermedial interplay. It affirms that pre-existing notions in the ‘discourse of Englishness’ were absorbed and reinvented by Dostoevsky with the use of figurative language, clarifying the origin of metaphors used in the text, together with literary and biblical allusions. A list of Russian and British artists exhibiting in the International Exhibition of 1862 is included.

Фундаментальная библиотека тюменского уездного училища и формирование гуманитарного образовательного ресурса в первой половине XIX в.

The article examines formation and development of the fundamental library of the Tyumen district school in the first half of the XIX century. From the author’s point of view, conclusion is that the process of accumulation of books in it was under strict control, but in a fragmented way and without regard to the status of the educational institution. The register of books on humanitarian orientation conveys the spirit of that time and testifies to the active interest in national history, pedagogy, Russian language and literature in the context of the theory of the official nationality. However, philosophical science was not officially recognized. The information field of the library was higher than the demands of the district school, and the mediation between the author of the book and the reader was carried out at a low level. Nevertheless, the appearance of the first secular library at an ed-ucational institution served as a significant factor in the dissemination of knowledge and the formation of civil society.

Introduction to the special issue ‘Return of the nation: Education in an era of rising nationalism and populism’

This Special Issue of the European Educational Research Journal (Special Issue) contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationship between education, nationalism and populism to enhance scholarly understanding of the construction and maintenance of nationalism. The special issue consists in total of six original articles that cover different sources, spaces and forms of nationalism: banal and virulent, strategic and habitual, reproduced by state actors and power elites versus individuals or groups who echo, subvert or extend the official narratives and nationalism as both nested in topographical spaces as well as in topological relations. It foregrounds the specificity of nationalism as a discursive-material-affective practice that unfolds contextually. The articles highlight, for instance, the relationships between nationalism and other `isms’ (populism, religious conservatism and authoritarianism) and the evolving processes such as climate emergency, improving recognition of indigenous rights, ambiguous expertisation or ubiquitous digitalisation. Overall, for the sociologies of education, the special issue highlights the importance of exploring both how education reproduces nationalism and how nationalism (as a strategy, practice, discourse, place-building and position-legitimating or affect) intervenes in and takes advantage of education.

Konstantin Leont́ev: Russian Conservatism and Ecumenical Byzantinism

Abstract: This article considers Konstantin Leont́ev’s political ideas and the place they occupy within the Russian conservative tradition. After first considering the similarities and differences between Russian and Western conservatism, the article surveys the origin of Konstantin Leont́ev’s political thought in his diplomatic career and his response to the Graeco-Bulgarian church controversy. It is argued that Leont́ev differed from most contemporary Russian conservatives in rejecting nationalism as a liberal phenomenon and by valuing Pan-Orthodox rather than Pan-Slavic unity. This suggests that his political thought can be seen as an echo of the ‘official nationalism’ associated with Nicholas I.

Jüdische Stadtdeputierte in der Zweiten Polnischen Republik: Projekte – Strategien – Dynamiken[The Jewish city councilors in the Second Polish Republic: Plans, strategies, dynamic

Jüdische Stadtdeputierte in der Zweiten Polnischen Republik: Projekte – Strategien – Dynamiken[The Jewish city councilors in the Second Polish Republic: Plans, strategies, dynamic

“I am born on the land of Pakistan. I am Pakistani.”: Terric nationalism among Hindu Pakistanis

ABSTRACT Pakistan is known for the problems of its religious minorities. Moreover, official Pakistani nationalism is religio-ethnic – a state created for the Muslims of British India. One would expect that Pakistan’s religious minorities don’t feel a sense of belonging to it. Drawing on more than 50 interviews and four months of extensive fieldwork among working class Hindu residents of a mixed Hindu-Muslim neighbourhood in Karachi, Pakistan, this article evidences that they felt belonging to the Pakistani nation based on an embodied connection they had with the land of Pakistan through birth, nourishment from the land and similarly embodied connections of their ancestors. By presenting the idea of terric nationalism, this article critiques the ethnic/civic nationalism binary. Further it makes a case for nationalism studies to focus on the subjectivity of the subaltern to build theory.

Репрезентація національних історій у ілюстрованій науково-популярній літературі (на прикладі ілюстрацій Артура Кампфа і Георга Белве до «Preußens Geschichte» («Історії Пруссії»,1913) Рудольфа Герцога)

This study looks at illustrated popular literature as a tool for shaping its readers–viewers’ perceptions of national histories. The author explores this issue through the example of Rudolf Herzog’s book for German school students «History of Prussia» ("Preußens Geschichte'', 1913) illustrated by Arthur Kampf and Georg Belwe. Despite the book’s popularity in the 1910s, this paper offers its first academic examination. The study combines terminology and methods coming from the fields of history of representations, political mythologies’ and visual cultures studies as well as art history. The author also adheres to methodological recommendations formulated by researchers in illustrated literature. The paper demonstrates that «Preussens Geschichte» exemplifies personality- and event-centred «official-nationalist» approach to history writing. The book’s contents reflect the current political situation and seek to promote the imperial government’s agendas as well as certain moral values. The author argues that the specific purpose of Kampf and Belwe’s illustrations consisted in stressing and simplifying the book’s key subject matter and facilitating its memorisation. The ballads performed the same function. The author maintains that the stylistic unity and repetition of similar subject-matter in Belwe and Kampf’s work contribute to the book’s overall representation of Prussia’s history as a coherent narrative. Belwe’s pictures encapsulate the book’s main ideas through the use of generalised images rather than directly translating Herzog’s prose and poetry into pictures. Kampf’s illustrations further stress the role of monarchy and army as the key actors of Prussian history through the artist’s selection of subject-matter and employment of artistic devices. Together with Herzog’s text, his pictures promote determination, courage, and self-sacrifice for the sake of the country. Two other themes that dominate Kampf’s illustrations are the bond between the monarchy, the nation, and the church (an element of The Second Reich’s official nationalism) as well as Prussia’s technological advancement as an epitome of its political power.

Joseph de Maistre and Peter Chaadaev: Cultural transfer of Catholic ideas

The influence of Joseph de Maistre on P.Chaadayev is a confirmed fact, though the textological analysis of his “Philosophical Letters” has not yet been carried out. The problematic aspect of the topic is the variety of interpretations of the thought of the Savoyard philosopher in Russia, which leads to the paradoxical possibility of reaching opposing conclusions based on the same works of de Maistre. He also inspired the conservative thinkers and Chaadayev, whose works were perceived by his contemporaries as opposing the theory of official nationality. The methodology used to investigate this problem is M.Espagne’s methodology of reception studies, which suggests the possibility of creating a new semantic meaning when an idea is perceived from a different cultural or political perspective. In this article, we focus on Chaadayev’s strategies in interpreting de Maistre’s thought and the significant differences that arise in adapting the Savoyard philosopher’s ideas for the readers of the “Philosophical Letters”. The novelty of the study lies in comparative analysis of the texts, which makes it possible to move away from stating the fact of borrowing to its specific use, characteristic of the author and the era when the work was written in Russia. With this approach, the focus of the study shifts to the recipient’s text and the perception of the Savoyard philosopher’s thoughts in a specific historical context.

Autocracy, Nationality, Progress: Urban Space and Russian Social Investigations of the 1830s

Abstract The 1820s and 1830s saw the beginnings of the modern social-scientific study of urban life. In Great Britain and France, these years gave rise to the “Dickensian” anxiety about cities as squalid, disease-infested slums. This article examines how the physical space of St. Petersburg and Moscow was represented during these years by four pioneers of the study of Russian urban society – Vasilii Androssov, Aleksandr Bashutskii, Semen Gaevskii, and Andrei Zablotskii-Desiatovskii. Drawing on ideas and methodologies of Western contemporaries, especially Alexander von Humboldt and the French hygienist Louis-René Villermé, they depicted Russia’s capitals on three spatial scales: that of the individual house or street, the city as a whole, and the entire planet. Rejecting the pessimism of their Western counterparts, they depicted St. Petersburg and Moscow as wholesome cities managed by a wise government and inhabited by a benign population. However, they also argued that the forces driving the development of both cities were partly independent of the imperial state and could only be understood by trained experts. They thereby contributed to the rise of a public opinion engaged in critical discussion about Russian society, and bolstered both Nicholas I’s nationalist ideology of Official Nationality and his government’s cautious efforts at socioeconomic modernization.

The Patriotic Spirit of the Bulgarian Army in the First Balkan War presented in the Reports of Major Gheorghe A. Dabija

"The companion of the 19th and 20th centuries found the Balkan nations in the fullness of the generative process for the legitimation of identity and international recognition. The destiny of becoming a nation has destined those peoples to be truly grumpy and warlike, with territorial claims beyond the limits of the violence allowed by public sensibilities in a prosperous and emancipated Europe. Territorial conquests, followed by expulsions and purifications, of forced cultural assimilation, made the Balkans the “gunpowder barrel” of Europe, detonated by the great European powers in the competition for the Ottoman heritage. Geographically positioned at the periphery of the Balkan world, Romania's national project was focused more on Central and Eastern Europe, where several million Romanians lived under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. However, the threatening Russian expansion into the Straits led Carol I to opt for an alliance with the Central Powers. Therefore, during this period the official nationalist rhetoric was focused on the issue of the Balkan Romanians. Context in which the army, together with the other institutions of the Romanian state, was mobilized in the effort to define and affirm the historical right of the Romanian nation in the Balkans, receiving the mission to identify and inform on realities and political-military, economic-social and cultural activities south of the Danube, facts that we bring to attention from the perspective of military documents. "

A dialectical-relational approach to anti-trans sentiments on Hupu

As the first edition of the Olympics including transgender sportswomen, Tokyo 2020 brought trans-rights debates to the forefront of global sports spectatorship during the summer of 2021. In this article, we adopt a dialectical-relational approach to address how anti-trans sentiments unfold in male Chinese sports fans’ social-mediated communication. Based on textual analysis of posts retrieved from Hupu, the research reveals that anti-trans sentiments are largely informed by an essentialist notion of sex, which considers it to be a purely biological construct that is paramount in policymaking, being perpetuated in the process of China’s modernisation. Anti-trans discourses manifest in the sampled postings tend to converge with China’s official nationalist rhetoric, projecting critical voices against liberal-progressive values and Western-style democracy. The research findings shed new light on the dialectical relations between nationalist politics and anti-trans sentiments and, by extension, queerphobic views in China’s sports fandom, pointing towards the heteronormative monopoly of public discourses in sport and beyond.

“Does Not Allow the Righteous to Remain Careless”: Socialist Revolution in the Conservative- Democratic Discourse of the 19th Century

Considering society to be the main subject of nation-building, the Slavophiles and the Pochvenniks acted as a kind of conservative democrats. In this, their views coincided with the views of publicists of an earlier generation, usually ranked among the supporters of the “official nationality”. Their political outlook was based on anticlass pathos, the desire to form a national identity on the basis of a peculiarly understood Orthodox spirituality. The main objects of criticism of the Slavophil publicists were “aristocratic opposition” and “revolutionary conservatism”: those forms of conservative politics and ideology that provoked revolutionary upheavals and were thus their root cause. Left radicalism was considered by Slavophile publicists as one of the varieties of “despotism of theory over life”. Not recognizing the positive content in it, the Slavophiles considered it a symptom of a disease that struck the national organism. The publication on the pages of Aksakov’s “Rus” of the unfinished cycle of K.K. Tolstoy marked the beginning of a number of publications devoted to the problems of nihilism and written by N.N. Gilyarov-Platonov and N.Ya. Danilevsky. Considerations of Gilyarov-Platonov were developed by his nephew — F.A. Gilyarov. However, his book “15 years of sedition” contained sharp attacks on the authorities and the “Katkovsky direction”. The most serious philosophical study of the problems of nihilism was the numerous works of N.N. Strakhov. Over time, the revolutionary ideology changed. “Pure” nihilism was receding into the past as early as the 1870s; the Narodniks and Marxists themselves considered themselves to be the bearers of a positive program. For their part, the conservatives did not recognize this positive element — and, arguing even with the Marxists, they continued to use the polemical arsenal of the former anti-nihilistic discourse. At the same time, there was no unified approach to Marxism in conservative circles. So, for D.I. Ilovaisky, he is a phenomenon alien to Russia. For S.F. Sharapov, Marxism, on the contrary, was a product of Russian life.

Iran in Motion: Mobility, Space, and the Trans-Iranian Railway

Iran in Motion: Mobility, Space, and the Trans-Iranian Railway

IMPERIAL IDEOLOGY AS A PRINCIPLE OF MODERNIZATION OF THE INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT

The purpose of the study. The topic's relevance has been caused by the fact that research on S. Uvarov's ideological heritage was done mainly within the Marxist paradigm from the standpoint of social and class competition for many years. The Soviet historical science argued that imperial education had served the interests of autocracy; therefore, it had adopted the idea of Official Nationality. At the same time, historians quite carefully omitted the fact that S.S. Uvarov had laid the ideological tool for organizing the linguistic and cultural assimilation of the peoples of the Russian Empire. Scientific novelty. There has recently been a tendency to study the complicated bureaucratic and intellectual heritage of S. Uvarov (C.H. Whittaker, R. Wortman, E.D. Dneprov, A. Miller). Such attention has been related to a growing interest of contemporaries in the philosophy of conservatism with the intensification of national processes. The research aims to clarify the content and objectives of Uvarov's conservative and ideological doctrine, which became «an intellectual weapon» of modernization of the educational sphere and part of the domestic imperial national policy. The object of research is the ideological system of the Russian autocracy. The subject is S. Uvarov's intellectual heritage, specifically his Official Nationality program, which provided an algorithm for the «evolutionary» correlation of the ideological foundation of the Russian educational environment for many years. Conclusion. Hence, Uvarov took his place in the history of the empire not just as a talented bureaucrat and reformer of the educational environment but as a politician who tried to emancipate the Russian national consciousness against the background of the imperial ideology, in the key of loyalty to the autocracy. His Triad served to ideologize society to maintain control over the public. Uvarov's proclamation of the Official Nationality program contrasted the uncontrolled spread of materialistic and liberal ideas with a conscious conservative barrier in the form of strengthening bureaucratic regulation in the sphere of education. Within the domestic policy of state nationalism framework, the minister combined «public education» «with the spirit of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality».

Managing diversity: an assessment of the national question in Pakistan

ABSTRACT Modern societies are confronted with a plethora of issues that have far-reaching socio-political ramifications. The negative effects of diversity are primarily the result of state policies. Where societies were not homogenous, attempts were made to bring desperate populations together to advance official nationalist projects. Pakistan, being dominantly a Muslim state, has religio-cultural and ethnic diversity where minority groups have raised their voices against the unjust state’s policies. This study examines how these issues evolved over the course of Pakistan’s history. The paper attempts to answer the question ‘why has Pakistan’s plurality become unmanageable?’ The results demonstrate that a high degree of centralization of authority, the adoption of Urdu as a national language, a sense of domination of the central institutions by the Punjabis, underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in state institutions, and controlled society has aggravated the position of diverse groups in Pakistan, with colossal consequences to national economy and social harmony.

Ritual cursing as an oath of submission: The problem of religious difference across Safavid Iran and modern Pakistan

AbstractThis article undertakes a comparison between Safavid Iran and modern Pakistan with the aim of highlighting the similarities and differences between their respective state projects of crafting ‘Islamic’ polities. The comparison proceeds through a focus on the state-sanctioned practice of ritual cursing of Sunnis and Ahmadis in Safavid Iran and Pakistan respectively. In both cases, the states made extensive legal efforts to mark out these religious Others by vilifying them on charges of heresy and innovation. This article argues that this vilification was oriented towards creating homogeneity among political subjects of the polity, who were required by the state to curse and condemn these religious Others in order to demonstrate their submission to sovereign power. Ritual cursing thus functioned as an oath of submission that was elicited by the state to draw subjects into the project of sacralizing the polity and to discipline them into reproducing the normative order of the sovereign power. There are also significant differences between the two cases that throw light on the historical specificity of different modes of sovereignty in early modern and modern Muslim polities. While Safavid kings sacralized their realm through the diffusion of scriptural law moulded to enhance their own sovereign power, the Pakistani state is engaged in the sacralization of the national body politic through its official religious nationalist ideology.