Chris Doss wrote:
>>Nationalism is no longer a progressive force in Indian
> >politics.
>I'm interested in the subject of nationalism due to the phenomenon as it
>exists in the fSH, where you can in Russia, e.g., have "Rossiskyi"
>nationalism (which would be identification with the Russian Federation),
>which I think is positive, or, on the other hands, nationalist
>particularisms, Russian or Tatar or Bashkir or Chechen etc. nationalism,
>which is very dangerous.
Yes, I agree with you. Just as Tamil or other similar nationalisms would be a grave danger in India.
--- Me:
I think there is a tendency among people who operate conceptually using the framework of the European nation-state or a more-or-less culturally homogeneous land empire like the US to misread "nationalism" as it occurs in the context of multinational countries. In Russia and the Soviet Union, when it existed, at any rate, Great Russian nationalism is/was not the main threat, although it is more visible to a West that is used to treating Russia and the Russians as if they were the same thing. For greater is/was the danger posed by local particularisms. This is doubly so since a Russian nationalist is far more likely to identify with the country as a whole than, say, a Tatar nationalist is.
A while ago, I was wandering about through the Internet and came across a British Trot document written in 1990 right after the Baltics announced their independence. It was incredibly naive; its heart was in the right place, but that's about it. Calls to "Support a Free and Independent Soviet Anti-Stalinist Armenia!" just don't cut it when you start to reflect on the fact that Armenia contained a rather large number of Ajeris who had rejoiced over the death toll caused by the Armenian earthquake. "Free and Indepent Moldova!" just sounds pathetic today.
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