>From: "Grant Lee"
>
>This is beginning to remind me of a conversation I had a few years ago with
>a Somali immigrant who had been here for a few years. She asked what
>nationality I was and when I said "Australian", she said "yes, yes, I am
>too, but where did your people come from?" To her Australian meant only a
>citzenship, whereas I suggest it is also a cultural identity -- i.e. an
>ethnicity in the broad/contemporary sense of the word -- clearly understood
>by its members. In fact, Australian citzenship is easily obtained and held
>by the vast majority of the population.
I have the same conversation with people in Russia. Russian has two words that get translated as "Russian." "rossiskyi" (citizen of the Russian Federation) and "russkyi" (ethnic Russian). Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Dargins, Chechens, anybody with a Russian passport is rossiskyi; only an ethnic Russian (or who identifies as one, since one's nationality depends upon self-declaration) is russkyi. A Jew, Kazakh, Uzbek etc. no more considers him- or herself to be Russian than a Vietnamese-American considers him- or herself to be White. There is no trans-subgroup Russian "national idea."
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