Victor Shnirelman

Doctor of Sciences, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.

One of the leading Russian anthropologists specializing in the politics of ethnicity, nationalism, race discourses, and social memory in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia and the former Soviet republics–newly independent states. His books in English include: Who Gets the Past? Competition for Ancestors Among Non-Russian Intellectuals in Russia (Washington DC, Baltimore and London, 1996); The Value of the Past. Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia (Osaka, 2001); The Myth of the Khazars and Intellectual Antisemitism in Russia, 1970s–1990s (Jerusalem, 2002). His recent two-volume book in Russian deals with the ideology and practice of the “new racism”.

Imagined Nation-State or Empire? Contemporary Discourse on Russian Nationalism

More than twenty years ago Roman Szporluk distinguished between two branches of Russian nationalism: empire-savers and nation-builders. Both ideas still exist, yet they are interpreted by the Russian nationalists quite differently from what Szporluk thought.

When he was developing his concept, the Hyperborean idea with its view of the “Aryans” was introduced in Russia. This was closely associated with theosophy and aryosophy, which became popular in the wave of “second religiousness” that replaced the discredited communist idea. Besides its other functions, the new religion was to develop and approve the “national idea” that was actively sought by the Russian nationalists during the past two decades. Several models were suggested: some of them focused on the empire, others aimed at the “(ethnic) Russian state.” In both cases, the Russian nationalists exploited an image of the “Slavic-Aryan people” as though they had originated in the Arctic Hyperborea and expanded from there throughout Eurasia and beyond. Yet, the “Aryans” and their achievements were interpreted quite differently as well as the projects of future statehood.

My questions are – what is the “Aryan idea” about today? How are “Aryan humans” viewed by Russian nationalists? What does the “light from the North” mean? How is all this related to the idea of empire and what sort of empire precisely? What are the relationships between this empire and nation-state, if any? What is a place of “civilization” within this paradigm? Are there any connections between “empire” and “civilization” in this discourse?