You are on page 1of 228

Abel Polese is a scholar, development worker, writer and wannabe

musician. To date he has published 15 books, over 100 peer-reviewed


chapters and articles and has designed capacity building and training
programmes on the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Southeast
Asia and Latin America (funded by, inter alia, the EC, UNDP, Erasmus
National Agencies, Irish-aid). His forthcoming book The Scopus Diaries:
The (Il)Logics of Academic Survival is also a blog and is conceived as a guide
to think strategically of one’s academic career.

Oleksandra Seliverstova is a junior researcher at the Department of


Political Science at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and a Marie Curie
Fellow at the Institute of Governance, Law and Society at Tallinn
University (TU). In her PhD research she focused on exploration of
everyday nationalism and bottom-up nation building through consumer
culture in multi-ethnic societies. In 2008 she received her MA in Eastern
European Studies from Free University Berlin, where her research focused
on ethnic conflicts in post-Soviet area. Her BA in Business Administration
was awarded by the International Christian University, Kiev in 2005.
Between 2005–6 she worked as teaching assistant at the Institute of
Theology and Liberal Arts, in Odessa (Ukraine). For several years she was
engaged in the NGO sector in Ukraine and worked as a research assistant.

Emilia Pawłusz is an early stage researcher in the Marie Curie ITN


programme at the School of Governance, Law and Society of Tallinn
University. She obtained her MA in sociology and social anthropology in
2011 from the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland. Between
2012–14 she was a visiting researcher within the Swedish Institute Visby
Programme at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at
Södertörn University, Sweden. Her fields of interest include Baltic choral
singing, nation-building in CEE and visual anthropology.

Jeremy Morris is a Social Anthropologist working on societal and cultural


issues in post-socialist Eastern Europe. Having written extensively on
contemporary Russian culture in the past, his current research is focused on
ethnographic and interpretive approaches to understanding ‘actually lived
experience’ in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He has recently
received research funding to investigate the negotiation of worker identity
under post-socialism (British Academy 2010–11).
INFORMAL
NATIONALISM
AFTER
COMMUNISM
The Everyday Construction of Post-Socialist
Identities

Edited by
ABEL POLESE, OLEKSANDRA SELIVERSTOVA,
EMILIA PAWŁUSZ AND JEREMY MORRIS
Published in 2018 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London • New York
www.ibtauris.com

Copyright Editorial Selection q 2018 Jeremy Morris, Emilia Pawłusz, Abel Polese
and Oleksandra Seliverstova

Copyright Individual Chapters q 2018 Timofey Agarin, Marharyta Fabrykant, Elizaveta


Gaufman, Rayna Gavrilova, Jeremy Morris, Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják, Tamara Pavasović Trošt,
Emilia Pawłusz, Abel Polese, Liga Rudzite, Oleksandra Seliverstova, Dilyara Suleymanova,
Petra Št’astná and Csaba Zahorán.

The right of Jeremy Morris, Emilia Pawłusz, Abel Polese and Oleksandra Seliverstova to be
identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book.
Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.


International Library of Historical Studies 11

ISBN: 978 1 78453 941 2


eISBN: 978 1 78672 396 3
ePDF: 978 1 78673 396 2

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India


Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To our families
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations xi
List of Contributors xii

Introduction The Silent Noise of (Everyday) Identities 1


Abel Polese, Oleksandra Seliverstova, Emilia Pawłusz
and Jeremy Morris
Doggy Bags and Post-Soviet Identities 1
Limp Flags and Noisy Invisible Identities (Post-Socialism
and the Everyday) 4
This Book’s Approach 10
Structure of the Book and Main Themes 12
1. ‘I’m Only Half!’ Schooling and Strategies of Belonging
Among Adolescents from Minority Ethnic Backgrounds
in Russia 17
Dilyara Suleymanova
Introduction 17
Schooling in Post-Soviet Russia as an Arena of Competing
Nationhood Claims 20
School Practices of Ethnic Ascription 23
Strategies of Belonging: Portraits of Pupils 27
‘I Like to be Taken for a Tatar’: Passing as a
(Christianized) Tatar 30
Conclusion 33
viii INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

2. Borders of a Borderland: Experiencing Identity in


Moldova Today 36
Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják and Csaba Zahorán
Introduction 36
State-Building and Nation-Building in Moldova 38
Competing Identity Categories 40
Nationalising Collective Memory in the Public Spaces 44
The Stencils of Identity 46
Transformations of Identity through the Lens of
the Everyday 47
Language, Asymmetrical Power Relations and Everyday
Practices 50
Conclusion 53
3. Teaching the National through Geography and
Nature: Banal Nationalism in Primary Schools in
Serbia and Croatia 57
Tamara Pavasović Trošt
Introduction 57
Methodology 60
Findings: Textbook Content Analysis 62
Discussion and Conclusion 79
4. Why Nations Sell: Reproduction of Everyday
Nationhood through Advertising in Russia and Belarus 83
Marharyta Fabrykant
Introduction 83
Nation-Building and Economic Transformations in
Russia and Belarus: A Historical Background 87
Advertising in Russia: Empire, Nation and In Between 90
Advertising in Belarus: The Struggle for Banality 96
Conclusion 102
CONTENTS ix

5. Money Can’t Buy It? Everyday Geopolitics in


Post-Soviet Russia 104
Elizaveta Gaufman
Introduction 104
Why Prosume Foreign Policy? 106
Speaking Geopolitics 108
Framing Geopolitics 111
Symbolising Geopolitics 115
Eating Geopolitics 118
Conclusion 120
6. Turbofolk as a Means of Identification: Music Practices
as Examples of the National in Everyday Life 123
Petra Št’astná
Introduction 123
The Setting for the Birth of Turbofolk 127
Identification with Turbofolk 129
Contradictions in Evaluating Turbofolk Music 132
Impact of Turbofolk Music on its Consumers 134
Autochthonous Turbofolk as an Illustration of Diasporic
Identity 135
‘Turbofashion’, ʻTurbostyleʼ 138
Conclusion 141
7. Something Bulgarian for Dinner: Bulgarian Popular
Cuisine as a Selling Point 144
Rayna Gavrilova
Introduction 144
Why Food as a National Practice? 146
What is Food as a National Consumption Practice? 147
How to Read the Food as Text 149
The Structure of the Menu: The Sign System 153
The Words of the National Culinary Discourse 155
The Twenty-First-Century Image of Bulgarian National
Cuisine 160
x INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

8. Making Modern Mongolians: Gender Roles and


Everyday Nation-Building in Contemporary Mongolia 164
Timofey Agarin and Lı̄ga Rudzı̄te
Building a Nation for Mongolians 165
Nomadism as Practice of Everyday Nation-Building 168
Forging Ties to the Nation via Religious Practices 171
Chenggis Khaan Legacies 173
Contribution of Women to Mongolian Everyday
Nation-Building 176
Conclusion 180
Conclusion When Post-Socialism Meets the Everyday 183
Abel Polese, Oleksandra Seliverstova, Emilia Pawłusz
and Jeremy Morris
Bibliography 188
Index 210
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures
Figure 3.1 ‘Croatia at the contact of three cultural-civilizational
circles: Central Europe, the Mediterranean, Southeast Europe’
(Tišma 2015:23). 69
Figure 3.2 ‘Natural population growth of Serbia’
(Stamenković and Gatarić 2015:73). 75
Figure 3.3 ‘Forced migrations of Serbs from Croatia
in 1995’ (Stamenković and Gatarić 2015:74; the same picture
appears in Milošević and Brankov 2015:62). 76

Tables
Table I.1 Four Waves of Nation-building Studies and
Four Different Interpretations in Scholarly Debates 6
Table 3.1 Summary of Identity and Nationhood Messages
Found in Serbian and Croatian Fourth-grade Nature and
Society and Eighth-grade Geography Textbooks 77
Table 6.1 Lyrics from the song ‘Naša sudbina’. 137
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Timofey Agarin is Lecturer in Politics and Ethnic Conflict at Queen’s


University Belfast, Northern Ireland. His research interest is ethnic
politics and their impact on transition from communism and
particularly on the interplay of nation state-building with social and
institutional change. In the past he has looked at the dynamic relations
between national identity, minority issues and ethnic conflict across the
post-communist region. Using the cases of institutions tasked with
minority protection, he investigates how democratising states cooperate
with one another as well as with international organisations to reduce
ethnic tensions domestically and ensure peace and stability across the
post-communist region. He is the Director of the Centre for the Study of
Ethnic Conflict at Queen’s University Belfast, Chair of IPSA Research
Committee ‘Politics and Ethnicty’ and Convenor of PSA Standing
Group on Ethnopolitics.

Marharyta Fabrykant is Senior Lecturer in data analysis and cross-


cultural research at the Belarusian State University, Minsk and a
Research Fellow at the National Research University Higher School of
Economics, Moscow. Her research interests are nationalism, national
identity, and national history narratives, with a focus on Central and
Eastern Europe. She authored and coauthored three books and a number
of articles, including, among the most recent, Countries versus Disciplines:
Comparative Analysis of Post-Soviet Transformations in Academic Publications
from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine (with Tregubova N., Fabrykant M.,
Marchenko A., 2017).
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xiii

Elizaveta Gaufman is Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for


Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen. Her
research focuses on the impact of verbal and visual enemy images in new
media, including representations of gender and ethnicity. Her book
Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis
was published in 2017.

Rayna Gavrilova holds an MA and PhD in History from the University


of Sofia, Bulgaria and teaches in the Department of Cultural Studies at
the same university. She has been a Fulbright fellow in Harvard
University; a research fellow at the Annenberg Institute of Near
Eastern and Judaic Studies in Philadelphia, PA; research fellow at
Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris; and visiting professor
in Macalister College, Saint Paul, MN. Gavrilova teaches classes
in Historical Anthropology of Southeastern Europe, Anthropology of
Food and Eating, The City as a Way of Life. Her book The Familial Scene:
Anthropological History of the Family Eating in Bulgaria was published
in 2016.

Jeremy Morris is Social Anthropologist working on societal and


cultural issues in post-socialist Eastern Europe. Having written
extensively on contemporary Russian culture in the past, his current
research is focused on ethnographic and interpretive approaches to
understanding ‘actually lived experience’ in Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union. He has recently received research funding to
investigate the negotiation of worker identity under post-socialism
(British Academy 2010– 11).

Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják studied Social Anthropology, working at


the Hungarian Academy of Science, Centre for Social Sciences,
Institute for Minority Studies. Her main fields of interest
include nationalism, popular culture, and cultural sociology in Central
and Eastern Europe. She is doing her PhD at Pécs University about
the Szekler regio in Romania. She is working on papers about
symbolical conflicts between ethnic groups and their aspects in the
popular culture, about popular music and the far-right. She spent six
months in Chisinau researching the process of constructing national
identities.
xiv INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Emilia Pawłusz is Early-stage Researcher in the Marie Curie ITN


programme at the School of Governance, Law and Society of Tallinn
University. She obtained her MA in sociology and social anthropology in
2011 from the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland.
Between 2012–14 she was a visiting researcher within the Swedish
Institute Visby Programme at the Centre for Baltic and East European
Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her fields of interest include
Baltic choral singing, nation-building in CEE and visual anthropology.

Abel Polese is a scholar, development worker, writer and wannabe


musician. To date he has published 15 books, over 100 peer-reviewed
chapters and articles and has designed capacity building and training
programmes on the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Southeast
Asia and Latin America (funded by, inter alia, the EC, UNDP, Erasmus
National Agencies, Irish-aid). His forthcoming book The Scopus Diaries:
The (Il)Logics of Academic Survival is also a blog and is conceived as a
guide to think strategically of one’s academic career.

Lı̄ga Rudzı̄te is Marie Curie Fellow and a PhD student of Economics


and Business Administration at Tallinn University of Technology,
researching the impact of private sector development assistance projects
on entrepreneurial moralities in Kyrgyzstan. Her Master’s degree
research explored the role of embodied knowledge in development,
studying the interactions between development practitioners and
beneficiaries in Mongolia. Prior to that she was engaged in civil society
organisations and movements in Latvia and on EU level, consulting on
and advocating for better social inclusion and international development
cooperation policies and practice. Her academic interests are
international development theory and practice, political economy of
development, global political economy of gender and sexuality, and
politics of inclusion and empowerment with a particular focus on
Central Asia and Mongolia.

Oleksandra Seliverstova is Junior Researcher at the Department of


Political Science at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and a Marie Curie
Fellow at the Institute of Governance, Law and Society at Tallinn
University (TU). In her PhD research she focused on exploration of
everyday nationalism and bottom-up nation-building through consumer
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xv

culture in multi-ethnic societies. In 2008 she received her MA in Eastern


European Studies from Free University Berlin, where her research
focused on ethnic conflicts in post-Soviet area. Her BA in Business
Administration was awarded by the International Christian University,
Kiev in 2005. Between 2005– 6 she worked as teaching assistant at the
Institute of Theology and Liberal Arts, in Odessa, Ukraine. For several
years she was engaged in the NGO sector in Ukraine and worked as a
research assistant.

Dilyara Suleymanova is Post-doctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the


Department of Social Anthropology, University of Zurich. She received
her PhD from the University of Zurich with an anthropological research
on education in the Republic of Tatarstan, where she explored the
implications of the Russian educational reforms for schooling and
regional politics of belonging. Along with anthropology of education,
identity politics, language and ethnicity, her research interests include
post-Soviet Islam and Islamic education as well as more recently the
dynamic of conflict narratives in the diaspora. She published, among
others, on post-Soviet notions of morality and Islamic madrasa
education, on Tatar youth identities on the social network Vkontakte
and on linguistic policies in Tatarstan.

Petra Št’astná is a PhD student in the Department of Ethnology,


Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She finished her MA in
Balkan studies, where she researched various topics connected to
communities from former Yugoslav countries in diaspora. Her main
academic focus consists of contemporary migration waves, ethnic
minorities and popular culture within the framework of cultural
anthropology. Currently she lives in New Zealand, as she has just
completed her exchange at the University of Otago.

Tamara Pavasović Trošt is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the


Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She received her
PhD in Sociology from Harvard University (2012), with a dissertation
examining the interplay between history and ethnic identity among
Croatian and Serbian youth. She has published about issues of everyday
identity, populism, history education, collective memory and sports and
xvi INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

nationalism, as well as the relationship between class and ethnic


animosity, with a geographic focus on the Western Balkans.

Csaba Zahorán studied History at the University of Eötvös Loránd in


Budapest. After his doctoral studies he started to work at the Historical
Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Between 2012 and
2015 he worked at the Hungarian Institute in Bratislava; since 2016 he
has worked at the Historical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences (Lendület/Momentum/Trianon 100 Research Group). He is the
director of the Terra Recognita Foundation. His main areas of research
are the Szeklerland region in the framework of Romanian and Hungarian
nation-building, interethnic relations in Central and Eastern Europe and
the memory of the Trianon Peace Treaty.
INTRODUCTION

THE SILENT NOISE OF


(EVERYDAY) IDENTITIES

Abel Polese, Oleksandra Seliverstova,


Emilia Pawłusz and Jeremy Morris

The flags hang limply (Billig 1995:40–1, see also Skey 2015), but
how do we know that people don’t notice them? And that by not
noticing them, they are making us compliant national subjects?
(Fox 2016:4)

Doggy Bags and Post-Soviet Identities


To many scholars of the former Soviet region, but also to many ordinary
citizens of the former USSR, Georgia is a place of abundance where
Pantagruelian meals are served at any hour of the day and wine flows in
streams. It is no accident that Georgians say ‘yes, we have a meal where
no wine is served. It’s called breakfast’.
Some years ago, a friend decided to move to Georgia with her partner.
They happened sometimes to meet Georgian friends for a meal. Among
the many aspects of Georgian hospitality there is the (quasi-) moral
obligation to pay for your guests and to order for them, so that they get
to try all the delicacies that the country has to offer. As one might
imagine, ordering food for three people often turned out into an exercise
aimed at flooding the table with food that could easily feed an extended
family or a small tribe. Upset by the prospective waste, at least initially,
2 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

in a clumsy attempt to save food she mentioned that the food was good
and she would have liked to take some of it to her place to eat it later.
Her hosts were of course delighted and simply ordered more food, this
time to be packaged for takeaway. Doggy bags have no future in Georgia,
at least not for the moment.
Abundance and generosity in food serving is not necessarily
something unique to Georgia. Many populations in the world are proud
to display their hospitality as a confirmation of their uniqueness.
Hospitality is something proper to the human race, although in different
forms and expressions. Still, it is not uncommon to visit a country whose
inhabitants will contend that ‘there is no people as hospitable as . . .
ours’. True, Georgians have a saying, ‘a guest is from God’, and think
that even an enemy, once in the home, should be honoured as a guest.
However, what is important here is not who the most hospitable people
are, but how the feeling of being the most hospitable people affects
perception of one’s Georgianness. While to a naı̈ve first-time traveller,
this claim might sound very close to reality, the scholar is more likely
to concentrate not on the uniqueness of the feature but on the claim to
uniqueness. To a Georgian, the claim of being uniquely hospitable,
generous and friendly will be an obligatory step in performing their
Georgianness, make them feel ‘authentically Georgian’ and place them
in opposition to the idea of what ‘non-Georgians’ are.
Claims of the existence, or absence, of certain practices are as
important as the practices themselves. Herzfeld (2004) has defined
‘cultural intimacy’ as ‘the recognition of those aspects of a cultural
identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that
nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality
. . . [so to argue that] state ideologies and the intimacy of everyday social
life are revealingly similar’ (2004:3).
Following this claim this book is an attempt to go beyond state-
centred accounts of national identity construction and to bring to bear
an everyday perspective on post-socialist identities. We borrow concepts
from a growing debate on the forms of nationalism experienced and
renegotiated at the level of everyday life (Antonsich 2015; Edensor
2002; Foster 2002; Fox 2006, 2016; Skey 2011) to engage with a post-
state framework for the study of post-socialist identity. The power
of consumption and mundane practices has been largely acknowledged
in the Western world (Edensor 2002; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008;
INTRODUCTION 3

Wilk 1999). However, research has somehow underestimated the


seemingly mundane little actions that confirm and develop identities in
the post-socialist world. The role of the state in the construction of post-
socialist identities is well established (Arel 1995; Galbreath 2005; Isaacs
2010; Kolstø 2000; Kuzio 2001, 2002; Tishkov 1997).
In contrast, national identity, perceptions and narratives are also
something that ordinary people make sense of independently. In this
process they may give a different importance to, or prioritise, identity
markers that the state feels as secondary or that are non-state-originated.
By doing this, they contribute to the renegotiation of a national identity
and to the construction of alternative markers that are, in our view, as
important as state-originated markers. Through evidence collected in
a variety of situations by our authors, this collection shows that the
formation of somebody’s feeling of belonging to one specific nation can
occur gradually through routine cooking of traditional dishes, while
watching TV commercials or simply chatting on social media. This is, in
principle, challenging to demonstrate. It could be argued that people all
over the world cook and watch TV and that a significant portion of the
world population is active on social media. What makes these actions, or
rather their meaning to people, different, in our view, is the importance
attached to these actions that ultimately reshapes the perceptions of self
(imagined) community, the society they operate in and the state they are
supposed to be faithful to.
We are not the first to claim this. Previous studies on performances of
national rituals related to social tea-drinking in Japan (Surak 2012) and
chewing qāt in Yemen (Wedeen 2009), washing up in Sweden and
Denmark (Linde-Laursen 1993) and driving in Britain (Edensor 2006),
have emphasised the perceptional aspect of identity, a thing that Billig
(1995), Foster (2002), Miller-Idriss (2006), Fox and Miller-Idriss
(2008), Hearn (2007), Lofgren (1993), Skey (2010, 2011) and Edensor
(2002, 2006) have attempted to conceptualise in their efforts to study
the mundane forms of expressions of a nation.
However, studies that demonstrate how national identities are being
shaped and then materialised in everyday life remain scarce, in particular
in the non-Western context. As Fox (2016:2) suggests: ‘We have some
good leads for where to search for this tacit nationalism, but we haven’t
yet uncovered evidence of it’. While trying to understand why we
are still facing such a lack of evidence he emphasises the invisible,
4 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

untouchable quality of everyday nationalism. In particular, it is the


capacity of not attracting attention that distinguishes everyday
nationalism from other forms (see also Edensor 2006:529). In other
words, Fox contends that nationalism ‘works its magic not through flag
waving, but through flags hanging limply, stealthily concocting a world
of nations unselfconsciously and uncritically imbibed as part of the taken
for granted order of things. These limp flags are not a metaphor for the
nation’s impotency, but for its potency’ (Fox 2016:2).

Limp Flags and Noisy Invisible Identities


(Post-Socialism and the Everyday)
In their provocative book Captain Swing, Hobsbawm and Rude ([1969]
2014) made a claim that people tend not to ‘notice’ phenomena until
they make the headlines (see also Billig 1995; Fox 2016; Jenkins 2011).
And this applies too to how research in certain areas becomes
modish over time. Since the rise of Putin, research on authoritarian and
neo-conservative identities has increased – an elite project, but not
necessarily reflected so unambiguously in everyday expressions of
identity. The same can be said for research on the Middle East after the
Arab Spring or research on Ukraine after the Orange Revolution.
Now, where have scholars found inspiration to expand their research,
or move their focus, to a new region or topic? Most likely in newspapers,
news programmes and media outlets. It could be said, thus, that (some)
scholars tend not to notice a phenomenon until it hits the headlines.
Indifference and apathy, more difficult to measure than active promotion
of national values, or other manifested expressions of nationalism, have
recently gained attention (Carter et al. 2011). This, in some respects, is
connected to the concept of power or simply the decision not to do
anything about a given situation, or against a given political regime
(Sharp 1973, 1991). It can help better understand the existence of an
‘implicit nationalism’ (Hassin and Fergusson 2007; Hassin et al. 2009;
Carter et al. 2011).
Scholars have recently afforded more importance to ‘. . . the mundane
practices through which something which we label “the state” becomes
present in everyday life . . . this intense involvement of the state in so
many of the most ordinary aspects of social life as the prosaic aspect of
the state’ (Painter 2006:753). This reflects the end of a time-frame for a
INTRODUCTION 5

nation-building project and process. The elites can propose a framework


but the nation is ultimately reproduced and renegotiated by the people
on an everyday basis. As Connor (2004) argued, there is no defined
temporal framework for the construction of a nation (Connor 2004).
Because we may know when nation-building starts but not
necessarily when is completed, we can see it as a project that inscribes
a process, rather than a phenomenon (Isaacs and Polese 2015). If this has
to be elaborated it must also be informed by the agency of people.
A project is conceived within a given framework and most likely by
political elites, while the process remains ongoing and other actors may
participate in it, being equally important to its outcomes.
The ‘people’ dimension has been only recently acknowledged. Early
works using the term ‘nation-building’ pointed to the agency of national
elites and the role of state institutions and mechanisms in the
construction of a national political community. This was seen as the best,
or possibly sole, way to avoid conflicts in multi-ethnic states that
emerged because of the decolonisation process. With borders artificially
traced and several ethnic groups living under the roof of the same state,
building the nation around a series of values was seen as the only way to
deal with ethnic diversity (Deutsch and Foltz 1966), at least in theory
since little seemed to change after that (Connor 1972). However, further
debates on nation-building, discussing the construction of Western
nation states and then the way nationalism and nation-building had
been interpreted and pursued in post-Cold War Eastern Europe, show a
similar origin.
Further debates on the formation of national identities tended to shift
the focus from the post-colonial world to the European experience, looking
at the ways some nation states had emerged, thus contributing to the
diversity of views about when nations were born (Gellner 1983, 1991),
what the ancestor of a nation was and what the main milestones in their
transformation into modern states were, as well as constructivist vs
perennialist and primordialist debates (Anderson 1991; Hobsbawm 1990).
The collapse of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia
offered a tremendous opportunity to scholars interested in national
identity. The collapse of three major federations (Czechoslovakia, the
USSR and Yugoslavia) generated a variety of successor states offering
new material and cases to continue empirical studies on national
identity, which informed the third wave of nation-building literature.
6 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Table 1.1 Four Waves of Nation-building Studies and Four Different


Interpretations in Scholarly Debates
Period Geographical Focus Conceptualisation
1960s New states of Asia and Modernity will erase ethnic
Africa boundaries and civic values will
prevent conflicts
End of the 1970s, Western Europe and Desire to create even access to
beginning of the US resources and economic welfare
1980s leads to conception of the
contemporary nation state
1990s Former USSR and Ethnic boundaries are dangerous.
Balkans Engagement with civic values will
allow consolidation of political
community
After 2001 post-conflict countries If a state is unable to take care of
(such as Afghanistan itself, foreign powers must have a
or Iraq) primary role in promoting
democracy
Source: Polese 2011.

Recently, nation-building literature has diverged even further.


Starting from Fukuyama’s book Nation-building from Afghanistan to Iraq,
it has moved from the idea of a nation, re-framing discussion into an
international relations context (with a debatable use of the ‘world-
nation’, see Connor 1967), leading ‘nation-building’ to signify the
intervention of foreign powers to stabilise an unstable state.
What these debates have in common is the tendency to emphasise the
role of elites, of a national narrative constructed at the top level. This is
possibly the most visible aspect of national identity formation and we
would agree that it is an important one. A state is there to give
instructions to its citizens and most policy making originates at the state
level, this feeding a large body of scholarship on nation-building in
former socialist countries (Brubaker 1994; Kolstø 2000; Roy 2007;
Smith 1998).
However useful to understand the starting point of nation-building at
the country level, this approach is limited. First, it assumes that once a
policy is adopted it will roll all the way down to the citizens and produce
some effects with little distortion between the initial intentions of the
INTRODUCTION 7

policy makers and its outcomes. Critical research has shown that this is not
always the case (Mylonas 2013). A state, comprising a number of large
organisations, is not monolithical but reproduced and enacted through a
set of practices and interactions between people and their institutions
(Desbiens et al. 2004; Jones 2007; Kasza 2002, Polese et al. 2014), a thing
that a remark by the former head of UNAIDS express nicely:

when I visited a Catholic hospital in Namibia . . . I asked ‘Sister,


are you promoting condoms?’ Her answer was short: ‘Doctor Piot,
Rome is a long way from Namibia’ . . . It made me understand that
even a religion with a hierarchical structure as apparently rigid as
the Roman Catholic Church’s is not in reality monolithic, but
guided in its daily work by the variable styles of individual
humans (Piot 2010:268)

Orders, instructions, even ideological commitments can get lost on their


way and produce a different, milder or distorted message and outcome.
Verdery framed Romania as the Kingdom of Oz to point out the
relevance of this to the socialist period (1991). Scott (1998)
demonstrated that grand projects and ideas intended to improve
human conditions may fail specifically due to this transmission issue.
This brings us to a second, but interconnected, point. People are not
passive actors (who could be called ‘policy-takers’ as opposed to policy-
makers) but interpret, negotiate or even oppose political measures, either
formally or informally. This is something that has informed several
sociological works looking at the relationship between people and
society (Giddens 1984; Migdal 2001) and can be applied to the study of
national identity (Polese 2010, 2011).
Inasmuch as people are not passive actors subject to policies but
rather select them, prioritise some (not necessarily the ones the elites
would like them to prioritise) and contribute to their interpretation and
renegotiation of their symbolic value, we have to take into account the
role of ordinary people and their agency; the everyday is a useful way to
do this. In the language of a state, the state

then ‘interacts with’, ‘intervenes in’, ‘depends upon’ or ‘regulates’


other distinct social spheres such as ‘the economy’, ‘civil society’,
‘private life’ and so on. Focusing on the statization of the everyday
8 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

is one way to undermine the separate spheres assumption by


disrupting the binary logic of state/non-state formulations
(Painter 2006:754)

Indeed, a growing number of studies confirm the importance of the


unselfconscious form of nation, located, but at the same time concealed,
in the mundane contexts, practices and rhythms of everyday life
(Antonsich 2015; Edensor 2002, 2006; Löfgren 1989, 1993; Eley and
Suny 1996; Skey 2011; Foster 2002).
In the former socialist region, this logic has fast emerged through
the works of a relatively small group of scholars that have concentrated
on everyday understandings of such concepts as nation, citizenship and
ethnicity (Agarin 2011; Brubaker 2006; Cheskin 2013; Klumbyte
2010; Knott 2015; Kulyk 2014; Pfoser 2014; Pawlusz 2016;
Seliverstova 2016). They have shown that place-based identities at the
level of ordinary people are extremely nuanced concepts and processes.
Though people tend to perceive their national, ethnic identities as
taken-for-granted, they interpret and experience them differently.
Some of these authors revealed that very often people do not
differentiate between ethnic and national and that for them nationality,
ethnicity and citizenship are relational and situational states of mind.
This recent body of literature, mainly using rich in-depth
ethnographic studies, has demonstrated that national or ethnic
identity needs to be rather understood from the perspectives of actors
who experience it and make meaning of it and not only from an
institutional perspective.
In addition, other attempts have been made to promote debates on
the contesting and renegotiation of state ideas on national
communities. A special issue of Nationalities Papers (Isaacs and Polese
2015) has used a specific focus on Central Asia to emphasise the gap
between how nation-building is imagined by the national elites and
how this comes about in different ways, highlighting the gap between
intentions and results. In a subsequent volume, the same authors make
the claim that traditional tools and approaches are not sufficient to
understand the variety of practices that construct the nation through
actions and modes which are not always or necessarily initiated by the
political elites. Development of the cinema industry in Kazakhstan
(Isaacs 2015), organisation of mega events in Azerbaijan (Millitz 2015)
INTRODUCTION 9

as well as the role of other actors in their everyday work (Ventsel 2012,
2016; Wigglesworth-Baker 2016) shed light on a practice that has
been defined as ‘spontaneous nation-building’ (Polese 2009, 2009b,
2011) and that can be defined as

a construction of national identity conceived, performed, and


engaged with by people or organizations of people; for instance,
the construction of national identity through the perpetuation of
national songs, popular art, singing, and dancing despite the
possible lack of support from state authorities . . . second, just as
nation-building measures might not have the desired effects and
impact on a given population, there might be some measures
that, conceived of at the central level, were not intended to
primarily influence identity construction but nevertheless
end up strongly affecting identity in a country (Polese and
Horak 2015:2)

Inspired by these approaches we have attempted to bring the debate a


step forward and engage with practices that draw on Eriksen’s
distinction between formal and informal nationalism, where

the identity presented by the formal institutions of the state does


not fit with the experiences of the people to whom it is directed:
the ideology does not, in these respects, communicate with the
experienced needs and aspirations of part of the population, and its
symbolism is therefore not credible and is ultimately impotent
(Eriksen 1993:6)

We are thus interested in the experience and reproduction of identity by


ordinary people in their daily interactions with the state, its institutions
and other individuals. We look, in particular, at the way the nation is
produced in the imaginations of these citizens through a myriad of
actions that they perform, sometimes unconsciously. We maintain that
these actions are crucial to the formation of a national consciousness and
studying these actions is vital to understand the very essence of national
identity, which is the result of a synergy, or a synthesis, between what the
elites propose through official narratives and what people understand,
renegotiate and reproduce.
10 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

This Book’s Approach


There seems to be a consensus among scholars focusing on the everyday,
that the very concept of everyday is not easily accessible (see also Edensor
2006; Skey 2009:334; Billig 1995:38; Eley and Suny 1996:21–2;
Hearn 2007:658–9). This is based on the understanding that national,
and, in general, identities, are shaped by what we do not do, as much as
by what we do. It is not what I consume that defines my identity but also
what I choose not to consume. Still, surveys usually explore the few
things that people do, rather than concentrate on the million things that
people choose, consciously or unconsciously, not to do. And even among
the things that people do not do, some have more importance than
others and the choice to attach a certain importance to one thing and not
to another is highly subjective, becoming visible only when the analysis
is made ‘thick’, when we isolate a choice to study the context and
background behind that very particular choice.
This makes the everyday a slippery territory, hostile to most data
collection techniques that are not sufficiently deep. Ethnography is
somehow too time consuming and more difficult to frame in a positivist
analysis and therefore is not usually used to gather evidence for political
or economic decisions. However, attention to qualitative methods has
increased recently and a number of analyses make extensive use of
qualitative approaches with the end of providing a multidimensional
view on social phenomena. Figures and numbers count and need to be
collected. But the capacity to read these figures beyond their apparent
meaning is an important asset that is acknowledged as lacking in some
current research, the 2016 US election forecasts being the ultimate
evidence for it.
It would be unfair to claim that the everyday has been totally absent
from postsocialist research. Immediately after the opening of the
socialist bloc and thus the possibility to spend periods of time in a
country to talk to people and observe them, anthropologists and
sociologists started inquiring into everyday practices and material
culture. They looked at ordinary people with the goal of understanding
the post-socialist transition from the people’s perspective. Seminal works
by Boym (2002), Rausing (2004), Wanner (1998), Humphrey (2002),
Caldwell (2002) and Verdery (2003), focused on difficulties that former
Soviet and socialist citizens were facing in the beginning of 1990s while
INTRODUCTION 11

coping with poverty, ideological changes and loss of their previous


identity references. Although national identity was not necessarily their
primary focus, a number of scholars produced meaningful accounts of the
development of new markers for group identities, evolving in that
particular part of the world. With their ethnographic work they uncovered
details on informal economic practices (Humphrey 2002), in which many
post-Soviet people were engaged. Also they demonstrated how people
were transforming from Soviet to Western consumers (Fehervary 2002;
Rausing 2004; Pilkington 2002). Overall, such works have contributed to
understanding upon which values and elements new national commu-
nities were based. However, the micro processes they researched were
rarely connected to or confronted macro-process, such as nation and state-
building.
A significant amount of solidly written accounts on nation-building
in the region have adopted a state-centric perspective (Kolsto 1999,
2000; Kuzio 1998, 2002; Smith 1998; Tolz 1998; Vetik 2012) while
exploring the issues of minorities, diaspora populations and border
regions. They usually focus on such aspects as integration, assimilation
or potential ethnic tensions within one national community. However,
few works credit groups with a role of challenging official discourses on
nationhood and citizenship. In our book, ethnic minorities and
populations living in the border regions are empirically presented as
symbolic spaces of mediation, fracture and contestation of top-down
policies. Formal actors of nation-building (the state, its institutions,
political elites), providing instructions through formal and official
channels, are not alone in this task. There are unrecognised, unnoticed
and non-formalised actors that act in a way that is informal or
spontaneous, to redefine national identity more ambiguously.
In contrast to most works on identity construction that examine the
politics and policies of identity-building in the region, our narrative
takes into account the role of non-traditional, non-politicised and non-
elite actors in the construction of identity. For one thing, even small
children, as school pupils, can play an important role in renegotiation of
state ideas about nation and its citizens, by adding their own
interpretations or by not accepting some taken-for-granted assumptions.
In addition, we emphasise the transnational nature of a variety of
practices that can be found in more than one country. By doing this, we
go beyond an understanding of national identity construction limited to
12 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

a single-state territory to study movements, tendencies and attitudes


that have emerged over a region, or a number of countries. We look at
the way identity, or identities, are conceived, understood and ultimately
performed by actors independent and disconnected from the state.
We refer here to the use of consumption practices and patterns to
redefine the nation and its boundaries, to cross-country tendencies
that unite ethnic groups, classes or segments of a society ‘beyond the
nation’ and create contrasting, or competing, identity markers then
used by a variety of actors and single citizens, to redefine their identity.
In particular, we look at the way identity is understood, performed
and reproduced by common actions in the everyday life of the
concerned actors.
We do all this to propose that negotiation of identity interacts and
goes beyond official discourses produced by political elites within a
single territorially bound space and place, so to explore the nexus
between symbolic and physical spaces, private and public spheres,
tangible and intangible, formal and informal. We maintain that a main
deficiency of social science research that we set out to address has been
the neglect of phenomena that we call ‘invisible’ (see Becker 1963; Fox
2016; also Pawlusz and Polese 2017; Polese 2016 for a direct reference to
the invisible).

Structure of the Book and Main Themes


The current book was conceived and elaborated to engage with three
distinct aspects that have been relatively neglected: educational
institutions as contested spaces, the role of media in reshaping the
national imaginary and the everyday construction of identity through
cultural practices. We have been lucky in this respect to secure authors
who provided us with a variety of interesting case studies. The three
parts taken together provide, at least in our view, a good overview of
what identity is and how it is changing in the post-socialist region.
Because of this and the usual word limitation we had, we have felt the
need to give the authors the maximum possible space. This has been at
the root of our choice not to contribute a chapter as editors. Our views
are expressed in this Introduction and we have conceived this book as a
dialogue between scholars, generations and views. By force of this and
for the sake of academic debates, we have been happy to include authors’
INTRODUCTION 13

ideas with which we do not necessarily fully agree, but believe can
help feed a dialogue on the issue and provoke further authors to engage
with it.
The first part of this book provides evidence of the often-neglected
role of educational institutions as platforms for renegotiation and
contestation of state ideas on national categories. The first chapter, by
Dilyara Suleymanova, analyses the role of schools in a multi-ethnic
environment, offering the case of Tatarstan. She views schools as both
agents of the state and scenes/platforms for ordinary people on which
they can express their national sentiments, but also where they can act as
creators of some alternative accounts of nation while challenging the
official ones. The main message of this work is that people, even very
young ones, are not passive receptors and their agency in the nation-
building process is important to consider for understanding the ways in
which national identity is shaped (see also Knott 2015; Thompson
2002). In the following chapter, Tamara Trost sheds light on school
subjects not often considered as classical channels for transmission of
ideas on nation. Investigating the invisible side of the nation-
formation process, she demonstrates how such subjects as geography or
even sport can transmit messages about national categories in Serbia and
Croatia. When examining primary school textbooks she notes subtle
messages on nation there, which are however less ethnocentric than
official ideas on nation presented in history textbooks within the same
educational system.
The first part concludes with a chapter by Agnes Patakfalvi-Czirják
and Csaba Zahorán, who first identify some failures in the institutional
framework for national identity in Moldova and then demonstrate how
ordinary people cope with the projection of Moldovan national
community produced by local political elites. The authors reveal how
ordinary people make sense of ideas on national and ethnic categories and
how they fill the gaps they find in official narrative. Borders are
presented here as physical places to observe the mundane renegotiation
of ideas on national identity in Moldova, across which daily different
cultures, ethnicities and languages intermix.
The second part of the book consists of three chapters that explore the
role of media in shaping and portraying national community. Marharyta
Fabrykant analyses commercial advertisements in Russia and Belarus to
reveal which ideas of nation local businesses use when addressing their
14 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

consumers. The results of her study show that businesses rely mainly on
state ideas of nation and do not take into account non-conventional, non-
government opinions. This leads her to suggest that advertisements are
another channel of state propaganda and not a reflection of everyday
understanding of nation, shared by ordinary people.
Elizaveta Gaufman’s chapter concludes the second part. Following
some similar concerns of the previous chapter, she analyses the discourses
of Russian social networks. However, she presents such discourses as a
response to the state’s foreign policy. Her chapter reflects on an existing,
though rarely highlighted, dialogue between citizens and the state.
Gaufman focuses on people’s reactions to Russia’s foreign policy. She
maintains that, whilst supporting it, people incorporate new elements of
Russian folklore in which the main characters are usually important
geopolitical figures. Gaufman argues that the creation of a geopolitical
enemy, against which the current version of national identity in Russia is
built, occurs not only at the level of political elite and transmitted
through various channels as propaganda. The idea of enemy is developed
further by ordinary people and social networks serve as a platform to do
that. Gaufman speaks also about the generation of new national images
which then serve as references for collective national identification.
The third part of the book illustrates everyday cultural practices
through which national identity is formed. The first chapter by Petra
Šťastná presents an interesting case study on a music genre – turbofolk
– that developed in the former Yugoslav countries. Turbofolk, which is a
combination of pop and folk music, is symbolically rich in references to
both the socialist past and capitalist future, nostalgia for the East and
expectation of the West. Moreover, it has been always supported by local
political elites and widely shared outside of former Yugoslavia amongst
members of the Yugoslav diaspora. Such features give turbofolk a
symbolic power to unite people and to inspire a sense of collective
belonging among them.
The next work in this section explores the role of food in the
formation of identity. In particular, Raina Gavrylova’s chapter focuses
on the production of cultural identity in the hospitality industry of
Bulgaria. By questioning the standards of national cuisine used by
local hospitality businesses she looks at the way Bulgarian national
cuisine is shaped and how this affects its consumers, in particular
their perception of ‘national’. The chapter illustrates a dynamic
INTRODUCTION 15

process of renegotiation of national cuisine to contend that


‘Bulgarian’ entails a mix of traditions from different times and
cultures of other countries. This redefinition, in turn, opens up an
individual’s contribution into the shaping of what is national. As a
result, Gavrylova argues, in contrast to a rather fixed state and popular
nationalistic rhetoric, this type of national cuisine, developed by local
caterers, is more inclusive and flexible, as it incorporates elements and
names from cuisines of other cultures (including Turkish) that are
organically accepted as ‘Bulgarian’.
The final chapter, by Timofey Agarin and Lı̄ga Rudzı̄te, takes the
reader to (not-so) faraway Mongolia, a country that, in spite of being
closer to the USSR than other neighbour countries, has been largely
absent from post-socialist debates. Here the authors contrast the state’s
projection of Mongolian national identity, in which men have a central
role, to a popular understanding of what being Mongolian means.
By doing this, the authors suggest that women also play an important, if
not leading, role in the construction of a national identity. The reasoning
for such a conclusion lies in the fact that men are constrained in their
attitudes – their role is already predefined by state-supported narratives
in which men are portrayed as successors of Genghis Khan. Women, in
contrast, are freer in their choices and can adapt better to the conditions
of modern society, thus usually carving out for themselves new roles in
Mongolian society.
Taken together these chapters argue that informal nation-building
sites (from consumption to art, music to media), usually considered part
of the domain of everyday life, create national discourses that often
intertwine with other (regional, global) social identity discourses and
influence the way ordinary citizens imagine their group belonging. The
analysis of discourses in social networks groups, as well as in local
advertisements, shows that while some state-led ideas on nation are
echoed and even dramatised, others can be contested and in the end
generate new images and markers of the nation. Furthermore, nation-
building is hardly merely a discursive process. The nation and its
representations become materialised through objects, as well as the
arrangement of physical, ‘tangible’ spaces, be it a restaurant providing
national cuisine or a shop with ‘authentic’ local products. Accordingly,
when people visit such spaces or buy such services and products, they are
repeatedly exposed to the silent message that the world consists of
16 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

nations and nationhood is a basic category of placing oneself, others, but


also spaces and objects, within this world.
Finally, beyond discursive and material reminders of nationhood, the
nation is also a category of practice and performance. Serving ‘typical
food’ of the country to guests or listening to nationally themed music
and attending concerts and parties where it is played are only a few
examples of the myriad ways people, consciously and unconsciously,
practice their identity. The gravity of the informal and the everyday
for national identity-formation lies thus in the fact that they are
almost never perceived as political by ordinary people. While they are
seemingly silent, implicit and invisible sites of nation-building, this
book demonstrates the everyday as just as politically noisy in its
accumulation of national identity markers upon which ‘hot’ forms of
nationhood and other mobilisations rest.
CHAPTER 1

I'M ONLY HALF!' SCHOOLING


`

AND STRATEGIES OF
BELONGING AMONG
ADOLESCENTS FROM
MINORITY ETHNIC
BACKGROUNDS IN RUSSIA

Dilyara Suleymanova

Introduction
School education is considered central to the processes of state-building
and formation of national identity (Weber 1976; Boli, Ramirez and
Meyer 1985; Reed-Danahay 1996). Through the state-wide network
of public schools reaching to the most distant places, education
disseminates and transmits official ideology across territories and
populations. Schools promote universal literacy, knowledge of official
languages and common communication codes, fostering the processes
of cultural homogenisation (Gellner 1983). Moreover, they are
institutional sites where nationhood is imagined, emotionally experienced
and reproduced (Coe 2005; Bénéı̈ 2008; Adely 2012). Mostly, however,
our understandings of schooling are based on studies that rely on the
analysis of top-down educational policies, official documents and
textbooks, which convey only a partial picture of the educational
processes. It is crucially important to see how these educational discourses,
18 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

practices and policies are implemented, received, re-negotiated and


possibly subverted in concrete school settings.
As this volume sets out to study nationhood from the everyday life
perspective, attending to lived experiences of the nation (Fox and Miller-
Idriss 2008; Isaacs & Polese 2016), this chapter explores how national/
ethnic identities are perceived, constructed and negotiated within the
social spaces of school. It is anchored in ethnographically informed
research that approaches national identity as a set of everyday practices,
whether performance, consumption, material culture, music or arts
(Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008; Pawłusz and Seliverstova 2016). Research
into post-Soviet nation-building processes, as Isaacs and Polese (2016)
have pointed out, have been based mostly on studies of political
ideologies and elite discourses at the expense of more grounded
approaches. This is also true for research on identity politics in the
context of education, as there are still few studies that engage with
schooling from an anthropological, ethnographic standpoint.
While the analysis of textbooks, educational materials and policies
reveal political, ideological and bureaucratic aspects of nation-building
through schooling, the exploration of the social world of classrooms opens
up the possibility of studying the everyday ‘strategies of belonging’ – the
ways adolescents understand, deal with and instrumentalise identity
categories that are ascribed to them by the school and adults in general.
This is an especially interesting undertaking in the context of post-
Soviet educational systems, where ethnicity is inscribed into the
school’s bureaucratic procedures and projected as a primordial, in-born
characteristic of an individual. In contrast to such static and objectified
understandings of ethnic belonging emanating from state institutions,
everyday strategies of belonging by adolescents reveal the interactional
and situational qualities of identity.
In this contribution I will thus address and explore the multi-faceted
processes of identity negotiation among school adolescents (14 –16 years
old) as they take place in multi-ethnic classrooms in a small town in the
Republic of Tatarstan, an autonomous region of the Russian Federation.
Drawing on ethnographic data from an anthropological study of
schooling in Tatarstan, Russia, I will present vignettes illustrating the
divergence between the institutional procedures of identity ascription
and interactional dynamics of identity negotiation at school. The
in-depth portraits of selected pupils from Mari and Udmurt ethnic
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 19

backgrounds illustrate how adolescents seek recognition, status and a


sense of social adequacy in the social spaces of school, how they deal with
ethnic ascriptions that are stigmatised both in official educational
discourses and local societal discourses. The dominant societal and
public discourses in Russia that mostly define minority identities
through folkloristic images of the village ways of life, frozen in their
backwardness, play an important role in the ways students perceive their
ethnic belonging and that of others. In the classroom youth strategically
renegotiate and redefine their sense of belonging as well as resist
hegemonic ways of talking about ethnicity.
Numerous ethnographic studies of schooling have demonstrated how
daily lives of adolescents at school are shaped by different strategies to
gain status and friendships and acquire a sense of social adequacy (Willis
1981; Foley 1990; Levinson 1996; Hall 2008; Adely 2012). Adolescents
and children devise various strategies in dealing with ascribed categories
and demonstrate various responses which attest to the active role played
by children in co-constructing their identities (Semons 1991; Bailey
2000; Barley 2013). Particularly within school settings, children and
adolescents are often confronted with the various expressions of racism
and ethnocentrism (Hirschfeld 1998; Ogbu 2008). It is often from their
classmates and peers that children learn not only that people can be
divided into categories but also that there are ‘bad’ and ‘good’ ethnic
categories. School thus is one of the most important social spaces
where ethnic categorisation and labelling is acted out (Semons 1991;
Hammersley and Woods 1993; Barley 2013).
Some of these studies have used Goffman’s (1959) theory of
dramaturgical analysis to interpret the processes of identity performance
and negotiation among children and adolescents (Hall 2008; Barley
2013). The strategies that teenagers employ in relation to belonging can
be interpreted within the framework of ‘impression management’ as
navigation between the ‘front stage’ with its publicly articulated identity
and the backstage with identities reserved for private spheres. Although
this approach has its limitations, it can be fruitful to look at these
processes through the interactional and performative angle, especially
when it comes to dealing with ethnic ascriptions that are stigmatised
(Eidheim 1969).
In the following section I first introduce the reader to some of the
complexities of post-Soviet education in Russia where schools, especially
20 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

in the autonomous regions like Tatarstan, have become an arena of


competing projects of ethnic (and/or regional) and state-centred
(national) belonging. I then introduce the Republic of Tatarstan and the
small town where ethnographic fieldwork was conducted. Second,
I present the school settings where ethnographic observations took place
and introduce two vignettes that illustrate the discrepancies between the
institutional and interactional dynamics of ethnic ascription. In the
third part, I present the portraits of selected pupils from the Mari and
Udmurt ethnic backgrounds and their strategies of dealing with ethnic
stigma as well as with the ethnicising discourses of school and larger
surroundings. I conclude with interpretation and analysis of these
vignettes, drawing on but also challenging some of the Goffman
assumptions. Finally, I reflect on the problems of essentialism and
dilemmas of cultural authenticity that remain central to the projects of
cultural revitalisation among ethnic minorities in Russia today, many
of which struggle with stigmatising discourses.

Schooling in Post-Soviet Russia as an Arena of


Competing Nationhood Claims
With its centrally devised and uniform official curriculum and centrally
produced textbooks, the Soviet Union, and to some extent post-Soviet
Russia, are both examples of highly centralised and unified education
systems (Webber 1999; Eklof, Holmes and Kaplan 2005). Schools in
the Soviet Union were seen as being responsible for the manufacturing
a loyal Soviet citizen, spreading literacy in the Russian language and
transmitting the ideological messages of socialism. Certain concessions
were made to ethnic minorities within this highly centralised education
system, such as establishing schools that instructed in minority
languages (Anderson and Silver 1984). After the fall of the Soviet
Union, Russian educationalists launched a series of reforms aimed at
democratisation, diversification and regionalisation of education
(Webber 1999; Eklof, Holmes and Kaplan 2005; Karpov and Lisovskaya
2005; Suleymanova 2017). With the educational reforms following
political centralisation in Russia after 2000, these projects have been
replaced with consolidated efforts at inculcating national and patriotic
sentiments centred on Russia as a nation state (Piattoeva 2009; Prina
2015; Suleymanova 2017).
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 21

While numerous studies have analysed Russian educational policies


in the post-Soviet years from the state perspective (Jones 1994; Webber
1999; Eklof, Holmes and Kaplan 2005; Karpov and Lisovskaya 2005;
Shnirelman 2006), there are still few works that derive their analysis
from ethnographic research in concrete Russian schools (Markowitz
2000; Bloch 2003; Alvarez Veinguer 2007; Suleymanova 2015). This has
partially to do with the difficulties of obtaining access to ethnographic
research at schools in Russia, as many principals or educational officials
are unwilling to let researchers, let alone foreign ones, enter and stay for
periods of time at school.
The Republic of Tatarstan is taken as a case study to explore the
interrelationship between schooling and the politics of identity
(understood from both macro and micro perspective) in the context of
post-Soviet transformations in Russia. Tatarstan is a particularly
interesting case to explore such kinds of issues as it is an ethnically
heterogeneous region (one of 21 ethnically based republics in Russia)
which acquired extensive autonomy in the early post-Soviet years and
which has introduced important initiatives in school education and
language planning (Graney 1999, 2010; Gorenburg 2003).1 Besides
Tatars and Russians as the most numerous ethnic groups in the republic,
there are ethnic minorities such as Udmurt, Mari, Chuvash and Mordva
that live compactly in various areas of the republic and are considered
autochthonous to the area of the Volga-Ural basin.2 The Umdurt, Mari
and Mordva have corresponding ‘ethnic’ republics in the Volga-Ural
region and are often collectively referred to as Finno-Ugrians in
academic and public discourse (Lallukka 2001).3
School education in Tatarstan has been a site of competing
nationhood projects throughout the post-Soviet years, with federal and
regional (republican) governments advancing claims over the
educational content to be transmitted in schools (Graney 1999;
Suleymanova 2017). Official Russian school curriculum and textbooks
do not give much attention to the ethnic diversity of the country
(Khasanova 2005; Maier 2005; Schnirelman 2011). History textbooks
scarcely cover the history of the incorporation of various ethnic groups
into the Russian state and largely ignore the diversity of their historic
experiences within the country (Khasanova 2005; Shnirelman 2011;
Ismailov and Ganieva 2013). During the early post-Soviet years,
Tatarstan implemented various ‘ethno-regional’ initiatives to strengthen
22 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

the role of school in maintaining and developing the Tatar language and
in cultivating minority ethnic identities and cultures (Graney 1999;
Faller 2000; Wertheim 2003; Gorenburg 2005; Alvarez Veinguer 2007;
Wigglesworth-Baker 2016). These included not only diversification of
curricula and extra-curricular activities in the conventional Russian-
language schools (that constitute absolute majority of schools in
Tatarstan) to account more for the ethnic diversity of the area, but also
expanding and supporting the network of minority language schools
(that teach in Tatar, Udmurt, Mari, etc., languages). The idea was to
create spaces within school that would better reflect the diversity of
identities, cultures and histories of particular regions and provide
resources for resisting cultural homogenisation and centralisation.
However, with the changing political and social constellations in Russia
in the early 2000s, such initiatives were regarded as a threat to the
integrity of Russian statehood and to national unity, so gradually they
have been dismantled through a series of educational reforms (Zamyatin
2012; Prina 2015; Suleymanova 2017). With the introduction of the
new education standards (2010) and of the Unified State Examination
(2009), the ethno-regional component has been removed from the
curriculum, thus leaving almost no space in the classroom for
representations and narratives of minority or regional identities.4
The schools of the provincial town5 where I conducted my field
research have also experienced the consequences of these reforms. The
town is situated in a predominantly rural district of Tatarstan and is
populated mostly by Tatars (around 80 per cent) but has a significant
number of other ethnic groups, foremost Udmurts, Russians and a small
percentage of Mari and Kriashen.6 Situated in provincial areas, far from
the centres of policy making, small-town schools are no less subject to
bureaucratic control (by regular school checks) than city schools. What is
special about the small-town schools is that they are firmly embedded in
the social fabric of their surroundings; teachers, parents and students are
connected not only through school but also through kinship and
neighbourhood ties.
The countryside surrounding this town has Udmurt and Mari
villages, in some of which there are primary schools that partially use
native language (Udmurt and Mari) in teaching and also implement
some programs of Udmurt/Mari ethno-cultural education. Most town
schools however instruct in the Russian language, even though the
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 23

student body is predominantly Tatar. With the introduction of the


Unified State Examination in the 2009 – 10 academic year, all schools
more or less reoriented towards effective preparation of their pupils for
this test, so certain standardisation of priorities and stronger emphasis
on Russian-language teaching was a visible tendency (Chevalier 2013;
Suleymanova 2017).
The research on which this chapter is based was conducted in
2009 – 13 and included an extended ethnographic fieldwork in two
town schools in the 2009 – 10 academic year. This fieldwork involved
participant observation during lessons, breaks, at various school
events and extra-curricular activities. Semi-structured interviews were
conducted with school principals, teachers as well as students in the
Russian and Tatar languages. In each school I chose two classes, which
I followed regularly, visiting their lessons and conducting formal
interviews with pupils and teachers as well as more informal
conversations in the flow of school life and also outside of school.
Hanging out with students after school or in the evenings was an
important part of the fieldwork, not confined only to school settings
but involving various social spaces. I also occasionally visited schools
in the countryside (in the Mari, Udmurt, Kriashen and Tatar villages).
In Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, interviews were conducted with
educational experts and functionaries. Analysis of selected textbooks
on history and social sciences as well as of educational materials and
policy documents with a particular focus on representation of
ethnic diversity and regionalism were essential to this research.7 The
data for this chapter was mostly taken from the observations in the
town’s Russian-language school, which had an ethnically mixed body
of students.

School Practices of Ethnic Ascription


Shortly after arrival to this small provincial town, I realised how proud
and conscious people were of the ethnic diversity of the area and peaceful
co-existence of various ethnic groups on its territory. Multi-ethnic
composition and peaceful inter-ethnic co-existence were hallmarks
of the district, especially praised by the local administration that
regularly organised public folkloristic celebrations of ethnic festivities
(Russian, Tatar, Udmurt and Mari). They also constantly referred to the
24 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

inter-ethnic harmony of the district in their public speeches. These ways


of talking about inter-ethnic relations have strong links with the Soviet
discourse of ‘internationalism’ and the typical language of the Soviet
nomenclature when they talked about ethnic diversity.
Local residents themselves also frequently referred to inter-ethnic
harmony, underlining how friendly (druzhno) they lived with their
neighbours or friends of other ethnicity, helping and visiting each other
or jointly celebrating national holidays. Indeed, my initial observations
were that ethnicity was not the main concern of children and youth
and mixed friendships were the norm and not seen as problematic.
However, after some time in the field, it became obvious that even if
overshadowed by the rhetoric of ‘peacefully living together’, ethnic
stereotyping and prejudicing about the ‘other’ were widespread. People
were quite conscious about ethnic origins and it did play a role in certain
life situations and kinds of interactions. Also public state institutions,
such as schools, regard ethnicity as an important characteristic of the
students, collecting information on the ethnicity of pupils and handing
it over to the educational ministry (of Tatarstan).
As Rogers Brubaker has prominently argued, the Soviet Union
established a system of ‘institutionalized’ ethnicity where ethnic
identity became a ‘fundamental social category sharply distinct from the
overarching categories of statehood and citizenship’ (Brubaker 1996).8
Every citizen in the Soviet Union had to indicate his/her ethnicity in
their internal passport (from the list of ‘official nationalities’), in personal
forms when taking up a job or enrolling to an educational institution, as
well as during census-taking (Simonsen 1999). In Russian schools, up
until the end of 1990s, information on ethnicity (nationalnost’) of pupils
was contained in the school register. As a part of post-Soviet measures to
dismantle this system of institutionalised ethnicity, the new Russian
passports issued in 1997 did not contain the so-called ‘fifth’ line on
ethnic identity (Simonsen 1999). Likewise, new school registers have
been issued without the column on ethnicity. Despite these changes,
ethnicity remained the fundamental category of social identification and
various state agencies, including schools, continue to record and gather
information on ethnicity of their students. In Tatarstan, the republic’s
Ministry of Education collects information on ethnic composition of
schools, as they explain, in order to obtain necessary information for
devising policies on native-language education and language teaching.
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 25

How does a school gather information on ethnicity? Observations in


my field site provide some insights into that process. Usually, at the
beginning of the academic year, teachers either ask parents to fill in
forms, which contain information on ethnicity, or fill in these forms
themselves, based on birth certificates (which usually contain the
indication of ethnicity of both parents). Thus, teachers ascribe ethnic
identity to pupils based on what they see as ‘objective’ criteria –
information provided by parents or by the documents that indicate
ethnicity of both parents (from which teachers automatically derive the
ethnicity of their children). The situation gets more complicated when a
child is from a mixed family. When teachers have to decide ethnicity
based on birth certificates, they have either to take the mother’s or
father’s ethnicity. According to my conversations with teachers, this was
rather arbitrary. In the last five years teachers said they would take the
ethnicity of the father, while earlier ethnicity of the mother was crucial.
In case parents indicated the ethnicity directly, it was up to them to
decide what ethnicity he/she wished his/her child to be registered with.
In this institutional logic of identification, the child’s own view of his
or her ethnic identity is not taken into account. However, there are
exceptions to these institutional procedures. One of them I encountered
in one of the classes of the Russian-language school, where the teacher
received a newly composed ninth-grade class and let the students fill in
their personal forms themselves. As I talked to her about the ethnic
composition of her class, she explained:
‘If we gathered information on ethnicity from the parents and not
from them (pupils), we would have a different ethnic composition in the
class. We would have only two ethnic Russians instead of five that we
have now’.
As the teacher explained, this mismatch between the ‘objective’ and
‘subjective’ indications of ethnicity had to do with the fact that children
from Udmurt and Mari backgrounds in her class preferred to indicate
their ethnicity as Russian. The teacher explained that pupils of these
backgrounds were ashamed of their ethnic origins. She also pointed out
that because most of them did not speak or did not want to speak their
native language, they were basically ‘Russified’.
The following episode from a classroom interaction further indicates
how certain ethnic categories are perceived by students and gives
insights into the interactional dynamics of identification. I had been
26 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

attending a lesson of the Tatar language in a ninth-grade class and at


the end of the lesson the teacher allowed me to make a small exchange
with pupils. I asked children about their town, what they liked most
about it and what they knew about different languages spoken in this
area. I asked whether anyone spoke any Udmurt or Mari. The first
reaction was silence. The silence was broken by one of the male students
from the back rows, who pointed to a boy sitting in the front rows saying
loudly:

‘He knows Mari, he is a Mari!’


The other boy seemed embarrassed, turned around and answered:
‘No, I am only half!’
Then, again the student from the back rows pointed to the other
girl, saying:
‘And she, she is an Udmurt!’
The girl reacted to that with: ‘You! You are an Udmurt yourself!’
The boy answered: ‘No, I am half, my mother is Russian!’
As I asked children what they knew about the Russians, the same
boy who was so active in distributing ethnic labels answered:
‘Russians are the best nationality!’
A Tatar boy who was sitting in the back rows intervened with:
‘And the Tatars too!’
(Field notes, Tatar language lesson, October 2009)

What was apparent from this exchange is that ethnic categories were
situated on a certain imaginative scale of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalities,
with Russians being clearly identified as the best nationality, Tatars as a
‘good’ nationality and Udmurt and Mari ethnic categories ones to be
embarrassed of.
We continued our exchange on the topic of languages and it was clear
that children from Mari or Udmurt backgrounds did not want to admit
they knew or spoke their native languages. As I was showing interest in
these ethnic communities and tried to ask them more about various
festivities or cultural practices they knew, some of them would gradually
be released from their embarrassment and would react positively to the
fact that someone was interested in these cultures. Some students started
to tell me that they knew or took part in some special Udmurt or Mari
events or ceremonies.
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 27

After the lesson, I talked to the teacher, asking her about children
who declared they were mixed Russian-Udmurt or Russian-Mari
backgrounds. She told me that these children in fact were not from
mixed families but from ‘pure’ Mari or ‘pure’ Udmurt families. She said
that many of them were embarrassed to admit that they were of Mari or
Udmurt ethnicity and their strategy was to say that they were only ‘half’.
But what do students actually learn about these ethnic groups at
school? When one looks at what textbooks or other educational materials
say about the ethnic communities collectively referred to as Finno-
Ugrians, one should admit that these groups are silenced in the
educational discourse. Rarely are they mentioned in the textbooks at
all.9 One of the Russian textbooks specifically designed to reflect the
diversity of ethnic composition and histories of Russia’s population
mentions Mari, Mordva and Chuvash (without mentioning the Udmurts
at all) in a paragraph about the politics of Christianisation of the peoples
of the Volga-Ural region,10 calling them ‘pagans’ and listing their names
in brackets (Danilov and Kosulina 2004). In line with these discourses,
one of the pupils told me that he read somewhere that Udmurts
performed human sacrifices.11 In the local perceptions of the inhabitants
of this area, Udmurts and Mari were also associated with ‘paganism’,
suspicious rituals and sorcery. It was not rare to hear from the pupils that
Udmurts use the evil eye and practice witchcraft and sorcery. Usually
these views came together with stories of how one of their relatives
had been bewitched by an Udmurt. Here we see how local ethnic
prejudices intertwine with imperial and Soviet (through knowledge
produced by Soviet ethnographers) constructions of Finno-Ugrians as
‘pagan’ communities, practicing sorcery and witchcraft.

Strategies of Belonging: Portraits of Pupils


‘I’m only half!’: passing as a Russian
Closer portraits of some students reveal how young people deal
with ethnic identities that are stigmatised. Dima is a 15-year-old
teenager studying in the tenth grade of a Russian-language school.
He is one of the most active boys in the class and often takes part in
school-wide academic and sport competitions, concerts or military
games. He is a volleyball player, has a belt in karate and is involved in
the school’s military-patriotic club. He is the president of the school
28 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

self-government and is often at the forefront of various social activities


at school. He is thus an example of a ‘popular male’ who often engages
in different kinds of school activities.
I had a formal interview with Dima12 and several informal
conversations throughout my research stay. During our interview I asked
him about his ethnicity and he answered that he was Russian. As I asked
him about his parents, he answered that: ‘I’m not sure about the parents.
My mother is Russian. My father . . . I don’t know exactly, I didn’t study
this; I’m not interested in this’. His surname gave a hint that his father
was of either Mari or Udmurt ethnicity but the parents were divorced
and Dima was living with his mother. When I asked him about the
languages he knew, he only mentioned Russian, English and Tatar.
Even though he clearly communicated his identity as Russian to his
classmates, there were certain clues that allowed some of his peers to
doubt this. When I talked to a classmate about the ethnic composition of
the class, she told me that ‘even though Dima says he is Russian, I think
he is neither Russian, nor Tatar. Probably a Mari or an Udmurt – I don’t
know exactly’. When I asked why she thought he was not Russian, she
told me his knowledge of the Tatar language was too good for a Russian.
Another girl told me in a private conversation that Dima’s mother was
Mari because her mother had befriended her.
When I looked in the class records I saw that his ethnicity was
indicated as Mari. This information was provided by his mother, who
was indeed of Mari ethnicity, not Russian. His father, as it appeared later,
was also of Mari ethnicity. In later conversations one of his best friends,
who was of Udmurt background, revealed that Dima was actually from a
pure Mari family. Thus, Dima was one of the examples of Mari and
Udmurt children who presented their background as a mixed Russian
even though both parents were Mari.
Dima had the role of a ‘successful’ and ‘popular’ pupil within the
circle of his classmates and his ethnic belonging as Mari might interfere
negatively with this image. In order to bypass this stigma Dima was
involved in what Goffman (1959) calls ‘impression management’:
strategically re-negotiating identity depending on the particular social
contexts. At the ‘front stage’, to use the Goffman’s metaphor, he was a
Russian, active and popular at school. The presence of Mari ethnic
markers, like name or religious affiliation, along with those of Russian
ethnicity made this ‘passing’ almost unproblematic.13 The ‘backstage’
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 29

was those spaces where his non-Russian background could be


acknowledged, for example when visiting his relatives in the Mari
countryside or with his closest friends, who would know about his
ethnicity (one of them was of an Udmurt and another one of Kriashen
background).
That the ‘backstage’ identity still remains in certain ways important
for the pupils is revealed in a conversation with another student who was
of Udmurt ethnicity and, similarly to Dima, communicated his identity
as Russian. While he acknowledged that Russian identity was close to
him since he speaks Russian, he at the same time admitted that he felt
close to Udmurts, especially when it came to religion. From time to time
Sergey visits his relatives in the Udmurt countryside and especially his
grandfather with whom he has a close relationship and who in a way
socialised him into various Udmurt cultural practices (celebrating
important life-cycle events and so on). Here he also hears Udmurt speech
and understands it but prefers to speak in Russian with Udmurt youth in
this countryside. While at school, Sergey clearly communicates his
identity as Russian, in the Udmurt village it is his Udmurt membership
that comes to the fore.
Thus, strategically re-negotiating their identities against the
backdrop of social discourses concerning ethnicity, this example
demonstrate the interactional and strategic character that identity has
for these students. In order to understand the strategies of belonging of
these young people, we have to take into account that during the years of
adolescence, peer circles become especially important and adolescents are
to a great extent engaged in achieving status within their peer circles
(Corsaro and Eder 1990; Hall 2008). Thus, if ethnic identity is in
tension with the status role, ethnic belonging can be renounced or
renegotiated. Denouncing their ethnic background in the front stage
contexts such as school does not always mean total disengagement with
the Udmurt or Mari belonging. Stigmatised identity is not entirely
renounced but becomes a secret or a backstage identity, which can be
shared only with best friends. Most children in this town have relatives
in the countryside whom they visit, for example, on important ethnic
festivities such as Semyk14 or Easter and where they are exposed to their
native languages. Thus, the way pupils handle their ethnic belonging
depends on their positions within their peer circles, their status at school
and their links with ethnic communities.
30 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

‘I Like to be Taken for a Tatar’: Passing


as a (Christianised) Tatar
A different example of how adolescents handle their ethnic belonging in
the context of gendered interactions is the case of Marina. Marina is a 15-
year-old girl from an Udmurt family, studying in the ninth grade of a
Russian-language school. Marina lives in a neighbourhood dominated
by Tatars and has had Tatar-speaking friends since she was a child.
Correspondingly, her language competence in Tatar is very good. Besides
that, as she and her best friend, who is Kriashen (or Christianised Tatar),
assert, she ‘looks very Tatar’. In conversation with her Kriashen friend,
they use a mix of Tatar and Russian, which is typical for youth in this
town. Although for people of Udmurt and Mari background it is
difficult to ‘pass’ as a Tatar, because of the religious affiliation and
Christian names, it is however possible to pass as a Kriashen.15 This is
what Marina does from time to time, especially when she goes to her
friends’ Kriashen village where they also meet local boys. She readily
presents herself as a Kriashen/Christianised Tatar and proudly admits
that everyone believes that because of her appearance.

Marina: I like that I am taken for Tatar.16 It is better than being


an Udmurt.
DS: Why?
Marina: Because children here do not like Udmurts, they treat
them badly. They say: ‘Oh these Udmurts, I hate them!’
DS: Did you hear this yourself?
Marina: No, someone told me about that. They dislike us. Even
our neighbours. I think they don’t like us. Although
there are people who like Udmurts because they speak
three languages – Udmurt, Tatar and Russian.
DS: Do you speak Udmurt?
Marina: Yes, but not so good. My mother speaks Udmurt with
me and I answer her in Russian. But I am proud to be an
Udmurt. We know three languages! We are kind,
cheerful and joyful.
DS: And what do you like to be most? A Russian or a Tatar?
Marina: I like to be a Tatar (laughing). But to be a Russian is also
good here. People treat Russians better than Udmurts.
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 31

The presentation of self as a Kriashen was facilitated for Marina in the


context of interactions with Tatar-speaking but Christian Orthodox
Kriashen where her Christian name and her good command of Tatar
helped her to pass as a member of another ethnic group. She used her
language competence and ethnic markers in particular social situations
to gain social status within the group and disguise her stigmatised
ethnic background. This is yet another example of how ethnic belonging
can be renegotiated with the help of ethnic markers (language, name) for
strategic reasons. Still, the disguised ethnic background is not rejected
altogether. On the contrary, in the case of Marina (as well as a number of
other students of Udmurt background that I talked to), there are signs of
positive re-evaluation of the meanings of ethnic identity, expressed
through the statements that Udmurts are talented in languages or that
they are a kind and joyful people, which help these students to regain
self-esteem and confidence.

‘We are all humans!’: resisting ethnicising discourse


As these examples demonstrated, students devise various strategies of
dealing with stigmatising ethnic ascriptions, displaying agency while
negotiating their identities. When navigating and strategising within
various social situations, however, they do so within the dominant
framework of ethnicising discourse. They are not only clearly aware of
ethnic stigmatisations but skilfully use ethnic markers to elude this
stigmatisation in various social situations. However, there are
examples of students who find this ethnicising discourse problematic
in itself and articulate a critique of the dominant ways to describe,
ascribe and divide.
Damir is a 15-year-old boy in the tenth grade of the Russian-
language school and is also regarded as one of the ‘popular’ guys at
school. While at first sight he seems to be an example of ‘unproblematic’
Tatar background, in reality things are more complicated. While his
name, his language competence in Tatar and official records qualify him
as a Tatar, our conversation revealed that: ‘My father is Tatar and my
mother is Russian. I was baptised. My Russian name is Denis. So, it
turns out, I am a Christianised Tatar.17 This is what my parents told me.
However, I feel more Russian’.
However, then Damir told me that he speaks better Tatar than
Russian because of his aunt who lives with him and speaks only Tatar
32 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

with him. As I later found out, his mother was not Russian but Kriashen
and came from a Kriashen village. Though his public identity at school
is perceived as Tatar, except for his closest friends, no one in school
actually knows that he feels more Russian. Everyone around him
categorises him as a Tatar because of his Tatar name and Tatar language
competence. This leads to situations when ‘some people do not know
that I sympathise more with Russians and start to say bad things about
Russians in my presence. Usually I get angry and try to explain to people
that this is not true’.
In conversations with Damir, I became aware of his deep concern and
dissatisfaction with the processes of categorisation and ethnicisation that
he encounters both at school and as outside of it. He told me that
sometimes he reacts strongly against his classmates’ utterances about
Russian villages being dirty and abandoned and contrasting them with
Tatar villages that are ‘nice and cultivated’. These ethnicising discourses
also have an impact on his private life. Dating a girl from a Muslim Tatar
family became a problematic issue for him, which made the discourse of
ethnicisation a personal concern:

Why divide people in groups? We are all humans! We have two


legs, two hands, we think. It is just the faith in God that is
different. She [his girlfriend ] was telling me, when we are sitting
by the table she will be reading her prayer, I will be reading mine.
So what? We are praying to one God! She said we would divide
children then. Why? Let the children grow up and they can choose
themselves their religion. If my children choose Islam – I will not
be against it.

Like many of his other classmates, Damir is also involved in the game of
‘impression management’, presenting himself as a Tatar in the ‘front
stage’ of school but experiencing more empathy and closeness to Russian
identity in the backstage contexts. What distinguishes him from others
is that, in his interactions with other peers and friends, he tries to resist
ethnicising discourse, articulating a critique that fundamentally
questions the need to ‘divide’ and ‘label’. This example shows that
adolescents do not passively and uncritically reproduce and accept adult
discourses but are able to problematise and criticise the hegemonic social
narratives and frameworks.
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 33

Conclusion
These stories reveal how students devise ‘strategies of belonging’,
strategically deciding when, how and with what means to highlight
different ethnic markers and pass as a member of either this or
that ethnic group. In this account, adolescents and children emerge
as active agents who navigate complex social terrains, renegotiating
and actively co-constructing their identities as actors in their
own rights.
At the same time, these examples draw our attention to school as a
social scene where young people seek to gain recognition, status and
sense of social adequacy. They do so against the backdrop of dominant
societal discourses about ethnicity, gender and nationhood that elevate
certain ethnic categories and stigmatise others. Goffman’s theory of
dramaturgical analysis is one of the possible ways to interpret and
conceptualise the experiences of these students. It highlights the
performative, situated and interactional nature of identity that can be
strategically renegotiated depending on the situations and contexts
(front stage and backstage). These students find themselves in complex
social situations of moving between the status roles they seek to acquire
or have already acquired and ethnic ascriptions.
Indeed, the sense of belonging of these young adolescents is a
complex and multifaceted phenomenon that cannot be reduced to one
ethnic category but is rather shaped by the variety of experiences,
practices, roles, competences and ascriptions by others. Thus, as Jenkins
(2004:19) argues, the identities that others ascribe to us are as important
to our renegotiation of identity as our own understandings of who we
are: ‘It is not enough to assert an identity. That identity must also be
validated (or not) by those with whom we have dealings. Identity is never
unilateral’ (original emphasis).
What the interactionist approach less satisfactorily accounts for are
the ways societal discourses (on ethnicity, nationhood, gender) shape and
constrain these adolescents’ strategies of belonging. As public discourse
marginalises some young people’s ethnically ascribed categories, they are
forced to deal with this by either bypassing, renegotiating or renouncing
their ethnic identity or by engaging in cultural and political activism to
change societal perceptions and stereotypes. We have seen the signs of
this positive re-evaluation of ethnic categories in case of an Udmurt girl,
34 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Marina, who believes that Udmurts are talented in languages. However,


this lacks a more fundamental positive redefinition.
This however raises another important problem to consider. We, as
scholars and researchers, are used to criticising essentialising discourses
as reducing individual agency and the complexities of daily life and
processes of identification. On the other hand, many ethnic communities
in Russia today struggle to retain their identities and distinctiveness and
resort to essentialism as a strategic instrument (Lallukka 2001; Wolff
2007). These ethnic groups are either silenced in educational and larger
public discourses or are presented as communities frozen in the past, with
cultural attributes pertaining to village life. Here these communities
face what one might call the dilemma of cultural authenticity. Trying
to retain their cultural distinctiveness and authenticity, they fall into
the trap of folklorism, frozen-in-the-past representations of their
culture – because only these are considered culturally authentic. However,
these very representations also marginalise them. The dilemma of cultural
authenticity is faced by many minority communities in Russia today
and there are presently no appropriate political, cultural or discursive
frameworks to develop new, alternative ways of self-representation that
would be regarded as culturally authentic.

Notes
1. For example, teaching of the Tatar language as an obligatory subject at schools as
well as teaching of the history of Tatarstan and the Tatar people. These initiatives
have been implemented within the framework of the so-called ‘ethno-regional
component’ in the school curriculum (Suleymanova 2017).
2. According to the latest Russian census results (2010), the population of
Tatarstan is 53 per cent Tatar, 39 per cent Russian and 8 per cent representatives
of other ethnic groups. Results available at: http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_
site/perepis2010/croc/perepis_itogi1612.htm.
3. The languages of these ethnic groups are attributed by scholars to the Finno-
Ugric language group.
4. Thus in Tatarstan such subjects as the History of Tatarstan and the Tatar people
as well as regional additions to other general subjects had to be taken out of
lesson plans and only teaching of the Tatar language as an official language
of the Republic of Tatarstan could be retained at schools.
5. For the protection of my informants I do not disclose the name of this town and
do not give precise numbers on its ethnic composition. This town is a centre of
an administrative district in Tatarstan and has around 16,000 inhabitants.
SCHOOLING AND STRATEGIES OF BELONGING 35

6. Kriashen is a group that in the official public discourse in Tatarstan is regarded


to be a subgroup of Tatars that was Christianised after the Russian conquest of
Kazan in the middle of the sixteenth century. The origins of the Kriashen
however have in recent years provoked academic and political debates, as the
most active part of Kriashen regard themselves as a separate community who
were Christian before the Russian conquest of the Volga-Ural area. Kriashen
regard Tatar as their native language but profess Orthodox Christianity and
have Christianised Russian names (for more on Kriashen see Kefeli 2014).
In the area under study, Kriashen largely regarded themselves as a subgroup of
Tatars (which is evident from the results of 2010 census in this area) and
preferred to attend schools that instructed in the Tatar language.
7. Field notes, interviews and educational documents were coded and analysed in
accordance with qualitative research methods, particularly grounded theory
(Strauss and Corbin 1998).
8. Although scholars differ in their interpretation of this system of
‘institutionalised ethnicity’, as Zaslavsky, for example, regards some aspects
of this system, such as the indication of ethnicity in the passports, as the prime
instrument of Russification (Zaslavsky 1982).
9. Here I talk only about federal textbooks that are used for the overwhelming
majority of school subjects. In the respective ‘ethnic’ republics, there is
production of textbooks on native languages (mostly primary school textbooks)
where these ethnic groups are represented, although mostly as village residents.
See the case of the Udmurt republic (Vlasova and Plotnikova 2014).
10. The Christianisation campaigns took place after the Russian conquest of the
Volga-Ural region in the middle of the sixteenth century.
11. By this, he actually referred to the controversies around the Multan case in
nineteenth-century Russia, where a whole Udmurt village in Viatskaya
province of the Russian Empire was accused of performing human sacrifices
(Geraci 2000).
12. All names are pseudonyms.
13. Only his language competence could expose him as a non-Russian, as the
comment of his classmate demonstrates. At the same time this comment also
reveals the perception of Russians in these settings.
14. Semyk is a Mari tradition of the commemoration of the dead.
15. To pass as Tatars for Mari and Udmurts is also possible through conversion to
Islam.
16. In this conversation she used the word ‘Tatar’.
17. It is important to note that he used the term kreshchenyi tatarin (Christianised
Tatar) and not kriashen (Kriashen). The term Kriashen is often used by more
self-conscious Kriashen who regard themselves as a separate ethnic group.
CHAPTER 2

BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND:
EXPERIENCING IDENTITY IN
MOLDOVA TODAY

Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják1 and Csaba Zahorán

Introduction
Many experts see and refer to Moldova as a country of social cleavages
and permanent ‘identity crisis’ (Negură 2015; Calus 2014) or as the
terrain of the constantly battling ‘hot’ and ‘banal nationalisms’ –
characteristic for most Eastern European countries in their view – or as
the source of geopolitical problems (Otarashvili and Lidicker 2014).
Transnistria depends on the Russian government for support, which
means the issue of the country’s instability remains part of
public discourse (O’Loughlin et al. 2008; Calus 2014:77). The other
problematic topic reinforcing the instability agenda is the state’s
poor performance in defining differences and similarities of identities
(Verdery 1995). The dilemmas and uncertainties concerning the issues of
identities and politics of memory (Chinn 1997:43– 51; Chinn-Kaiser
1996) are highly influential; they determine the country’s stability too.
These dilemmas are strengthened by the forced mutual exclusivity and
opposition between different identity categories – such as ‘Romanian’,
‘Moldovan’, ‘from Moldova’, ‘Russian’, ‘Soviet’, ‘Gagauz’, ‘Jew’, etc., –
maintained by the political powers. The uncertain economic situation
and the slow change in social structures make this worse, thus
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 37

generating a certain grey zone (Knudsen and Frederiksen 2015) and


preserving a constant ‘in-between’ state on the periphery of Europe
(Green 2015). On the other hand, most experts do not mention everyday
experiences – the way people feel about their identity, the political
issues and the way they form and shape social practices. They do not
analyse either the way these uncertainties and conflicts become an
integral part of people’s everyday lives (they are ‘domesticated’) or the
way identities become meaningful to people and this ‘in-between’ state
somewhat liveable for them. Eleanor Knott pointed out the necessity of
bottom-up and people-centred research in this field (Knott 2015b)
and we had similar motivations – to see how nation-building and
identification processes work in Moldova ‘on the ground’, in everyday
situations.
Our analysis2 of everyday identities in Moldova is based on
participant observation in public spaces, commemorations, of language
use on the streets and in the private sphere, education, public discourse
in the media and other aspects of everyday life. Our observation shows
that the memory of ‘hot’ nationalism, the parallel nation-buildings and
state-building, the ‘weak’ state and everyday multi-ethnic relations
are too complicated to place the country on one of the two opposing
poles of an imagined dichotomy (‘hot’ and ‘banal’). Furthermore, our
research also reveals that the analysis of everyday relations in Moldova
presupposes the understanding and presentation of social, historical
contexts and antecedents as well.
In the following sections we focus on the changes in different ethnic/
national categories, the relations (asymmetries, sometimes conflicts)
between them, how they are reproduced and given cultural meaning in
everyday interactions. We describe major pathways of the past and recent
history of the Republic of Moldova and present examples to illustrate
how nationhood is ‘produced and reproduced in everyday life’
(Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008:537) in Moldova by ‘performing the nation’
and marking public spaces. Then we concentrate on the phenomenon of
identity and the complex system of local relations based on our fieldwork,
focusing mainly on language use, national orientation and on signs and
everyday manifestations of national affiliation (‘talking’, ‘choosing’ and
‘consuming the nation’) (see Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008).
Although a strong relation exists in Moldova between identity and
political orientation, we argue that this can be overridden by personal
38 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

life strategies and everyday practices. Political mechanisms create and


operate with exclusive identity categories but our findings show that this
is not always in accordance with everyday choices. We also argue that the
transformations of the public spaces and urban art (‘identity stencils’) in
Moldova do not reflect a collective memory or a consensus beyond
the rival identity politics, but are manifestations of domination and
politicisation of public space. The same process is apparent in other
spheres as well: use of language is defined more by power asymmetries
than by common practices. The asymmetries are influential in other
fields of the everydays too: in language usage in private spheres,
ethnicisation of consumption, education and labour market, etc.

State-Building and Nation-Building in Moldova


The everyday dynamics of ethnic boundaries in Moldova can best be
understood in terms of the old political mechanisms used in the
Soviet Union.3 Rogers Brubaker reviews not only the idea of the
‘institutionalised multinational’ in the Soviet Union, but reflects upon
post-Soviet relations as well. He highlights that independent Moldova
has inherited all the hidden contradictions and problems of the Soviet
system – such as the tension originating from applying nation theory
simultaneously to territorial-political and individual-cultural levels
(Brubaker 1996:42). The phenomenon of ‘institutionalised multi-
nationality’ manifests itself today in the fact that people ‘collect’ several
passports and citizenships.4 Having more than one citizenship – and the
attendant documents and rights – is possible due to the fact that after
1991 several nation states – such as Russia and Romania – started to act
as ‘mother countries’ for Moldova. Besides Russia and Romania, Turkey,
Bulgaria and Israel also tried to connect politically and culturally with
the Gagauz, the Bulgarian and Jewish minority groups respectively.
Such citizenship politics was a new and efficient tool to redraw borders
and to strengthen renewed nation-building aims. Citizenship not only
reflects one’s national identity, but at the same time it has a practical
usage too. Therefore, today’s trans-sovereign nation-building uses
similar strategies (Csergő and Goldgeier 2004; Isaacs and Polese 2016).
The uncertain relations and social fault lines in Moldova have
generated uncertainty concerning the real ‘identity’ of the Republic of
Moldova, even after gaining independence. This means that a consensual
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 39

relation between the state and its citizens has failed to arise, thus it is
unclear whether this relation is based on citizenship (territorial) or on
ethno-cultural (national) affiliation (Negură 2012). Since the 1990s this
uncertainty has been exacerbated by many other factors. Romania has
established a political and cultural connection to ethnic Romanians from
Moldova through different institutions (similarly, Russian-speaking
inhabitants were connected to Russia and the Gagauz to Turkey);
the frozen conflict of Transnistria (see Blakkisrud and Kolstø 2011) left
borders uncontrolled; the serious problem of emigration emerged
(see Bloch 2013; Horváth and Kiss 2015:120– 1), the economic
hopelessness and the corrupt political system (Transparency Inter-
national – Moldova 2015) made the country a grey zone (Knudsen and
Frederiksen 2015).
All these issues make it hard for the state to establish legitimate
authority capable of creating a unified identity politics. Despite the
struggle of different political powers to nationalise and dominate
everyday life in Moldova, which manifests itself on institutional
level too, multinational and multi-ethnic contexts are normal, taken for
granted and the cultural environment is still highly shaped by the
former mechanisms and traditions of the Soviet Union. The general use
of Russian is appropriate evidence for this hypothesis.5 At least in
Chişinău, Russian is the obvious ‘lingua franca’ for different ethno-
cultural groups (such as the Gagauz, Jews, Bulgarians, Ukrainians).
Therefore, everyday interactions based on inherited social mechanisms
from the Soviet era overwrite the aim of the Romanian state to turn
Moldova into a ‘little Romania’. We can argue that nationalising
everyday experiences is most successful in the case of ‘hot’ nationalism
(see Billig’s definition 1995:45– 6). In the case of a region with a multi-
ethnic background, of people with affiliations to several nations –
national identity and citizenship become important when it comes to
issues such as employability,6 or when one has to decide whether one
wants to become a fan of Tiraspol’s football team or of the Romanian
national football team.
In Moldova the relation between the state and its citizens is
shaped mainly by the different ‘mother’ countries, by the national
minority groups and adjacent political entities the mother countries
support and their visions of a nation. There is significant dynamism
in the power field of the nationalising states, mother countries and
40 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

minority groups, because these are not functioning in all cases as


political actors (following Brubaker’s theory).7 For example, the
Ukrainian and Bulgarian minority communities are less involved in
political struggles; they do not function as politically defined collective
actors.8 However, in some circumstances they can support or, on the
contrary, oppose the political integration of Moldova’s population.
For example, in the instrumentalisation of the ‘Moldovanist’ category.
As many researchers have found, identity politics in post-Soviet
countries, kin relations and geopolitical questions are part of the same
discursive field and so identity politics can serve as legitimisation for
nation-building (see Laurelle 2015; Brubaker 1996; King 2002; Protsyk
2007; Oleksy 2012). Our fieldwork also underlines that in Moldova the
terms ‘Russian’ and ‘Romanian’ have become two mutually exclusive
categories and the asymmetry between the two is displayed on many
levels (civilisations, political systems, geopolitically defined regions and
as oppressors and oppressed ‘nations’). In a 2015 study Petru Negură
notes that weak state institutions of Moldova were taken over by interest
groups and observes the political and geopolitical fluctuation of the
governing elites. The fact that civil society is divided when it comes to
cultural, identity and geopolitical issues reflects the seriousness of the
dilemmas about the questions of nation and national identity in the
country. The weak state9 refers to the inefficiency of state institutions, to
the failure in solving critical social issues and to the lack of basic social
consensus. In this context, expressing one’s ethnicity and national
affiliation becomes a ‘tool’ for everyday struggle and it transforms such
struggle into political statements (Negură 2015).

Competing Identity Categories


The broader context of the last two centuries of the history of the
Republic of Moldova is alternate attempts to integrate the country or
pursue independence. Several regional powers concomitantly sought to
annex and transform the area, while the local population had rather a
passive role in these processes. This sometimes led to the strengthening
of local characteristics, sometimes to their marginalisation, but in the
end, they all contributed to the consolidation of Moldova’s frontier-
status – the zone of political, economic and cultural collisions
(Livezeanu 1995; King 2002; Petrescu 2001; Caşu 2008a and 2008b).
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 41

All ‘integration’ periods have left their mark on the region’s


population. Spontaneous and organised immigration, together with
urbanisation processes, have increased the region’s ethnic diversity –
these processes started during the Russian dominancy and accelerated in
the Soviet period (Charles King pointed out that in the Soviet Union
the third most ‘Russified’ nationality were the Moldovans, see
2002:19 – 27 and 118 – 23). Another important factor was that the local
Romanian-speaking population was prevented from contributing to the
nation-building and state-building politics of Romania on the western
side of the Prut River – except for a short period in the interwar period
– and preserved its ‘Moldovan’ regional identity (Petrescu 2001:153 –
78; Livezeanu 1995:89 – 127; King 1994:345 – 68). This was
complemented by the doctrine of ‘Moldovanism’ – the existence of
an independent ‘Moldovan nation’ – created in the 1920s. Its main
purpose was to differentiate the Romanian-speaking community living
in Moldova from the Romanian nation (see Caşu 2008b:75 – 81; King
2002:63 – 123).
The political, social and economic processes within the Moldavian
Soviet Socialist Republic (1944– 91) still define the identity and the
dependencies of the inheritor state. Furthermore, contradictory views
about the results of socialist modernisation have led to a huge gap
between the two opposing parties in the local population; these
constitute both the roots and tools of different party politics and
identity politics.
In the 1980s –90s, parallel to the decline of socialism and fall of the
Soviet Union, besides the democratic transition and state-building,
several different nation-building processes were born in Moldova,
forming many rival identification categories (King 2002; Protsyk 2007;
Oleksy 2012).
The category of ‘Moldovanism’, which plays a crucial role in the
Moldovan identity politics, is a complex one. Piotr Oleksy identifies
three different nuances of this ‘ideology’: besides ‘Eastern Moldovanism’
characterised by Slavic affiliations – this constitutes the basis of the
ideology for the Transnistrian state-building – in addition there
are ‘Civic Moldovanism’ and ‘Ethnic Moldovanism’ (Oleksy 2012:
602– 5). Advocates of the ‘Civic Moldovanism’10 aim at creating and
consolidating the Moldovan political nation, which includes all citizens
of the Republic of Moldova equally, irrespective of their ethnicities and
42 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

nationalities. They primarily focus on the independency and sovereignty


of Moldova. They acknowledge the common ethno-cultural roots of
Romanians from Moldova and Romanians from Romania, however they
consider Romanians from Moldova an independent group. Furthermore,
they emphasise the need to integrate all the other non-Romanian-
speaking ethnic groups. Similarly, advocates of ‘Ethnic Moldovanism’
stress a citizenship-based integration of the different ethnic groups.
Moreover, they believe in the idea of an independent ‘Moldovan nation’
and Moldovan language. Moscow has always supported not only the
aims of the Russian-speaking community, but also those influential
‘Moldovanist’ politicians and economic interest groups (such as leaders
of factories and farming collectives) who feared the increasing power of
Romanian nationalist movements and Moldova’s estrangement from
the Soviet Union. Therefore, Moldovanism is often considered a
‘spoiling tactic’ – a movement serving the interests of the Russian
regional hegemon.
On the other hand, there is another influential group formed by the
‘Unionists’,11 the advocates of Moldova’s union with Romania. Except for
the interwar period, the Romanian nation-building movements were
quite limited in Bessarabia and later in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist
Republic (Caşu 2008b:78; Ţurcanu 2010: 504– 9). However, from
the end of the 1980s, Romanian nationalist aims started to become more
determined. In spite of the fact that only a small proportion of the
Romanian-speaking community from Moldova have identified with
these aims, the unionists had a clear goal: to (re)integrate Romanians
from Moldova into Romania – separated from Romania by force in
1812 – and to (re)unite Moldova with Romania (Oleksy 2012:128).
Most critiques addressing the unionist ideology state that its advocates
(from both sides of the Prut River) ignore all the other non-Romanian
ethnic groups living in the country and that they use a narrow nation-
building idea dating from the nineteenth century based on cultural
essentialism. This group stresses the Daco-Roman origins of Moldovans,
which implicitly excludes the non-Romanian-speaking population.
They focus on issue such as how to teach history at schools – whether to
teach ‘History of Romanians’, ‘Integrated History’ or simply ‘History’
(see Worden 2011; Danero Iglesias 2013). Also the ‘Romanian’ category
which we named simply ‘Unionist’ is more complex: for example, Knott
in her study differentiates four meanings of identification with the
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 43

Romanian nation in Moldova (‘Organic’, ‘Cultural’, ‘Ambiguous


Romanians’ and ‘Moldovans’) (Knott 2015a:846).12
In 1989, more than one-third of Moldova’s population was of non-
Romanian mother tongue13 – mainly Russians, Ukrainians, Gagauz and
other ethnic groups generally mistrustful and hostile to the increasing
Romanian nationalist rhetoric and to unionist visions to (re)unite
Moldova and Romania. The ‘Russian-speaking’ community is made up
of ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and others coming from different
member states of the Soviet Union. Their members live mostly in cities
and have relatively high social status. After the fall of the Soviet Union
they shifted from dominant group to ‘imperial minority’ (Brubaker
1996: 48–60), yet have tried to keep their influence (King 2002:176–7).
In time, part of the pro-Russian population moved to Russia or to
Ukraine, while those remaining in Moldova have lined up behind those
political actors promising to keep the status quo or at least to fight
against Romanian nationalism. After the secession of Transnistria, the
political representation of the Russian-speaking community from
Moldova has been taken over by left-oriented groups (socialists,
communists). Thus, the aim of preserving the Russian language and
Russian identity is connected to nostalgia for the Soviet times. Romanian
nationalists often criticise ethnic Russians for moving to Moldova only to
represent the interests of the Russian Empire; they do not want to
integrate into their new homeland (it is common that they do not speak
Romanian) and they are loyal rather to their ‘mother country’ instead of
Moldova.14
However, the identity constructions presented never exist in their
‘pure’ forms; they are present in the fields of politics and the public
sphere and especially in people’s everyday interactions in many different
forms simultaneously. Moldova’s complexity is not unique within
the post-Soviet area. For instance, Paul Pirie, in his study on national
identities in Ukraine, distinguishes between at least four types of ethnic
self-identifications (from strong identification with one ethnic group to
strong identification with more ethnic groups, Kolossov 1999:72), while
Ray Taras uses the metaphor of the Matryoshka doll to describe the
multiple and hierarchical character of national identities (see Kolossov
1999:72). During our fieldwork in Moldova we experienced the
permanency of these identity constructions, but at the same time, also
their dependency on concrete situations: many interviewees from
44 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Chişinău identified themselves with several identity categories such as


Soviet, Romanian or Moldovan.15
Different groups use various methods and tools of identity politics.
When in power, they try to restructure the different state institutions
(e.g., the public media, public administration, methods of teaching
history and politics of memory) according to their own needs and
purposes and according to their own nation-building ideology.
Furthermore, they try to mobilise supporters among the population
for as long as possible. Here they make use of the latest technology – the
professional use of the internet and of social media has become an
indispensable tool.

Nationalising Collective Memory in the Public Spaces


A spectacular manifestation of identity politics in Moldova – of the
fragmentary and contradictory character of Moldovan identity and of
collective memory due to the lack of consensus – consists in the ‘rivalry’
of public symbols in Chişinău. Although most of the communist
memorials were removed at the beginning of the 1990s, there are
still a lot of Soviet monuments in Chişinău. Indeed, some communist
monuments have been reinstated subsequently under the communist
parties’ government between 2001–9 (Musteaţă 2012:108). After the
government change in 2009, another turn in the battle for dominating
public spheres took place.
The central square in front of the Parliament – a special terrain in the
battle of memory politics – is a good example. While until 1991 a Lenin
statue stood there, today there is a stone monument to the memory of the
victims of the Soviet occupation and of the totalitarian communist
regime. The goal of this unfinished monument – raised in 2010 – is
obvious: that the condemnation of the Soviet past is perfectly suitable for
mobilising against (post-)communist and pro-Russian forces (see more
detailed Musteaţă 2012:115–20).
One of the most important Romanian national symbols – of
Romanian cultural genesis – is the statue of the Capitoline Wolf in front
of the National History Museum of Moldova. The first wolf statue from
Chişinău was a gift from Italy to Greater Romania to celebrate common
Latin roots, but after Moldova became part of the Soviet Union
the statue disappeared without a trace. Only after almost 50 years,
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 45

on 1 December 1990 – the anniversary of the new National Day of


Romania, the day of union with Transylvania – did they get another
copy. The statue had a strong symbolic meaning and message about the
common roots with Romania and was removed in 2005 for restoration
purposes. It reappeared again only after the change in government from
2009. In 2010, Moldova received another Capitoline Wolf statue, which
was placed in Edineţ, a town in the northern part of the country (where
almost half of the city’s population is ethnic Russian and Ukrainian).
Another interesting piece of art – similar to the Capitoline Wolf – is
also meant to symbolise the (Daco-)Roman origins of the Romanians.
A miniature and inconsistent version of Trajan’s Column – tiny in
comparison to the original one and lacking reliefs about the Daco-
Roman battle – is rather out of place in the context of the residential
area where it was placed at the beginning of 2000.16 The copies of the
Capitoline Wolf and of Trajan’s Column all refer to the great origins of
the Romanian nation. Moreover, they symbolise national unity and, at
the same time, they reveal that Romanian nationalists believe that
ethnic essentialism is stronger and more legitimate than the politically
instrumentalized memories of the recent past.
The Jewish minority from Chişinău seems missing from the city’s
collective memory – the lack of Jewish cultural representation in
Moldova is unique in the post-Soviet region, despite the fact that the
Jewish community was historically significant.17 One representative
example for the politics of memory in Chişinău is the story of the
monument raised in memory of the victims of fascism. The statue by
Aurel David was raised in 1991 at the exact spot where 14,000 people –
mostly Jews – were killed during World War II. The statue was later
damaged and removed. On the empty lot a car showroom was built and
above the mass grave a car wash and a parking lot were installed.
The statue was restored at the expense of the international Jewish
community, but its reinstatement was impossible because of the car
showroom. Finally, the inauguration of the new statue together with a
commemoration ceremony took place in a park established in the
parking lot on 8 May 2005.18 Absurdly, most of the speakers emphasised
the importance of respect for the collective memory of the Jewish
community.
Public spaces from the capital city of Transnistria and of other border
cities such as Bender (Tighina) show opposite trends to the ones in
46 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Chişinău. The trends have strengthened since the beginning of the


1990s. These separatist areas are characterised by a twofold politics of
memory. On the one hand, there is a trend to honour well-known
personages of the international and Soviet labour movement
(Liebknecht, Marx, Lenin) and the great generals of the Russian Empire
(Suvorov, Kutuzov) – their names stand on monuments and street signs
in Tiraspol. On the other hand, there is a trend to commemorate
the victims of the recent armed conflicts of the Soviet Union – from
Afghanistan to the Transnistrian War from 1992.

The Stencils of Identity


One specific form of ‘occupying’ the public spaces of Chişinău is reflected
in the stencil graffiti works – a popular genre of street art – around the
city. These stencils usually function as slogans with strong messages
about belonging to the Romanian or Moldovan nation. The most
common ones are: ‘Moldovans are Romanians’, ‘We are Romanians and
that’s it’, ‘Moldovans equal Romanians’, ‘Bessarabia is Romania’,
‘Bessarabia is Romanian territory . . . under Russian occupation for 200
years, so get over to the other side of the Prut River’, ‘Antonescu is a
national hero’.19 All these messages highlight the ideas of genealogy and
territorial unity, the unquestionable unity of culture and nationality and
thus they glorify the past. The sticker depicting Greater Romania has
become the symbol of the Romanian national-cultural unity. The
authors of such nationalist slogans ignore both the complex identity
dilemmas characteristic for Moldova and its multiethnic
population, replacing these with the idea of national-cultural unity of
Moldovans and Romanians and with other arguments for the union
between the two countries.
Another category of street stencils – in opposition to the previous
ones – represent the ideologies of ‘ethnic’ and ‘citizens’ Moldovanism’.
Such pictorial representations use either Moldova’s territorial lines and
inscriptions like ‘I love Moldova’ or make reference to the Moldovan
language: ‘I am Moldovan and Moldovan is my language’. Some others
use the old coat of arms with a bison head and the inscription ‘Moldovan
Voivod’ making reference to the former independent Moldovan
Principality. These stencils are not exclusivist – they build upon the
idea of citizens Moldovanism – but, as we saw earlier – they trigger
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 47

the antipathy and opposition of some ethnic Romanians, as the focus on


Moldovan values are interpreted as continuity with the Soviet Regime.
The most interesting part of this ‘political battle’ from the street is
how different reactions to unionist and nationalist slogans are born – for
example, to a sign from Puskin street, downtown, which praises the
Moldovan language and Moldovan nationality, there have been added
subsequently the following two sentences: ‘You are an idiot!’ and
‘You are crazy’. To stencils proclaiming unity with the Romanian nation
were most often added the inscription ‘Fascists’. It is also common to
just spread red paint on them or to strike through the inscriptions with
paint. There are examples of rewriting and word play as well, for
example: ‘Europe does not have (Soviet) values!’, ‘We (don’t) want the
union!’, ‘We want union (with Tiraspol)!’, ‘Bessarabia is (not) Romania!’,
‘Antonescu is a national hero/killer’.
We believe that these street stencils represent well both the complex
local relations and topical issues of identity politics. They reflect on
the issues of separatism, parallelism, different pursuits and cultural
affiliations and they reveal the historical approach behind identity
politics. The answers and reactions to these signs and stencils transform
the public spaces into a ‘national note board’ – an unconventional tool
for the ‘civil’ politics of memory.
While street art usually celebrates freedom of expression and treats
the city as a free ‘surface’, in the case of Chişinău this genre is part of
national propaganda; the political elite and other movements
expropriate it. Moreover, there is another interesting detail: all street
art in Chişinău uses the official language of the country – they are all in
Romanian. Thus, the only legitimate language of identity politics in
Chişinău is Romanian.

Transformations of Identity through the


Lens of the Everyday
Beyond the frames of different symbolical struggles over public spaces,
language use is the terrain which can reveal the dynamism of identities
and their variations, their transformations according to the actual
context. Everyday situations can reveal the complex reality which other
analyses are not capable of describing or sometimes just ignore.
Language in Moldova has been one of the key issues of the regime change
48 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

and of independence and a source of tension since the very beginning:


it has become the essential symbol of different cultures and the main tool
of identity politics at the same time. Starting from the second part of the
1980s a central goal of the Romanian ethnic-cultural emancipation
groups was to introduce the Latin version of Romanian and to make it an
official language. On the other hand, for conservative (communist)
leaders – acting in the name of the ethnic Russians – the protection of
the Russian language became a key tool for mobilisation against
undesired change. Even though the ‘language strikes’ from 1989 –90
could not stop or reverse the decision to make Romanian (Moldovan) an
official language nor the introduction of the Latin spelling – these
became official on 31 August 1989 – on the other side of the Dniester
River these new laws couldn’t be applied. This led later to Transnistrian
separatism.20 Later, the Russian language became the central element of
language politics: Pro-Russian communist groups aimed at preserving
the use of the Russian language in as many areas as possible – they
fought for teaching Russian at school and for making Russian the second
official language of the country. This aim runs through the whole history
of independent Moldova, it spreads across the fields of legislation, media
and public demonstrations (Prina 2015; Ciscel 2007).
However, the official legislations on language rights and the everyday
use of languages are often two parallel phenomena. This is especially true
in the case of Moldova, where there are still communities whose younger
members do not speak and do not understand the official language of
the state. The everyday interactions in Chişinău form a dazzling chain
of actions where language is not the main symbol of ethnic-national
identity; it is just a tool of banal everyday life (cf. Fox and Miller-Idriss
2008:541– 2). Language use differs from situation to situation: state
bureaucracy uses mainly Romanian, whereas Russian is used in business
meetings and in some areas of academic life. In everyday interactions and
in family contexts these languages are used alternately; in some families
they mix these languages randomly, in some others, they switch from
one language to the other depending on the topic and on the
intended message.
The story of one of our interviewees provides a great example for
switching identities in sequence and for acquiring different ‘identity-
layers’ through time. He was born in a poor Romanian family of
peasants, started his education in a Russian school and acquired his
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 49

higher education in the Soviet system. He believed that becoming a


Russian soldier would ensure a chance to break out. Due to his excellent
Russian skills he earned recognition as a soldier; later he fought in
Afghanistan as well. To strengthen his Soviet identity, he married a
Ukrainian woman and, according to him, all this helped in acquiring a
property in the centre of Chişinău. During the regime change he fought
in Transnistria too as a Soviet soldier. Afterwards, he got a pension and
settled down in Chişinău. At first he spoke Russian at home with his
wife, but when their child was born, they thought it important for the
child to know Romanian culture, therefore the whole family switched to
using Romanian. Mother and child learned to speak Romanian at the
same time from one of the grandparents who lived with the family. The
child speaks Russian only with his mother’s family and after graduation
he plans to work in Belgium or in The Netherlands. The family has
taken over Romanian traditions and holidays as well, as they consider the
Orthodox holidays as old-fashioned. With a few exceptions, they spend
their holidays with their relatives who have moved to Romania.
The conflict in Ukraine has strengthened their view that the only way for
Moldova to gain peace is to follow the direction shown by Romania, thus
they allow their son to participate in protests and events promoting the
union between Moldova and Romania. The family considers itself
Moldovan – thus legitimising mixed marriage too – however, they
want their child to identify as Romanian and they detest those relatives
who stick to ‘Soviet values’ and try their luck in Russia. This family
legitimises the decision to change from Russian to Romanian language
and customs mainly with the need to overcome the Soviet past. The
father believes that the most important thing is to assess how the family
can make a living and that they have to adapt to that particular situation.
The question of identity is secondary.
The following biography shows another direction. A Ukrainian
woman working for the local Communist party got married to a
widowed engineer from Moscow at the beginning of the 1970s. The
husband hardly knew anything about Romanian culture as he interacted
mostly with the Russian-speaking community from Moldova. After the
regime change they became pensioners and they bought an apartment for
themselves and one for their daughter. The daughter is also part of the
Russian-speaking community, she studied in St Petersburg and, after an
unsuccessful marriage, she moved back to Moldova. The family speaks
50 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Russian exclusively; the mother uses her poor Romanian when necessary
to solve administrative-official issues. The daughter met a Romanian
man and started a relationship. The parents oppose the marriage and the
young couple remain unmarried. This situation and the Romanian
origins of the father lead to constant fights in the family.21 They identify
as Moldovans and they would like to live in an economically more stable
and independent Moldova. They do not intend to get closer to Romanian
culture, traditions or to the Romanian language; they always find a way
not to use it or to avoid unpleasant situations. The interviewee made
remarks on this situation connected to the use of the Romanian
language. She experienced humiliation many times in interaction with
state and local bureaucracy, which makes her encounters with the official
sphere uncomfortable.
In this multi-ethnic environment, identity is often instrumentalised:
choosing an identity generally means a political statement. In the two
biographies some turning-points motivated by the international
contexts are present, which changed the ‘orientations’ of the interviewees
(‘pro-Russian’, ‘pro-Romanian’, ‘pro-European’). However, ‘choosing
identity’ is not only a political orientation or an emotional bond, from
the mentioned situations it is obvious that it can be a pragmatic decision
too. In the example of education, from the biographies it is visible that
the pattern of school choice (in the first case Romanian, in the second one
a Russian one in Russia) has not changed structurally after 1991: in both
cases the motivations show the efforts to synchronise identities and life
strategies. Later, choosing the right nation can also widen the
opportunities in the labour market (e.g., working in Western Europe
or in Russia). The exclusiveness of the identity categories may have
another effect: it can cause tensions in families that can lead to serious
conflicts (in both biographies).

Language, Asymmetrical Power Relations


and Everyday Practices
Everyday language use reflects the complex social system of Moldova.
We have encountered several institutions – independent of the
fieldwork we have conducted – where we could identify forms of
power manifestations through language use. One example was at the
Immigration Office from Chişinău, where information is in three
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 51

languages – Russian, Romanian and English. The increased number of


applications for Moldovan citizenship since the Ukrainian conflict can
explain this. However, the actual administrative process showed a
different set of power relations, where the lack of speaking Romanian is
a disadvantage or at least it makes a big difference. Besides Romanian,
English is also accepted – an Italian client was asked to use English
instead of Russian, as ‘English is the common language which connects
Romanians and Italians’.
In other everyday interactions such as at local shops, restaurants and
cafés, both Romanian and Russian are used. Older generations switch
from one language to the other without a problem. On the other hand,
there are some places in the city where Russian is the privileged
language, for example some shopping centres (NR1) and restaurants
(Andy’s Pizza, La Plăcinte), which are present in most big cities of
Moldova and in major cities of Transnistria too.
In the context of language politics, several studies conducted in the
1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s have reported that Russian
language has kept its key position in many areas,22 and the ‘spread’ of the
country’s official language has come to a halt (King 2002:172–3).
However, this seems to have changed lately: in Chişinău there is a strong
effort to unify and clarify the official language of administration. This
sometimes aggressive effort to make the Romanian language dominant
implicitly means driving back all other languages (mainly Russian) from
the public sphere in Moldova. Many of our interviewees with Russian
backgrounds have confirmed that everyday situations of public
administration can be problematic for those not speaking Romanian,
therefore in these situations they ask for help from acquaintances who
speak Romanian.
We would like to illustrate the power relations behind the use of the
official language with an incident at the public notary’s office. We had to
turn to a notary to certify a contract and one of the contracting parties
spoke Romanian only at a basic level. The notary asked, having seen only
her name written down, why she did not use the Romanian version of her
name and why she hadn’t requested the correction of her name on her
identity card. When the client was reading the contract, the notary
mentioned in a lecturing manner: ‘the time of Cyrillic letters has already
gone, it is time to learn the Latin letters’, then she added that she hoped
that ‘more and more people would learn the official language of the
52 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

country, so there weren’t so many issues with the old-fashioned part of


the society’. The client – the owner of an apartment – tolerated the
comments without any replies and only after signing the contract had
one retort: ‘I am old and the only thing I want is to have a peaceful life’.
This kind of situation makes clear the asymmetrical relations between
the client and the normative ‘power’.
In their everyday interactions, most people can easily switch between
the two languages and people can easily detect which language is most
suitable in different situations. Several conversations revealed that one
guiding sign to detect which language to use is clothing: some pieces of
clothing are considered – according to their brand or style – more
Western-like (thus automatically one should use Romanian) or more
traditional (equating to Moldovan or Soviet ientity, thus the language
should be Russian). Other signs of one’s ‘main’ language could be the
labels and inscriptions on shopping bag or the number plate of one’s car.
This idea of conferring extra meaning to everyday signs like number
plates is typical for Eastern Europe.
In Chişinău, local authorities have recently introduced the option to
include the place of registration on the number plate in Russian.
As owning a car is also a sign of social status, the idea of introducing
number plates in Russian reflects an identity struggle as well. The
number plates containing the letter ‘K’ (standing for ‘Kishinev’ in
Russian23) instead of the letter ‘C’ (for ‘Chişinău’ in Romanian) generate
an automatic categorisation of the car’s owner as member of the Russian
community – and ‘against’ Romanian nation and culture – which is
often considered as an act of provocation by local ‘conscious’ Romanians.
In conclusion, according to this logic, if a car has a number plate
with the letter ‘K’, it is advisable to use Russian to communicate with
its owner.
These everyday interactions – including small gestures and signs –
form a special knowledge and ensemble of traditions, which usually go
unnoticed by the mainstream debates of identity politics. They can
transform into signs of ethnicity and strengthen the ethnic borders.
However, these levels of local knowledge reflect the national discourses
appropriately; they are influenced and formed by the latter, while they
translate ideologies onto the practical level. Elements of banal and hot
nationalism – which recur in connection with certain topics – are
present simultaneously in these relations.
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 53

Conclusion
Although the geopolitical, historical and economic situation of Eastern
Europe is essential to nation/state-building, in this chapter we have tried
to describe how these mechanisms are transferred to the very complex
everyday lives of people from Moldova. We connect different layers of
nationalism present in the country through a few examples of the various
manifestations of identity and identity politics. Our examples faithfully
show the many discrepancies between the aims of identity politics,
language issues, and politics of memory, on the one hand, and people’s
everyday life experiences and interactions, on the other hand. The inherited
ethnic/national variegation, identities and their multiple variations in the
everyday situations do not fit so neatly those ethno-political categories
offered by the political elites of Moldova and the involved countries.
The hegemony of political discourses glosses over the construction of
these categories and their interactions in everyday life. As we saw in
Moldova there are Eastern, Civic and Ethnic Moldovanism and Unionism
as the main political categories and ethnic categories of Moldovans,
Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, Russian-speaking Slavs, etc. They are
arranged in a complex hierarchical structure; they derive from each other,
function beside each other and are situationally dependent and grounded
in actual contexts. The exact contexts define which category can be used: as
seen in one of our stories, when a mixed family consciously prepared a
child for life in the EU by ‘becoming Romanian’. Analysts often label this
phenomenon as Moldova’s ‘identity crisis’ and stress Moldova’s prolonged
limbo between West (Europe) and East (Russia). Although the term
‘identity crisis’ is accurate in many respects, it is also a good example of
political expropriation of identity-construction mechanisms. Petru
Negură states that the ‘identity crisis’ discourse has become an integral
part of the regime change narrative in Moldova, thus it has become
unquestionable, despite the fact that this so-called identity crisis is mainly
the issue of the ethnic Romanian elites and does not concern the rest of the
population of the Republic of Moldova.

Notes
1. We would like to thank the Erasmus Mundus Programme (Eastern Partnership)
for the possibility to research in Republic of Moldova and also ULIM
(Universitatea Liberă Internaţională din Moldova) for their generous hospitality.
54 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

2. During fieldwork in Moldova (December 2014 to July 2015) we attended many


public events: the opening ceremony of the second semester at the schools (in a
Romanian and a Turkish School), Spring Festival in Tiraspol and Chişinău
(Mărţişor Day), International Women’s Day, Rememberance Day of the Jewish
community in Chişinău, Orthodox Eastern and Radonica with local families
and two ‘unionist’ protests. We attended the military parade, Victory Day in
Tiraspol, and EU-day in Chişinău. We observed the everyday interactions at the
Piaţa Centrală, in several institutions: migration office, hospital, notary office,
football matches, universities. We paid attention to ‘ethnic interactions’ (noted
which language is common within random interactions, how the language was
used to mark asymmetrical power relations). During a workshop we collected
interviews and personal stories of students with different ethnic backgrounds
(Intercultural Workshop and Simulation Development on Moldova, organised
by DAAD Moldova). Within the third part of the research we collected
biographies, which showed the turning points within personal lives, the
reinterpretations of the different historical contexts and personal identities.
In this period we collected photos, official reports, articles from online and
printed media (mostly newspapers in Romanian: Ziarul NAŢIONAL, Timpul,
Jurnal de Chişinău, Adevărul (ediţie de Moldova). We documented events
and symbols of national or ethnical identities like statues, street signs, the
collections of the ethnographic and historical museums, public cemeteries in
Chişinău and in Tiraspol.
3. In the historical context Moldovanism was crucial, see: King 2002:63 – 123,
Caşu 2008.
4. See Patakfalvi-Czirják-Zahorán 2016:110 – 11.
5. Eurobarometrul-Republica Moldova, Barometrul de Opinie Publică (Chişinău:
Institutul de Politici Publice, 2015): ,http://ipp.md/public/files/Barometru/
BOP_04.2015_prima_parte_finale.pdf. .
6. Russian citizenship becomes important for those who want to work in Russia,
the Romanian passport becomes relevant who want to work in the EU. See more
detailed Horváth-Kiss 2016, Laurelle 2015, Bloch 2014.
7. Brubaker’s triadic relations ignore the dynamism of these affiliations: the
changing nature of the concept ‘nationhood’. The relations and images between
the three political actors changed a lot in the last few decades. As some of our
interviewees mentioned, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was ‘clear’, that
Romania is a poor and ‘dark’ country, they felt a cultural and economic distance
between the two regions. This perspective is stressed by the main characters from
the documentary named ‘Landlocked’, directed by Maarten de Kroon (https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v ¼ oVpItzanw7Q, Accessed 10 September 2016).
8. As an interviewee mentioned: ‘We Bulgarians, we don’t have problems because
of identity, we know who we are, our history, we don’t need to fight against
Romanians or Russians. When we vote, we are citizens of Moldova, Moldovans,
not a pro or contra nationalist. We are proud to be Bulgarians!’ (B.2., 21,
student, volunteer).
BORDERS OF A BORDERLAND 55

9. For the ‘weak state’ definition see Tsygankov 2007, Verdery 1995, 1996.
10. Oleksy calls it ‘Civil Moldovanism’ (Oleksy 2012).
11. The label ‘Unionists’ refers to the political goal of this group (the union of
Moldova with Romania). King calls them ‘pan-Romanianists’ (King 1994),
Oleksy ‘Pan-Romanists’ (Oleksy 2012), Danero Iglesias and Protsyk
‘Romanianists’ (Danero Iglesias 2013, Protsyk 2007).
12. Knott shows spectacularly the complexity of identity categories in Moldova,
although her categories are debatable – either due to their labels (‘organic’, etc.)
or either due to underrating ‘ethnic Moldovanism’ in her study.
13. Concerning the ethnic composition of territory between Prut and Dniester not
long after the Russian annexation, the majority of population was estimated as
Romanian-speaking (King 2002:19). In 1897, the Romanian-speaking
population of the region formed at least 47.6 per cent, while the Ukrainians
19.6 per cent, the Russians (Eastern Slavs) 8 per cent, the Jews 11.8 per cent, the
Bulgarians 5.3 per cent, etc., with Jewish- and Russian-dominated cities (King
2002:23). In 1930, the Romanians made up 56.2 per cent of Bessarabia’s
population, the Ukrainians 11 per cent, the Russians 12.3 per cent, the Jews 7.2
per cent, etc., but only 31.5 per cent of the urban population (Livezeanu 1995:
92). In 1989, the Romanian-speaking Moldovans formed 64.5 per cent of the
population of the Moldavian SSR, the Ukrainians 13.8 per cent, the Russians
13 per cent, the Gagauz 3.5 per cent. In 2004 (together with Transnistria), the
Moldovans made up 70 per cent, the Ukrainians 11.28 per cent, the Russians
9.34 per cent, the Gagauz 3.88 per cent (without Transnistria, the Moldovans:
75.8 per cent, the Romanians: 2.2 per cent, the Ukrainians: 8.4 per cent, the
Russians: 5.9 per cent, the Gagauz: 4.4 per cent) For more details see: Protsyk
2007, Appendix I.
14. According to different studies non-Romanian speaking Moldovan citizens do
not necessarily identify automatically with their ‘mother-countries’. A poll
from 2006 suggests that more than half (56 per cent and respectively
almost 60 per cent) of the ethnic Russian and Ukrainian respondents are
‘proud’ or ‘very proud’ of being a Moldovan citizen (see Protsyk, 2007).
Another complex analysis of the phenomena is given by Marlene Laruelle,
2015.
15. Igor Caşu identifies three stages of identity politics in the Republic of Moldova
between 1989– 2008: the ascension of ‘revolutionary, militant’ Romanian
nationalism (1989– 94), the years when identity politics were suppressed
(1994 – 2001) and, finally, the period after 2001, when the government made an
attempt to transform ‘ethnic Moldovanism’ from the level of ‘party ideology to
the level of state ideology’ (Caşu 2008:67 – 9). Since the downfall of the
communists led by Vladimir Voronin in 2009, the ideology of ‘civic
Moldovanism’ competes with the unionist ideology (to unite Moldova with
Romania) among the governing coalitions (Oleksy, 2012:131 –4).
16. The column was placed in the ‘Russian’ neighbourhood of the city Botanica.
17. In 1930, 36 per cent of the city was Jewish.
56 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

18. See, for example: Vitalie Hadei, ‘Blasphemy. The Victims of Fascism jammed
by Mercedes-Benz’. Ziarul Naţional, 3 May 2015: ,http://ziarulnational.md/
blasfemie-victimele-fascismului-inghesuite-de-mercedez-benz/.
19. Marshal Ion Antonescu, leader of Romania between 1940– 4, regained
Bessarabia temporarily from the Soviet Union.
20. See Law nr. 3465 from 1 September 1989 concerning the languages used on the
territory of the Soviet Republic of Moldova: ,http://lex.justice.md/index.php?
action¼ view&view ¼ doc&lang ¼ 1&id ¼312813 . . See also King, 2002:
134– 5, Cimpoeşu, 2010:35 – 8. The third paragraph of the Law defines Russian
as another ‘language to connect nations’ besides Romanian. The thirteenth
paragraph of the constitution which was adopted in 1994 defines ‘Moldovan’
language as the official state language, but it guarantees the right to preserve,
develop and use other languages – like Russian – as well. See the Constitution
of the Republic of Moldova: ,http://lex.justice.md/document_rom.php?
id¼44B9F30E:7AC17731 ..
21. ‘He is a Romanian, you can’t trust him. We gave an opportunity for our
daughter to break out from this country, she could go to St. Petersburg to study,
but she came back and started a life with a Romanian. We are disappointed, we
felt she had a cultural background, a status quo, but everything goes to dust’.
(R6, 76, retired)
22. ‘It is de facto the second official language of the country’. see King, 2002:
173 and Ciscel, 2006:584.
23. This distinction has proved to have such serious consequences in everyday life
that it was suggested to use numbers (standing for different districts), thus for
Chişinău there would be used number 1 instead of its abbreviation.
CHAPTER 3

TEACHING THE NATIONAL


THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND
NATURE:BANAL NATIONALISM
IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN
SERBIA AND CROATIA

Tamara Pavasović Trošt

Introduction
Children learn about and are socialised into national and ethnic
identities through a variety of channels, which can, but need not, be
explicitly nationalistic in character. Most research examining how
national identities are transmitted to youth focus on overt messages
teaching what scholars call ‘hot’ or ‘blatant’ nationalism: lessons about
what it means to be a member of one’s nation and ethnic group and its
position towards Others, such as those found in history textbooks.
Leaders, politicians and elites invest great effort into propagating
official symbols and revising national history to fit current needs and
state-sponsored celebrations, holidays and commemorations serve a
similar purpose. As such, particularly in post-conflict areas such as
the Western Balkans, literature examining the role of history textbooks,
collective memory and memorialisation and the influence of how the
past is remembered in the present – all features of ‘hot’ nationalism –
has flourished in the past several decades. Yet, children are exposed to a
58 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

variety of more subtle messages about the nation through other venues,
such as geography, music and arts lessons, as well as discussions about
current events such as sports competitions, the environment, tourism
and popular culture, which are typically excluded from traditional
nationalism and ethnic construction literature. Scholars of so-called
‘banal nationalism’ have highlighted the unconscious and ‘mindless’
acts through which nationalism is communicated in everyday life (Billig
1995), while the related field of ‘everyday nationalism’ (Fox and
Miller-Idriss 2008) has pointed to the importance of national identity
processes at the level ‘below’ of mundane life. Both of these approaches
have emphasised the significance and urgency of studying these everyday
forms of nationalism and national identity. Whereas schools are also
important sites of banal nationalism through non-national subjects,
they are nonetheless generally considered domains of ‘hot nationalism’
and typically studied for their perpetuation of national symbols and
history through national history education and official commemorations
and state holidays.
In this chapter, I attempt to bridge this gap, by looking at
how education of non-national subjects such as geography implicitly or
explicitly instil particular ideas of national identity in youth. The
research thus lies at the intersection of the ‘banal nationalism’ and
‘everyday nationalism’ literatures, both of which aim to turn attention
away from the purposeful, deliberate indoctrination of youth into
particular nationalist ideas and instead towards the more implicit,
everyday forms of nationalising everyday life. Billig’s notion of ‘banal
nationalism’ was originally applied to consolidated democracies
(‘established’ nations) where nationalism becomes absorbed into the
environment through flags, stamps, street names and subtle ‘us’ vs.
‘them’ distinctions, all of which serve as unconscious reminders of nation
belonging (1995:41 –2). Relatedly, the field of ‘everyday nationalism’
follows the ‘nationalism from below’ approach first introduced by
Hobsbawm (1991) and Brubaker (2004), pointing to the necessity of
studying ‘the actual practices through which ordinary people engage and
enact (and ignore and deflect) nationhood and nationalism in the varied
contexts of their everyday lives’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008:537).
The two approaches are necessarily related, as research has demonstrated
the disparate ways in which exemplars of ‘banal nationalism’ are received
and consumed, pointing to the importance of studying them within
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 59

their everyday, localised contexts (Jones and Merriman 2009; see also the
debate between Billig and Skey in Skey 2009).
Indeed, the connection between nationalism and school subjects such
as geography and nature and society warrant additional attention.
Geography in particular defines notions of place, space and territory, all
of which are critical in the imagination of nationhood and nationalist
politics (Brubaker, in Sturm and Bauch 2010:186) and can instil long-
lasting perceptions of one’s nationhood among youth. Scholars have
pointed to the relevance of political geography in instilling national
identities and ideologies among students and discussions on the
relationship between the teaching of geography and nationalism abound
(Bar-gal 1994, Post 2007, Raento 2010, Schlosser et al. 2011).
In addition to topics of borders and territory, the natural environment
also plays an important role, ‘not only to naturalize the connection
between nation and territory, but also visually to communicate and
reinforce identity with the nation’ (Agnew 2004:233). Similarly, the
landscape and national landscape imagery can naturalise certain images
into a national narrative, providing cues of what the nation is: it
naturalises particular images into the narrative and over time, these
images elicit shared values and meanings (Häyrynen 2000, Daniels
1993, Schama 1996). Studies examining geography textbooks have
shown how the use of maps and images can establish a particular
narrative (such as a narrative of ‘pathological territorial nationalism’ or
perpetual territory loss despite inalienable rights to an imaginary
territory, in the case of Argentinian textbooks; Escudé 1988), as
well an instil representations of other countries and other peoples
(for instance, representations of Asia and Asians in US geography
textbooks; Hong 2009).
In line with the approaches outlined, and drawing upon previous
ethnographic research with youth, I examine how youth in primary
schools are taught about non-national subjects such as geography and
how the nation is nonetheless defined through domains not typically
considered as sites of ‘hot nationalism’. I focus on two post-Yugoslav
countries – Serbia and Croatia – which represent an interesting
comparison as they both experienced significant shifts in identity
discourse over the last three decades, from Communism through
ethnic war through democracy, allowing us to observe their experiments
with national identity reconstruction over time and place, shedding
60 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

light on a process of national identity ‘rediscovering’ (Zerubavel 1995,


Schwartz and Shuman 2005, Olick 2007). More importantly, both
countries are still struggling to deal with the legacy of the authoritarian
and antidemocratic nationalistic discourse of the 1990s and have
undergone this transformation with mixed results. Whereas in Serbia
the focus has been on traditional national identity symbols such as
historical events, leaders and battles and Serbian youth have difficultly
expressing national identity without resorting to ‘blatant’ nationalist
symbols, drawing pride exclusively from the past, Croatian youth are
increasingly conceiving their national identity in non-nationalist terms,
such as pride for the seaside and clean air and base their source of national
pride in the present (Pavasović Trošt 2012). In addition to the different
historical context – the outcomes of the wars and politics of the 1990s,
explored elsewhere – research has demonstrated that a part of this
discrepancy is the complete co-option of traditional historical symbols
and imagery by nationalists in Serbia, leaving the liberal or civic-minded
populace without a basis for ‘traditional’ national ethnic identity
(Rossi 2009), whereas Croatia has gone through a process of ‘identity
convergence’ between the Croatian and European norms, values and
identities (Subotić 2011).
In order to examine how non-national subjects might be informing
national identities of youth, I focus primarily on ‘top’-level identity
messages, found in geography and nature and society textbooks, only
briefly discussing how youth actually talk about their identities on
the ground (‘bottom’-level discourse). In the following sections, I first
provide background to the case studies and the methodology utilised for
the study, followed by an in-depth examination the content of Nature
and Society and Geography textbooks currently used in Serbia and
Croatia in fourth and eighth grade.

Methodology
The process of creating new states following Yugoslavia’s ethnic wars of
the 1990s was naturally accompanied by the re-writing of history in
support of the new nation-building narratives in each country. These
transformations are reflected in history textbooks, which have been
extensively studied as sources of blatant lectures in ‘hot nationalism’ –
ideological messages about what happened in the country’s past, the ways
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 61

in which the past should be remembered and who belongs to the ‘nation’
and who does not (Stojanović 2004; Koren and Baranović 2009; Koren
2015; Pavasović Trošt 2017).1 Both countries went through a process of
extreme ethno-nationalism during the 1990s, which somewhat lessened
post-2000 with the election of new democratic governments, as well as
with pressure from international organisations to gradually eliminate
overtly nationalistic and normative text from textbooks. In Croatia, the
textbook market began opening in 2000, while in Serbia this move
happened in 2010, meaning that now, up to four or five alternative
textbooks are offered for each subject and there is no longer just one
‘official’ textbook for the entire country. The language and tone in these
new textbooks is markedly less overtly nationalistic, with the various
textbook ‘versions’ offering more or less nationalistic content (the choice of
which textbook is used is made by the teacher or school).2
In this chapter, instead of the traditional focus on history textbooks,
I instead rely on geography and nature and science textbooks. I analyse
textbooks used in the current school year in the fourth grade (Nature and
Society) and eighth grade (Geography) in Serbia and Croatia. Schooling is
still centralised in both countries following a similar curriculum structure,
meaning that students go through the same topics at the same time. The
first time students are introduced to topics of national relevance is in the
class called ‘Nature and Society’ (Priroda i društvo), when they learn about
national borders, national symbols and national history, though supposedly
under the pretext of a non-nature science/society curriculum. This course is
deliberately broad and covers brief introductions to an extensive range of
topics, including units on land, water, the sun, flora and fauna, the human
body, history, the country’s landscape, cities, cultural and historical
landmarks, etc. In Croatia, the second half of the textbook is devoted to
covering the natural resources, economy, towns and historical and cultural
landmarks of each of the four regions of Croatia, while in Serbia, a greater
emphasis is placed on nature broadly, natural phenomena, elementary
physics and chemistry, the human body and basic health; with the second
half also covering Serbian geography. The next time youth in Serbia and
Croatia are exposed to topics of national relevance is in eighth grade: both
through a designated history class and in a geography class. Eighth-grade
geography textbooks include important messages about the nation and
national identity, though less overtly than in history textbooks: they
discuss borders, physical and geographical distinctions of regions, basics of
62 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

economy, climate, tourism, population, flora and fauna and natural and
cultural heritage.
In order to systematically analyse the content in these textbooks,
I surveyed all of the Nature and Society and Geography textbooks in use
for the 2016–17 school year, for a total of fourteen textbooks.3 The two
countries have similar textbook publishing processes – as noted
previously, the textbook markets are open, meaning that several different
publishers offer different ‘versions’ of the same textbooks, though all
follow the same government-mandated curriculum and must be approved
by the Ministry of Education. In practice, this usually means around three
to five publishers: each country’s former state-owned publishers – Školska
knjiga in Croatia and Zavod za udžbenike in Serbia – and several smaller
ones (in Zagreb, these are Alfa and Profil, while in Serbia they include
Klett, Bigz, Freska, Novi Logos and several smaller publishers with
limited circulation). As they follow the same curriculum and go through a
rigorous assessment at the Ministry of Education, differences between the
various publishers’ editions cannot be significant, but are nonetheless
noticeable: as reviewed elsewhere (Pavasović Trošt 2012), the textbook
author’s ideological slant is clearly perceptible in the language, tone and
details included or excluded in the textbook. As such, surveying several of
the publishers within each country allows for a glimpse into the internal
domestic national identity debates within the countries, in addition to
comparing the content cross-nationally. When examining the textbooks,
I paid attention not only to the actual text, but also the amount of space
devoted to a particular topic, number and type of pictures and maps,
organisation of topics, as well as the supplementary questions for review
and further instructions. Later, I organise the findings of the textbook
analysis by the following topics: messages about national identity through
history and messages about national identity through language, the
environment, Kosovo and Europe.

Findings: Textbook Content Analysis


History
The largest differences between Serbian and Croatian textbooks lie in
the extent and nature of their coverage of history. While the textbooks
differ somewhat within each country and depending on the ideological
position of the author/publisher, Croatian textbooks as a whole spend
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 63

much more time explicitly discussing the 1990s war (in Croatia referred
to as the ‘Homeland war’), while Serbian textbooks, with some
exceptions, spend extensive time covering medieval history yet avoid
going into any discussions of the 1990s wars. Both extremes are
problematic. These discussions can primarily be found overtly in fourth-
grade nature and society textbooks in designated units, while in the
eighth grade they are scattered throughout the textbook in semi-related
topics (such as migration and population characteristics), since eighth-
grade students concurrently attend an actual history course, so the
geography curriculum does not specifically include historical topics.
Croatian fourth-grade nature and society textbooks start the historical
discussion in the sixth to seventh centuries, introducing Croatian
national identity and desire for independence as unchanging and
uninterrupted over the past century. These sections are titled ‘Croats and
their New Homeland’ or ‘The arrival of Croats to their Homeland’ and
clearly present a narrative of non-interrupted inhabitance of Croats in
the country that is presently Croatia, from the sixth century until
present times (Kisovar Ivanda et al. 2015:74; Ćorić Grgić and Bakarić
Palička 2016:64; Jelić 2015:46; Škreblin et al. 2015:50). This clearly
supports the narrative of the ‘millennial thread of Croatian statehood’,
which continues throughout the textbooks: the next subunit, referring
to the period of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, is called ‘The
century-long struggle for preserving independence’ (stoljetna borba za
očuvanje samostalnosti) or ‘Croatian states and the battle for the homeland’
(Kisovar Ivanda et al. 2015:78; Škreblin et al. 2015:54). Then, when
speaking of the nineteenth century, two of the textbooks have special
units on ‘The battle for the Croatian language’ (borba za hrvatski jezik,
Ćorić Grgić and Bakarić Palička 2016:70; Kisovar Ivanda et al.
2015:80), which further the story of an uninterrupted language, nation
and statehood and the idea of the century-long battle/struggle to achieve
these, from the sixth century until present times. More problematically,
in the few sentences on the nineteenth century, the textbooks include
lists of the ‘many Croats who gave their contribution’ to creating their
independent state, whose ‘ideas and actions are invaluable for the
Croatian people’; in two of the textbooks, this list, accompanied by a
picture, includes Ante Starčević, a highly controversial political
figure known for his anti-Semitism and anti-Serb nationalist ideology
(Kisovar Ivanda et al. 2015:81; Jelić 2015:53). The narrative of a
64 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

unified, uninterrupted specifically Croatian statehood as early as the


sixth century is present across all Croatian fourth-grade nature and
society textbooks. The same narrative is present in eighth-grade
geography textbooks, only in greater detail: symbolic discourse such as
the ‘millennial dream’ or ‘several-hundred-year-long struggle’ for
statehood also appears (Tišma 2015:85; Jelić and Škrget 2015:86), as
well as indicating that, in 1990, the Croatian parliament confirmed
‘Croatian several-hundred-year-long statehood’ (Lukić et al. 2015:41).
As historical content is not explicitly covered in the eighth-grade
geography curriculum, we find additional ‘elective content’ at the end
of units discussing history: for instance, one textbook has a sidebar
titled ‘Croatia already had its statehood partially even before 1991’,
which briefly discusses the history of Croatian statehood (Jelić and
Škrget 2015:25).
In Serbia, the equivalent historical units in fourth grade, of early
settlements, start by discussing the arrival of ‘Old Slavs’ (Stari Sloveni),
not Serbs in the first place (Vasiljević et al. 2015:111; Blagdanić et al.
2016:44). The period from the twelfth to the end of the nineteenth
century is devoted much more space than contemporary times: in one of
the textbooks, for instance, while early history spans 16 pages, the entire
twentieth century is afforded one page, with the postwar era
summarised in just one paragraph (Vasiljević et al. 2015:130). These
extensive units on medieval history include units on the creation of the
Nemanjić dynasty, life under the Nemanjićs, the Kosovo battle and its
aftermath, life under the ‘Turks’, the First and Second uprisings, etc.
(Blagdanić et al. 2016:46–65). Interestingly, one of the textbooks
highlights the positive aspects of Ottoman history in the section
‘History in the present’: it mentions how contemporary Serbian
traditions of drinking coffee, traditional Serbian dishes such as čorba,
musaka, ćufte, sudžuk, yogurt, kajmak, burek, baklava, tufahije, etc. as well
as customs such as taking off one’s shoes and wearing slippers inside the
house, all come from Turkish times (Blagdanić et al. 2016:53).
When it comes to World War II, one of the most contentious events
in the region and on which the struggle over the ‘proper’ historical
narrative continues to this date, we also find differences in the two
countries. World War II is only cursorily mentioned in all four of the
Croatian fourth-grade textbooks. Only two of the textbooks mention the
Independent State of Croatia, both simply stating that ‘many atrocities’
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 65

(zlodjela) happened in the ISC, without further elaboration (Kisovar


Ivanda et al. 2015:82; Ćorić Grgić and Bakarić Palička 2016:72), while
the other two skip through this entire time period. One of the textbooks
skips through the entire twentieth century with one sentence: ‘During
the twentieth century on the territory for Croatia, three wars took place:
World War I, World War II and the Homeland War. The Homeland
War began in 1991 . . .’ (Škreblin et al. 2015:56). Curiously, Serbian
fourth-grade nature and society textbooks do not mention Croatian
crimes in World War II, instead discussing the casualties of the war more
generally. This is particularly interesting as this aspect of the war is
especially highlighted both in Serbian history textbooks and in everyday
public discourse. The way in which present-day ideological preoccupa-
tions surface in these textbooks is in their description of the civil war in
Yugoslavia during World War II: in line with the new official state
ideology, the textbook portrays the četnik movement as existing side-by-
side with Tito’s anti-fascist partisans, without discussing the
controversial aspects of this historical reinterpretation (Gačanović
et al. 2015:134; Kovačević and Bečanović 2016:152; Blagdanić et al.
2016:67 – 8).4 Apart from these messages, Serbian fourth-grade
textbooks generally avoid any overt discussion of difficult historical
events. As described later, the wars of the 1990s are similarly avoided.
As opposed to World War II, the Homeland War is explicitly covered
in all four of the fourth-grade nature and society textbooks in Croatia.
Two textbooks mention the war as a precursor to statehood in a neutral
manner, while the two more explicit textbooks call the war ‘aggression’
(Kisovar Ivanda et al. 2015:88) and ‘greater Serbian aggression’ which
had ‘the aim of creating Greater Serbia and placing all other peoples
under its rule’ (Jelić 2015:54). The perpetrators are named as Serbia
and Montenegro (Ćorić Grgić and Bakarić Palička 2016:74): ‘Serbia and
Montenegro, with the help of the Yugoslav Army and a part of the
Serbian population in Croatia’ (Kisovar Ivanda et al. 2015:88). The most
explicit discussion of the Homeland war in fourth-grade textbooks can
be found in Jelić (2015): ‘In this war, leaders of the neighbouring
republics of Serbia and Montenegro, with help of the Yugoslav National
Army, tried to destroy and subjugate Croatia as much as possible. From
this imposed war, our homeland came out as a victor’ (p. 58). Eighth-
grade geography textbooks follow a similar logic, except covering
the material in greater detail. While eighth-grade geography does
66 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

not include history in the curriculum at all, the Homeland war is


mentioned in one form or another numerous times throughout each of
the textbooks – for instance, in Tišma (2015), it is mentioned in sections
as diverse as those on Croatia’s population (67), the economy (76),
natural movements of people (79), migrations (82), Croatia and the
world (85), Croatia and European organisations (88), as well as in cities
of the Croatian lowlands (162). These references are sometimes cursory
and in passing, though occasionally include mentions of ‘Greater Serbian
aggression’ (85, 162), ‘war aggression on Croatia’ (p. 83) and ‘war
imposed on Croatia’ (88), all of which clearly portray Croatia’s sense that
it was solely a victim during the war, ignoring the war’s complexity and
Croatia’s own transgressions. In terms of the problematic Croatian
military operations ‘Flash’ and Storm’ in 1995, in which many Serbian
civilians were killed or forced to flee, they are only mentioned in one of
the fourth-grade textbooks as independence battles (Ćorić Grgić and
Bakarić Palička 2016:74A), in line with the official state position on
these events. Where these events are mentioned in eighth-grade Croatian
textbooks, one finds mentions that some Serbs ‘left during the freeing of
occupied parts of Croatia’ (Lukić et al. 2015:101) or that the total
number of Serbs in Croatia decreased during the Homeland war (Jelić
and Škrget 2015:73), but no mention of the operations or causes of these
migrations explicitly.
In Serbia, messages about the 1990s wars are generally less overt or
are skipped altogether. Only a few of the fourth-grade nature and society
textbooks even mention the war, typically in passive voice and
summarised in one sentence: ‘In the last decade of the twentieth century,
the common Yugoslav state disintegrated. After a several-years-long war,
many human casualties, destruction and millions of refuges, all of the
former republics became independent countries’ (Vasiljević et al.
2015:130). Similarly: ‘the independence of former Yugoslav republics
was accompanied by armed conflict with many human casualties and
destroyed homes’ (Blagdanić et al. 2016:69) and ‘11 years after Tito’s
death, SFRJ disintegrated in 1991 and 1992 in widespread armed
conflict’ (Kovačević and Bečanović 2016:152). Notably present is
avoidance of detail, which comes quite abruptly and surprisingly after
the extensive historical detail provided for the period between the
seventh and nineteenth centuries. One of the other textbooks avoids
discussion of messy historical detail by organising units according to the
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 67

themes for each era: ‘where and how did people live?’, ‘what kinds of jobs
did people do?’, ‘where did people study?’ and ‘how did people of this era
dress?’; the subunit on ‘Serbia through the centuries’ includes barely any
text, simply maps with territory and pictures of the leaders of the time –
both effectively avoiding discussion of potentially problematic aspects of
history (Gačanović et al. 2015:136). In eighth grade, the war manages to
creep into the text, but in a relatively hidden manner: for instance, the
unit on ‘Migrations’ covers migrations from ancient to contemporary
times and does not mention the events of the 1990s anywhere in the text,
but nonetheless includes a picture of a column of refugees during
operation ‘Storm’, with the subtitle ‘Forced migrations of Serbs from
Croatia in 1995’ (see Figure 3.3). Sparse text on the war can be found in
the units on ‘Serbs outside of the borders of Serbia’, in which the war is
called a ‘civil war’, during which many Serbs were forcibly displaced
from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Stamenković and
Gatarić 2015:91–2; Milošević and Brankov 2015:106– 7), as well as
that many Serbs left Serbia proper due to the ethnic conflicts, sanctions
imposed upon Serbia and the economic crisis that resulted (Kovačević
and Topalović 2016:175). This section notes that Serbs owned around
two-thirds of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina before the war, but
due to the Dayton agreement of 1995, now only own 49 per cent
(Stamenković and Gatarić 2015:92), similarly refering to the loss of
Serbian population in Croatia, which fell from 12.2 per cent before the
wars to only 4.3 per cent today, which is attributed to ‘the civil war and
forced migrations of Serbs’ (Milošević and Brankov 2015:107). Also
importantly, some of the eighth-grade textbooks discuss the Federation
of BiH and Republika Srpska as two separate countries, not two entities
of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is also a reflection of
the mainstream nationalist narrative and is quite problematic for future
relations between the two countries.

National Identity/Overt Nationalism


As history and national identity are inextricably linked, the way in
which history is discussed and which events the authors decided to
include and exclude, already speak implicitly to national identity.
In addition to the latent messages on identity, overt messages on what it
means to be Serbian or Croatian can be found as early as fourth grade.
This content can be found in the historical units as well as in general
68 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

discussions of the environment, culture and population. In Croatia,


this includes several themes: mentioning the ‘civilizational-cultural’
orientations of Croatia, introducing the narrative of an uninterrupted
millennial dream of statehood, emphasising its clear Europeanness and
through units on the battle for preserving the Croatian language.
In Serbia, such content is absent, aside from the discussions of Serbian
traditions and customs throughout the various historical eras and
through the insistence of Kosovo belonging to the Serbian state.
Explicit discussion of national identity is not common and is more
apparent through latent content. Only one of the Croatian eighth-grade
geography textbooks has a special unit titled ‘Croatian identity’, which
instructs students to discuss how people outside of Croatia see Croats
and whether we are born with an identity (Lukić et al. 2015:39). This
unit warns about the dangers of globalisation and increased similarity
between different parts of the world, in which ‘it is more than ever
necessary to take care of preserving one’s own identity. It is built through
centuries with tradition, customs, culture and civilization’ (p. 39).
Several pages later, after discussing the Croatian flag, hymn and coat of
arms, this unit concludes ‘With collective effort of all of her citizens, the
identity of Croatia gets stronger in the world, with all her local
differences’ (42). Importantly though, this is the one textbook that also
repeatedly highlights the importance of respecting diversity, inter-group
cooperation and peaceful neighbourly relations, calling the
religious, language, cultural and racial diversity as the ‘wealth’ of a
country (100– 5).
All of the Croatian geography eighth-grade textbooks introduce the
concept of the three ‘cultural-civilizational’ circles which permeate, meet
and overlap on Croatian territory: Mediterranean, Central European and
Southeast European or Balkan. One of the textbooks explains that
whereas the first two are a part of the European West, the third is a part
of the European East (Tišma 2015:23), further highlighting that,
‘Although the effects of the three aforementioned cultural-civilizational
circles overlapped over the Croatian territory, we specify Croatia as a
Mediterranean and central European country’ (24, emphasis in original; the
same sentence with same emphasis can be found in Jelić and Škrget
2015:24). More problematically, the map that accompanies this text
shows this third ‘Eastern’ circle as to extend all the way to the Middle
East, with pictures of a mosque and Orthodox church (whereas the other
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 69

two ‘civilizational circles’ have pictures of cities) – with the ‘Eastern’


circle hardly touching the territory of Croatia as pictured on the map
(p. 23, see Figure 3.1). The other two textbooks have similar maps (Jelić
and Škrget 2015:23; Lukić et al. 2015:40), also pointing to which of
these ‘civilizational circles’ Croatia’s neighbours belong to, with for
instance Bosnia as designated to have ‘prevailing oriental influence’ (Jelić
and Škrget 2015:25). In this way, the textbooks, while supposedly
focusing on geography, make a clear ideological definition of ‘us’ vs. the
‘Other’ and what should be considered the civilised West versus the
‘Balkan’ East with which Croatia does not want to associate itself.
Indeed, Croatian textbooks highlight the distinctly European nature
of Croatian identity (see also Rivera 2008), not simply discussing
EU integration, international organisations and the like. For instance,
the fourth-grade nature and society textbook has a historical unit

Figure 3.1 ‘Croatia at the contact of three cultural-civilizational circles:


Central Europe, the Mediterranean, Southeast Europe’ (Tišma 2015:23).
70 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

(fifteenth century) already titled ‘Croatia in its European surroundings’


(Jelić 2015:50). In eighth grade, the discussion of Croatia’s European
heritage comes primarily through the ‘civilisational-culture’ circles
discussed previously, in which Croatia is defined as a decidedly ‘Central
European and Mediterranean country’ and is referred to as such already
in the chapter title (Tišma 2015:21; Jelić and Škrget 2015:22). Eighth-
grade textbooks also discuss the EU accession process, in some cases even
discussing Euroskepticism and reasons for worry about EU membership:
‘Doubt in the value of joining the EU came from the opinion that the
Republic of Croatia will lose its sovereignty and tradition and that its
entry to the EU can poorly affect an Croatian economy already burdened
by numerous problems’ (Lukić et al. 2015:11). Nonetheless, the positive
aspects of EU membership area are also discussed in great detail, as well
as rights and responsibilities of Europeans, such as human rights, rights
of children, etc. In Serbian fourth-grade textbooks, EU accession
processes are occasionally cursorily mentioned, but there are no special
units on the relationship between Serbia and Europe. Instead, the fourth-
grade textbooks have units on ‘Citizens of Serbia and the world’
(Blagdanić et al. 2016:30), ‘Democratic relations’ and ‘We are children
of one world’ (Kovačević and Bečanović 2016:56– 9) or ‘Serbia is a part
of the world’ (Vasiljević et al. 2015:131), which include topics of human
rights, rights of children, international organisations Serbia belongs to,
UNESCO, etc. Serbian eighth-grade textbooks do include a longer,
dedicated unit titled ‘Serbia in contemporary integration processes’,
where the text is primarily factual in nature: definitions and history of
the Council of Europe, the EU’s size and population, the timeline of
Serbia’s ‘journey’ to the EU (Milošević and Brankov 2015:114– 17); this
unit highlights that Serbia ‘has a clearly developed position and political
and economic commitment for joining the European Union and all other
forms of integration in the Balkans and in Southeast Europe’ (Kovačević
and Topalović 2016:184).
While both countries’ textbooks discuss the environment, as per the
required curriculum, the emphasis on the environment and natural
beauty is noticeably stronger in Croatian textbooks. In Croatian fourth-
grade textbooks, the emphasis on the Adriatic Sea is recognisable already
in the table of contents. Aside from the other subunits which are titled
simply ‘The Human Body’, ‘Forests’ or ‘Flora’, two of the textbooks
have distinctly-titled units: ‘The importance of the Adriatic sea for the
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 71

Republic of Croatia’ (Kisovar Ivanda et al. 2015:46; Ćorić Grgić and


Bakarić Palička 2016:48) and an additional subunit on ‘Natural
distinctions of the Republic of Croatia’ (Prirodne posebnosti Republike
Hrvatske), even though these natural resources are again covered in each
of the regional subunits. That the Adriatic Sea is distinctly Croatian
appears already in the very first historical unit referring to the eleventh
century in one of the fourth-grade textbooks: it tells the story of
Petar Krešimir IV, who was the first to call the Adriatic Sea ‘our sea’
(našim morem) (Kisovar Ivanda et al. 2015:76), implicitly attributing
ownership of the Adriatic Sea to Croatia. In addition to the emphasis on
the sea, Croatian fourth-grade textbooks also explicitly discuss the
environment, with additional assignments at the end of the lesson
instructing students to find a branch of lavender or rosemary to smell it;
to make a presentation panel about the natural resources of the Republic
of Croatia; provide explicit discussions about the importance of
preserving the environment: using public transportation, reducing
electricity consumption, etc., all the while highlighting the relevance of
these measures to our environment (Kisovar Ivanda et al. 2015:49–53).
The textbooks also spend lengthy discussions on the importance of
preserving the environment. For instance, one of the eighth-grade
geography textbooks begins and ends with sections on the environment,
discussing the effect of climate change globally and on Croatia
specifically, human responsibility for climate change and what Croatia,
Croatians and each individual specifically can do to preserve the
environment (Lukić et al. 2015:14, 230– 4).
In Serbian fourth-grade textbooks, the environment is less explicitly
discussed. One could say that the complement to Croatia’s ‘Natural
phenomena of the Republic of Croatia’, in which Croatia highlights its
specificities with natural resources and the Adriatic Sea, is Serbia’s unit
on ‘The contribution of Serbia to the culture and science of the world’
(Gačanović et al. 2015:114). This subunit highlights the archaeological
findings in Serbia, UNESCO protected monasteries, cities with
fortresses and Serbian scientists who ‘with their discoveries indebted
the entire world’: Nikola Tesla, Mihajlo Pupin and Milutin Milanković
(Gačanović et al. 2015:114). The eight-grade geography textbook covers
the ‘natural-geographic features of Serbia’ in about 56 pages, but these
are focused on descriptions of the type of land, typologies and height of
mountains, climate, rivers, flora and fauna, etc., without any specific
72 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

emphasis on Serbian particularities of geography. Instead, the fourth-


grade Serbian nature and society curriculum mandates a larger subunit
titled ‘Man: a part of nature’ or ‘Man: a natural and social being’. This
section includes general health advice such as avoiding smoking and
drinking, with subunits on ‘Relationships towards others’ or ‘How we
should treat others’: this unit describes how we should treat our friends
and neighbours, to respect the environment, responsibility towards
animals, not to discriminate on the basis of gender or skin colour and to
treat people with disabilities and older people with additional respect
(Kovačević and Bečanović 2016:66, Gačanović et al. 2015:26–8,
Vasiljević et al. 2015:18–19). Eighth-grade textbooks include a unit on
‘Protecting nature’, though it emphasises erosion, eruptions, natural
fires, etc. and the importance of preserving Serbia’s protected natural
reserves, though with less emphasis on a personal relationship between
Serbia and the environment (Kovačević and Topalović 2016:73;
Milošević and Brankov 2015:50– 5).
The narrative of victimhood weaves throughout both of the
countries’ fourth- and eighth-grade textbooks. The sense of
victimhood is manifold, from early history throughout contemporary
times. For instance, in Croatian fourth-grade textbooks, the author
speaks about the historical attempts to subjugate the Croatian
language, beginning in the seventeenth century (Jelić 2015:52). This
line of ideological reasoning continues throughout the Croatian
eighth-grade geography textbook. When discussing Croatia’s inde-
pendence, it mentions that this happened ever 900 years of ‘foreign
control’, explicitly including the Socialist Yugoslavia as one of the
foreign controllers (Tišma 2015:24) and thus negating any idea of a
peaceful or desired common state as well as discussion of the territories
unjustly lost to Serbia after World War II (Tišma 2015:32). The
eighth-grade textbooks also mention how Croatia ‘lost’ parts of its
territory to neighbouring countries (though not mentioning its own
territory gains), for instance losing a part of Srijem to Serbia and
Boka Kotorska through Budva to Montenegro (Lukić et al. 2015:37).
The narrative of victimhood is strongly present in Serbian history
textbooks and public discourse as well (see Pavasović Trošt 2012;
Stojanović 2004), but as the textbooks do not discuss these historical
events in detail, there is limited opportunity to include victimhood
discourse. The exception are the discussions on Kosovo.
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 73

Language and identity are intricately connected, particularly in this


region, where claims to identity were inseparable from claims to a
distinct language (Greenberg 2008). Indeed, Croatian fourth-grade
textbooks spend several pages discussing the relevance of the Croatian
language and the struggle to preserve this language. This begins already
in the seventeenth century, where Hungarians attempted to subjugate
Croats to the Hungarian language. The struggle for Croatian language
continues in the nineteenth century: the textbooks have specific units
called ‘The battle for the native Croatian language’ (Borba za materinski
hrvatski jezik, Jelić 2015:52–3) or simply ‘The battle for the Croatian
language’ (Ćorić Grgić and Bakarić Palička 2016:70; Kisovar Ivanda
et al. 2015:80) and include the timeline of the development of the
language, the first newspaper, theatre play and parliament speech in the
Croatian language (Škreblin et al. 2015:55). A related way in which
language relates to national identity is through the ongoing struggle of
minorities to exercise their right to use their language (in schools and
street and building signs, for instance): a right which is explicitly
mentioned in both countries’ textbooks. Curiously, while Serbs represent
the largest minority in Croatia and controversies over the right of the
Serbian minority in Croatia to use Serbian language and Cyrillic script
are an almost everyday occurrence in the news, when fourth-grade
textbooks discuss rights of minorities to use their own language/script,
the pictures accompanying the text in all of the textbooks are either dual
Italian-Croatian signs (in Istria: Tišma 2015:75; Škreblin et al. 2015:66;
Jelić 2015:67) or dual Czech-Croatian (in Daruvar: Kisovar Ivanda et al.
2015:100). The Serbian nature and society and geography curriculum
does not include a unit on language, so discussions of Serbian language
can be found only in smaller subunits regarding population
characteristics. When the Serbian language is explicitly discussed, the
textbooks mention that the official language is Serbian and official
alphabet is Cyrillic and mention the rights of minorities to use their own
language and alphabet (Kovačević and Bečanović 2016:55; Blagdanić
et al. 2016:10), though a more elaborate discussion on the origins and
development of the language is absent.
One of the noted ways in which state ideology is clearly present in
Serbian textbooks is through the inclusion of Kosovo as an integral
part of Serbia, present on every map of Serbia and with its own section
detailing the region’s geography and borders. All of the textbooks
74 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

include the population of Kosovo and Metohija in the total population


of Serbia and include Kosovo in the relevant nature-geography units, in
addition to the explicit discussion of the battle of Kosovo in almost all
of the fourth-grade textbooks. Though Serbian geography and nature
and society textbooks as whole tend to avoid messy historical or
political discussion, ideologically normative statements appear when
Kosovo is concerned. This is most notable in the eighth-grade
textbooks. Two of the textbooks explicitly discuss Kosovo’s unilateral
declaration of independence in 2008, which Serbia rejected ‘and will
never recognize the secession of her southern province’ (Stamenković
and Gatarić 2015:8) – a sentence that stands out given the otherwise
avoidant tone and absence of political discussion in the textbook.
Another textbook mentions the unilateral declaration of independence
in the context of the 1999 UN resolution guaranteeing the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of Serbia, such that the dispute regarding the
legality of the independence declaration is still awaiting a decision of
the International Court of Justice (Kovačević and Topalović 2016:16).
Regarding Kosovo, the textbooks also describe its high birth rate
(12 per cent) versus central Serbia ( – 5.0 per cent), which is
experiencing the ‘white plague’ (Stamenković and Gatarić 2015:
72 – 3, see Figure 3.2) and mention in a sidebar that the administrative
borders of Kosovo and Metohija do not correspond to the geographical
borders of the Kosovo and Methojia basin and actually encompass
significant parts of central Serbian territory as well (p. 34). Further, in
the unit on ‘Types of settlements’, below a chart including ‘Total
number of settlements in urban settlements in Serbia’ (which includes
Vojvodina, central Serbia and Kosovo), the text mentions that
‘Many settlements in Kosovo and Metohija in which Serbs lived for
centuries, were forcefully displaced at the end of the twentieth and
beginning of the twenty-first century. This type of displacement
becomes massive from the middle of 1999, after the arrival of
international humanitarian forces of the United Nations and the
withdrawal of Serbian troops’ (p. 80). While this textbook offers no
explanation as to the context of these displacements, one of the
textbooks adds the following: ‘Displacement of the non-Albanian
population from Kosovo and Metohija has continued in the beginning
of this century, with the unitary declaration of independence of the so-
called Republic of Kosovo’ (Kovačević and Topalović 2016:90).
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 75

Figure 3.2 ‘Natural population growth of Serbia’ (Stamenković and


Gatarić 2015:73).

Finally, aside from the units on population and migration, the eighth-
grade textbooks also highlight the centrality of Kosovo’s churches and
cultural heritage to Serbia, for instance in units on UNESCO-protected
sites, which include pictures and descriptions of four of Kosovo’s
Figure 3.3 ‘Forced migrations of Serbs from Croatia in 1995’
(Stamenković and Gatarić 2015:74; the same picture appears in Milošević
and Brankov 2015:62).
Table 3.1 Summary of Identity and Nationhood Messages Found in Serbian and Croatian Fourth-grade Nature and Society and
Eighth-grade Geography Textbooks
Serbia Croatia
History Prior to Extensive discussion of middle ages and ‘golden’ era Narrative of continuous and uninterrupted
twentieth of twelfth and thirteenth centuries. statehood since arrival of Croats in sixth and
century seventh centuries; focus on battle for Croatian
language.
World War II Brief coverage; no discussion of ISC, četnik and partisan Brief coverage; no discussion of ISC.
movement described as side-by-side movements.
1990s wars Wars cursorily mentioned as part of Yugoslavia’s Extensive discussion of Homeland war and
disintegration, sections on migration and Serbs in the Serbian ‘aggression’ throughout the textbook as
diaspora and in photographs accompanying the text, well as in dedicated subunits.
no discussion of culpability; Federation and RS in
Bosnia discussed as two separate countries.
Identity Environment Mentions need to preserve in environment in non- Emphasis in dedicated units on environment,
dedicated units; emphasis more on universal social Croatia’s natural wonders, Adriatic sea as ‘our’
responsibilities as ‘citizens of the world’, dedicated sea since eleventh century, climate change and
sections to UNESCO-protected sites. what each Croat citizen should be doing to
preserve the environment.
Europe Discussions of EU and regional integrations provided Explicit categorisation of Croatia as central-
in positive, factual terms, stating Serbia’s clear European and Mediterranean; emphasis on EU
commitment to the EU; global identity emphasised accession and its implications.
in light of UNICEF, human and children’s rights.
Table 3.1 Continued

Serbia Croatia
Language Mentioned cursorily without separate unit. Extensive discussion in separate units on
importance of Croatian language and the ‘battle’
for preserving Croatian language.
Overt identity No overt discussion. Explicit discussion of cultural-civilisational
narratives identity circles.
Other identity (1) Discussion of Kosovo as an indisputable part of (1) Millennial thread of statehood;
narratives Serbia or with explicit remark that Serbia will never
recognise its independence; mention of Kosovo’s
fertility rate;
(2) Victimhood – loss of territory. (2) Victimhood – loss of territory; foreign
control.
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 79

medieval Serbian churches, though without discussion of their fate or


current political disputes (Milošević and Brankov 2015:129 – 30).

Discussion and Conclusion


Table 3.1 summarises the main similarities and differences found in
Serbian and Croatian fourth-grade nature and society and eighth-grade
geography textbooks, analysed in the preceding sections.
Through my examination of geography and nature and society
textbooks in Serbia and Croatia, summarised earlier in this book, I point
to two main findings. First, the analysis highlights the extent to which
national symbols and messages on national identity – where and when
the nation is, who belongs to it and who the ‘other’ is – are all very much
present in geography and nature and society textbooks, sites not
typically considered domains of ‘blatant’ nationalism. The same
ideological national narrative and nationhood myths that scholars have
found in history textbooks and in public discourse are also strongly
present, though less overtly, in geography textbooks, only now applied
to natural and social topics instead of historical events and battles. These
include the ‘millennial statehood’ myth in Croatia, the Kosovo myth in
Serbia; as well as the myth of victimhood and innocence, where only
those events are accounted for in which the nation was the victim and
never the perpetrator. None of the textbooks surveyed provide critical
reflections on geography, borders or identity, though this is expected
given the ideological prescriptions of the curriculum. In general, the
textbooks surveyed are less normative than history textbooks,
which provide very apparent ideological (such as ‘it should never be
forgotten’ or ‘we will never forget’) and problematic ethnically exclusive
messages (Pavasović Trošt 2017). Nonetheless, ideas on how old the
nation is, who has a right to belong in it and which aspects of the nation
students should feel most proud of are all clearly evident in geography
and nature and society textbooks as early as fourth-grade and, as such,
point to the relevance of examining non-national subjects as important
sites of nation-building.
Second, I have shown the ways in which ‘non-blatant’ sources of
nationalism, such as pride in the seaside, natural beauty or the
environment, can serve as powerful ways of informing youth’s
understandings of their own national identity in non-ethnic terms.
80 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

While far from a test of how effective the messages analysed in this chapter
resound on the ground in the two countries, recent ethnographic research
in the two capital cities has pointed to significant differences in the way
youth in the two countries understand their own identities (see Pavasović
Trošt 2012). This research has shown that Croatian youth are able to
conceive of their national identity in non-ethnic terms, such as through
pride in the seaside and clean air, while youth in Serbia – even those
explicitly trying to escape nationalist discourse – have difficulties
expressing their national identity without resorting to ‘hot’ nationalist
symbols such as historical battles and war. This is largely supported by
studies demonstrating that Serbian nationalists have successfully co-opted
traditional national symbols into their illiberal discourse (Rossi 2009),
whereas Croatian youth are able to combine traditional nationalist symbols
with a pro-Western, democratic narrative, also explained by Subotić (2011)
as a process of identity convergence vs. divergence between European and
national values. Similarly, when asked about their sources of national pride
explicitly, Serbian youth mention non-national events such as tennis or
Eurovision successes, pointing to both the void in positive, present-day
pride in Serbian national discourse; whereas in Croatia, youth are
overwhelmingly proud of Croatia in the present, pointing to the success of
the post-2000 Croatian narrative of the achieved millennial dream of
statehood (see Pavasović Trošt 2017 and Najbar-Agičić and Agičić 2007).
These and other ethnographic studies fall into the realm of ‘everyday
nationalism’, discussed in detail already, which importantly can show us
how these banal symbols are received on the ground. While not necessarily
measuring the effect of instruction of non-national subjects such as
geography and nature and society, they nonetheless point to the extent to
which non-nationalist terms such as pride for the seaside, clean air or sports
successes can and do inform youth’s understandings of their own national
identity, sometimes to a larger extent than official national history
narratives (Yerkes 2004; Pavasović Trošt 2012). As such, the analysis
points to the possibility of non-national subjects such as geography, the
environment, tourism and sports and music successes to provide youth
with important beyond-ethnic ideas about their national identity.
These findings raise several additional questions. First is the question
of the extent to which we can even consider geography and nature and
society instruction as ‘banal’, as the lessons provided are occasionally
quite explicit and far from ‘mindless’, as per Billig’s definition of the
TEACHING NATIONAL THROUGH GEOGRAPHY AND NATURE 81

term (Benwell 2014). Other related classes, such as language and


literature, arts, music and citizenship classes (see also Pykett 2009),
could also fit into this discussion, as they are by curriculum design
expected to instil particular values in students, even if these lessons
appear more ‘banal’ to the reader. Many traditional studies of banal
nationalism examine how postage stamps, licence plates, currency, flags
and maps serve as unconscious reminders of nationalism, though scholars
have questioned whether objects such as bilingual road signs, for
instance, can be truly ‘banal’ in nature: ‘symbols of the nation are
interpreted in different ways by different people: some in banal and
unconscious ways; others in a more conscious and overt manner’
(Jones and Merriman 2009:167; see also the debate between Billig and
Skey 2009). As Benwell (2014) points out, the reception of these kinds
of banal nationalism objects – such as road signs – is not mindless and
mundane and indeed can and does instil certain feelings of oppression or
contention among the people seeing them. In countries with centralised
curricula, where the explicit goal of all subjects – both presumably
‘banal’ ones, such as geography, science or literature, and explicit ones
like history and citizenship – very few topics can be considered truly
banal in nature.
Finally, the results shed light on the importance of examining both
the sources of everyday nationalism, such as geography and nature
textbooks, as well as the reception of these messages, possible only
through deep ethnographic research on the ground. Textbooks remain
important sites of nation-building and provide a glimpse into what and
how the state is teaching youth about their identity, regardless of how
these messages are appropriated by students.5 As textbooks not only
legitimise the established political and social order and participate
in ‘creating what a society has recognised as legitimate and truthful’
(Apple and Christian-Smith 1991:4), they are also a site of contestation
and consensus; they allow us to assess the interests of political actors and/
or elites in power over the educational apparatus (Kymlicka 1995, Soysal
et al. 2005:14). Of course, teachers and other educational officials act as
a ‘filter’ through which these messages might be carried out differently
than prescribed or desired by the state, in addition to non-school
influences such as family, religious institutions, media, etc., all of
which affect the way in which students evaluate and appropriate material
taught in school.6 Simultaneously, it is important to examine the
82 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

reception of these messages on the ground, as discussed, as banal


markings can be understood and internalised differently. Instead of
reifying the ‘Serbian’ or ‘Croatian’ national narrative, as in the analysis
we would be better off paying more attention to localities and studying
place-based understandings of nationalism (Benwell 2014, Jones and
Merriman 2009). Both Serbia and Croatia are enormously diverse
countries in terms of regional, class and urban-rural differences and an
important piece of the puzzle is determining among which parts of the
population – localities, regions, socio-economic classes – these messages
are appropriated in everyday life.

Notes
1. Most notably, Dubravka Stojanović (for Serbian textbooks) and Snježana Koren
and Magdalena Najbar-Agičić (for Croatian textbooks) and several other authors
have continuously provided excellent reviews of the state of history education in
their respective countries and are involved in on-going projects of producing less
biased and less normative, agenda-driven history education (see especially
Stojanović 2004 and Koren and Baranović 2009). Apart from these, many other
organisations and scholars have been involved in history textbook research in the
two countries; see volumes by Hopken (1996), Koulouri (2002), Brunnbauer
(2004) and Dimou (2009).
2. Nonetheless, the battle over the national identity narrative and the ‘correct’
version of history in textbooks continues to this date, with the main points of
contention including the events of World War II and the Independent State
of Croatia, the nature of the Communist regime, as well as the dissolution of
Yugoslavia through the wars of the 1990s and culpability for war crimes.
3. Several other editions were approved, but not analysed in this text due to space
considerations and/or the limited circulation of the textbooks: for Serbia,
I limited the analysis to seven textbooks, which excludes editions by the
publishers Novi Logos, Eduka, Gerundinijum, Freska and Nova Škola; for
Croatia, all approved textbooks for both fourth and eighth grade were analysed
(seven in total), with the exception of the publisher Ljevak.
4. For an explanation of the various movements during World War II and the
conflicts regarding their re-interpretation in recent times, see Mihajlović Trbovc
and Pavasović Trošt 2013.
5. For extensive reviews of the long list of studies demonstrating the relevance of
textbooks, see Apple and Smith (1991) and Soysal and Schissler (2005).
6. For a review of the literature on the development of identities among youth, see
Scourfield et al., 2006.
CHAPTER 4

WHY NATIONS SELL:


REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY
NATIONHOOD THROUGH
ADVERTISING IN RUSSIA
AND BELARUS 1

Marharyta Fabrykant

Introduction
Studies of everyday life have been steadily gaining prominence in social
science. In cultural studies, the focus on everyday life enables a non-
positivist, empirically based approach to build general theory via specific
cases, intertwining numerous cultural motifs. In sociology, Sztompka
(2008) went so far as to announce the sociology of everyday life as a
third paradigm able to solve the sociological tension between a focus on
structure versus agency. In the interdisciplinary field of nation and
nationalism studies, an attempt to shift attention towards everyday
manifestations of nationality (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008) was initially
perceived by A. Smith (2008), in a now-classic contribution to the field,
as a threat to the previous historical focus and the adoption of a shallow
temporal view. Subsequent studies, however, demonstrated the multiple
opportunities of approaching national identities, and not least the
representations of national history, via everyday life. This approach has
proved especially fruitful in supplementing the impact of the actual
84 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

legacy from the historical past by understanding how laypeople lacking


the knowledge of a professional historian imagine national history and
its relevance. Edensor’s extended case study reveals such imagery to
consist predominantly of everyday objects and practices endowed with
special symbolic meaning for national identity (Edensor 2002).
The everyday life perspective helps not only to identify such objects,
but also to uncover the mechanisms of how some, but not other,
everyday phenomena become signifiers of national identity.
Such an approach to nationhood is particularly appropriate when
studying processes of national identity construction in transitional,
modernising states, where not only the present, but also the past
as represented in popular imagery undergoes rapid transformations.
Existing research shows how everyday practices serve as an intermediary
between national identity and a wide variety of spheres of social life not
necessarily related to the national issue, such as political regimes (Horak
and Polese 2016), social policy (Bougdaeva 2016), religion (Gulmez
2016) popular culture (Isaacs 2015, 2016) and particularly the economy
(Ventsel 2016). A recent study of the Western Ukrainian case shows
that, far from flattening the perspective, approaching national identity
via everyday practices of consumer behaviour reveals new features of
internal tensions in nation-building (Seliverstova 2016). It shows that
national identity has not only the usually studied ideological, but also
banal, dimension and that it is the latter that forms the habitual patterns
of behaviour and reflects the habits of the heart.
One such repetitive occurrence forming the habitual everyday
background is advertising. It relies on symbols of national identity and
features studies of everyday nationhood as a deceptively transparent tool.
Roland Barthes’s semiological classic ‘Rhetoric of the Image’ shows
how the advertisement of Panzani, an Italian food company, makes use of
the recognisable visual imagery of ‘Italianness’ (Barthes 1964). Marketers
use the already well-established and unquestioned ‘banal’ representations
of national identity – or, to foreign audiences, national stereotypes – in an
attempt to transfer the same unquestioned loyalty to the advertised
products (Keillor, Thomas and Hult 1999; De Mooij 2013). Consumption
of nationality through easily obtainable goods provides an easy
opportunity for fulfilling a national duty without stepping outside the
everyday routine. No need to reflect deeply about the exact meaning of
nationhood in general or a specific national identity, no need to prove
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 85

allegiance to the nation by making any kind of personal sacrifice. Yet, on


the other hand, unlike the more mundane manifestations of banal
nationalism, such as saying ‘the country’ instead of ‘my country’ (Billig
1995), responding to nationally framed advertisements becomes
recognisable as a symbolic gesture. In short, advertising built from
national identity symbols raises its audience from the banal, but does not
take it all the way to substantive national sentiment. The mechanism
appears so clear that most existing studies on the use of national identity
in advertising focus on specific techniques that may or may not work in
given circumstances (e.g., Prideaux 2009; Subramanian 2013; Rius-
Ulldemolins 2015). Accordingly, such research centres on the
consequences of such advertising, including its efficiency in boosting
the demand for the product and long-term reaffirmation of certain types of
national identity and the ‘correct’ mode of its representation.
The present study aims at revealing prerequisites under which
advertising using national identity symbols may function. It relies on
an in-depth analysis of negative cases – post-Soviet countries where
both of the apparently necessary prerequisites, a competitive economy
as taken for granted and a version of national identity shared by the
majority, are currently lacking. To make the negative cases more
extreme, the two countries under scrutiny include Russia, the core of
the former Socialist world, and Belarus, where the government
consistently relied in its legitimisation on ‘preserving the best from the
Soviet past’ (Bekus 2010). The added value of the study transcends the
subject of advertising using national identity symbols. The analysis of
this subject in non-Western societies sheds new light on a broader issue
in the relations between public opinion, business and the state, in the
process of nation-building. The post-Soviet region is of particular
interest to the study of everyday manifestations of national identity
in advertising due to its two characteristics – unfinished nation-
building and a relatively young (younger than a majority of the
population) market economy. More than a quarter-of-a-century after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, its successors still experience the
consequences of the Soviet-enforced internationalism and state
monopoly. The public debate on economic attitudes and the national
issue frequently diffuse into a general and inevitably vague discussion
on the country’s future. Unlike these musings on the right course
to take, the discursive field of advertisements has clear edges and
86 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

provides a more tangible set of materials on everyday nationhood in


transition societies.
The use of the post-Soviet cases is also important because it switches
the focus from the consequences to the prerequisites of advertising using
national identity symbols. The question becomes not how it works and
to what effect, but under what conditions can it work or, indeed, even
appear in the first place. The practices of advertising and the discourse
on national identity appear banal, indispensable and firmly entrenched
in everyday life – but only insofar as the society where they exist is
implicitly imagined as a contemporary Western society. Once this
premise is made explicit and is dropped, neither nation-building nor the
emergence of a competitive economy can be taken for granted anymore.
To function in its prototypical ‘banal’ mode, advertising using national
identity symbols requires an unquestioned competition between various
commercial brands and a similarly unquestioned monopoly of a certain
version of national identity, complete with a set of meanings and their
external representations. But what would happen in a society where
competitive markets, although already in existence (otherwise there
would hardly be any point in advertising), have become habitual and
‘banal’ for the population? Or what about a society caught in the midst
of the nation-building process, with an ongoing competition between
alternative versions of national identity and their manifestations? Would
advertising in either of these societies approach the national issue at all
and if so, how and when? These are the questions the present study seeks
to address based on the evidence from Russia and Belarus.
The rest of the chapter is structured as follows. The next section
provides the necessary background information about economic
transition and nation-building in Russia and Belarus – In the case
study of Russia, the trajectory of change indicates a shift from initial
epoch of universalism and integration via the period of growing
prosperity to the conservative turn, making the national issue a central
point of the public debate. In the case of Belarus, the transformation
has been much more gradual and led to the increased importance of
national identity not contrary to, as in Russia, but due to economic
modernisation. The two subsections in the main body of the chapter
focus on specific changes in advertising using national identity symbols
in each country. These analyses show how the examples of such
advertising help to operationalise the trajectories of change in national
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 87

identities and reveal various techniques of integrating national identity


into everyday life. The concluding section reveals the similarities
demonstrated for the two very different country cases and shows that,
under the conditions of incomplete nation-building, businesses depend
on the state-promoted versions of national identity and that this
dependence is stronger when the state becomes not more, but less
business-friendly.

Nation-Building and Economic Transformations in Russia


and Belarus: A Historical Background
Despite their uniquely close links and their belonging to the dual
United State (Soyuznoye gosudarstvo), Russia and Belarus differ in much
more than the size of their territories and populations. The differences in
the trajectories of nation-building and the economic transformations
highlight some not-so-obvious questions to be considered when
analysing post-Soviet transition.
One such question, not often explicitly posed, is what takes
precedence in a given country – nationality or economy? In Russia, the
economic reforms of the first post-Soviet years had until recently
dominated public debate. So-called ‘shock therapy’ introduced the basic
components of the market economy, such as free prices and private
property (Shleifer and Treisman 2005), but failed to give the population
an understanding of the underlying principles (Appel 2000; Aslund
2007). The liberal reformers were later frequently called technocrats,
focusing on the efficiency of their actions with little regard to their
popular support. While economic liberalisation gave birth to
advertising, the free market economy itself in Russia was not promoted.
This technocratic approach amplified the secondary trauma of economic
hardships during transition. This trauma brought about a backlash that
in the presidential election of 1996 almost returned the communists to
power. In the second half of the 1990s, as the reforms slowed down and
almost stagnated, the debate on the route the Russian economy should
take intensified. Having nearly lost the power to foster institutions of
the free economy due to the mechanism of free elections, the reformers
faced an uneasy dilemma between conducting economic and political
liberalisation simultaneously or postponing the latter until completing
the former (Gaidar and Chubais 2011). Although opinions were divided,
88 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

the thinking on both sides remained technocratic, focused on immediate


and tangible problems to solve and uninterested in the vague idealist
issues, as national identity was then viewed.
After a quick recovery from the world economic crisis of 2008– 9 the
rapid economic growth of the preceding decade started slowing down.
It was only then that the national issue came to the forefront of
the public debate, embraced first by the opposition and then by the
government. The new generation of self-defined Russian liberals,
interested in politics much more than economics and placing the need
for popular support over technocratic rationality, at first attempted to
employ nationalism in a purely instrumental manner as a guaranteed
means of eliciting mass support (Kolstø 2014; Horvath 2015). This tool,
however, was quickly snatched from the opposition’s hands by the
government. Unlike the opposition’s version of nationalism: ethnic and
exclusive, the new official Russian nationalism revived the historically
more familiar imperial vision and based its popular appeal not on ethnic
purity and cultural homogeneity of the population, but on the power
and geopolitical influence of the state (Kolstø and Blakkisrud 2016).
To legitimise this vision and at least somehow define the borders of the
imperial superpower, it nevertheless had to resort to ethnic constructs,
such as ‘russkii mir’, ‘the Russian world’). Amidst this new complexity,
the long-neglected and marginalised national issue suddenly exploded in
the public debate. As its participants recognised, it was unclear not only
which economic and political models Russia should adopt, but also what
Russia itself should be – a nation state, an empire, a combination of the
two or something different entirely. The economic discussions between
free market liberals and statists continue as a struggle for influence
between proponents of the two, by now familiar and clearly defined,
positions; the national issue, on the contrary, baffles with its newly
discovered variety of options and inconvenient complexity.
The situation could not have been more different in Belarus. Unlike
Russia, the former imperial core eager to break with its Soviet past,
Belarus, having followed other former peripheries in the parade of
sovereignties, soon openly proclaimed its Soviet nostalgia. In the first
few post-Soviet years, the disappearance of the old power gave a chance
to the only organised political movement of the time – the movement
for the so-called national revival. The early post-Soviet Belarusian
nationalists at first positioned themselves as national democrats
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 89

modelled after the heroes of the Central European velvet revolutions.


Unlike the Central European prototypes, however, the Belarusian
nationalist movement evolved not from an earlier dissident movement,
which Belarus almost completely lacked, but from, at first, apolitical
and dispersed folklore and literary clubs devoted to preservation of the
unique cultural heritage and not general political principles such as
democracy. After its transformation into a political force, and gaining
political power, the nationalists in Belarus prioritised fostering
national language and culture over building new political institutions
and an economic program was lacking (Savchenko 2009). It is to this
lack of interest in economic issues in the times after the collapse of
the old Soviet economic ties and regulations that nationalists are said
to owe their failure in the presidential elections in 1994. The new
government made the most of the popular irritation with the
nationalists’ top-down approach to nation-building, their elitist stance
and the apparent irrelevance of the national revival to the pressing
everyday problems. The anti-nationalist rhetoric became an important
part of the state’s ideology for many years to come (Marples 1999).
The focus on the economic issues amounted to the rejection of shock
therapy in favour of small tactical steps when necessary and the
preservation of all things Soviet when possible (Miazhevich 2007).
These attitudes gradually transformed only much later. In nation-
building, the new generation born in the independent Belarus had no
firsthand Soviet experiences that could inspire nostalgia. Belarusian
statehood, no longer a novelty, required a new meaning, a new identity
beyond the preservation of the Soviet legacy amidst the rapid economic
reforms in the neighbouring states. The government responded to this
demand by selectively adopting and transforming certain motifs of
the early post-Soviet nationalist discourse and turning them from
remote inspirational ideals into ostensible depictions of the status quo,
thus approaching the model of banal nationalism. At approximately
the same time, the global IT boom triggered a rapidly growing
industry, by far more modernised than other branches of the Belarusian
economy. The government responded to this development by a series of
measures that, besides the habitual attempts to regulate and control,
included a sort of preferential treatment, especially in taxation. The
success of the Belarusian IT sector contributed to the government
eventually adopting the discourse of modernisation and also gave the
90 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

population a source of national pride and made it more receptive to the


national identity issue.
To sum up, the relations of nation-building and economic
liberalisation in Russia and Belarus differ in most respects. In Russia,
the economic transformations came to the forefront immediately after
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the national issue, over 20 years
later, both of them introduced by the government. In Belarus, national
identity first appeared in the centre of the public debate, with the
economic transformation playing at best a secondary role and both
nation-building and economic liberalisation were until very recently
associated with the opposition’s agenda. Comparing the two country
cases will show to what extent and in what ways the order of precedence
and the attitude of the state would impact the forms of advertising using
national identity symbols.

Advertising in Russia: Empire, Nation and In Between


The use of national identity symbols in Russian advertising has gone
through several distinct stages. Initially, in the 1990s, the national
motifs in commercial advertising largely centred on the romanticised
imagery of pre-Soviet Russian history, especially the nineteenth
century. The liberal reformers of the period regarded the whole Soviet
period of Russian history as a grave, if not fatal, mistake, a wrong turn
that led to an unnatural aberration of historical logic. Pre-Soviet
history, especially its late years prior to World War I, on the contrary,
appeared proper and genuine, mainly because of Stolypin’s economic
reforms. For this reason, the early post-Soviet Russia, so they believed,
would do well to eradicate the Soviet failed experiment by establishing
a rapport with the immediate pre-Soviet epoch. Besides, the nineteenth
century held many other attractions for the Russian public apart from
the not-so-widely shared liberal economic ideology. The Russian
nineteenth century means for Russians the golden age of Russian
literature, the time of Pushkin and Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
It was also the time when Russia became Europeanised in its high
culture and diplomacy. Although Europeanness in that period applied
only to the elites, Soviet secondary education presented this period in
Russian culture according to the slogan that art should always ‘belong
to the people’. Ironically, it is this Soviet maxim that provided the
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 91

newly emerging post-Soviet Russian free market economy with a tool


of legitimisation.
Multiple Russian businesses of the 1990s sought to establish their
embeddedness in Russian society by appealing to the nineteenth century
as a source for historical precedent. Unlike in many cases of nationalist
use of the idealised past, the attraction lay not in the fascination with the
distant past of times immemorial or an atemporal essentialist image of
national identity. On the contrary, the past appeared in advertising as
temporalised and owed its attraction not to the desire to escape from the
present-day unromantic reality, but rather to restore the missing link
and start anew from a point of historical continuity. On the other hand,
the prestige of the nineteenth century offered not only a ready-made
valuable resource, but also posed an interesting dilemma. While an
advertisement by definition has to be memorable, the semi-sacred status
of nineteenth-century Russian culture forbade the use of anything that
could be perceived as too flashy or vulgar or even ironical. For example,
within this logic an advertiser could not send Pushkin around praising
vacuum cleaners. Thus, in order to grasp the attention of its target
audience, advertisements of the period had to rely on a very limited
number of tools. It was this limited number of options that made each of
them so widespread.
Strangely enough, the most popular of these tools were not the most
picturesque. Arguably the most easily recognisable appeal to the
nineteenth century was the use of the old Russian spelling, which existed
before the spelling reform conducted by the Bolsheviks to simplify the
rules and ease the implementation of their universal literacy program.
By the end of the twentieth century, hardly anyone but experts in the
history of the period was proficient in the old spelling rules, but
proficiency was unnecessary, since the whole set of rules was replaced by a
single recognisable sign – the use of the pre-reform letters yer and yat’,
no longer present in the contemporary Russian alphabet. While experts
deplored the ungrammatical pseudo-nineteenth-century spelling of
brand names, the newly emerging businesses made full use of the
easily recognisable letters in the spelling of their brand names and
slogans. It was enough to simply add the letter yer after a final consonant
at the end of the word to evoke all the powerful imagery of the pre-
Soviet, ‘true’ Russia. Characteristically, the most influential Russian
business newspaper of the period, Kommersant, not only had its name
92 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

spelled with a yer at the end, but also used this letter as its shortened
name. The use of the last letter instead of the first one, as is habitual in
abbreviations, shows the advertising trend of the time, as well as the
word choice itself, meaning a distinctly antiquated, but certainly not
pre-nineteenth-century synonym to a modern word ‘businessman’
(‘biznesmen’ v. ‘kommersant’).
The pre-reform spelling was combined with brand names
characteristic of the late-nineteenth-century Russian businesses,
specifically by calling the new brands by male Russian family names,
such as Korsunov (a brand of elite chocolate and sweets), sometimes
in their Frenchified versions, again referring to the nineteenth-century
practices, such as the Tin’koff bank or Smirnoff vodka. Importantly,
while these two brand names sound familiar, only one of them genuinely
belongs to the nineteenth century. The Smirnoff distillery was founded
in 1863 by Piotr Smirnov, who later emigrated and sold his brand rights
to a British company. The attempt of his great-grandson to revive the
brand under the name Smirnov (here again, ending with yer) resulted in a
dispute eventually resolved by Smirnov brand becoming a daughter
company of Smirnoff. The Tin’koff bank, on the other hand, was founded
in 1994 by Russian businessman Oleg Tin’kov and the antiquated
version of the name, no longer used in the transliteration of similar
Russian surnames, is thus purely a stylisation. The overt merging of past
and present made the nineteenth-century version of Russian national
identity, based on its attachment to European high culture, spread
throughout Russian branding and advertising of the 1990s. The
abundance of nineteenth-century-looking brand names with yers, the
usually subdued visual representations, formed a new image of Russian
cities that soon became entrenched in everyday life.
The situation changed in the early 2000s, when the nineteenth
century as a source of the prototypical Russian national identity was
effectively hijacked from the new Russian businesses by a very different
power – mass culture propagating distinctly illiberal political views.
In the 1990s, the imagery of the romanticised nineteenth century of
the kind formed in the commercial advertising attracted hardly any
interest from the then-intense and highly competitive political
campaigners. The Russian liberals paid little attention to popularisa-
tion of their views and to the national identity issue. Their rivals first
relied on Soviet nostalgia and, when playing the national card, such as
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 93

in army general Lebed’s presidential campaign, relied on an ethnic


version of Russian national imagery, such as the kind of idyllic
landscape recognised as typically Russian, complete with birches,
green grass and bright sunny weather. This image served to create a
feeling of comfort, stability and naturalness, contrary to the
nineteenth-century motifs aimed at legitimising and contextualising
the ongoing social change. These mutually opposed intentions were
fused when the romanticised imagery of the nineteenth century
acquired a meaning detached from economic liberalisation. Beginning
with pop songs and culminating with the widely popular movie The
Barber of Siberia by Nikita Mikhalkov in 1998, the nineteenth century
came to signify not the Russia of Stolypin, international diplomacy and
of industrialisation and commerce, but the Russia of conservative and
military nationalism. Characteristically, this reframing of the
nineteenth century referred not to the period understandably preferred
by the liberals – the reforms of Alexander II and of Stolypin, but to the
reign of Alexander II, who first officially introduced to the Russian
empire the past-orientation and exclusive ethnic nationalism. At the
core of this reframing lay the previously marginalised idea of the
mystique of Russian exceptionality and incomprehensibility (famously
expressed in the words of Tyutchev, a poet and conservative diplomat,
‘Umom Rossiyu ne ponyat’’ – ‘Russia cannot be understood with the
mind’) as grounds for national superiority. The public acclaim won by
this new discourse made the previous imagery of the nineteenth
century in commercial advertising obsolete. It also demonstrated the
public demand for a new kind of conservatism, different from the
legitimisation of the no-longer-novel free market economy and
increasingly irrelevant Soviet nostalgia.
This demand found its multiple expressions in new uses of national
identity symbols in Russian advertising. This time, from the early 2000s
onwards, commercial advertising reflected the two polar versions of
national identity long before this contradiction became explicit in
mainstream public debate. On one hand, brand names and especially the
names of trading outlets started to include the word ‘empire’ (cf. Morris
2005). This kind of brand name could apply to a variety of consumer
goods regardless of their price, technological sophistication and the
target audience. Usually such names would refer to a shop offering a
wide assortment of a single kind of good, as in the ‘empire of stockings’.
94 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Paradoxically, this implied homogeneity of assortment directly


contradicts the original meaning of empire – an internally
heterogeneous multi-ethnic state. Despite this contradiction, this
imperial kind of advertising reflected the new spirit of the time.
Doubtless, the shops posing as empires that filled the streets of Russian
cities contributed to the positive image of empire and, moreover, its
positioning as a part of everyday life better than any political propaganda
could have done.
At roughly the same time, the use of traditional and explicitly
traditionalist ethnic versions of national identity grew more
widespread. The versions of ethnicity varied from neutral and
somewhat amorphous to sharply defined and even to some extent
xenophobic. The first ethnonationalist advertising evokes the imagery
of Russian nature, the private sphere of idyllic family life or elements of
positive auto-stereotypes, as in the brand of chocolate ‘Russia is a
generous soul’ (‘Rossiya – shchedraya dusha’). An example of the second
kind of advertising is a series of video ads for Vorontsov crunchies
featuring the characters of Semyon and Sam. Sam is portrayed as an
incompetent foreign or westernised citizen with but a vague idea where
bread comes from. He gradually learns the skills required to produce
the ‘real’ Vorontsov crunchies by Semyon, a resourceful and efficient
local of the Vorontsovo village. The series of adverts construct a
fictional Vorontsovo village. TV ads form a series of lessons Semyon
gives to Sam on making crunchies. The website dedicated to the
campaign provides detailed information about crunchies and their
properties, but also about the Vorontsovo village and its surroundings
and even allow one to listen to the local FM radio station and watch
videos by the local Vorontsovo band, appropriately named ‘Crusts’.
This imaginary environment turns a simple product of bread
crunchies into the centre of a fantasy world with its own imaginary
everyday life ironically combining traditions and modernity. The
slogan of the campaign is ‘Vorontsov crunchies. Caring for traditions
for the sake of fun,’ which shows the possibility of commercialising
national identity, not by offering customers the chance to consume
national glory, but, on the contrary, by bringing national traditions
down to earth. The abstraction of nationality enters everyday life when
it is allowed to become an object of creative and light-hearted
improvisation.
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 95

A by far more blatant version of superiority and extreme didacticism


feature in a video ad for the kvas drink ‘Nikola’, where a circus bear
refuses to obey a tamer, the classical image of an Uncle Sam, tears off a
frilly skirt and rises in anger so that in the end the roles are reversed: the
bear cracks the whip and the tamer wearing the skirt rides the bear’s
bicycle. Other video ads for the same products play not only on
misogyny, exemplified with a skirt presented as a degrading sign of
weakness and submission, but also on homophobia, as when the drink
is described as made of natural Russian ingredients and ‘having
remained the only natural among drinks’ (one of the meanings of the
word ‘natural’ in colloquial Russian is ‘straight’). In yet another video ad
a man wearing stereotypically traditional Russian ‘ushanka’ hat and
speaking broken Russian with a strong American accent advises his
audience not to drink ‘Nikola’ kvas and bases his credibility on
pretending to be Russian (‘You see I’ve this hat. I’m a Russian, you must
believe me’). The campaign was repeatedly debated not only in the social
media, but also in courts of law. In 2014, a domestic competitor accused
the company of misleading the public by assuming that the Nikola kvas
is the only natural drink on the market. Earlier and more directly related
to the national identity issues, in 2005, the Coca-Cola and Pepsi
companies complained that the slogans ‘Drink NiKola! Kvas is not cola’
and ‘No to colaization. Kvas is the health of the nation’ violated the
ethical principles of advertising by negative comparison of competitors’
products. The objection ran along the lines of cola being a generic name
of a drink rather than a trademark associated with a particular company.
As related to national identity, cola obviously stands for Westernisation
and specifically Americanisation and exploits the frequently appearing
legends about cola’s alleged exceptionally pernicious corrosive and
destructive chemical properties. Within a post-colonial mentality,
resistance to ‘colaization’ is an everyday mode of resistance to symbolic
colonisation (cf. Morris 2007:1392, on the similar colonial associations
of ‘Snickers’). This kind of ethnonationalist advertising exploits feelings
not merely of national superiority, but primarily of identity threat, a fear
of submission, perversion and even of national identity theft by not-too-
well-concealed ‘foreign agents’. At the same time, this negative
nationalism, similar to the neutral self-image presented in the Vorontsov
crunchies, makes use of a relaxed joking manner, as reflected in the
slogan ‘The kvas Nikola: being Russian for the fun of it’. Moreover, the
96 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

construction of the act of consuming the consumption of ‘natural’ kvas as


a fight against the threat of ‘colaization’ resembles a part of the plot of
the widely read novel ‘Generation P’ by Viktor Pelevin, an important
Russian postmodernist fiction author. This resemblance fits well into the
recently popular attributing of the new manifestations of the Russian
conservative turn to postmodernist fiction of writers like Pelevin and
Sorokin, whose novels have long enjoyed wide popularity among the
Russian reading public. Here again, as in its imperial variety, the use of
national identity symbols in advertising not only accurately reflects the
political spirit of the time, but also cements it in everyday life – a sphere
usually little touched by political propaganda.

Advertising in Belarus: The Struggle for Banality


Advertisers who would appeal to national identity in Belarus face a
problem inapplicable to Russia, let alone to states already finished with
nation-building: the lack of socially shared and easily recognisable
symbols of national identity. As a very reluctant latecomer to nation-
building processes in Europe, post-Soviet Belarus found itself in a
situation where the imagery of the Belarusian Soviet republic had little
appeal to potential consumers of new commercial goods, while the
imagery of earlier historical periods appeared in the popular perceptions
as neither familiar nor wholly Belarusian. Hardly any businesses dared to
repeat the mistake of the nationalist politicians, who relied in their
propaganda on the alleged attraction of the romanticised imagery of the
medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania – the state that figured in the
Soviet history textbooks as Lithuanian-dominated, not Belarusian
(Fabrykant & Buhr 2016). The strange unfamiliar symbols themselves
required popularisation in the first place and therefore could hardly serve
as an efficient tool for popularising anything else. Unlike contemporary
Russian national identity, which exists in several distinct and complete
versions, Belarusian national identity currently represents a single field
of meanings rife with inconsistencies and lacunae.
The gradual transformations of the popular image of Belarusian
national identity due to economic modernisation vividly present
themselves in the cases of cafes positioning themselves as serving
Belarusian national cuisine. Unlike portable goods, cafés are by
definition tied to a specific location. It means that a café relying on
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 97

national identity symbols represents a certain relation between the


national and the local, between the abstract national idea and its
embodiment in the everyday life of a city. In the Belarusian capital,
Minsk, the café Grunewald uses national identity symbols which lack
any references to the city, despite its central location on a street once
considered for pedestrianisation to give promenading citizens an
opportunity to appreciate the historical architecture in a mundane and
relaxed manner. The café makes no use of this historical location, one of
the very few in Minsk where pre-Soviet buildings were preserved.
Instead, its name refers to a major military victory, widely popularised
by the early post-Soviet Belarusian nationalists that took place far from
Minsk and even outside the territory of contemporary Belarus.
The Grunewald café owes its name to one of the most glorious events in
the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – the battle at Grunewald
in 1410 that ended in a momentous victory over the long-term and
dangerous enemy – the crusaders of the Teutonic order. The interior of
the café, however, mostly features materials borrowed from a
much later period – the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – and
especially from the Sarmaticism – a protonationalist ideology of the
Polish, but not Belarusian or Lithuanian, nobility of the period.
The incongruity in time and place is even more strikingly expressed in
the most picturesque decorations – the figures of the knights that,
instead of celebrating the victorious heroic ancestors, commemorate
the defeated enemy. The obvious reason is that, unlike the warriors of
the allegedly Belarusian Grand Duchy, the crusaders are easily
visualised and recognised, largely due to the popularity of Western
European medieval history and its portrayal in multiple movies. The
mostly contemporary European cuisine does not allow the visitors to
actually taste national history. Instead of recreating an atmosphere of
everyday life at some period of Belarusian history, the café offers a
motley set of recognisably historical and elaborately decorated items.
The significance of this case is that it shows how the commercial
product’s positioning via reference to national history can project the
construct not of national identity, but of historicity as such. Its
attraction lies in the exotic and remote romanticised past – in fact,
exactly the opposite of everyday life. In the Belarusian context, this
case illustrates one of the key problems of early post-Soviet Belarusian
nationalism – its failure to create meaningful links between the past
98 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

and the present. Thus, the commercial use of national identity symbols
may only seem to integrate the national identity into everyday life.
Consumption of national identity may, on the contrary, become a
consumption of escapism, driving all things national from everyday
life. This single case demonstrates the multiple disruptions between
the national and the local, between the national and the historical,
between the national and the everyday and, ultimately, between the
national and the nationals, Belarusian identity and Belarusians
themselves.
Another example of the contradiction inherent in Belarusian identity
is another Minsk café called the ‘Old Town’. Unlike the Grunewald café,
it makes use of the location at a historical spot in Minsk. Both its name
and its exterior, reminiscent of late medieval towns, suggest an attempt
at the commercialisation of the national urban culture, particularly after
the early post-Soviet Belarusian nationalist historians tried to create an
image of the medieval Minsk as a highly developed European town with
lively trade and efficient self-government. The latter was especially
important, because for several centuries Minsk, along with a number of
other now-Belarusian and Western European towns, enjoyed the
Magdeburg right to self-government, which did not exist in Russia – a
fact framed in the nationalist discourse as a proof of supposed European
superiority of Belarus over Russia. Strangely, however, the café does not
build on this rich material. Instead, it offers typical peasant cuisine
described in a countrified folksy manner, with proverbs and
colloquialisms reminiscent of the representations of ‘typical Belarusians’
in Soviet Belarusian fiction. This folksy manner may be partly due to the
initially selected target audience. Unlike the Grunewald café, the Old
Town first positioned itself as an affordable place of leisure for young
people. The inconsistency between the urban exterior and the countrified
interior reflects a much debated controversy within Belarusian
nationalist identity – the lack of a recognisable national urban culture.
Rural culture, based on contemporary adaptations of folklore, looks
genuinely Belarusian, but is not as prestigious, while the urban high
culture cannot be easily traced to any past tradition. Here again, as in the
previous case, nationalist historians’ inattention to the everyday life
dimension of the past hinders the integration of national identity into
present everyday life. On the other hand, the customers are not expected
to directly identify themselves with the bucolic Belarusian peasants.
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 99

The folksy atmosphere hidden behind the old town exterior invites its
customers to relax and ironically look down at the past generations of
Belarusians – a more attractive option for the young people than
looking up to the medieval heroes of the Grunewald battle. This case
resembles the Russian case of the Nikola kvas, since both show how the
gap between the outdated national self-image and the contemporary
lifestyle of the target audience can be commercialised not by creating
links, but, on the contrary, by emphasising the contradiction ironically.
These two cases highlight vexed issues in contemporary Belarusian
national identity, which mostly originated in the early years of
independence when not only the specific traits, but even the very
existence of Belarusian national identity was a subject of doubt. Over the
last few years, however, researchers started to speak of a habitualised
Belarusian identity, especially among the generation born in
independent Belarus. These processes are difficult to trace because of
unclear operationalisation and one of their most vivid manifestations, at
least in the Belarusian case, is the emergence of new commercial
products and new kinds of advertising.
One such example, building on the two previous cases of cafés, is a
pub opened in 2016 under the name ‘1067’. The minimalist design
and the standard international menu do not overtly suggest any reference
to national identity. It is only cognoscenti who would recognise 1067 as
the year when Minsk was first mentioned in written historical sources.
Unlike the Old Town and the Grunewald cafes, this pub does not
attempt to recreate as many symbols of the national past as possible,
but relies on a single reference to the city’s long history. Even more
importantly, it does not adopt a picturesque touristy version of
‘the national flavour’, but relies on a single symbol to commercialise
national and local patriotism. Thus, the new Belarusian national identity
enters everyday life not by recreating the atmosphere of the past, but by
making mere knowledge about the past sufficient and mundane.
Another and earlier example of the modernisation impact on
Belarusian national identity refers to the symbol that so far has proved
the most problematic to integrate into everyday life. This symbol is the
Belarusian language. Since most Belarusians can at best understand
Belarusian, but not speak it fluently and use in their everyday life either
Russian or Trasianka (a mixture of Russian and Belarusian analogous to
the better-known Ukrainian Surzhik), the use of the Belarusian language,
100 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

far from being a usual practice, transfers symbolic meaning


(Brown 2005). This meaning can best be defined not as Belarusianness,
but as Belarusian-mindedness. Mastering a language requires a heavy
investment of time and effort and in a mostly Russian-speaking
environment that offers few incentives for learning Belarusian, signifies
a high level of national commitment. It also highlights a person who
possesses sufficient leisure and can afford to occupy themselves with not
only externally rewarded activities on a regular basis. An attempt to use
this symbolic meaning of the Belarusian language in advertising
was made in the mid-2000s not by a Belarusian company, but by a
transnational corporation, namely Samsung. Neither the text nor the
visual content of the advertisements contained anything specifically
Belarusian, but the use of the Belarusian language alone was sufficient
to attract attention and even cause some discussion in the media.
According to the company representative, the purpose of using the
Belarusian language was to reach the target audience of young educated
professionals. Thus, the elitism of the early post-Soviet Belarusian
nationalists, while costing them popular support, created a new meaning
of the Belarusian language as a symbol of the creative elite instrumental
in popularising a commercial product among those who see or want to
see themselves as belonging to this category.
A more habitual use of national identity symbols in Belarusian
commercial advertising, using a relatively wide range of recognisable
representations of Belarusianness, started after a massive state-sponsored
campaign promoting a positive national self-image. The streets of
Belarusian towns were filled with billboards showing Belarusians
of various ages and occupations, with an intertwined pattern of the
Belarusian state flag and the slogans ‘For Belarus’ or ‘We love Belarus’.
Interestingly enough, this campaign was preceded by several years with
another state-initiated attempt to appeal to national identity – that
time, urging the target audience to buy Belarusian products. The
stickers with a simple directive slogan ‘Buy Belarusian’ and the
Belarusian banner as their only adornments soon became a habitual part
of the shopping routine. The later non-commercial campaign was
surprisingly more varied and picturesque, although the offer of a positive
self-image would likely face much lower competition than an appeal to
refrain from buying foreign products. This variety helped to solidify
the range of national identity symbols. An additional impetus to this
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 101

process was given in 2014, when Belarus hosted the world hockey
championship and the demand for souvenirs increased dramatically,
resulting in a much more varied and imaginative offer. The need to
present the country to tourists from abroad helped to better define the
representations of national identity recognised by Belarusians
themselves. These examples show another interesting feature of
advertising using national identity symbols – its relation to nation-
branding. Allegedly, nation-branding should create universal national
imagery, which various businesses can then adapt to their specific
products and advertising strategies. In a modernising state like Belarus,
however, economic modernisation may well precede and even create the
demand for national identity. The oft-mentioned idea that Belarusians
need less advertising of the Belarusian language and more advertising
in the Belarusian language demonstrates how commercialisation of
national identity symbols can be regarded not as self-serving and
potentially degrading exploitation of the national sentiment, but as a
kind of social responsibility.
The recent years saw the appearance of products where the use
of national identity in advertising constitutes an integral part of
the product itself. One such example is the souvenir tea box ‘Belarus in
History’. The four sides of the box, corresponding to various periods in
Belarusian history, are densely covered with pictures representing great
personages, cultural artefacts and the characteristic visual background of
each epoch. The transposition to such a mundane product as tea serves
well to legitimise Belarusian national identity as stable and completed,
with its established set of socially approved symbols. The painful issues
of Belarusian nation-building, the search for identity, dealing with
contested or morally ambiguous characters from national history, the
gap between the past and the present – all these issues evaporate.
The selected symbols assume the status of banality by means of their link
to something as firmly entrenched in everyday routines as tea. Another
such example is the clothes brand ‘Honar’. The name translates from
Belarusian as ‘honour’ or ‘pride’ and the clothes themselves incorporate
stylisation of the national embroidery not into fancy folk costumes for
celebrating folk holidays, but into modern shirts and dresses to be worn
in the office or at a party. Curiously enough, despite the well-known
symbolic meaning of clothes adorned with the national embroidery,
‘vyshyvanka’, in neighbouring Ukraine, the ‘Honar’ clothes are presented
102 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

and, judging from the demand, perceived as apolitical. It may be due to


the neutral stance taken by the Belarusian government towards the
military conflict between Russia and Ukraine and probably even more so
to the national embroidery on the Belarusian state flag. These examples
show that, simply by reacting to consumers’ increased interest in their
national identity, businesses can transform the national identity symbols
from unusual into mundane.

Conclusion
The present study, unlike most research on the uses of national
identity in marketing, focuses not on their anticipated and actual
effects, but on their relatively little-known prerequisites. The review of
materials combining field observation data and knowledge of the
business environment reveals the background of national identity-
themed advertising in Russia and Belarus.
The results show that in both the ex-core and ex-periphery of the
former empire businesses implicitly rely on the state-transmitted version
of nationality as a primary source of information about popular attitudes.
By drawing upon a number of cases from the early 1990s to the
present, the study reveals that businesses increasingly rely on official
representations of national identity when governments become not more
but less friendly to the private sector. In the case of Russia, the use of
national identity symbols in advertising becomes more varied
(from ethnic to imperial nationalism) and more intense (in certain
cases, up to blatant xenophobia) in the years of increased reassessment of
the earlier free market reforms and tightening state control in various
spheres including the country’s economy. In Belarus, businesses become
more enthusiastic about the use of national identity symbols in
advertising not only when the national identity issue is freed from the
associations with nationalist, but also at least declaratively pro-market
oriented, opposition and is approved by the government, with its
complicated relations with the private sector.
This dynamic is due to business owners’ view of themselves as a
struggling elite minority who in contrast to the government are
following the well-established tastes of the post-Soviet masses. As a
result, vivid images used in advertisements translate the abstract
language of nationalist propaganda into specific role models and patterns
REPRODUCTION OF EVERYDAY NATIONHOOD 103

of everyday nationhood. Thus, the practices of consumption of


advertisements and products themselves play a crucial role in creating
a post-Soviet version of banal nationalism. In bringing national identity
symbols into everyday life via their association with products of everyday
use, businesses arguably possess a power of persuasion by far superior to
the impact of open nationalist indoctrination.

Note
1. This work is an output of a research project implemented as a part of the Basic
Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of
Economics (HSE).
CHAPTER 5

MONEY CAN'T BUY IT?


EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN
POST-SOVIET RUSSIA

Elizaveta Gaufman

Introduction
With foreign policy being an integral part of national identity, it is vital
to study the everyday consumption of foreign policy, that is, how foreign
policy aspects of national identity are interpreted at a grassroots level.
Given that foreign policy emanates from the state, it requires less effort
to support than oppose, making it arguably a more inclusive form of
civic nationalism (Halikiopoulou, Mock et al. 2013; Reeskens and
Wright 2013). This chapter argues that foreign policy interpretation in
society is a manifestation of an (individual) psychological desire for
a positive self-identity (Giddens 1986) akin to ‘banal nationalism’.
Moreover, unlike the growing studies of everyday nationalism, there are
few investigations of ‘everyday foreign policy’ or the everyday of
geopolitics (Morris 2016) and this chapter fills an empirical lacuna of
bottom-up study of Russian foreign policy analysis, traditionally
focused as it is on Russian government (Mankoff 2009; McFaul 2012;
Tsygankov 2016).
Even though nationalism is supposed to be a mass phenomenon, the
study of the masses has been notoriously absent from scholarship and
the ‘nation’ in question was usually taken for granted (Whitmeyer 2002;
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 105

Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008). It is, however, important to study the way
nation is enacted, renegotiated and even subverted by the population
(Herzfeld 2014). Because even though nationalism is constructed top-
down, it cannot be properly understood unless it is also analysed bottom-
up (Hobsbawm and Ranger 2012; Isaacs and Polese 2016; Seliverstova
2016). It is therefore crucial to study how nationhood is discussed, framed,
symbolised and enacted (cf. Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008).
The literature on everyday nationalism is new and bourgeoning, but
already offers numerous perspectives that go beyond the top-down
approach to the study of nationalism and identify grassroots perspectives
on nationalism, identity and everyday practices. Most authors who deal
with the topic of the everyday expression of nationhood draw on Billig’s
notion of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995) and explore this concept from
an anthropological/sociological perspective, meticulously tracing the
ways in which nationalism can be produced and consumed on a popular
level – perhaps even, ‘prosumed’. Prosumption is a phenomenon
involving both production and consumption and a locus of social
change, often relating to new media practices and having particular
resonance in former communist societies (Sokolova 2012). Nationalism
and its everyday manifestations and prosumption do not exist in a
vacuum; they have significant implications for the political lives of
citizens, especially their attitudes towards Others (Morozov 2009).
As Prizel notes, ‘[an] emotional, albeit irrational sense of nation and
national identity . . . is an extremely important if not driving force
behind the formation of [. . .] foreign policy’ (Prizel 1998:14). In other
words, an increase in nationalist sentiment correlates with an intensified
grassroots foreign policy discourse.
Russia has pursued a ‘foreign policy for domestic consumption’
approach (Tsygankov 2016), with foreign policy being an integral part
of the nation-building process, as well as legitimation effort (Hutcheson
and Petersson 2016). In Russia this tactic showed its disastrous effects on
the eve of the first revolution in 1905 when Russian Minister of the
Interior Pleve suggested ‘a little victorious war’ with Japan in order to
distract the population from domestic problems. By projecting ‘great
power national identity’ in the form of assertive foreign policy it
was thought possible to strengthen internal societal cohesion – a
phenomenon that is most commonly known as ‘rally around the flag’ and
is not exclusive to Russia (Oneal and Bryan 1995; DeRouen 2000;
106 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Baum 2002). Recent developments in Russia show that nationalist


tendencies are not restricted to xenophobia in everyday practices, but
have a very prominent foreign political dimension (Kolstø and
Blakkisrud 2016) observed in opinions on state borders, wars and
alliances. This was particularly visible in the aftermath of the Ukraine
crisis after 2014, when an incredible explosion of political consumerism
was registered, which was primarily foreign policy-motivated
(Gurova 2016).

Why Prosume Foreign Policy?


Isaacs and Polese (2016) note that the psychological aspect
of nationalism is significant, because one needs to create a bond of
attachment to an abstract idea. Thus, it is important to look behind the
nationhood manifestations and explore the psychological underpinnings
of nationalism. Or as Edensor (2002) puts it, there is a ‘fundamental
emotional subjectivity which grounds identity in shared, unreflexive
feelings’ that needs to be explored from a political psychology point of
view. While Jennifer Mitzen (2006) and other proponents of the concept
of ontological security1 (Kinnvall 2004; Rumelili 2015; Subotić 2015)
advocate a move from an individual to a state level, this chapter proposes
applying the ontological security concept to the level it originated in –
individuals. Striving for ontological security and identifying ‘friends’
and ‘enemies’, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been
a driving force in post-Soviet society (Gudkov 2005; Amirov 2015).
Moreover, it is easier to converge on a positive self-identity, than a
negative one. Consequently, it is much easier psychologically to revert
back to Soviet-era perceptions of great power identity associated with
successful foreign policy.
Positive national identity in Russia is inextricably linked to assertive
foreign policy, such as openly defying the US, pushing against NATO in
Eastern Europe and Central Asia or expanding the ‘sphere of influence’
(Laruelle and Gabowitsch 2008; Laruelle 2014; Tsygankov 2016).
Moreover, foreign policy practices and discourse in Russia are a product
that the population is supposed to consume (Trenin 2015) – hence the
‘consuming foreign policy’ in the title of this chapter. But how to study
the everyday consumption of great power identity in foreign policy? In
this case, the literature on everyday nationalism provides a very useful
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 107

framework for analysis. Fox and Miller-Idriss suggest studying everyday


nationhood in four ways:

(1) discursive constitution of the nation;


(2) types of frames people choose to assert nationhood;
(3) invocation of national symbols; and
(4) national distinction in mundane tasks and preferences (Fox and
Miller-Idriss 2008). For the purposes of this chapter, I take the
categorisations and apply them to the analysis of foreign policy
consumption. In order to analyse foreign policy from a bottom-up
perspective, one needs to resort to the discursive arena where the
elite-led ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 2012) is
mediated and renegotiated almost in real time – in social networks.

As such, Russian social networks despite the attempts of Kremlin paid


trolls2 (Gunitsky 2015), operate much like a rhizome (Deleuze and
Guattari 1980) with its principles of heterogeneity, multiplicity and a
signifying rupture. Social networks in this regard function as ‘always in
the middle, between things, inter-being, intermezzo’ (Deleuze and
Guattari 1988), mediating governmental discourse, offline consumer
practices, traditional media discourse and opinions of ordinary Russian
citizens (Morris 2013). A number of scholars have debated the
differences between the notions of agency and subjectivity (Allen 2002;
Morrissey 2003), but this chapter leans towards a Foucauldian
understanding of subjectivity, not least because it operates under the
assumption that ‘power is everywhere’ and specifically looks at the level
of analysis – everyday negotiations of geopolitics normally neglected by
political scientists.
In the following section I apply the Fox and Miller-Idriss framework
to the study of everyday geopolitical consumption by using data from
Russian language social networks. With the help of Levada public
opinion polls and recent scholarship on Russian media, I identify
nodal discourses related to foreign policy in its grassroots perception
(anti-Americanism, ‘Gayropa’, Ukraine, sanctions). The material for this
chapter was collected from the most commonly used Russian language
social networks: LiveJournal (LJ), Vkontakte (VK) and Twitter. The three
social networks were scraped for key words regarding each aspect of the
everyday foreign policy consumption 2014– 16. Firstly, I analyse the
108 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

main discursive constitution of foreign policy at grass-root level. What


do Russians actually talk about when they discuss foreign policy?
Secondly, the most common frames that used by the population in order
to assert certain dimensions of foreign policy will be demonstrated.
Thirdly, I highlight specific symbols used by the population in their
foreign policy performance. Finally, the chapter will show how foreign
policy perception affects the culinary choices made by Russians – one of
the mundane tasks that shows how pervasive the discourse of national
identity can be.

Speaking Geopolitics
Despite the reset policy3 and the obvious decline of unilateralism in
America’s foreign policy, the US continues to dominate Russia’s foreign
policy discourse. According to Levada polls, 82 per cent of respondents
expressed negative attitudes towards the US. As Morozov (2009) notes,
there is a complicated relationship between Russia and the West that
oscillates between attraction and repulsion, where an inferiority complex
and the feeling of spiritual superiority play major roles. In any case, if
there is one feature that can define Russian foreign policy it is its
obsession with the portrayal of an enemy, which in Russia’s case is the
US, on both a state and a grassroots level. Most sociological studies point
to the rising perception of the West and the US as threatening
(Dubin 2011; Levada 2012, 2014). As Dubin (2003) notes, ‘the West’ is
a kind of empty signifier with a negative overtone that is mostly used for
internal purposes in Russia. Given that collective memory is the basis for
‘invented traditions’ (Isaacs and Polese 2016) and memory itself is an
integral part of national identity (Mälksoo 2009), it is not surprising
that collective memory serves as a basis for foreign policy legitimation
(Gaufman 2017).
The US and the West provide probably the most extensive collection
of collective memory references. Remnants of Cold War propaganda
tropes in everyday political discourse are remarkably ubiquitous
(Meduza 2015; Morris 2016). By searching key words related to the US,
one can quickly identify a whole slew of anti-American, anti-gay and
anti-liberal communities that use visual aids to get their message across.
Notably, most of the anti-American groups have large ‘albums’ hosting
collections of photographs of Russian weaponry (mostly missiles and
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 109

other phallic shaped military production). In a sense, it is another self-


construction as a powerful virile identity that can battle the enemy,
represented as an heir to fascism and which employs the same Soviet-era
narratives of aggressive American foreign policy and Whataboutist4
rhetoric (Economist 2008), i.e., counter-critiquing the US whenever
there is a critique of Russia.
Discussions involving the US and the West peaked during the
protest movement after the Russian parliamentary elections of 2011–12
and then again following the escalation of the situation in Ukraine
beginning 2014. The broader media context is also at play: if
mainstream mass media outlets, particularly television, are imbued with
anti-American critiques, social media users tend to spill over into radical
anti-Americanism.
The wave of demonstrations against electoral fraud led Russian
officials to declare that the protests were initiated and paid for by the US
State Department, with former US ambassador to Russia Michael
McFaul ‘giving instructions’ to Russian ‘aggressive liberals’, claiming
that the US is on a quest to destabilise Russia and ‘bring it to its knees’.
The electoral fraud created quite a divide on social networks, which was
itself a tool that helped mobilise protesters. A popular internet meme –
the State Department’s cookies (‘pechen’ki GosDepa’) – appeared after
a NTV 2012 documentary ‘Anatomy of Protest’, that argued the ‘white
ribbon’ opposition leaders and participants of the protest in general
were paid for by the State Department together with the Georgian
government (NTV 2012). This is a repetition of a narrative that genuine
protest is impossible in Russia, unless it is sponsored by the US in an
attempt to destabilise Russia. Social networks could thus be seen as a
resonator for moderate discourse: fuelled by mainstream less radical
discourse, social media users feel free to reproduce a more extreme
version that is still in line with the pro-government stance.
The monitoring of Twitter yields anti-American rhetoric at almost
any point in time, but anti-Americanism spikes are usually visible
around major geopolitical upheavals and substantial protest
demonstrations in Russia. Social networks actually reveal a plethora
of anti-Americanisms and they vary from audience to audience, e.g., in
VK the most popular groups with American themes are about America
as a travel destination, work and travel, green card, American clothes;
but further down the popularity ladder are the nationalist and radical
110 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

anti-American groups that may profess their anti-Western attitudes,


but focus chiefly on the US. VK features many popular groups such as
‘We are against the US regime’,5 ‘Group for those who hate the US,
the European Union and NATO, who are against terrorist UN
resolutions!’6 – again emphasising the geopolitical component in the
threat discourse. There is also a range of groups plainly insulting the
US such as ‘America is shit’,7 and other more derogatory terms, but
usually those groups tend to emphasise American unilateralism in
foreign policy. The Ukrainian crisis added another dimension to
the anti-Americanism adding the ‘anti-Maidan’ addition to the group
names: ‘Fuck the US – no to US foreign policy/Anti-Maidan’,8
re-articulating the belief that the protest movement is paid for and
organized by ‘GosDep’.
LJ reveals about 2,700,000 queries to a search term ‘America’ and, as
in VK, it has a lot of posts about life in the US, while at the same time
there are posts about America preparing for World War III, about its
‘Russophobe projects’, it’s support for terrorism and its internal ‘decay’
(‘zagnivaushiy’ – a very common metaphor during the Soviet era
regarding the West). LJ dynamics are different from Twitter due to the
platform’s blog specificity. Given that popular posts can be listed as
the day’s ‘top blog post’ and therefore gain far greater visibility, this is
the arena where the ‘Kremlin trolls’9 manage to exercise a lot of influence
by driving certain blog posts to the top.
The ‘battle for hearts and minds’ usually rages in commentaries on
the popular entries that include polarising points of view. Nevertheless,
it is possible to observe a certain dynamic in the audiences of particular
blogs: in oppositional blogs like lj avmalgin, lj dolboeb or lj drugoi
the keywords of the American-themed posts do not necessarily include
enemy image constructs on a large scale. At the same time, more
Kremlin-oriented blogs yield a more hostile environment; including
more swearwords as well. More importantly, verbal discourse of the
government mouthpieces is transformed into visual acceptance by the
audience: Pervyi Kanal (the main state TV broadcaster) would talk about
connections between the US and fascists using visuals showing the same
connection. Simultaneously, blogs would reflect and refract the TV
discourses, creating a mutually reinforcing multiplatform discourse
(Morris 2013:183; Morris 2016:111).
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 111

Moreover, as Morozov (2015) notes, Russian identity as a subaltern


empire creates a need for the subaltern to speak. Even though social
networks might not necessarily be the epitome of subaltern voices as
they presuppose a number of features which ‘the real subaltern’ might
not have, such as access to the internet and electronic devices, social
networks still provide a public space for groups that self-identify as
ignored or unrepresented by politicians, thus constituting them as a
subaltern in relation to the government. People engaging in everyday
geopolitics on social networks perceive Russian ‘great power’ identity as
subaltern vis-a-vis the US that needs to be performed in order to counter
the perceived dominance of the US.

Framing Geopolitics
What are the tropes and specific frames that the population use in their
discussions? As noted earlier, the main goal of grassroots foreign policy
discussion is to create a positive image of national identity and for that
one needs to disparage or at least differentiate oneself from the
opponent (Coser 1956; Tajfel 1981). Fox and Miller-Idriss also note
that it is a masculine form of the nation that comes to the fore in
everyday practices, commemorations and, especially, in sports events
(Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008). It is extremely visible during football
matches between competing countries: during the UEFA Cup in 2012
both Russian and Polish football fans tried to remind their opponents
of historical events when Russians/Polish defeated each other,
projecting military confrontation onto the stadium (Gaufman and
Walasek 2014).
This preference for militarised masculinity is particularly evident
in the choice of frames used in grassroots geopolitical discourse.
Feminisation of the opponent also serves as a tool to underline
‘otherness’. Gilman notes that feminisation was a frequent tool for
othering Jews in European culture (Gilman 2013). Given the
overwhelming prevalence of heteronormativity in Western culture
(Bunzl 2000; Fradenburg and Freccero 2013) it is no wonder that
othering binaries were common, upholding male as a norm and female
as deviation, not to mention any other gender identities. Gilman goes
further to argue that even the notion of ‘diseased’ was also associated
with ‘female’ (Gilman 1999; Gilman 2013).
112 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Feminisation of Ukraine worked along the avenues of othering:


Ukraine was represented as a female in need of Russian help (‘damsel in
distress’), thus fulfilling the conditions of Russia’s ‘topping’ (Sperling
2014), that is, putting Russia in a higher hierarchal position and at the
same time othering Ukraine as non-male, i.e., an inferior geopolitical
actor. Moreover, as Guseinov (2015) notes, the 2014 mass media also
resorted to the Tsarist discourse that denies the existence of Ukrainian
identity, language or state, which is also a feminisation strategy that
implies the inferiority of Ukraine to Russia. This is widely reflected in
everyday geopolitical refractions (Morris 2016:123). This line of
argument is probably related to the phantom pains of Russia’s bygone
great power status or its current attempt to be a subaltern empire (cf.
Morozov 2015). Several examples from social networks can provide
examples of this kind of feminisation strategy.
Among the most popular bloggers who comment on the Ukrainian
crisis and clearly express their pro-Russian stance, is the ‘fitness blogger’
Elena Mironenko. She compares Ukraine with a loose woman, who sells
herself to the ‘Atlantic syndicate of thieves’ and ‘international
community of perverts’. Russia in this ‘essay’ is represented as her
older brother, who is tired of ‘the organization of a brothel’ in his
apartment. The interesting bit here is also the fact that the post-soviet
space seems to be described as an apartment that the brother owns – a
not-so-subtle reference to Russia’s dominant role among ex-Soviet
republics. The kind of narrative that equates Ukraine with a whore – a
degrading and subalternising feminisation of an opponent – is quite
common also on the colloquial level. Moreover, feminisation of Ukraine
can be found on other social networks (see Figure 5.1):
The screenshot from VK’s ‘Anti-Maidan’ group (Figure 5.1) describes
the relationship between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine as three sisters
living in the same home, with Ukraine explicitly called a whore [a taboo
curse term at the upper-end of the spectrum of foul language] who
‘dragged a negro to our home’ (most likely, a reference to Barack
Obama). Moreover, Ukraine is called stupid for ‘rejecting the family’
and believing the ‘negro’s’ promises about the dolce vita in Europe.
Remarkably, the text acquired 3318 ‘likes’ and 571 shares in half a day.
This kind of discourse does not use an existential threat narrative or even
mention fascism, but it puts Ukraine in the subordinate position and
rather serves for self-inflation of Russia’s image.
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 113

Figure 5.1 Source: Vk.com, ‘AntiMaidan public page’ Translation: We are


like three sisters in one flat. Russia – the eldest, Belarus – the youngest, smart
and hard-working; and Ukraine – pretty, but a total whore, every three years
– divorce, maidan, a new dude . . . We have been putting up with this – she is
family after all, but she suddenly dragged a negro to our house, says they are in
love, he promised a beautiful life in Europe – glamour. In the meantime, we
have to register him in our apartment and sign off part of it to him. Of course,
we understand that he is a crook and he tries to swindle us out of our
apartment, we are trying to stop her, but she is a stupid fool, disowned her
family, thinks we are her enemies, thinks we are jealous of her happiness with
the negro. Now we are thinking whether she is a whore, or just an idiot . . .

A number of ‘epithets’ about the supporters of Euromaidan are related


to the modification of the word ‘Maidan’, ‘maydanutye’, ‘maydauny’ – a
conflation of Maidan and Down’s syndrome, yet again a feminisation
through a reference to disease. Another insult included a modification of
the word ‘svidomye’ (former Soviet nickname of Ukrainian Nationalists),
which in blogs often turns into ‘svidomity’ to create an association with
‘sodomites’. A similar technique is used, for example, in the Russian
conservative circles in the use of the words ‘tolerasty’ or ‘liberast’
(a conflation of tolerance with the word ‘pederast’). Such linguistic
constructions are linked through word-formation and refer the reader
not only to the sexual abnormality and lack of masculinity of the
pro-Ukrainian ideologues, but the inherent deviance of the Ukrainian
ideology. Strikingly many of these creations are clearly the result of
114 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

grassroots social media refraction of more staid official discourse,


indicting the everyday ‘prosumption’ of geopolitics.
Euromaidan in general for many pro-Russian commentators is
synonymous with not only fascism, but also other Western ‘evils’. It is
not surprising that social networks abound with references to ‘Gayropa’
– according to the definition by Ryabova and Ryabov (2013), this term
was adopted for the ‘designation of European gender deviance and
Europe as a whole and even to refer to European values and European
democracy’. Although the term ‘Gayropa’ is typical for discussions on
social networks, that is, in a less formal setting, its appearance in
the official media, is alarming. This indicates the feedback effect from
everyday geopolitical framing into the more traditional sense of the
public discourse domain.
‘Gayropa’ is only one term used to refer to gender roles in the world of
politics. Ukraine is thus represented by Russian commentators in
the form of a woman (as a variant of female prostitutes) or a homosexual
man, but, in any case, not in the form of a ‘real’ man. Thus,
commentators construct the submission of Ukraine to the West/EU/US
through sexual acts and subsequent emasculation of Ukraine itself.
As Ryabova notes,

negative assessment of Europe helps to achieve a positive self-


identity. Keeping in mind that emasculation of Others constitutes
re-masculinization of Russia, i.e. following identity politics
characteristic of Russian society of the 2000s. This policy has
two dimensions: the creation of attractive models of national
masculinity and image of Russia endowed with masculine
connotations (strength, independence, rationality and others).
(2011)

The narrative of European deviancy, often connected to homosexuality


(a very common Other image – cf. Riabov, Riabova 2011) is not unique
to the events in Ukraine. In fact, the roots of ‘European deviance’ in
Russian discourse could be even traced back to the discourse of ‘vile
Latin influence’ in the Middle Ages, through to the Westernisers/
Slavophile debates in the nineteenth century. On social networks even
before Euromaidan, there were many posters expressing the everyday
refraction of state policy in the sphere of deviant sexuality: the synonymy
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 115

of homosexuality and drug abuse or homosexuality and paedophilia.


Moreover, homosexuality is also put in a Huntington-esque ‘clash of
civilisations’ context, with Russia being ‘on the right side of history’.
The Eurovision Song Contest of 2014 added to this tendency; Conchita
Wurst was supposed to symbolise the downfall of European civilisation
with its ‘extreme tolerance’.
Thus, most tropes and frames employed by Russian social
network users in geopolitical discussions revolve around heteronormal
perceptions of femininity and masculinity. Feminising the opponent,
whether Ukraine or the EU, was supposed to make them different
and, by extension, inferior to Russia. At the same time, foreign policy
was implicitly (and often explicitly) likened to a sexual act, where
only an active, i.e., male or ‘topping’ (Sperling 2014) position was
appropriate.

Symbolising Geopolitics
Nationhood is reproduced in everyday life by ordinary practitioners, that
is, citizens (Edensor 2002; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008). This is
reminiscent of the Paris School of thought in International Relations
(Bigo 2002; Bigo 2002; McDonald 2008; Leese 2015). This postulates
that security is enacted on an everyday basis by professionals working in
the field. This is also the case for the kind of everyday geopolitics that
was particularly visible in the symbolism around the Ukraine crisis.
A reference one’s loyalty to ‘our’ side in the conflict around Ukraine was
primarily manifested by the St George’s black and orange ribbon.
Although the ribbon became a symbol for pro-Russian support during
the Ukrainian crisis, its use was actually popularised in the mid-2000s
by the pro-government ‘Nashi’ youth movement. It was also extensively
and increasingly used in commemorations of World War II. This is
probably why several Russian oppositional figures are reluctant to accept
it as a symbol.
The ribbon itself was first introduced by Catherine the Great during
the Turkish-Russian war of 1768– 74 and was later used following
Russia’s victory against Napoleon during the Patriotic War of 1812.
Building on its symbolism for heroism and glory, the ribbon was later
used during the Soviet era on medals ‘For the Capture of Berlin’ and
greeting cards for Victory Day. This too, perhaps, was a deliberate
116 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

attempt by Soviet memory entrepreneurs to bind the ribbon with the


collective memory of the Great Patriotic War of 1941– 5 and Patriotic
War of 1812. During the events in (specifically) Eastern Ukraine, the
ribbon was monopolised by pro-Russian separatists in order to show
their commitment to the victory over fascism – a particularly successful
form of everyday geopolitical prosumption; consequently, it was
supposed to show that the political system after the defection of Viktor
Yanukovych to Russia is, in fact, the fascism against which South-east
Ukraine is fighting. Thus, a discursive string of logic was created:
a person who wears the ribbon is not only a supporter of pro-Russian
forces in Ukraine, but he/she is also against fascism and, consequently, in
opposition to the current government in Ukraine.
The use of the coloured ribbon as a key marker for pro-Russian
positions led to the invention of another meme: kolorady, a pejorative term
used to refer to supporters of the pro-Russian side referring to the colours
of the Colorado pest beetle. This designation, which was reportedly coined
by Russian oppositional LJ blogger Andrei Mal’gin, essentially serves to
dehumanise the Other and to construct the Other as an existential threat.
References to insects to dehumanise are very common in constructing
enemy images (Keen 1991). Beetles and other insects are of course
generally viewed with disgust in the European cultural space and, more
narrowly, in Russia. The Colorado beetle, of orange and black colouring, is
frequently used by pro-Ukrainian commentators to deride pro-Russian
separatists and those that support them.
The explosion of patriotic consumption of memes, discourses and
images and their prosuming refraction, took place in the aftermath of the
‘Crimea re-unification’. Apart from the re-interpretation of the term
‘vatnik’ [Soviet-era padded jacket] to represent unthinking loyalty
among Russians, President Putin’s likeness has become a veritable brand
that serves to project the alignment with the Kremlin’s foreign policy.
The domestic market featuring ‘patriotic collections’ sell T-shirts with
Putin. Most of the images have him in a military uniform, a typical
Russian fur hat or interacting with carnivorous animals. In other cases,
Putin is adorned with further stereotypically ‘male’ characteristics, such
as guns, sports cars, Terminator-style sunglasses, etc. not only affirming
his alpha-male status, but also styling him as a Western masculine
popular culture icon akin to James Bond. ‘Designer T-shirt’ stores
featuring the patriotic collection by Alexander Konasov boast 20 shops
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 117

in major Russian cities, including Moscow, Krasnodar, St Petersburg,


Vladivostok, Nizhniy Novgorod and others. Konasov offers T-shirts
with slogans such as ‘Krym nash’ [Crimea is ours], ‘svoikh ne brosaem’
[we don’t leave our own behind], ‘vezhlivost’ goroda beret’ [politeness
takes cities] and other references to the perceived Russian victory in the
Ukraine crisis.
The ironic part of these ‘patriotic collections’ was that most of them
relied on certain Western images and memes. Thus, even ‘patriotic’
consumption worked with creative re-appropriation strategies, using
‘Western’ icons and narratives, such as Terminator, Godfather or
Formula 1 cars. These ‘patriotic collections’ showed the inherent
presence of Western tropes combined with the image of President Putin.
This strand of symbolic geopolitics also confirms the argument proposed
by Hutcheson and Peterson (2016) Putin is the political lynchpin in the
Russian political system.
The initially derogatory term ‘vatnik’ (padded jacket) was created in
2011 in reference to Spongebob Squarepants in order to poke fun at
jingoist Russians. However, in the context of the Ukraine crisis this term
is used to identify Putin’s Ukraine policy supporters. As Lurkmore puts
it ‘Vatnik is a trope for Russian patriotic sheeple [bydlo]’ (Lurkmore
2016). Even though initially used by pro-Ukrainian commentators, it
was quickly reappropriated and is now re-interpreted in a positive way
by pro-Kremlin bloggers.
The popular Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin inspired fashion
designer Egor Zaitsev to launch a collection of ‘designer vatniks’ in
order to hijack the meme and re-appropriate it in a patriotic way
(Ovchinnikov 2015). Nevertheless, the term is still quite popular in its
negative incarnation on social networks: a VK search for vatnik yields
roughly a million hits, not including a derivative ‘vata’. An overview of
the hits demonstrates that the term is more likely to be used in a
negative sense, despite Prilepin’s best efforts. Moreover, a popular LJ
community that features examples of extreme Russian patriotism,
called ‘Potsreotism’ even features a George ribbon-coloured vatnik as
its avatar.10 Creative re-interpretation of the term vatnik was yet
another example of the geopolitical performance at grassroots level
that was related to psychological self-inflation. As it was impossible
to silence the vatnik-discourse it had to be re-interpreted in a
positive way.
118 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Thus, the symbolising of geopolitical discourses definitively occurs


via a civic nationalist avenue. The main markers of otherness in this case
are not related to ethnicity, but rather to the attitude towards World
War II (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War) as the main ritual
commemoration affirming national bonds (Spillman 1997; Gudkov
2005; Rutten, Fedor et al. 2013); support for Russian foreign policy in
Ukraine was manifested through an amalgamation of the Great Patriotic
War memory with discourses of the resurgence of Russian great-power
status pursued by President Putin.

Eating Geopolitics
What could be a more mundane and daily task than deciding what to
eat? Even as children people are exposed to geopolitical discourses via
food and foodways. We are encouraged to eat porridge in kindergarten
because ‘children in Africa are starving’; nations are disparaged
geopolitically through food associations: France’s refusal to support the
American invasion of Iraq led to the renaming of ‘French fries’ as
‘Freedom Fries’ in Congressional cafeterias and the French were called
‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’. Thus, food and geopolitics
frequently intersect. The condemning of foreign food in an attempt
to bolster certain political decisions is by no means a new strategy.
Russians are familiar with ‘surgical strikes’ of specific food sanctions
proposed by the former Chief Sanitary Inspector Gennady Onish-
chenko that were officially imposed for health reasons but almost
always came on the heels of political decisions taken by targeted
countries. These bans for ‘health reasons’ (e.g., of Georgian wines or
Ukrainian products) earned Onishchenko the title ‘Okhrenishchenko’
on social networks that could roughly be translated as a person
who [fucking] lost his mind. This time, however, food sanctions
were not disguised by charges of ‘low hygiene standards’ in the
countries of origin.
After EU sanctions against Russia in summer 2014 connected to the
shooting down of the Malaysian passenger flight over Eastern Ukraine,
the Russian government banned European agricultural produce from
Russian markets in an attempt to hurt the EU’s common market. TV
reports of crushed Polish apples, French frozen geese or Dutch cheese
(RBC 2015) were supposed to show the determination of the
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 119

government to clamp down on any circumvention of these measures.11 A


number of bloggers expressed their indignation at the fact that the
sanctioned produce was destroyed and not given away to the poor and
even launched a petition on change.org to stop the destruction of food
(RSN 2015). Destruction of food in oppositional bloggers’ minds was
also connected to the memory of the Great Patriotic War. Journalist
Slava Rabinovich, was outraged that President Putin, himself a native of
Leningrad, whose inhabitants survived a siege that led to mass starvation
between 1941– 3 in which Putin’s own older sibling died, would destroy
food (Obozrevatel 2015). Similar sentiments surfaced in the comments
sections to different news reports that described food incineration
(Novaya Gazeta 2015).
These TV reports were echoed by the pro-Kremlin movement’s
‘Khryushi’ [piggies] sticker campaign where activists in T-Shirts reading
‘Eat Russian’ descended on Moscow supermarkets and labelled
‘sanctioned’ produce with a sticker that featured an angry bear ripping
a conflation of American and EU flags apart. This campaign was widely
publicised on state television (Vesti.ru 2015) and print media
(Kommersant 2015). What an American flag had to do with Swiss
cheese – an unsanctioned product as Switzerland is not an EU member
– appears to have escaped activists’ minds.
Somehow, the idea of foreign cheese seemed to dominate the whole
sanction discourse. Whenever bloggers discussed sanctions, it was the
availability of foreign cheese that came up the most. Political scientist
Sergey Medvedev even connected the availability of ‘cheese culture’ and
political stability in a given state (Medvedev 2016), also reminding the
readers of Sorokin’s Oprichnik Day antiutopian novel, where all foreign
products were banned and the citizens could only choose from two types
of each type of produce, with only one variety of cheese being on offer.
After the introduction of food sanctions by Russia the following poem
appeared on VK12:

You could hear the groans


From the fifth column:
‘Where is mozzarella?’
‘Where is mascarpone?’
Stop whining,
Spiritless bourgeois!
120 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Chew Our Russian


Processed Cheese!

[Slyshatsya stony
Ot pyatoy kolonny:
‘Gde motsarella?’
‘Gde maskarpone?’
Khvatit skulit’,
Bezdukhovnyy burzhuy!
Syr nash rossiyskiy
Plavlenyy zhuy!]

In this (admittedly, tongue-in-cheek) poem one can detect very strong


references to Soviet motifs (Mayakovsky’s ‘Eat oranges, chew grouse,
Your last day comes, bourgeois!’) and the very term ‘fifth column’ refers
to the Soviet lexicon that described state traitors. Again, there is an
interesting epithet: ‘unspiritual’, in relation to the ‘fifth column’, which
shows the popularity of the narrative about the spiritually poor and
consumerist West and its ‘henchmen’ in comparison with Russia
Even though social network users really tried to get on board with the
food sanctions, craving for Western food still comes occasionally to the
fore. In VK there are a number of communities that offer Spanish ham or
French cheese. Levada reported 23 per cent of Russians thought they
were negatively affected by food sanctions, while 58 per cent continue to
support them (Levada 2016). Even though there is no reliable data on
actual food consumption choices, one can assume that due to the drastic
devaluation of the rouble many Russians simply cannot afford imported
food. For instance, a Dutch-style cheese produced in Russia would cost
about e6 a kilo, while its cousin from Switzerland would total e5 for 100
grams.

Conclusion
The phenomenon of patriotic prosumption is relatively new to Russia
compared with the US, where both the everyday unthinking or creative
incorporation of geopolitics into practices is well established: state
symbols such as flags are seen routinely displayed on residential houses,
clothing, food, etc. and a general level of ‘patriotic religiosity’ is quite
EVERYDAY GEOPOLITICS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 121

high (Marvin and Ingle 1999; Kemmelmeier and Winter 2008).


This chapter emphasised the need to study everyday nationalism; how
national identity is consumed and prosumed on a daily basis by the
population. This chapter showed that one of the most important aspects
of nationalism is the refraction of geopolitics in the everyday, especially
in a highly politicised society such as Russia. How do people enact
this on a daily basis? As Fox and Miller-Idriss identified (2008), it occurs
through a number of practices. The four dimensions discussed in this
chapter included speaking, framing, symbolising and eating geopolitics.
In the light of the Ukraine crisis, these aspects of everyday nationalism
were very visible on social networks and offline, as people still continue
to wear George’s ribbon (symbolising), to buy Russian cheese (eating), to
blame the US for the sanctions (speaking), while using feminisation
tropes (framing) in order to undermine the legitimacy of the state’s
enemies.
These practices constitute nationhood at a grassroots level, but they
are inextricably linked with the psychological needs of individuals to
assert their subjectivity. Patriotic (non)-consumption exploded in
Russia during and in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis. It could be
considered an indicator that a ‘feeling of belonging to a great nation’ –
the loss of which was mourned most following the breakup of the
Soviet Union – has been restored. At the same time, it also shows that
the need to perform geopolitics in the everyday in the quest for positive
self-identity and subjectivity has increased. By showing their
agreement with state’s foreign policy, Russian social network users
not only cater to their psychological need for a positive in-group
identity, they are also allocating themselves agency in the Russian
political system.

Notes
1. Ontological security refers to the need to experience oneself as a whole,
continuous person in time – as being rather than constantly changing – in
order to realise a sense of agency (Giddens, 1991; Laing, 1969:41 –2).
Ontological security seeking consists in the drive to minimise hard uncertainty
by imposing cognitive order on the environment (Mitzen 2006).
2. An internet troll is a person who deliberately tries to provoke people online by
posting inflammatory statements. A ‘Kremlin troll’ is a type of internet troll
who posts pro-Kremlin and anti-oppositional statements.
122 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

3. ‘Reset’ of Russian-American relations is attributed to the period after the


election of Barack Obama in the USA and Dmitry Medvedev in Russia and
supposed to mean a warming-up of the relations between the two countries that
including a new START treaty, joint anti-terrorism effort, etc.
4. Adapted from the phrase: ‘(But) what about . . .’ followed by a comparison to
hypocritical US or European politics. This can be directly traced to Soviet
rhetoric used to deflect attention domestically from criticism of the human
rights situation in the USSR. When an abuse in the USSR was mentioned, a
knee-jerk retort referring to a US shortcoming inevitably followed. This even
became part of ironic popular culture associated with the phrase: ‘But they [the
USA] lynch negroes, you know’.
5. “We are against USA’s politics” [My protiv politiki SShA] https://vk.com/
usabitch (Accessed 21 September 2016).
6. “We are against the politics of USA, NATO, EU and UN! Anti-USA” [My
protiv politic SShA, NATO, ES, OON! Anti-SShA] https://vk.com/againstthe-
west (Accessed 21 September 2016).
7. “America is Shit” [Amerika - Govno] https://vk.com/amerika.govno (Accessed
21 September 2016).
8. “FTU [Fuck the US] - No to USA’s Foreign Policy// Antimaidan [FTU -Net
vneshnei politiki SShA// Antimaidan] https://vk.com/f_t_u (Accessed 21
September 2016). These groups and public pages tend to have between 1,500 –
120,000 þ strong membership. Anti-Maidan groups with anti-American
rhetoric usually have roughly 50,000 –500,000 members.
9. ‘Kremlin trolls’ or ‘Kremlin bots’ is the term for the social network users
working for organisations that are supposed to promote a particular type of
discourse on social media, often referred to as ‘50 ruble commentary’.
10. http://potsreotizm.livejournal.com/ (Accessed 21 September 2016).
11. A popular Russian saying argues that ‘Strictness of Russian law is compensated
by the lack of necessity to observe it’.
12. VKontakte Page «Kak ya Vstretil Stolbnyak» https://vk.com/wall-
35294456_1555504?reply¼1556320 (Accessed 11 August 2014).
CHAPTER 6

TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF
IDENTIFICATION:MUSIC
PRACTICES AS EXAMPLES OF THE
NATIONAL IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Petra Št’astná

Introduction
Turbofolk (TF) is a contemporary music style found under different
names throughout the Balkans and in other countries around the world
where migrants from the Balkan1 area live. It is a mixture of
contemporary popular and (traditional) folk music, often with an
electronic component. Variants can be observed globally as a part of the
pop-folk music category. TF is an example of global hybridisation of a
once-traditional music style through contact with Western music styles
(pop music, disco, hip-hop, RnB, etc.) based on the incorporation of
new, foreign elements into one’s own (national, regional, local) tradition
of popular culture (music). Pop-folk is just one variation of this tendency
(others are, for example, folktronica or rock-folk).
Serbian scholar Ivana Kronja points out the specific role of media in
the post-socialist bloc countries including the former Yugoslavia.
Together with political and economic transformations, these countries
have also experienced a ‘media’ transformation: a direct mass-media
post-modern society transformation, where all the important social
relations are ‘mediated through media’ (Kronja 2008:97). This leads to
124 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

various imitations and glocalisations, evidenced by such developments


as TV Balkanika (known as the ‘Balkan MTV’), national versions of
reality shows and soap operas (Kronja 2008:100). Rory Archer states
that hybrid music styles (chalga, cro-drance, musică orientală, arabesk) in
the region cause ‘moral panic’. ‘Moral panic’ appears as a consequential
effect which threatens the ‘national self’ (2009:27). Archer adds that
‘central to these regional moral panics is the notion that sources from
the East remain of lower value than those regarded as national of from
the West and more securely ‘other’ (and implicitly better) locales’ (ibid).
Turbofolk is a very well-known and extensive form of audiovisual
expression. It is widely present in ex-Yugoslav societies. In the Balkan
countries and within the diaspora people feel either strongly in favour of
it or the direct opposite. With regards to the diaspora, TF comprises the
majority of public music consumption2 from the countries of origin.
Simply put, listening to TF is so common in diaspora that it can be
considered an everyday life practice. With this in mind, I conducted field
research in Austria in 2014 to discover what kind of identification TF
music brings to its consumers.
Identity formation is a dynamic process reacting to changes
happening in the society. In this book and elsewhere (Isaacs and Polese
2015, 2016; Pawłusz and Seliverstova 2016; Horak and Polese 2015)
identity constructions have been widely examined in the post-Soviet
space beyond a state-institutional level. Isaacs and Polese note about the
post-Soviet space that ‘[n]ew claims of nationhood have emerged,
countries have become divided and some national, ethnic and religious
movements and phenomena have become more visible’ (2016:1).
A parallel reality works for the post-Yugoslav space as well. More
attention towards everyday life practices in forming of the national in
the ex-Yugoslav context provide a different and fresh perspective.
According to contemporary nationhood and nationalism theories,
national identity can be established by everyday (un)conscious realities
of ordinary people (Billig 1995, 2009; Skey 2009, 2011; Edensor
2002). This coheres with management processes led by the state
authorities and institutions, but a significant segment is constituted on
an ordinary basis by ordinary people. What is more, due to their taken-
for-granted character these processes may be almost invisible.
Nevertheless, the socio-cultural perspective ‘from-below’ can be very
helpful when examining contribution of people to nationhood and to
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 125

the forming/shaping of the national. Michael Billig states that the


production or reproduction of national belonging is made by a
‘whole complex of beliefs, assumptions, habits, representations and
practices’ (1995:6).
Skey (2009) critically points out several debatable statements in
Billig’s Banal nationalism. One of them is the generalisation of how
people receive pro-national impulses. This chapter contributes to that
critique: it observes a specific group of people listening to a type of
music characteristically (supra/inter)-national in its core. Although the
examined group consists of a limited number of diaspora members, it
still contains many meanings and for each member it contains different
experiences, pleasures and reactions. Thus, it supports Billig’s claim that
humans are not merely receivers of messages from media and ‘have much
to debate, as they bring the topics of ‘common sense’ into rhetorical
opposition’ (2009:348). However, this finding also stresses the need to
reflect the diversity outlined in Skey’s argument.
The national can also have a more complex meaning in the context of
diaspora, as the state is lacking physicality. For example, Fox and Miller-
Idriss research national signs in the context of being outside the country
of origin. They examine examples from the USA and Quebec (in relation
to the United Kingdom and France) and recognise minor attributes in
the language used by people who feel attachment to the country of
origin. They add that by similar practices nationhood is ‘meaningfully
embodied, expressed and sometimes performed in the routine contexts of
everyday life’ (2008:542). In addition, people make choices and so their
national belonging is implicated in those choices: ‘People “choose” the
nation when the universe of options is defined in national terms’ (ibid).
In the Balkan context nationhood is expressed by looking for music and
people (referred to as ‘naša muzika, naši ljudi’ – ‘our music, our people’)
in diaspora ethnic bars, club, cafés, shops, etc. and connecting with
anything that attaches one to the homeland. National rhetorics –
implicit in the terms ‘our’ and ‘we’ can also be found in Billig (1995) and
Skey (2011). This is supported by the language of TF music. It is also
widely practised in everyday verbal communication among the diaspora
members.
Turbofolk, an informal and mundane music style, is exclusively
supported by the private sector. Thus, ‘from below’ and ‘banal’
perspectives are obviously considered desirable and incorporate either
126 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

subconscious or conscious imagining and practising of the national.


However, the main aim of this chapter is to challenge the black-and-
white vision (relating to assimilation, separation or hybrid-unique
identity diaspora trends) in the scope of everyday life identity
construction. It is possible to work within and/or between these
strategies. Everyday reality connected to music consumption opens up
other options in terms of how to deal with identity. It is not necessary to
understand it only in the terms of national belonging to/identifying
with a particular nationhood. A very specific insight on a micro level is
the example of autochthonous turbofolk production. It shows how
unintentionally (inter/supra)-nationally oriented song can express a
subjective and intimate relation between a diaspora member, the country
(countries) of origin and the country of residence (or generally diaspora
space). Overall, the chapter contributes to the understanding of national
identity construction in a non-traditional way. It shows diasporic
perspectives towards nation state(s) through entertainment –
specifically music. The imagined nationhood identification that
emanates from it relates to a very fragile and blurry idea. Nevertheless,
for young people it often serves as a base for connection with ‘roots’,
although they might not always perceive it that way. Billig might define
this as ‘the nationalistic unconsciousness’ (2009:348– 9). As he explains
further, ‘the unconscious can also include what is so familiar and habitual
that it passes unnoticed’ (ibid.).
This study is based on fieldwork data collected in Austria. Austria
was chosen for its relatively numerous ex-Yugoslav diaspora, discussed
later. I visited several cities and many places connected to the turbofolk
scene. In total, 27 respondents were interviewed and 135 participants
filled in a questionnaire. Ethnographic methods enabled work in situ as
well as supporting qualitative interviews. Respondents were chosen
randomly. TF is so popular that almost every young and middle-aged
person between 15 and 40 years would have an opinion about it and
therefore there were no strict selection criteria. The interviewees
contained listeners and non-listeners of TF. They were approached in TF
spots (cafés, clubs, bars), in the university, on the streets, some of them
were found via Facebook and other social networks, through friends,
family or acquaintances. The interviews were open and non-directed.
Participant and non-participant observations were widely practised at all
kind of events where TF played a role (especially cafés, discos, bars).
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 127

Specifically behaviour, mood, movements, dancing, singing, debates,


chats and other reactions towards the TF sphere were observed and
I focus on public practice. Because it was very difficult to shape the
findings, I decided to work with the data through the scope of the
consumption and practising of TF. Here, practice refers to the absorption
and internalisation (via behaviour, usage, thinking) of TF and shows
different everyday perspectives including fashion, café/club culture,
national/non-national identification (from the point of view of ethnic
minority members) and a sense of belonging.

The Setting for the Birth of Turbofolk


The first mentions of turbofolk predominantly date to the Yugoslav
cultural environment during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The term
itself was introduced by the controversial Rambo Amadeus, a Yugoslav
singer famous for his satirical lyrics and had a highly negative
connotation. The inspirational platform for turbofolk was based on
novokomponovana music3 (NkNM or newly composed national music), a
pop-folk style emerging since the 1960s. Later productions of NkNM
already contained elements of mass culture, social topics, emotional
expression, sentimentality and ‘pseudomodernity’. With the turn to
turbofolk, the music gained more explicit sexual and emotional
references as well as a change in presentation and image of the singers.
To clarify, NkNM (and other domestic music styles) did not disappear
but by the beginning of the 1990s, turbofolk music had become a
synonym for real business, a successful career and a certain kind of a
lifestyle. Due to the political changes during the early 1990s, Serbian
society paid an enormous amount of attention to national issues and to
the increasing tendencies towards ethnic homogenisation. The values of
the old regime were decaying, previously stable and fixed media barriers
were dissolving and the market was starting to be privatised. There were
other reasons for citizen’s dissatisfaction: isolation of the country,
international sanctions, Serbian migrants from other parts of Yugoslavia
heading towards Serbia and deteriorating living standards caused by
stagnation of the economy and the economic crisis. The situation was not
any better in the surrounding countries. This atmosphere created a stable
platform for turbofolk music as production costs were low. Thanks to the
light themes of the songs, escapism to a ‘golden world of glamour’ and
128 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

simple lyrics, ordinary people were able to identify with it and therefore
chose to listen to it. In the mid-1990s, turbofolk established a music
monopoly over the whole country (over and above war-folk music,
NkNM and the dance-techno scene) and started to spread beyond the
borders, where it experienced a rapid increase in popularity too.
According to many scholars (Archer, Gotthardi-Pavlovski, Kronja,
Grujić), the TF music industry helped fuel the nationalistic mania of
the era. They usually illustrate this by pointing to the wedding of the
then most famous singer Svetlana Veličković – known as Ceca- to the
founder of Srpska dobrovoljačka garda paramilitary troops, Željko ‘Arkan’
Ražnatović in 1995. Nevertheless, it is essential to understand the
atmosphere at that time in terms of the chaos in the ethnic sphere evoked
by the nationalistic movement diffusing through society. Turbofolk
embraced these values and used them to increase its commercialisation.
Turbofolk stars took pleasure in assured financial profit and therefore
perfectly corresponded to the materialistic tendencies of the era.
In the same way that the political and social atmosphere at the time
contributed to the production of turbofolk, TF served to reinforce and
legitimise the values of society.
The main, recurring themes present in the TF scene coincided ideally
with the escapist needs of society at the time and, as such, were attractive
to the lower and lower-middle classes. Common topics included, but
were not limited to, physical attraction, the naked female body, erotic
themes, alcohol, entertainment and sometimes consisted of quite vulgar
content. Marija Grujić even finds a ‘pornographic sadomasochistic
image’ in turbofolk style (2013:91). Songs had a simple structure,
a strong chorus and easy, metaphoric language. They were inspired by
current events, they highlighted the Orthodox religion and Serbian
national traditions and used easily recognisable symbols.
Later, in the 2000s, some new singing stars appeared (for instance
Seka Aleksić, Goga Sekulić, Dado Polumenta, Djogani, Sandra Afrika)
and the rhythm in TF accelerated so that it could compete with the
contemporary music in Western discos. By this time, it had also
spread among all the other Balkan countries, sometimes joining already-
existing, similar styles of music.4 Apart from rare exceptions that used
orientalisms to a large degree (which could be possibly explained as a
self-orientalisation), national elements in the TF music industry were
slowly minimalised. However, TF has remained almost exclusively sung
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 129

in Serbian. Nevertheless, national (Serbian) motifs have decreased and


been replaced by a sort of collective sentiment referencing a shared
Balkan background. The new generation, which grew up in different
circumstances and does not recall the old regime, continues the
production of contemporary TF. Topics remain the same. Lyrics about
alcohol consumption, sexuality and entertainment are still as attractive
as before. Turbofolk succeeded in building not only a music scene but
also a consumer lifestyle and image.

Identification with Turbofolk


Before the 1990s, the ex-Yugoslav diaspora in Austria contained
traditional ethnic minorities, political and economic migrants and guest
workers (Gastarbeiter). When the 1990s came, many refugees resettled
there as well. Afterwards, new economic migrants and brain drain
migration waves arrived. Descendants of migrants contributed to a very
diverse community. The majority of society has not often distinguished
between individual countries of origin of ex-Yugoslavs. Ordinary
Austrians have used the term ‘jugo’ for all the ex-Yugoslav citizens,
regardless of country of origin. This term is interpreted as derogatory by
the diaspora. Even Austrian statistics represent a generalised overview –
they usually consider people from former Yugoslav countries to be one
group. It is also possible that the diaspora has claimed this collective
identity and moulded it in their own manner, to their own standards.
Estimations suggest that the ex-Yugoslav diaspora in Austria has around
450,000 members, including descendants (Statistik Austria 2012).
The diaspora has established an infrastructure of cafés, restaurants, clubs
and shops. The migrants and their descendants have connected with
their home music scene and regularly welcome singers from their home
countries. Thus the diaspora plays a significant role in terms of the music
audience (and the financial contribution) to the home production
of music. Everyday music listening is an integral part of diasporic
communities and TF is played at weddings, celebrations, holidays and
parties. The music style varies, but a majority of the songs played there
can be defined as ‘traditional’, NkNM or turbofolk. When people gather
in order to celebrate or to have fun, they call the occasion teferič, žurka,
tulum, fešta, dernek or simply Balkan party. A ‘Balkan feeling’ is for an
outsider clearly visible in the practising of turbofolk. Listeners
130 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

themselves refer to the ‘Balkanness’, as belonging to the Balkans,


through TF. For instance one respondent said he likes to listen to TF
because ‘when you see the lyrics, everything is Balkan, Balkan party,
Balkan rhythm, Balkan everywhere and everything about it’. One
question arises, though. Does the diaspora really feel a panethnic
identity by taking up choruses of the songs and catch-phrases or is it just
a marketing trick? In what ways can the diaspora relate to this? We can
only speculate that the feeling of ‘luda žurka’ (wild party) or the strong
emotionality bring about a pro-collective identity that could be possibly
called ‘Balkanness’. The fact is, that tolerance and maybe even apolitical
tendencies are an evident characteristic of those practising TF. Politically
oriented people who see TF through the prism of war usually consider
turbofolk to be very negative and do not participate in it (shown from
the questionnaires, comments in online debates on diasporic blogs and
forums and interviews). From the participant observation it seems that
the politics of openly practising TF includes an intense focus on the
physical body or the needs of the body, hedonism and carefreeness. Other
perceptions are likely to be hidden in the private sphere or are
experienced latently. Turbofolk is practised by ‘new Austrians’ (second-
generation migrants), Croatians, Bosnians, Bosniaks, Serbians and other
consumers with different ethnic backgrounds. Parallel tendencies can be
found in the kwaito culture in South Africa.5
TF events are often connected to important (inter)national dates
and holidays – New Year, Christmas, Women’s day, the anniversary of
particular minority clubs, etc. In every city where there is significant
demand, turbofolk (and sometimes NkNM music) is played in local
discos or bars at least once a week (Saturday), even sometimes hosting
performers. Turbofolk is the most reproduced music style in the (ethnic)
public space. The position of turbofolk within Austria can be explained
by the availability of the enormous home production of this style and
the decreasing attractiveness of old Yugo-rock. Even young people in
diaspora who do not listen to it or feel antipathy towards or ignore
turbofolk, come into close contact with it (usually as passive listeners).
Some respondents commented that they do not actively search for or
listen to turbofolk but they consume it anyway: when they go to a club
or café (or when they for instance travel by long-distance buses to their
countries of origin) they are forced to listen to it. They usually presented
typical reflections such as: ‘if I don’t have any other choice’, ‘only if
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 131

I must’, ‘only if they turn it on in some club’, ‘if I am out and it’s on’,
‘I don’t care about the music when I am with my friends’, ‘only if I must
because of the others’. One pattern is apparent from these answers –
individuals like to socialise and places for young people in the diaspora
are dominated by the turbofolk scene.
It is very common for households in the diaspora to have access to
media that continuously play turbofolk. For example, TV Pink, which
experienced a boom in the private sector of TV music channels in the
1990s, is still a must-have for many households. Moreover TV Pink
and other TV music channels are an inexpensive way to keep track of
what is happening in the countries of origin. Thus, it is not surprising
that many respondents heavily exposed to the music coming from
ex-Yugoslav countries. Examples of the outward practices of turbofolk
are seen when TF music is loudly blaring from ethnically decorated cars
in the suburbs of Vienna or half-drunk guests are belting out songs in a
TF concert or disco. The atmosphere is always very emotional and people
feel a strong sense of camaraderie. The entertainment and emotional
factor is usually strengthened by the amount of alcohol drunk.
Connection to TF can be significantly tied to physical features and
body sensitivity. This physicality relates mainly to dance, alcohol
drinking, general enjoyment, loud music and close contact between the
sexes – to TF clubbing and hedonistic identity (including the purported
‘Balkan mentality’ framework: ‘samo polako’, ‘nema problema’, etc.).
According to respondents, at a TF party, one can experience great fun,
the music is joyful, the rhythm is quick enough to dance and visitors are
drunk and happy. The atmosphere is carefree, relaxed, without any barriers
or rules (‘I love to go to Balkan parties because there are not many rules,
it is chaotic, the best party!’, ‘I feel incredible there’, ‘When you hear
it [TF music], you start to sing immediately.’ ‘Relax . . . enjoying’).
Some respondents boasted that they go to the TF party to get drunk. This
clubbing relation is dominant among young consumers, whereas some
older ones visit these places less often as they move on to another life phase
(‘Sometimes I feel old, the music is about the same thing all the time,
for example drunkenness and that some woman looks good so that you can
go with her’.) We can add the motifs of forgetting everyday problems
and escaping inferior minority feelings to the attractions of TF. As one
informant stated, many of visitors have very low self-esteem, but this
changes ‘180 degrees with entrance to the party’.
132 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

When reflecting on consuming TF, some listeners emphasised that


they listen to it ‘just for fun’ and it does not mean anything particular
to them or to their identity. They sometimes confirmed that on the
contrary, the sevdah or rock music they listen to affects their identity
and not TF (‘Yes it does, I recall the homeland while listening to
sevdah’.).6 Others highlighted the opposite – they listen to turbofolk
because for them it is a part of national identity (‘it [TF] means to me a
lot, I feel like I am at home and I miss it!’). University students more
often mentioned national or cultural identity (for example, one
informant who listens to TF regularly once a week in the clubs, alludes
to the experiential characteristics and relation to the country of
origin – ‘When I listen to our music, it has a lot to do with cultural
and national identity. Remembering childhood, because my parents
listened to it too, when I was little. When I listen to the foreign music,
it is more like entertainment’). Mostly the second-generation or first-
generation people that arrived in the host country at an early age spoke
about a connection with their language. One of my informants
mentioned the cultural background of it (‘Language: listeners of the
same music have mostly the same discourse in their lives and have
similar values’).

Contradictions in Evaluating Turbofolk Music


Turbofolk is popular, but what do actually people think about it? Most
of my respondents (including those who listened to it) claimed that it
has the following characteristics: provincialism, small-mindedness or
narrow-mindedness, primitivism, amorality, inciting of criminal-
behaviour, kitsch and low quality. Some of them even added that it is
a social enemy within. Most of them are bothered by some of its
elements – usually the accordion sound and the warbling (‘harmonika i
zavijanje’), as they can sometimes be interpreted as signs of its ‘oriental’
nature. Often they criticise it for lack of originality. The reality of
TF consumption is surprising in contrast to this generally negative
attitude towards it. Wherever there are ethnic (‘ex-Yu’) dance clubs, the
music they play has a turbofolk nature. Turbofolk parties are occasionally
organised even in the non-ethnic clubs. The music scene of the Austrian
diaspora is musically monotonous and the clubs are the most sought-
after ethnic sites for the youth.
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 133

This contradictory situation means that most members of the


diaspora despise turbofolk, but consume it at the same time. From the
outside it is criticised, but as soon as Saturday evening comes, it seems
that the best thing to do is to go to a turbofolk party. This situation is
very common in the larger cities and places where there is an ethnic club.
47.9 per cent of respondents that listen mostly to turbofolk connect it
directly with their identity (in the anonymous questionnaires this was
stated 31 times, during interviews only four times). Nevertheless, a
certain aspect of shame is apparent in most of the answers collected
from respondents who listen to turbofolk (especially when they were
asked to openly admit that they listen to TF). It also shows that young
individuals that declare their TF preferences can be easily shown in a bad
light (or with the same negative connotations which are generally
perceived in TF). It turned out that there are many ‘pseudo-consumers’
of TF. These individuals do not directly admit they listen to turbofolk,
but from the other questions it is clearly visible that they go solely to the
TF clubs and cafés, know the songs, etc.
Nonetheless, turbofolk is an integrating musical-imaginary space. Its
consumers are from different social and intellectual strata, but unite
under the banner of TF. The egalitarianism evident in the turbofolk
scene is indeed quite typical for most of the dance music scenes. Because
of the equalising tendencies of the turbofolk scene, nation-based tensions
might be blunted. According to Farrer, an emphasis on the experience of
‘glamorous sophistication’ and the ‘high life’ blurs differences between
people. At the same time, senses of belonging to ‘global citizenship’
might be strengthened. Again, the sense of global belonging that TF
inspires is reflected in other music scenes throughout the world. Farrer
adds that global young people’s dance culture celebrates ‘consumption,
fashion and sexuality in which youth on every continent participate,
reinforcing as emergent global hegemony of consumer values’ (2005:
481). This fully corresponds to the reality of turbofolk. Some TF
consumers in Austria come from ethnic minorities even in their
countries of origin (Roma people even have their own turbofolk club
in Vienna). Though many of them do not feel the need to claim their
national identity, the TF scene is not open to the majority of Austrian
society. Also, the collectiveness at some point supports regional
belonging. TF parties are often visited by a significant number of
Turkish and Albanian people. Rice finds similar trends, including
134 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

positive nationalism based on cultural diversity and cultural (multi-


ethnic) connection, in the consumption of chalga music in Bulgaria.7

Impact of Turbofolk Music on its Consumers


Radio, TV or internet determines the mainstream popular music that the
public consumes. A repeating compendium of popular music hits creates
an imaginary web, which, with time, connects young consumers
and unites them via shared experience. According to Jason Toynbee, the
mainstream is ‘a formation that brings together large numbers of people
from diverse social groups and across large geographical areas in
common affiliation to a musical style’ (2002:250). I mentioned this
during interviews with my respondents. They very often noted that they
know turbofolk and narodna songs (some of them even precisely word-
for-word) without active searching for them or learning them. They have
heard them everywhere since they were children and subconsciously
remembered them (there are no differences between respondents who
grew up in Austria and the ones who grew up in the former
ex-Yugoslavia countries).
Contemporary popular music also brings with it its idols and lifestyle
models. In turbofolk production we can find a multitude of references to
materialism and hedonism (expensive goods, sex, alcohol, drugs and so
on). If we compare it with Western (mostly US) RnB, pop and disco
music production, we can find many similarities. British sociologist
Nick Stevenson claims that contemporary global consumerism is
accompanied by an increasing rate of personal debt, the spread of loan-
credit systems, a decay in savings and the dominance of American-style
consumerism (2010:330). The ‘hyperconsumer’ movement can
primarily be seen in the countries that do not quite belong to the
economic global north, yet in which ordinary citizens can still afford
‘show-off materialism’. Similarly, a high rate of materialism and
consumerism elements permeates ‘Balkan’ reality and in the practising
of turbofolk – especially in its imagery.
In the context of diaspora communities we must not forget that
sharing turbofolk also evokes transnationality. Music is, in a cultural
sense, also a transnational commodity. It is not limited, it can easily cross
borders and, according to sociomusicologist Simon Frith, it defines
‘places’. Frith explains that ‘. . . in clubs, scenes and raves, listening on
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 135

headphones, radio and in the concert hall, we are only where the music
takes us’ (1996:125). At first glance, it might seem that the
consumption of turbofolk in the diaspora leads to the typical expression
of a cultural practice within an ethnic perspective (as, for example, Fox
and Miller-Idriss observe). That it can be personified by a
complementary identification with the country of origin. For example,
for a long time I did not understand how it was possible that young
Croatians (or Bosnians/Bosniaks) in the diaspora in Austria identify
themselves with mostly Ekavian (Serbian-dialect) turbofolk coming
from Serbia. The same turbofolk that is related to unfortunate war events
during the break-up of Yugoslavia. One of the respondents explained
what practising means to her. In principal, she does not identify with the
music, but with the consumers of the music. She does the same as the
young Croatians in Croatia. She said: ‘I feel connected to my crowd and
friends as well as to my country, where this music is mainly listened to’.
For another interviewee, TF meant ‘a memory of home’. Although the
ex-Yugoslav diaspora might not realise it, they can keep the same
patterns of behaviour in Austria as counterparts in the countries of
origin. Thus, they can conserve a certain kind of national identity
through entertainment (in our case by means of turbofolk), which
applies especially for the first generation of migrants.

Autochthonous Turbofolk as an Illustration of


Diasporic Identity
The notion of autochthonous diasporic turbofolk music is very rare since
the majority of turbofolk production is imported from the home
countries. Despite this, I found one autochthonous song that can help
gain a better understanding of the perception of turbofolk by its
consumers. The song ‘Naša sudbina’ certainly uses the general patterns of
turbofolk music from the countries of origin and at the same time
illuminates an everyday life identity struggle of a migrant/descendant in
a particular, musical way.8
Before a brief analysis of the song, it should be noted that the
producers of the song, DJ Zoki and Sale, live in Germany. It appears that
DJ Zoki is a second-generation migrant. The singer Sale was supposedly
born in Serbia, but has lived in Germany for a long time now. The music
production is very uniform, both using a relatively large proportion of
136 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

acoustic segments and neutral English language (for example, in


the songs Balkan hot step, Balkan is on fire, Balkan nation). Despite the
different backgrounds of the producers (which is most apparent in the
rap section), their understanding of reality in the diaspora is very similar.
The song generally references young people in the diaspora who live
‘on two chairs’. They struggle with their identity. Germany is defined as
‘up’/‘north’ (‘gore’), the Balkan region as ‘down’/‘south’ (‘dole’), which is
very common in diasporic vernacular. We can clearly see there is a
particular Serbian national language used in the song, although it still
appeals to ‘Balkan people’ in general. Further specifications of locations
are delineated by the words ‘up there’, ‘down’, ‘here’ (‘gore’, ‘dole’, ‘tu’).
The paradigm of the diaspora is highlighted by enumerating countries
where ‘Balkan people’ live in the chorus. It is concluded that, even
though they live ‘all around the Earth’ and it is thus ‘their destiny’, their
roots are in the Balkans and so is their heart. The personified Balkan area
can, in a way, be understood as a caretaker/protector.
We can find the notion of hybridity in the rap section, which is a
typical attribute in the identity of young migrants and their descendants
(‘whether to live down or up, if in both of the areas they feel good’).
According to the singer, it is possible to live a full and satisfied early life
‘up’, if there is enough entertainment (‘žurke’), because one can feel alive.
This kind of life contains the following elements: alcohol, music and
dance. According to the lyrics, these elements correspond to genuine
‘Balkanness’. The last sentence ‘ajde nazdravite za našu sudbinu’ can mean
a celebration of a diasporic destiny. Destiny is a traditional motif, which
we can trace back to traditional and NkNM music. Its presence in the
song stresses the ethnic background.
Generally, the imagery of the song’s music video fits well to the
diaspora’s sense of expression. Luxurious goods, fame and image
(expensive clothes and shoes brands, fashionable accessories) play an
important role there. These material attributes are the main source of
one’s personal status in the diaspora. This drive for ostentatious displays
of wealth points to the general vulnerability and absence of established
social structures available in the home country. The use of symbols and
references taken from Western hip-hop, rap and RnB music is probably
meant to show similarities between both (turbofolk and Western
popular music) scenes. We can find several Western music patterns in the
turbofolk industry. We can understand this as way to create a sense of
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 137

belonging to the young global generation. According to the reactions


of listeners, it is possible to deduce that ‘Balkan people’ have a need to
relate to the Western music scene. What’s more, they can even enhance it
with added value, notably through ethnic elements.
An interesting part of this analysis is to examine comments people
posted under the video for this song on YouTube. From these, we can
deduce certain points. For example, the comments are full of
grammatical mistakes and typing errors, which indicates that consumers
were probably born in the host country (in the diaspora) or moved there
at a young age. According to the dialects in the comments, we can
conclude that consumers are from different parts of the former
Yugoslavia. Comments suggest that consumers also like to listen to this
song while driving. They often comment that they recognise places in
the video. Whether or not the assessment is accurate, the recognition
still represents a certain connection with their homeland through the

Table 6.1 Lyrics from the song ‘Naša sudbina’.


Chorus: This is our destiny,
Ref: Ovo je naša sudbina, Nemačka, Germany, Austria, we are all
Austrija, ima nas širom sveta Italija, around the world, Italy,
Švajcarska, gde god se nalazimo Switzerland, wherever we are, our
srce nam je uvek tu, i kuca na heart is always here and beats in
Balkanu za našu sudbinu. the Balkans for our destiny.
Stalno se pitam gde ću na kraju I ask all the time where will I live at
da živim, ja sam izabrao put, neću the end, I chose the way myself, I will
nikoga da krivim. not blame anyone.
Znam da mi je ovde dobro kao i I know I am ok here, I am ok down
dole, žurke, život i sudbina prate too, parties, life and destiny follow us
nas do gore. up there.
Bum bum bum bum ritam je, za naš Bang bang bang that is the rhythm,
narod ajde sipajte, u čaši vodka viski pour it for our nation, there is vodka
je, ruke gore ajde igrajte. in the glass, put your hands up and
dance.
Srce nam je dole iako mi smo tu, ajde Our heart is down even though we are
nazdravite za našu sudbinu. here, let’s cheer for our destiny.
2x ref 2x chorus
Nemačka, Austrija, Italija, Švajcarska. Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland.
Kuca na Balkanu za našu sudbinu. Beats in the Balkans for our destiny.
2x ref 2x chorus
138 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

song. Therefore, a close relation between song, homeland and consumer


is established. The ethnic (and ethnocentric) component is visible in the
following comment: ‘fuck Lady Gaga! Just go on, champions, show the
world who the Balkan people are’ (‘POSEREM IM SE NA LADY
GAGU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SAMO NAPRED CAREVI POKAZIMO
SVETU KO SU BALKANCI:D [sic]’, by user Sikorsky2648).

‘Turbofashion’, ‘Turbostyle’
There are two obvious patterns visible in the everyday reality of listeners
of turbofolk. Firstly, peer pressure from friends and the ‘crowd’, with
whom the young person spends his/her time with and which plays a
major role in the public consumption of turbofolk (in the manner:
‘everybody who I hang out with listens to it [TF], so I listen to it too’).
Secondly, the younger the person, the more likely this peer pressure will
influence them to start consuming TF. Among Austrian TF parties and
cafés, age ID is often not required (nor checked) and many guests visit
these places at a very young age. It was not an exception for me to meet
young people around 15-years-old in these places during my research.
Using Top Music TV or Okto TV video materials and ethnic magazines
it was possible for me to find and explore places of public consumption of
turbofolk in Austria. As already mentioned, these places are usually
divided into discos and cafés. They usually do not have an obvious ethnic
name and therefore people who go there have to be well-informed to
recognise them. Diaspora members know these places very well and are
informed about the current programme, hosting singers, deals, etc.
In Austria there are many more cafés than discos.
A dress code is needed for some of the TF parties. In most of the
parties, the dress code does not necessarily differ from the one in the
international dance clubs, but sometimes a presumed difference is
highlighted. In this case guidelines suggest that women wear high heels
(fetishism towards high heels even led to a regular ‘štikla night’ event in
one music club in Vienna), sexualised clothes and other recommen-
dations. Explicitly, there are very few rules about how to dress, but
turbofolk fans do have certain conventions and therefore they know what
kind of dress they are expected to wear. According to some interviewees
conventions are also important in order to enjoy the party. One of them
stated: ‘Ridiculous texts and choreography, criminal aesthetics, rgcdgc
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 139

rhythm and so on, only if you are not too nostalgic for the 1990s and if
you do not know texts of Dr Iggy and the others, I would not
recommend you going to such a party, but if you know what to expect,
you can have good fun’. Besides this, ‘turbofashion’ closely relates
to ‘turbostyle’, which is more complex and, when it comes to the male
consumers, it usually overlaps. Female visitors usually do not wear
clothes for TF parties anywhere else, whereas males do. As it was already
announced, high heels are a must for a turbofolk party. Another
respondent comments this topic:

What is very popular for us are those high heels. If you do not have
high heels when you go to Balkan Palace (a club in Graz), you are
out, you are simply trash for everyone, it is like this, I don’t
understand it, that’s why I don’t like to go to Vanilla in our city,
because if you don’t have high heels there, you failed. For example
I cannot and don’t want to wear heels every weekend . . . that’s why
I go also to Austrian clubs and out with Austrians, instead of our
crowd where you have to be 100 per cent perfect and be getting
ready for five hours . . . last weekend I went to Balkan Palace . . .
there were seven girls at my table and I came as the last one, every
single one had a short skirt or a short dress and stilettos, I had only
those wedges . . . skirt, black tights and a long-sleeve shirt, I wasn’t
so eye-catching and I was left as the last one who wasn’t spoken to
by any body. I thought to myself . . . not a chance, the more you
show . . . yesss!!!

From this comment is apparent that short skirts and tiny dresses are very
important. The situation in a typical turbofolk party is as follows. Sexual
goal-orientation is very common and is usually initiated by male
visitors. Women tend to be placed in the role of a trophy (but not a
victim). Interviewees usually admitted that ‘ . . . girls are almost naked,
made up as hell . . . and they easily go with someone’. Turbofolk stars
were blamed: ‘they simply destroyed the quality, they destroyed the
culture in the music, they produce unbelievably too much negative,
through that energy that . . . girls from 13, 14 years make love on the
streets and become pregnant’. A strong self-eroticism is visible, too.
Visitors do care very much about their looks so that they feel attractive.
Detailed preparations of one’s image make for club visitors assuming
140 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

self-confident roles (analogously in Bruce J. Biddle’s role theory and


Goffman’s performance theory). They are the ones who the others take
photos of so that they can feel as perfect as their turbofolk idols. This is
evident mainly among the female consumers and the queer community.
Visitors usually enjoy the atmosphere by singing and dancing
(commonly alone). A state similar to trance is experienced, especially
during live performances. One informant described it: ‘it is impossible
to describe it to someone who didn’t experience it’ and, ‘only our people
[individuals with Balkan roots] can experience it’. Other informants
defined the state as ‘death’, ‘ecstasy’, ‘state of soul’, ‘pain’. If there is a big
event – for example a well-known singing star, it sometimes happens
that people fall into a mass madness.9
Clubs usually constitute a more or less anonymous and free zone in
which it is possible to express sexually without commitments.
In addition, individuals can take a ‘temporary or contextualized
identity’ (Farrer 2005:482). A highly interesting finding was detecting a
queer ethnic community connected to the dance (TF) scene. In view of
the fact that queer communities are still taboo in Balkan countries,
it shows another level to the liberal lens of turbofolk consumption and
practising in the diaspora. Practicing different sexualities can be seen as a
sign of tolerance and possibly collectiveness as particular queer
individuals are perceived as ‘our’ (‘naši’) diaspora members.
The style is usually subject to the current world fashion. Female
visitors also frequently imitate their turbofolk idols. As another
interviewee confirmed: ‘I copy the trends (of the singers), what’s in’. The
image of the males in TF is rather unified and strongly differs from their
Austrian counterparts who visit non-TF discos (another respondent
stated: ‘all boys have the same scheme!’). The ‘scheme’ usually means
tight jeans, white sneakers, tight shirt or t-shirt with a large V-neck.
They show-off their tattoos, expensive watches and gold or silver
accessories. A few informants during the interview also drew attention to
males’ haircuts, which some of them called ‘deppenfrisur’ (a mocking
term for a currently popular haircut). To summarise, ‘turbofashion’ is
rather supportive of a young look and therefore mostly young people
visit places where they can consume turbofolk.
A detailed observation of TF parties can lead us to a specification of
some ethnic symbols as well. Visitors sometimes wear necklaces with
religious motifs (Orthodox/Catholic crosses, beat, etc.) and tattoos
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 141

with national or religious themes. Interestingly these small ethnic


markers do not interfere with interethnic cohesion. In some of
the parties, people dance kolo (especially during KUD shows, which are
presented as national events even having turbofolk singers as hosts or
during turbofolk parties focused on an older age profile – 30-plus).10
However, in the majority of ordinary turbofolk parties, visitors just
passionately sing and keep their hands up. If a female singer is hosting,
there are mostly women in front of the stage, if there is a male singer,
mostly men occupy the front. This could be interpreted as gender
identification or idolisation. In the majority of the clubs and cafés,
visitors and staff speak Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian. Traditional gender
roles are applicable – for example, women do not pay for their drinks
and a woman never goes to the club alone. Most of the visitors are males.

Conclusion
Turbofolk can be perceived as a subculture or a post-subcultural
phenomenon in the Balkan diaspora. Nevertheless, if we disregard the
diaspora factor, TF becomes just a part of mainstream culture emanating
from the Balkan countries. Autochthonous turbofolk, produced among
the diaspora, is rare. However, whether it is autochthonous or not, TF is
unbelievably popular.
Young generations of the former Yugoslav diaspora in Austria
culturally identify through music and social contacts. In relation to the
theory of Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008), nationhood through TF can be
expressed consciously while going to ethnic parties, speaking languages
of the countries of origin or singing in them and building relations/
groups with people who share this interest. It can be also practised
subconsciously in the private sphere. Although the basis for
identification process through music of an ethnic minority member
can be definitely connected with national or ethnic belonging, the
national aspect should not be perceived as the only layer. Turbofolk
represents an identification process that might be considered primarily
nationally oriented but individual identification goes far beyond this and
depends on the subjective perception of each person. Practising
turbofolk can take up many forms, from simple enjoyment of erotic body
movements to queer identity contribution or in the relation towards
an imaginary homeland. It is important to stress the strong Balkan
142 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

(collective or pan-ethnic) notion connected to the TF scene. Collective


understandings of TF can be perceived as shared national spaces.
The national background of a particular TF consumer does not play
any role in evaluating TF – Bosnians, Bosniaks, Croatians, Serbians
and Macedonians gain the same positive or negative (although
surprisingly apolitical and nationally uncrystallised) relation to
turbofolk. Respondents did not mention any political or nationalistic
allusions. Not one respondent related it to the criminal records of singers
in the 1990s or nationalistic propaganda of Slobodan Milošević. This
finding is interesting, as the global ex-Yugoslav diaspora is generally
assessed as very nationalistic (for example, a study of Gordana Blagojević
notes the presence of nationalistic and insulting comments under one of
the turbofolk songs on YouTube. However it is not possible to analyse
where those users are from and whether they are consumers or not)
(Blagojević 2012:166). Austrian reality might not be different, but
the turbofolk scene there seems to have laid aside those tensions.
On the contrary, TF seems to figure as a means to connect people from
the same region. TF listeners simply want to have fun. The results also
showed that when it comes to the consumption of turbofolk, it does
not matter how long diaspora members have lived in Austria or
whether they belong to the first or to the second generation. The key
factors lie in whom they frequently meet, where they live and how
old they are.

Notes
1. The Balkan area, as related to turbofolk, can include countries from the whole
Balkan peninsula as turbofolk (or pop-folk and other hybrid forms of popular
music) is common in all of them.
2. The terms ‘consumer’ or ‘consumers’ are widely used in this chapter. They
primarily relate to listeners of turbofolk (secondarily also to the listeners of
‘novokomponovana’ or ‘narodna’ music). This terminology is chosen due to the
scope of post-modern consumerism, where I conceptually place turbofolk.
3. In Serbian referred to as novokomponovana narodna muzika, in Croatian as
novokomponirana narodna glazba. For better understanding it should be added
that NkNM is usually also called narodna (national music) or narodnjaci.
To make matters more confusing, the term narodna and narodnjaci can be used
also for turbofolk music by its consumers. Turbofolk (and sometimes NkNM)
can be denominated as cajke (a Croatian term) or džigara or džigera (especially in
Bosnia and Herzegovina).
TURBOFOLK AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION 143

4. Turbofolk and similar styles have existed in some countries of former


Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosova [where
it is known as tallava]) for a while. Besides Western styles of popular music, it
has been the most visible mass-consumed music style. In Slovenia as well as in
Croatia it has obtained a special position – for further details, see the works of
Baker, Gotthardi-Pavlovski and Muršič. In Romania the TF counterpart is
known as musică orientală, in Albania as tallava and in Bulgaria as chalga.
5. See Vı́t Zdrálek. 2015. Mapping the Individual Musical Experience in post-
Apartheid South Africa: A Bio-Ethnography of Township Dweler Lesiba Samuel
Kadiaka. Praha: Univerzita Karlova.
6. Sevdah is a traditional music style connected to the Bosnian Muslim cultural
tradition.
7. See Timothy Rice. 2002. ‘Bulgaria or Chalgaria: The Attenuation of Bulgarian
Nationalism in a Mass-Mediated Popular Music’. Yearbook for Traditional Music
34:25 – 46.
8. The song can be viewed on the YouTube website: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v¼J9bTLzkxy0U (Accessed 13 April 2015).
9. As an illustration, see the Facebook pages of one of the largest clubs in Vienna,
Insomnia: https://www.facebook.com/insomniaclubvienna?fref¼ts (Accessed
9 May 2015).
10. KUD – ‘kulturno-umjetničko društvo’ is a minority club with a cultural and
artistic purpose. It mostly consists of several groups for traditional dances. Kolo
is a traditional circle dance, common in most of the Balkan countries.
CHAPTER 7

SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR


DINNER:BULGARIAN POPULAR
CUISINE AS A SELLING POINT

Rayna Gavrilova

Introduction
Scholars have recently widened their interest in the symbolism of
food production and food consumption. Building on the work of scholars
such as Douglas (1966) and Levi-Strauss (1974), scholarship has
examined the role and meaning of food both to the individual and
society in a variety of contexts. Looking at food production through
constructivist lenses and seeing it as cultural and social choices
originating at the individual level (Appadurai 1988; Cwiertka 2006;
Murdoch et al. 2000) has allowed research to go beyond an economistic
or exotically cultural dimension to pay more attention to the symbolics
of food consumption (Cusack 2000; Wilk 1999). This chapter is a
further attempt in this direction. Douglas and Isherwood (1996) and
Miller (1987) have emphasised the significance of choosing and (non)-
consuming certain products for identity production and performance.
By looking at practices of food consumption in the everyday life of
Bulgarians, this study seeks to define the relationship between
performed and declared identities.
Framed in a debate initiated by Billig (1995) on banal nationalism
and continued in literature on everyday production of identities
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 145

(Edensor 2002, 2006; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008; Fox 2016; Polese
et al. 2017), this chapter is constructed on the assumption that an
individual’s and groups’ political choices are not always dictated by the
state and may be performed through channels that are spontaneous,
unofficial, informal, invisible or intangible (Antonsich 2015; Edensor
2002; Fox 2016; Pawlusz and Polese 2017; Polese 2009, 2010, 2014;
Skey 2015). This, with particular reference to former socialist spaces,
adds to attempts to reconceptualise the study of national identity in the
region and look at a variety of tools and instruments to do so. This
encompasses politically constructed identities whose meaning is
reshaped by the context (Adams 2010; Isaacs and Polese 2015, 2016;
Polese and Horak 2015) to competition between segments of a
society (Cheskin 2013; Isaacs and Polese 2015, 2016) with particular
attention to the role of the everyday (Knott 2015; Morris 2016; Pawlusz
and Seliverstova 2016; Seliverstova 2016, 2017). Accordingly, this
chapter attempts to provide a further account confirming the
importance of everyday practices to the processes of (national and
local) identity-formation. This chapter explores the influence of micro
on macro processes of national identity-building, through the
production of cultural identity in the hospitality industry. It is based
on a study of the online self-presentation of restaurants offering
national cuisine. It explores the declared new standard and new
consensus among caterers on what is ‘national’ cuisine and national
culinary heritage.
Ultimately, it is proposed that ‘the past’, ‘the authentic’ and ‘the
Bulgarian’ quality is modelled on the pre-World War II Bulgarian
peasant home. However, the chapter unveils an ongoing and dynamic
process of constructing and naming the structures of the national
cuisine. This process is, essentially, a bricolage, which leaves ample
space for individual contributions. In contrast to popular nationalistic
rhetoric, the national cuisine incorporates freely Turkish names and
products, identifying and accepting them as ‘Bulgarian’.
The flexibility of the vocabulary of national style, open to include new
terms, test new products and, in general experiment, mirrors a tendency
to construct a food identity that is inclusive and ever-expanding. This is
in contrast to or notwithstanding the official narratives on Bulgarian
identity, which evolve in a less dynamic way and tend to be typically less
inclusive and flexible.
146 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Why Food as a National Practice?


In Bulgaria, research on food and eating as a social and cultural
practice is a scientific ‘field in the making’ (to borrow from the title of
Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson’s 1998 article on French gastronomy). The
statement implies by no means the absence of sufficient empirical
material or general-interest texts. The ethnography of pre-modern
alimentation and of folk customs involving food, is represented by a
number of publications.1 The properly anthropological or – more
broadly – cultural questions, surrounding the acquisition, preparation
and consumption of food however became a matter of interest only
recently and systematic observations, particularly longitudinal ones,
are still scarce. The fact that this new field does not have a name in
Bulgarian is indicative: the phrase ‘culture of eating’ is usually associated
with manners; ‘food culture’ points to the biological lab; ‘nutritional
anthropology’ sounds awkward and is almost never used. The descriptive
name ‘research (or anthropology) on food and eating’ is a poor substitute
for the short and established field ‘food studies’ but is the closest
approximation to a definition of the field. Food and eating are powerful
cultural forms, which put on display essential individual and collective
meanings (Douglas 2014; Wilk 1999). This idea, introduced by the
founding fathers of sociology and anthropology and developed
brilliantly by the structuralist tradition (Barthes 1961; Douglas 1966;
Levi-Strauss 1974), offers a possible approach to understanding social
reality but also bring into the analysis systems and border fields of a
different order. In a global context of destabilised communities,
models, boundaries and shared meanings, food and eating represent an
anthropological field, where one can observe concisely the formation,
deformation and reformation of cultural practices and identities. The
proposed text is an attempt to survey the commercialisation of culture
and more specifically food practices, as part of the big question of post-
communist identities in Bulgaria. It builds on a venerable tradition of
food metaphors, such as the historic Paris à table (Briffault 1846);
bows to Levi-Strauss’ famous phrase that food could be bon à penser
(Levi-Strauss 1971:89); recognises the heuristic potential of Alsayyad’s
‘consuming tradition’ (Alsayyad 2001) and Bell and Valentine’s
‘consuming geographies’ (Bell and Valentine 1997). The play of
meanings implied by these metaphors renders them irresistible and even
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 147

more so by the fact that the relationship between culture and


consumption is an established idea.2

What is Food as a National Consumption Practice?


The lack of systematic observations on individual and collective
consumption that could provide a sound empirical base made it
necessary to use a specific archive: the self-presentation of restaurants on
the internet. The intentions behind these representations are obvious:
attract attention, patrons, consumption and revenues through provision
of services and merchandise appealing to paying customers. Within this
broad research field I focus on a particular type of establishment which
has direct bearing on the questions about culture, national identity and
cultural heritage: restaurants that advertise Bulgarian national cuisine
and ambiance. The fact that these are commercial establishments which
monetise cultural preferences is particularly interesting because it allows
us to glimpse certain hierarchies and, correspondingly, make an
assessment of the gravitational pull of the proposed and consumed
culture. In the absence of (publicly available) market research on the
hospitality sphere in Bulgaria, the owners become marketing specialists,
whom Richard Johnson calls ‘the cultural accountants of capitalism’
(quoted in Tomlinson 2005:16).
The tradition of restaurants offering national cuisine dates almost
from the time of the very emergence of commercial caterers in Bulgaria
(see Velichkov 2004:160– 2; Kiradzhiev, 2001:352– 7). The efforts to
develop public eating into a profitable economic sector gained
momentum during the communist period and resulted in the
proliferation of a special sub-category ‘home-style establishment’ (bitovo
zavedenie)3 in the seaside resorts first and then in the bigger cities,
managed by a special enterprise ‘Balkantourist’. Unlike regular
restaurants, the purpose of which was ‘to provide affordable and
nutritious food and satisfy the food needs of the broad working masses’,
these establishments were created to ‘satisfy the needs of the foreign
guests in our country’ (Kratki lekcii 1957:7). I came across the term
‘home-style establishment’ for the first time in a text from 1969, which
laid out the standardising norms and practices of the regulated economy.
These new public places adopted a number of specific features, which
permanently entered the food nomenclature, settings and props:
148 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

‘The cutlery used in the home-style establishments should be selected


according to their category; the tables must be covered with decorative
bitovi tablecloths and bitov crockery’ (Lekcii 1969:3). Both items were
freely modelled on traditional forms, colour, patterns and materials,
derived from the traditional pre-modern peasant ware.
The empirical base for my research is the systematised information on
the restaurants in Sofia, presented on the internet site Zavedeniata
(‘The Establishments’)4 and tagged as offering ‘Bulgarian cuisine’.
The category displays information on 934 establishments, defined as
restaurants,5 which means they offer the full range of services:
comprehensive menus; eating on the spot; service by a waiter; formal list
to choose from. Of them, 137 were defined as ‘taverns’;6 110 as
‘beerhouses’; 153 as ‘pubs’; and 31 as ‘folk clubs’. That means less than
half of the establishments use the designation ‘tavern’ (mehana) – the
traditional name for a national cuisine restaurant. The examination of
the visual representations shows that only the taverns exhibit the
recognisable interior of the ‘home-style establishment’. In addition to
being listed in the ‘Bulgarian’ category, 876 of the restaurants claim that
they offer ‘Bulgarian cuisine’ exclusively or together with other cuisines
(Italian being the most popular). The observation that 93.8 per cent of
the restaurants advertise that they offer ‘Bulgarian cuisine’ deserves brief
comment. The fact that ethnic identity influences food preferences is
well known and extensively discussed (see for instance Smith 1967;
Finkelstein 1989; Girardelli 2004; Vukov, Ivanov 2010; Krasteva-
Blagoeva 2010). It does not matter whether the ‘ethnic’ is one’s own or
‘alien’: its attractiveness and influence on consumer choices is
ubiquitous. These interpretations could be developed in several
directions: the purely sensory experience; the confirmation and the
pleasure of rediscovering one’s own identity; public demonstration of
loyalty or/and statuses; proxy for experiencing the exotic. The national/
ethnic sells food. Here my interest is not so much in the attractiveness of
the national (which hardly could be studied on the base of promotional
texts only) but rather in the ‘brand’, the product sold and more
specifically in the question of whether there is a new established norm,
new consensus among restaurant owners as to what is national cuisine
and culinary heritage; how does it relate to past models; how is it
communicated to the consuming audiences? In this perspective one
would seek to find out whether the dishes (the ‘units’) of the national
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 149

cuisine and the menus (the ‘syntactic’ systems) have changed (I am


referring, of course, to the well-known article by Roland Barthes on the
psychosociology of taste (Barthes 1961). I have no doubts that the
substantive work of (re-)construing the narrative of the national cuisine
could be done only after a thorough examination of additional
representational texts (including fora, chats, blogs and comments) and
particularly after a systematic study of actual consumption practices.
The next level of analysis and interpretation – the study of the diets
(the ‘styles’ in the semiotic metaphor) – cannot be done without field
research. I was not able to engage in this task and decided to limit my
analysis to the space situated between the real product and the consumer
where the collective imaginary unfolds and where ‘significant
production of false perceptions and values’ (Barthes 1979) takes place.

How to Read the Food as Text


The site Zavedeniata was chosen precisely because it offers a good
opportunity to compare cases. The information is standardised: each
entry includes profile photo, visitor counter and uniform sections. From
the list of restaurants that offer solely Bulgarian cuisine (18 out of 900)
and 37 others, which offer Bulgarian cuisine plus grilled dishes and
‘Balkan grill’, plus 55 establishments where the interior was entirely or
predominantly traditional (bitov), I selected a group of 18 establish-
ments. All restaurants in the group have full information (including
menus); they are rather popular; the food and the ambiance are typically
‘Bulgarian’. Their menus and photos formed the sample to study the
representation of national food identity.
Every restaurant from the group included on its page a short text for
self-presentation. All but two contain explicit claims for origin or
affiliation, sometimes two or more: ‘Bulgarian’, ‘national’, ‘patriarchal’,
‘authentic’, ‘bitov’, ‘traditional’. Some descriptions (in which I include the
restaurant name in Bulgarian and then English) are mostly general
invitations and statements, such as:

‘Bitovo establishment with its own style’ (Mamin Kolio, Mama’s


Kolio); ‘authentic Bulgarian environment from once upon a time’
(Izbata, The Cellar); ‘the atmosphere is in traditional bitov style, the
quality of the food – guaranteed. Come taste the magic of the
150 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Bulgarian cuisine’ (Magiata na chergite, The magic of the carpets);


‘cosy bitov environment’ (Nashe Selo, Our Village); ‘Welcome and
come in to eat a bite of home cooked dishes and to immerse yourself
in the coziness of the times bygone. The setting in Petleto will
impress you with its authentic bitov style’ (Petleto, The Little
Rooster); ‘a contemporary establishment in traditional-national
style, adapted to the requirements of the modern times’ (Pri Shopite,
At the Shopi);7 ‘authentic Bulgarian cuisine’ (Delvite, The Jars).

Others make clear attempts at poetry:

‘Right here, close to the Vitosha lakes, where Bulgarianness is still


to be found, our tavern was created to bring together people
around rich wines and music [. . .] With recipes collected over the
ages, once you taste them, you come back’ (Djorevata kashta,
Djore’s House); or ‘built in the spirit of the Bulgarian home,
exuding coziness with its authentic interior [. . .] dishes
accompanied with flowing wines [. . .] collection of authentic
Rhodope8 bells and elements of the culture of the Rhodope corner
of Bulgaria’ (Rhodopski chanove, Rhodope Bells); or ‘The
Bulgarian restaurant Chevermeto, whatever your heart desires!
The restaurant Chevermeto brings together authentic setting, old
recipe dishes and a folk performance’ (Chevermeto, The Spit); or ‘a
combination of authentic Bulgarian national revival atmosphere,
infused with classic folk motives, recipes of older [sic!] Bulgarian
recipes and music, which merges the sound of the pipe and the
shepherd’s flute with the sprightly and solemn voice of the bells.
The tavern offers to its guests the opportunity to immerse
themselves in the depths of Revival Bulgaria,9 to feel the spirit of
the voyvodi,10 to savour the traditional Bulgarian hospitality, to see
and listen to the sound of the popular bells and their clear voices’
(Mehana Chanovete, Tavern of The Bells).

Some even present small dramatic scenes:

The common table in the restaurant Rodopska kashta brings


together family, friends and even just acquaintances, therewith
strengthening the patriarchal tradition of the Rhodopians – the
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 151

tradition to be always together. The host-Rhodopian is always


welcoming. He treats every guest – a traveller, a beggar or a
relative – with an open heart. We meet our guests with ‘Welcome’
and direct them to the table: ‘Please partake of what you find’. For
the newcomers we have prepared a small sample of the traditional
Rhodope dishes. The incomparable taste of the Rhodope dishes
and the wonderful Bulgarian wines [. . .] The magic of the
Rhodope song [. . .] The colours of the folk costumes [. . .]
The magical sound of the Rhodope pipe and the silver ringing of
the bells (Rodopska kashta, The Rhodope House).
In front of you our chef will cook special dishes on a wood-
fuelled grill and following old Bulgarian recipes. The meat is
always fresh, coming from livestock raised high in the mountains
exclusively for the restaurant Murafeti. The establishment has a
folklore program – including authentic Bulgarian instruments
and human voices that bring you in touch with the cosmic feel of
the folklore (Murafeti).

And finally the emblematic presentations (abridged):

Restaurant Under the Lindens is located in an old Bulgarian house,


which is a historical monument, a classical Bulgarian house built of
stone and wood. The restaurant enchanted visitors since its very
opening in 1926 as a pub named Select. Elin Pelin, the creator of
some of the best Bulgarian short stories in that tumultuous period
gave it the name Under the Lindens, which survived until today.
Elin Pelin was among the patrons of the small neighbourhood pub,
which sheltered a number of famous Bulgarians and offered them
tranquillity and cosiness to write their stories and articles, while
sharing the wine from Karabunar and Vinogradets [. . .] The meats
and hash prepared on the spot, the yogurt and the cheeses, the bread
and the preserves bring our guests back to the world of their
childhood memories and grandma’s dishes [. . .] The pitas and the
piperades being and a constant element of the Bulgarian table, we
prepare for our guests a number of pita breads and pastries baked in
ovens, as well as delicious piperades and baba ganoush with freshly
roasted vegetables (Pod Lipite, Under the Lindens).
152 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

(All quotations are from 5 January 2015).


The main elements of the ‘national taste’ expected to attract the
customers/consumers are easy to pinpoint even in this small sample:
‘once upon a time/past/old/national revival period’, bitov, ‘authentic’,
‘domestic’, ‘gozba’,11 ‘wine’, ‘music/folklore/pipes/bells/songs’, ‘grill/
meat’. In all cases but two, the visual representations in the available
logos, posted on the front page of each restaurant complements or
supplements the story: a sample of ten images exhibits repetitive motifs:
use of retro fonts; the name written in a circle or arc (association with
a vault, wheel, stamp); graphic representations of traditional houses;
imitation of old illustrations, etc. The colour palette is also surprisingly
uniform: sepia and brown prevail, with accents in red, yellow and white.
The leading marketing strategy of selling ‘Bulgarianness’ however is
clearest in the photo spreads, available on the website. All establish-
ments present from a few to more than 50 photos of their interior,
garden (if existing), dishes, events organised in the restaurant: clear
evidence of the importance of the visual aspects in the presentation of the
national restaurant. If we are to describe it summarily, the ambiance is
bitova – traditional, domestic, peasant, nineteenth-century. Seventeen
out of our 18 cases are arranged in this style. Like the written
descriptions, it is not difficult to identify the almost canonical elements:
stone walls; wooden pillars and lintels; wooden rustic tables and benches;
rugs; white lace curtains on the windows; several decorations such as cart
wheels (on the wall or as lamps), traditional pottery, lanterns, farming
instruments, costumes, baskets and kegs, plaited onion or dried red
peppers. Almost half the restaurants have a fireplace or an oven in the
main space. Almost all have a designated place for a music band or a
dance floor. The planning and the execution vary from kitsch (Kaiser,
Mamin Kolio) to almost museum-quality authenticity (Pod Lipite,
Rodopski Chanove) and from stuffed tawdriness to tasteful minimalism.
The elements of the interior leave no doubt that the past, authenticity
and Bulgarianness are imagined as sanitised versions of the pre-World
War II rural house. This is not surprising if we recall the fact that in
1944, 78 per cent of the Bulgarian population lived in villages, meaning
that this kind of environment is the familiar domestic scene of their
childhood or of their grandparents for a significant portion of the adult
Bulgarian population. The claims of authenticity ring true. The
intriguing aspect is the total lack of awareness of the incongruity and
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 153

dissonance observable: we see TV sets hung on wooden pillars (in one


case the pillar is wrapped in sheep skin); arcopal sets arranged on top of
machine-woven traditional style tablecloths; modern oil and vinegar sets
on rustic tables; kitschy paintings on the walls. In only few of the
establishments one sees consistent effort to maintain the authentic
atmosphere, to clearly separate the old from the modern or, even more
rarely, to reinvent the traditional creatively in the space of the modern
restaurant. One may suppose that the lack of interest among the owners
mirrors the general absence of interest in real authenticity among the
customers. The bricolage of randomly selected signs is sufficiently
recognisable and satisfactory.12

The Structure of the Menu: The Sign System


The study of the structure of the menus – the kinds and sequencing of
offered dishes – is an interesting approach to reveal the changes in
social practices and cultural attitudes, as Jean-Louis Frandrin (2002)
has demonstrated convincingly. The menu as a concept and as a practice
did not exist in the everyday life of Bulgarian families until the
accelerated modernisation and urbanisations at the end of the
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries: people ate
just one dish (something cooked or something dry taken to work),
rarely preceded by a soup or pickles (Gavrilova, 1999:99). The end of
the nineteenth century saw the importation of the idea of a three-course
meal: first course (soup), second course (cooked or a-la-minute) and
third course (dessert) for those who could afford them, of course. The
practice was a radical, sometimes objectionable, novelty: sources from
this period offer testimonies that people from the older generations
found the idea of eating more than one dish in one meal shocking
(Hadzhiiski 1974:220 n. 2). As far as we can determine in the absence
of representative and longitudinal data, the practice spread primarily
among the urban middle classes, from the lowest segments (qualified
workers, petty clerks, artisans) to the highest (senior state servants,
entrepreneurs, senior military officers). The adoption of the new model
was undoubtedly facilitated by the proliferation of knowledge about
the ‘proper’, ‘good’ (bourgeois) eating and was predicated on the
availability of a housewife or domestic help to prepare three-course
meals every day.13
154 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

If the introduction of food categories such as soup, dessert and salad


was a result of the previously mentioned processes and accounts for the
change in the domestic style of eating, it was the festive food which
provided the prototype and influenced the development of the meals
eaten out. The traditional festive table was distinctive in its contents and
volume: it started with aperitif of strong alcoholic beverages, consumed
with meze (Turkish from Persian – a selection of small dishes served to
accompany alcoholic drinks), followed by rich soups, main dish (often
roasted or baked), pastry, dry fruits and nuts. The model of the French
festive meal, introduced by the royal palace and foreigners and
expatriates, brought the appetizers (starters) and the real desserts. Very
soon the growing number of published cookbooks cemented the new
norm of a decent meal: a starter, main course and dessert.14
What do we observe in the menus of the restaurants which advertise
their allegiance to Bulgarian cuisine? In most cases they organise their
offerings according to the type of the dishes and not according to their
place in the sequence of courses, as is the case with the classic Euro-
Atlantic menus. For instance, the dishes that would normally be listed
under the heading ‘starters’ we find distributed between two to six
separate categories: salads, soups, cold starters, hot starters, mezes,
sometimes as invented categories such as ‘delicacies’ or ‘caprices’. The main
courses usually appear under this very general heading but often they are
grouped according to the meat or the speed of preparation (long-cooking
vs a-la-minute). The grill is always separate even if the dishes could be an
appetiser or main course. What is interesting is the mass introduction
between the starters and the main courses of a special category – the
‘satch’.15 Yet another idiosyncrasy are the purely invented categories
observable only in single restaurants only, such as ‘selected old recipes’
(Delvite), ‘From the spit’ (Chevermeto), ‘Rhodopian specialties’ and
‘from Grandma’s kitchen’ (Rodopski Chanove), ‘The offer of the Master’
(Zagorka), ‘For seriously hungry people’ etc.
This structure of the menus suggests a couple of interesting points.
First, the occurrence of the same nine categories of dishes (even if named
differently) in the repertoire of the majority of the establishments
(salads, cold starters, warm starters, mezes, grill, main dishes, satch, fish
and desserts) indicates that there is an unspoken consensus among the
caterers concerning the expectations of the patrons of national cuisine
restaurants. If we compare this, let’s call it, ‘core menu’, with the menus
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 155

of the other types of restaurants we see a lot of commonalities, but two


categories – the mezes and the satch – are almost exclusively represented
in our type of establishments. Second, in the other types of restaurants
the headings of the different categories of dishes are as a rule the
established designations (soup, salad, starter, etc.), while we see a great
variety in the composition and names in the ‘national’ restaurants. As a
first hypothesis I propose that we are witnessing a dynamic process of
constructing and naming the national cuisine; that this process is, again,
a kind of bricolage and leaves a lot of space for the contribution of
individuals with their understanding of what constitutes the national
specificity (experimentation). In addition, the crafters of the Bulgarian
national cuisine borrow unproblematically from Turkish elements.
These have entered Bulgarian language and practice (meze, satch) in stark
contrast with the popular and populist nationalist rhetoric. A number of
these categories of dishes, such as razjadka (roughly ‘starter’, something
to start the process of eating), topenitsa (dip, something to dip into), satch,
gjuveche (diminutive from Turkish guvec, earthenware pot), keremida (tile),
are nowhere to be found in A Collection of Food Recipes, the bible of
cooking during the socialist period (1968, 951 pages, 1303 recipes) and
the cookbooks published before 1944. The term satch is mentioned twice
in the first two Bulgarian cooking and advice books, published in 1870
and only with its original meaning of a ceramic plate. Inversely, two
dishes with Slavic names and, possibly, provenance – the parzhenitsa
(something fried) and the trienitsa (something ground) – that we find in
the earlier cookbooks have disappeared altogether. I would suggest that
the reason is that they are specific dishes and cannot be transformed into
a category. In general, it seems that the ancient sound of a food not so
much the actual dish suffices to endow the new dishes with the consumer
value of ‘authenticity’. The menu, the syntactic system, has acquired an
essentially European body (salad, starter, main dish, dessert) but has
developed several Bulgarian-Balkan offshoots, some of which have no
real precedents in the traditional cuisine.

The Words of the National Culinary Discourse


Our investigation becomes even more interesting when we start
examining the collection of lexemes that make the sentences of the
national commercial eating: the dishes in the context of their category.
156 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Any category is good for reading and analysing but I will focus on the
salads only, which offer particularly rich empirical data. The salads do
not exist either as a concept or as a practice prior to the re-establishment
of a national Bulgarian state in 1878, the growth of the trend-setting
elites and receptive urban middle classes and the emergence of the
instruments of change of the culinary culture (media, cookbooks,
vocational training). The term ‘salad’ was mentioned first in 1870 by
Petko Slaveykov in the recipe ‘beet salad’ (Slaveykov 1870:75); the idea
of serving chopped vegetables with condiments was totally alien. Twenty
years later, the Bulgarian lexicographer Naiden Gerov included the
word in his magisterial five-volume Dictionary of the Bulgarian language
(1978, 5:110), but, interestingly, provides a double gender form – a
masculine and a feminine. Throughout the years the number of salads
included in the cookbook increases steadily: from eight in a cookbook
from 1904 to 47 in a cookbook from 1933.
We see an impressive number and variety of salads on the menus of
Bulgarian cuisine establishments, an average of 20.5 different salads per
restaurant. In 14 out of the 18 restaurants they are placed at the
beginning of the printed menus. Even more impressively, there is an
absolute consensus about The National Salad, with capital letters, and
this is the Shopska salad (named after the same regional group in western
Bulgaria, the Shopi). The salad is present on the menu of every single
restaurant in our group, with the same name. Almost half of the
establishments list the ingredients of the salad and again the uniformity
is noteworthy: the five mandatory elements are tomatoes, cucumbers,
peppers (raw or roasted), onion and Bulgarian white cheese (feta). Two
restaurants find it necessary to embellish by adding a blurb: ‘The taste of
eternal Bulgaria’ (Mehana Chanovete) and ‘The Bulgarian Tradition’
(Magiata na chergite). The mythology surrounding the Shopska salad
has been discussed by researchers (Dechev, 2010) and it is important to
draw attention to the fact that two of its ingredients (tomatoes and
peppers) were adopted by the Bulgarians only after mid-nineteenth
century, a circumstance that throws doubt on the claim of its ‘eternal
taste’. Any attempt to challenge the myth, however, as did Albena
Shkodrova in her book Soc Gourmet (Shkodrova, 2014) provokes
heated debates, revealing the high emotional temperature of the
national food discourse. Second in popularity is the Shepherd’s Salad
(in 14 establishments), where eggs, yellow cheese, salami or ham and
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 157

mushrooms are added to the ingredients of the Shopska. In seven cases


we see a ‘Peasant salad’, virtually undistinguishable from the Shopska
salad. In third place comes the green salad (from lettuce or different salad
greens), present on 13 menus, with or without the additions of boiled
eggs, chicken and cheese. It appears under several different names
(Women’s Salad, Chef’s salad, Rigoletto, Meze, Salad for connoisseurs,
etc.). Separately, we see numerous occurrences of green salad with
(canned) tuna fish (in 15 establishments) – a surprising finding,
considering that canned tuna was not sold in Bulgaria before the end of
the communist regime. Tomato salad is available in nine restaurants,
most often served with feta cheese or buffalo cheese; separately, seven
restaurants offer tomatoes with mozzarella, in three cases correctly
named Caprese. Next in popularity are the salads of peppers, carrots,
cabbage and carrots. The salads made of cabbage and of cucumbers are
relatively infrequent – a surprising fact, given that both vegetables were
among the few autochthonous crops cultivated in the region since
prehistoric times. At the same time, salads with potatoes, native plants
of the Americas, which came to Bulgaria in the late nineteenth century,
are more popular. The common potato salad occurs with this name four
times, but we see it once as ‘Our own’ salad and once as ‘Chorbadzhi’
salad (Chorbadzi is the Turkish name for a wealthy and influential man).
The absurdity of the naming is obvious: the potatoes were neither ‘our’,
nor chorbadzhi’s food as they were introduced at the time when the
chorbadzhis were already history.
Of particular interest is a group of salads with names that occur just
once; do not exist in the pre-modern cuisine; do not appear in the
cookbooks published between 1878 and 1944, when intense codification
and Europeanisation of the domestic food practices took place; cannot be
found in the recipe collections for state canteens and restaurants during
the socialist period.16 This means, evidently, that the dishes have been
invented in the last 20 years or so. Their names reveal clearly how the
culinary culture is constructed and packaged for commercial purposes
and I would claim that the observations on this phenomenon are valid
for the domain of the national culture in general.
The reservoir of ideas how to define the ‘Bulgarian’ quality could be
roughly structured in three main sources of inspiration. The majority
of the names, a total of 19 cases, are derived from the designations of
professions or statuses: salads of the ‘Boyards’ (2), ‘The mayor of our
158 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

village’, ‘the Monks’, ‘the Wagoners’, ‘the Inn-keepers’, ‘the Mummers’,


‘the Monastery’, ‘the Tavern’, ‘the Master’, ‘the Marketplace’, ‘the Priest’,
‘the Fisherman’, ‘the Haydut’, ‘the Choban’ (shepherd in Turkish), ‘the
Chorbadzi’ (without counting the previously mentioned ‘Peasant’ and
‘Shepherd’s’ salads). The second big group are the salads with geographic
names: from Arbanasi,17 Bulgaria, Vratsa, Lom, Samokov, Ihtiman,
Chukurovo, Thrace, the Rhodope, the Balkan (Stara planina), etc. – a
total of 18. The third category form the names, related to the kin
nomenclature: Grandma’s salad (2); Grandpa’s, Women’s, Men’s,
Daddy’s, Maidens’, ‘Our garden’. Seven names hint at the quality of
the salad: ‘Connoisseurs’18 (2), ‘More-more-most’, ‘Plum brandy’,
‘Three plum brandies’, ‘Old fashion’, ‘For meze’. The remaining cases
mention an interesting ingredient (iceberg lettuce, salmon), distant
location (Cyprus, Sicily) or something idiosyncratic (Rigoletto, the
Rugs, Pink kiss).
The intentions behind the choice of a name seem obvious in two
groups. The kin group refers the customer to her/his childhood and
youth memories, when everything was homey and ‘one’s own’. The same
is valid for the geographic group, as the places are major anchors of
identities. The first group however is very interesting and calls for
unpacking. We see among the names a few recurring motifs and their
connection with the food sold is not unilinear and the range of
associations is far richer. Names such as ‘Komita’s’ (Insurgents) and
‘Haydut’s’ (highway men who opposed the Ottomans) carry the aura of
heroism, rebellion, opposition, unsettlement, repudiation of the normal
life, which sets itself radically apart from the idea of peacefully
consuming food according the protocol and tradition. I would add to
these names with provocative undertones the occupations of the
innkeepers and the tavern-keepers, who were liminal figures in the
popular imagination. The salads served under these names offer different
combination of common vegetables, with a more elaborate preparation
(such as peeling the tomatoes). This is in comic dissonance with what we
know about the lifestyle of the komitas and hayduts, not to mention the
fact that many of these vegetables did not exist in the region at the time
of the Ottoman Empire. We observe the same discrepancy between the
name and the substance, between the signifier and signified that we saw
in the menu structure. The lexical spices added to an ordinary salad
apparently provide the ‘sizzle word’,19 which can have no relation
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 159

whatsoever to the product – a trick known to every marketing expert.


However, the ‘Komita’s’ salad offers something that cannot be found in
the restaurants serving French cuisine: it is ‘our own’, masculine,
rebellious cooking; its ingredients have nothing to do with the implied
story, which unfolds in the space of the imaginary, between the name and
the product. It is the association created by the name that makes the
salad ‘Bulgarian’. The ubiquitous presence of the grilled foods is due to
their delectable taste in first place but no less to the strong link between
roasted/grilled meats and festivity and its association with ‘manliness’
and ‘heroism’: we are aware of the gendered eating20 (women cook, while
men roast) and we know that the real Hayduts, who were living in the
mountains and the forests, prepared their food on open fires. The salad
inventions, the popularity of the grilled meats and satchs seem to lead to
a conclusion that the Bulgarian cuisine as perceived, represented and
sold in the restaurants clearly valorises the roasted/grilled/a-la-minute/
manly/meaty/festive food. The imagery is not only manly and heroic but
also outdoorsy, different from the tedious kitchen work. Even the salads,
which are vegetable-based and vegetables are grown and cooked by
women, manage to adhere to this perception.
The other status-related salads in our sample point to a different set
of questions. Most of them are named after professions or social roles of
whom it is known that they eat well: Boyards, Mayors, Chorbadzhis,
priests, masters, tavern-keepers. These salads seem to be promising
something more than the ordinary, of the more affluent and influential
classes. I should mention that I did not find a single salad named after
the professions of the modern elites (officers, let’s say, or ministers).
At the opposite end we find salads named after the profession of hard and
intense labourers: the shepherds, who tend to their flocks all day and in
any weather, under different names (pastoralists, chobani);21 the
harvesters; the wagoners, the regional transhumance pastoralist
Karakachani (sarakatsani). Again, all names belong to the rural way of
life – I never found a salad named after a tailor, let’s say, or a painter.
A quick comparison of the ingredients of the laborers’ and the elite’s
salads actually reveals a certain preference to use mostly common
vegetables, white cheese and olives in the first group, while the second
group in most cases includes some kind of meat or meat products. The
selection of the statuses perceived as relevant to the national cuisine/
culinary identity makes a strong case that not only the core, but the
160 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

entire discourse on national identity, is borrowed from the pre-modern


peasant society and culture. The intrinsic ‘Bulgarianness’ is sought and
found within the traditions of the ethnographic and social bygone.

The Twenty-First-Century Image of


Bulgarian National Cuisine
My attempt to interpret the language of the national cuisine on the
empirical material of restaurant salads is intended as a demonstration of
the possibilities of the method, rather than as a set of hard arguments,
leading to large-scale conclusions. And yet, similar readings of the other
menu categories that were not included in this text give me some
confidence to suggest that most of the observations will be confirmed,
therefore I would like to proposes a few general observations with
promising potential.
The Bulgarian national restaurant cuisine exhibits at present an
identifiable style, based on syntactic rules, recognised and adopted by
the establishments, which offer ‘Bulgarian’ cuisine. The vocabulary of
this national style is open, flexible, unproblematically contradictory
(‘Chorbadzi saladlet’ (sic) with balsamic dressing (sic!)), as any live
vocabulary is. Often it is impressively creative: we see the use of
archaic words and archaic sounding words; of diminutives of nouns in
unthinkable versions (‘saladlet’), wrongly spelled words that nobody
cares about.22 The syntactic system, on the other hand, is deeply
contradictory: the most visible self-presentations (the blurbs on the site)
almost always speak of ‘gozba’ (archaic and intimate word for ‘dish’, with
etymology in the Slavic and Indo-European ‘gost’ (guest), therewith
clearly establishing a mental image of homeliness, grandmotherliness,
slow cooking,23 everyday food, pre-modern times. The dishes actually
served in the restaurants however are mostly grilled, meats, satchs,
hayduts, that is, the manly, heroic, festive, a-la-minute, open to foreign
tastes and the food industry.24 One participant in a Facebook group on
restaurants even goes as far as saying: ‘no one cooks in the restaurants any
more’. This is incorrect of course: in the 18 surveyed restaurants we see a
number of slow-cooked dishes25 and still the persistent advertising of
gozbas is in clear dissonance with the dominance of the salads, the grill,
the satch and the meze. The discrepancy between marketing strategies
(the brand) and the actual contents is resolved apparently in the sphere of
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 161

the collective imaginary. The caterers adapt to the expectations of an


audience, which likes national cuisine without bothering to question its
Bulgarianness and authenticity. The consumers adapt and adjust their
ideas about the national cuisine to the food they receive in the
restaurants. The survey of a set of names, categories and menus of the
bitovi establishments allowed us to see the outlines of the model
of construing and selling national culinary culture: the assembling of
menus consisting of freely selected authentic dishes, names, products
and dishes peacefully coexisting with products, techniques and tastes of
other national cuisines or the modern food industry and commerce;
invented combinations of products and techniques, which at the same
time stay in the realm of the familiar without taking the risks of
experimentation.
This hotchpotch however does not fall apart but is consolidated in
an almost-uniform nomenclature and presentation. From the mass
adoption of the satch as a mainstay of traditional cooking (incorrect) to
the choice of print fonts and colour palette of the logo, we see a bona fide
canon of the national-style restaurant cuisine. I would propose two
possible and complementary interpretations of the observed situation.
The first is related to the limitations and constraints of the restaurant
cooking in general; the second, to the dictate of consumer expectations.
Even those not familiar with the specificity of food preparation in
restaurants know that cooks work with pre-prepared elements of the
easily spoiled food. Only high-class restaurants with numerous staff
could afford to cook each dish from scratch. The pressure to keep the
prices affordable puts a lid on the aspirations to build a real restaurant
kitchen with different stations. This circumstance immediately
impoverishes the cuisine by excluding an entire range of dishes
(several slow-cooking dishes, roasted whole meats, fresh eggs and dairy
products, freshly baked pastries). The corrective pressure of the
consumer demand is no less tangible. The restaurants offer dishes that
are in demand and in mass demand. The Bulgarian public, lacking
long-cultivated culinary tradition (interest in authenticity, in local
brands and rarities and only nascent interest in food discourse) or, if we
add a more damaging circumstance – a public socialised in a culinary
tradition shaped by the central-planning egalitarian economy, does not
seek authentic dishes with their original names and local ingredients.
In addition, the sense and need to preserve the authentic cultural
162 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

system is missing. The culinary culture is disintegrated and finds its


identity in a limited number of individual significant elements,
simulacra of the national, which turn to be sufficient in delivering the
main objective of marketing the culture: offer ‘easily recognizable
markers of ethnic identity’ (Lu, Fine, 1996: 536). Even if individual
cooks and caterers have a genuine interest in authenticity, they know
they cannot sell it. The consumer receives in the Bulgarian bitov
establishment a version of the ‘Bulgarianness’ they expect and deserve.

Notes
1. The ethnographic literature is summarised in Etnografija na Balgaria, 1983; 2.
For recent publications see Vukov, Ivanova 2010; Dechev, 2010.
2. Suffice it to mention William Robertson Smith (1889), Audry Richard (1939),
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1965), Mary Douglas (1995), Marcel Mauss (2001).
For good review of the anthropological tradition and more recent publications
see Di Giovine, Brulotte (2014).
3. The term is untranslatable; it is an adjective of ‘bit’, in Russian ‘быт’ – that
segment of human life which comprises the satisfaction of material and spiritual
needs.
4. http://zavedenia.com/ (accessed 5 January 2015).
5. The data is from 23 – 25 January 2015. The numbers today may be different
because of the dynamics of the field but the error is from one to five
establishments.
6. The mehana (tavern) is ‘an establishment where alcoholic beverages are sold
and consumed’, according to the Guidelines for cooking laborers (Danailova,
1966:31).
7. The Shopi is are regional group in western Bulgaria.
8. Rhodope mountain is situated in the south-central part of Bulgaria; its southern
slopes are in Greece. The mountain has rich history, interesting regional cuisine
and culture.
9. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the period of cultural
modernisation and nation-formation among Bulgarians in the Ottoman
Empire, known as ‘National Revival’ (Vazrazhdane).
10. Voivoda. Old Slavic, literally ‘war-leader’ or ‘war-lord’.
11. Gozba is an Old Slavic word for ‘disk’, ‘meal’.
12. My objective is not to discuss the social meaning of this ‘displaced meaning’
(McCracken, 1990:104 ff.) but I have no doubts that the observations I propose
could provide ample food to study the collective psyche.
13. See Ruth Schwartz Cowan (1983) about the increasing volume of domestic
obligations for the housewife in the modern period (Cowan, 1983).
SOMETHING BULGARIAN FOR DINNER 163

14. See for instance ‘Lunches and dinner: what should I cook today?’ (Obedi i
vecheri, 1942: 55)
15. The satch (from the Turkish sac, metal sheet) is a sturdy ceramic disk, used to
bake breads and pancakes on open fire or charcoal.
16. The cookbooks published in Bulgaria before the 1990s mention just a few salads
with names: Shopska, Shephards’, Garden and a few interesting exceptions
(the Work company’s, Spring).
17. A village close to Veliko Tarnovo, medieval capital of Bulgaria.
18. The Turkish word Merakli is used.
19. A word that triggers an emotional response.
20. Neuhaus, Jessamyn (ed.) Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and
Gender in Modern America. The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore,
2003.
21. Greek for ‘shepherd’.
22. A non-representative survey among the Facebook friends of the author as to
whether they find the diminutive designations of dishes appealing or repulsive
generated more than 50 comments (https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?
q¼Rayna%20Gavrilova%20%D1%83%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%
B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BD%D0%B8 of 22 January 2015),
of which 30 were negative or critical, 10 neutral and only six positive.
An interesting comment was ‘In restaurants with folk taste (sic!) it is OK’.
23. Najden Gerov defines gozba as ‘cooked dish’ (Gerov, 1, 230).
24. The observed restaurants offer pre-prepared ingredients (such as chicken parts,
blanched potatoes, cheeses with seasoning).
25. Sarma (5), kebap (4), comlek (4), roasted stuffed whole lamb (11), stewed shin
(10), kachamak (polenta) (6), cavarma (7), kapama (4).
CHAPTER 8

MAKING MODERN
MONGOLIANS:GENDER ROLES
AND EVERYDAY NATION-
BUILDING IN CONTEMPORARY
MONGOLIA

Timofey Agarin and Lı̄ga Rudzı̄te

Students of post-socialist nation-building often forget a far-away outpost


of the Soviet regime wedged between the Soviet Union and China, yet
Mongolia is a post-socialist society. During socialism, urbanisation,
industrialisation and, as elsewhere, deportations of social and cultural
elites were the primary tools of socialist nation-building, alongside
availability of universal healthcare, education, consumer products and
high culture. Many of these – though in a different form – are still
widely available and cherished today, 25 years after Mongolia’s full
independence from Soviet patronage. During this time, nation-building
and toleration of nomadism have gone hand in hand with consolidation
of its democratic regime. This brings us directly to the issue of nation-
building for this society that is different from many other in the post-
socialist domain: Mongolians have been around for a long time, but their
experience of national statehood was imported by socialist ideologues in
the 1920s. It was translated into the local vernacular and continues to
impact the processes underlying the nation state, nation and regime-
building after the socialism.
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 165

It is widely accepted that nation-building is a process of constructing


narratives (Hobsbawm 1992; and, especially, Klumbyte 2003). Similarly
to other post-socialist places, in Mongolia these focus primarily
on Mongolians’ past. Formal nation-building centres around the role of
men in perpetuating Mongolian-ness, with traditions, legacies and rigid
gender norms being communicated through familial socialisation of the
new generation of Mongolians. We therefore ask how the roles ascribed
to males and females acknowledge and contribute to the top-down
nation-building in contemporary society. To do so, we provide an
overview of claims laid bare by Mongolians about the uniqueness of their
nation and this nation’s distinct features, something that is typical for all
nation-building projects the world over. Then, we track down elements
related to the cultural set-up, lifestyles and traditions as nation-building
tools in Mongolia in general and in Mongolian families in particular.
We map these variations onto gender practices where (as we believe)
some practices allow the co-existence of traditional Mongolian customs
with modern-day opportunities. We look particularly at the role of
and expectations from women to identify the effects of people’s
(unreflective?) practices on the larger project that the editors of this
volume term ‘everyday nation-building’ (Seliverstova and Pawlusz 2016;
Polese and Horák 2015; Isaacs and Polese 2015, 2016).
This paper draws upon fieldwork conducted over the period of three
months in 2012 in regions of Ulaanbaatar, Hovsgol, Arhangay and
Henti, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews,
document analysis and cross-referenced informal conversations. Looking
at the presence of ‘traditional’ nation-building instruments and the ways
in which they are used to engage with gender categories, we explore how
modern Mongolians identify as part of their nation state-bound culture.
We conclude that these are but reflections of what many have previously
assumed to be endemic to the European processes of social cohesion,
forging strong national consciousness by subtle means and, ultimately,
formal nation-building.

Building a Nation for Mongolians


The socialist era is widely considered the time of active formation of the
Mongolian state-nation. It gained particular importance throughout the
1920s when the new regime sought to craft a collective identity which
166 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

could be useful for and supportive of the socialist political system.


Therefore, when Christopher Kaplonski suggests that ‘socialists had
inherited a state that was of relatively recent origin and was not clearly
identifiable with the existing form of collective [i.e., national – authors]
identity’ (Kaplonski 1998:35), it is clear that only with the
establishment of a socialist state in Outer Mongolia can we attest the
beginning of the Mongolian nationalism’s evolution.
Nation-building in Mongolia during the socialist era was not much
different from similar projects pursued by the Soviet rulers when
dealing with (semi- and quasi-) nomadic people. Following Stalin’s
dictum, new political and social regimes were more likely to prosper if
‘national in form and socialist in content’ (Stalin 1936). Not only did
this mean that each ethnic group (natsionalnost’) had to have its own
ethno-territorial homeland (in the case of Mongolians, a state de jure
separate from the Soviet Union), but had to be bolstered with a set of
national traditions and building upon a heroic past (Roy 2000).
Particularly the national histories of (in the Soviet parlance) ‘backward
nationalities’ were to reference peoples’ struggle against the
external foes as well as internal oppressors. In the case of the
Mongolia, this amounted to a rewriting of history away from ‘being
about rulers and people to being about a people’ (Kaplonski 1998:35),
elevating, for example, Sukhbaatar into the pantheon of heroic
Mongolian figures.
In his more recent work, Kaplonski observes that the understanding
of what being Mongolian means today distinguishes between Mongolia
of ‘tradition’ and that of ‘People’s Republic’ (Kaplonski 2000). However
pivotal for construction of the nation, the state and the link between the
two, the underpinnings of socialist reason for creating a Mongolian
nation state is rarely perceived as being a part of citizens’ everyday
experiences today. Instead, references to socialism as ‘the empty period’
are frequent in scholarship, as well as in everyday conversations. Similar
to what Laura L. Adams observed in Uzbekistan (Adams and Rustemova
2009; Adams 1999), the state embraced the national ideology of the past
as a prescription for the future; the breakdown of socioeconomic
infrastructure in the early years of post-socialism additionally pushed
Mongolian society into the fold of ideals about the nation which were
formerly taboo. The socialist-time ideas were now turned on their head
with commitment to sedentary lifestyles substituted by pastoral life,
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 167

Buddhism replacing atheist practices and multiple everyday heroes


yielded their place to Chenggis Khaan.
It appears that precisely the three specific markers of community that
the socialist regime was bent on eradicating provide the reference point
in the contemporary national imagery precisely because the past regime
sought to purge these from the public space. Thus (1) sets of references
about Mongolians’ embeddedness in their natural environment (2) social
and religious norms connecting individuals to diachronic community
and crucially (3) the intergenerational equity of Mongolian people as is
personified in the figure of Chenggis Khaan, all provide opportunities
for modern-day Mongolians to engage with the traditional nation-
building tools offered by the elites (Isaacs and Polese 2016).
Forming national identity within particular spaces, through religious
practices and through reference to a common historical figure are not
new ways of matching a nation to a state, the purpose of nation-building
as such, according to Abel Polese and Slavomir Horak (Polese and Horak
2016). Similarly, Sara L. Jackson suggests seeing nation-building as a
process through which states attempt to convince a group about their
shared identity and territory (Jackson 2015); this is done by providing
a set of elements that people can choose to accept or discard as their
identity markers (Isaacs and Polese 2016:9). The way people engage
with these tools constitutes the everyday nation-building.
The responses to the nation-building narratives often also translate
into actions not initiated by the state, but aimed at strengthening the
identity of the nation among other perceived group members. These
Polese and Horak refer to as ‘spontaneous nation-building tools’ (Isaacs
and Polese 2016:9). It is at the intersection of the traditional nation-
building tools and the motivation and intent for putting spontaneous
nation-building instruments to practice where we locate the
contribution of this chapter. As we show, the return to traditional
Mongolian-ness proceeds in concert with distinct views on social
relationships and roles borne by male and female Mongolians, allowing
men to take a lead in the everyday practice of nation-building, leaving
women to either endorse the offered narrative in a supporting role or
resort to what become spontaneous nation-building tools as a response to
it. Thus when it comes to Mongolia, it is not only a question of how the
‘nation-building’ is being performed, but also of subjects undertaking
these practices.
168 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

We reference the actors in their identities which appear to bear the


most weight in their day-to-day interactions, that is, as individuals with
distinct gendered characteristics, interests and identities. The sets of
expectations set out by the Mongolian society from men and women
offers the background to practices which individuals ought to perform to
qualify for and be accepted as Mongolians. When talking of ‘men’ and
‘women’ we merely refer to social categories deployed in the process of
nation-building (Brubaker 2004). Only individuals belonging to a
nation can engage in everyday reinterpretation of norms without
challenging national traditions. This analytical approach helps us focus
on substantive issues in, rather than on process of or relations between
the subjects of this day-to-day nation-building when reflecting on
gender-specific roles in Mongolian nation-building.

Nomadism as Practice of Everyday Nation-Building


When Mongolia steered towards a market economy during the early
1990s, much of the population experienced significant challenges in
regards to their lifestyles and chains of supplies. The economy of the
country experienced high levels of inflation as well as food shortages,
which were particularly pronounced in urban areas where the vast
majority of citizens lived while working in factories and in socialist
services. Later, as the reforms of 1990 resulted in disbandment of negdels
(i.e., Mongolian kolkhozes), many Mongolians chose to ‘go back to their
roots’: take over the livestock and set off into the steppe, re-assuming
their nomadic lifestyle, despite the lack of experience with herding.
When reflecting on these experiences today, many of our respondents
suggest that their decisions were meant to reclaim their history, cashing
in on the opportunity to live the purity of Mongolian-ness and lead a life
in accordance with tradition.
Today, around two-fifths of the Mongolian population lead nomadic
lives.1 This represents the connection of Mongolians to nature, their
herds and spirits of the land. Nomadism embodies the bravery and
hardships of living in the Mongolian steppe and dealing with the rough
weather conditions. These have hardly changed since the times of
Chenggis Khaan and the ideals of those days long past are re-lived by
experiencing nomadism. Even people who had never herded, but whose
relatives were still living in the steppe, would regularly articulate this
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 169

connection in conversations, establishing themselves as a part of the


Mongolian nation. In a conversation with the President of Mongolia,
Ts. Elbegdorj stressed that Mongolians were a nomadic nation and few
non-Mongolians would survive the harsh conditions of the steppe.2
Stories and ideas similar to these have become the ‘truths’ – something
worth telling about Mongolian nation from childhood.
Return to a steppe life meant also a return to the ‘traditional’ division
of labour within households: While men are the ones herding the
animals, spending time away from the ger, females are the ones that
usually stay around the hearth and ger, making fire, cooking food, taking
care of small children. Herding as means of production by the nomadic
people is thus associated with men who are in charge of the success or
failure of the household to ensure their livelihood. But the expectations
from women extend beyond their traditional roles once families need to
secure their livelihoods due to increasing unreliability of herding as a
source of sustenance. International development organisations and
families themselves then look for ways to engage women in additional
economic activity.
Women are approached by development agents to introduce
agricultural practices next to herding, but this is often met with a
great scepticism from women themselves. A more accepted approach
practised by many families is sending their daughters to school for
longer to improve their chances for better occupation and as a result
better the economic status of the family. This trend has increased over
time and today about 70 per cent of all students in tertiary education are
female. Though this will result in long-term high levels of female
employment,3 we believe that it is families, not women, who view
prolonged spells in education as an opportunity for better employment
in cities and expect that these will retranslate into family’s economic
welfare. Aude Michelet suggests that the friction between the expected
gender roles and the new realities of the increasing numbers of women
becoming the main bread-winners in families and contributing less
within the ‘female domain’ have a potential to create tensions in
households (Michelet 2015). With the increased participation of women
in labour market, sharing of household chores by men has been losing
much of its past stigma.4 Though encouraging in itself, equal
participation of Mongolians of both genders in domestic labour is
postponed by the belief (shared among men and women) that home (ger)
170 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

is still the female purview, while men should remain herders, even if
with varying results in terms of income.
Both reluctance to take up agricultural practices and the tensions
around the gendered tasks around the ger are closely connected to the
narrative that describes Mongolians as nomads that should lead nomadic
lifestyle. Three decades ago, Anatolii Khazanov observed that even those
nomads who had moved to villages and cities often thought of
sedentarisation as an interim stage of their lives and that they would
return to nomadic way of life at the first opportunity (Khazanov
1983:84). In the interviews one of us conducted with an international
development organisation in 2012 it was often mentioned that
Mongolians, men and women, believed that nomadism was ‘in their
bones and blood’ irrespective of the overwhelming numbers of sedentary
Mongolians.
The return to nomadism is often romanticised as being part and
parcel of Mongolian history and tradition. The embeddedness of
nomadism in nature provides a space where the history and tradition can
be practised as uniquely ‘national’. Among others, Tim Edensor proposes
to look at the complex ways that the nation is ‘spatialised’ through
institutional and everyday practices: how elements of national space
constitute symbolic geographies, creating spatial entities out of ‘nations’
(Edensor 2002:65). And the national spaces that lay claims to symbolic
power, are also replicated in local contexts, used by people as part of their
repertoire of everyday practices. This is reflected in the Mongolian
context, where nomadic landscapes and practices around them form the
core of proposed idea of the nation, even if most people are not directly
linked to nature any longer.
Khazanov asserts that one of the main characteristics of ‘proper’
nomadism in Mongolia has been the disinclination to undertake
anything other than pastoral activities (Khazanov 1983). The
reluctance to take up agriculture is synonymous for Mongolians with
affirming their belonging to the ‘nomadic stock’ and the fact that plot
holding is not ‘in their bones’.5 It would be more appropriate to see the
return of the view of nomadism as the virtuous lifestyle inside the
parameters of post-socialist, everyday nation-building. It is also more
in line with the re-invigorated view of the virtuous national
characteristics which leave no space for practices traditionally
associated with the settled life.
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 171

It is worth noting that many practices underlining the uniqueness of


the Mongolian nation reference past experiences of the people who
traditionally led a pastoral lifestyle and were on the move throughout
most of the past centuries. However, during the socialist era most
Mongolian families led a settled lifestyle and such a reference – however
tentative – to the pastoral lifestyle of Mongolians marks a significant
contrast to ideas and ideals of the socialist time in the country. Thus
nomadism is quintessential to Mongolians’ self-image as a people
connected to their natural environment, even if they do not practise it
themselves. Therefore, even if not everyone practises herding,
Mongolians still refer to themselves as nomads, even if – as has been
observed by Gaby Bamana – they live in townships (Bamana and
Sėndėnzhavyn 2008). Here economic struggles and opportunities have
created space for different narratives of nation.6
The view that nomadism is essential to practising Mongolian-ness is
widely accepted across Mongolia. Keeping a relation to the land and
land-based lifestyles is a tool offered and accepted for consolidating the
sense of a nation. It coincides with men’s responsibility around the house
and within the community. Women are imagined in this narrative only
in a supportive role, often giving them space to practice the
complimentary, sedentary lifestyle, which is not a part of the national
normativity and thus also escapes any possibility of alterations to the
original narrative.

Forging Ties to the Nation via Religious Practices


Though Buddhism arrived in Mongolia from the Manchu, it is perceived
by Mongolians as a local religious tradition amalgamating shamanism
(such as involving spirits), norms of conduct with community (such as
practices of hospitality) and sets norms for communal relations (such as
the requirement to cooperate). Buddhism alongside shamanism
continues to play an important role in the everyday and provides the
backdrop for feelings of unity, if not outright homogeneity among the
Mongolians. Though many Mongolian norms associated with Buddhism
fell prey to socialist modernisation, many local traditions were
continuously called into peoples’ everyday and private lives despite
being frowned upon in public (Kaplonski 2015). Therefore, when
following the demise of socialism there was a need to re-define the
172 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

features of Mongolians which could be used for nation-building ‘after


the break’, many practices and traditions quietly observed in private
came to use. Looking back into the past allowed the tapping into sets of
‘traditional’ elements of lifestyle, often leading to new combinations
of those elements in common imagery (See, e.g., Sabloff 2001). Many of
these related to quasi-religious practices that connected the living
individuals with the spirits believed to be able to harm individuals and
households if not negotiated with. One of the central ways of soliciting
protection of the household and people residing in the area surrounding
has been traditionally – in socialism, as well as in post-socialist times –
organized in ritualised practices around ovoos.
Ovoos are places believed to offer a location for people to access and
negotiate with ‘land masters’: spirits. As such, they are usually
positioned on top of mountains and are important places for ceremonies
that reflect the common responsibility of people for their joint
wellbeing. As all misfortunes befalling individuals are seen as having
been caused in one way or another by spirits, it is the responsibility of all
members of community to negotiate with them and requiring ritualistic
offerings to assuage spirits.
Morten Axel Pedersen describes that the ovoo ceremonies before
socialism used to be bound up with the social reproduction of patrilocal
clans, as the men of the surrounding kin groups would be the ones
performing the annual rituals, thus reconfirming their belonging to the
land they lived on (Pedersen 2012). Ovoos therefore represent a location
for connecting with the diachronic community as well as with the spirits
that are affecting the immediate kin of Mongolians. During socialism,
ovoo ceremonies were forbidden and ovoo places were formally stripped of
all spiritual meaning. This did not prevent people from adding pebbles
and stones to ovoos, claiming it as a superstition if not a spiritual practice
(Endicott 2012). Today, outside of a ritualistic ceremony, it is considered
important for Mongolians driving past an ovoo to stop and offer
something to spirits.
The communal space around ovoos offers another site for performing a
Mongolian nation through a practice of the common religion. Here, as in
herding, the effectiveness of the nation-building tool relies mostly on
men, including the sedentary Mongolians, taking part in the annual ovoo
ceremonies at different locations across the country. Individuals
congregate to engage in joint acts of protecting their people from
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 173

spirits as part of a collective act of shared responsibility (Pedersen 2011).


Women, though at times taking part in the ceremonies, are not
responsible for negotiating with spirits in this particular way, keeping
them to more home- and hearth-related spiritual practices, e.g. offering
tea in libations to spirits, a practice less exposed to public eye. Thus
women engage in religious practices as part of the everyday nation-
building, however these are much smaller scale, home-bound, not
engaging with the community or any group larger than the immediate
family. The lack of explicit communal significance provides
opportunities for women’s spiritual practices to be less tradition-
bound and more adaptable to different new situations, e.g. moving to an
apartment in a city, forming a space for intersection of traditional
narratives and modern lifestyles. This space is present rather in women’s
nation-building performances than in men’s, but as the gendered
practices do not seem to intersect within the formal narrative, the
traditional narrative seems to run parallel to the modern lives.

Chenggis Khaan Legacies


Since the early 1990s, the link of every Mongolian to Chenggis Khaan
has been re-established, reproduced and re-embedded in objects, events
and joint celebrations. His depictions blazon national consumer
products such as beer, vodka, meat, matchboxes, as well as adorn public
spaces across Mongolia: large statues have been erected in Ulaanbaatar
and Tsonjin Bolgod, Ulaanbaatar’s international airport carries his name,
as do the various businesses around the country from wedding saloons to
shops, from restaurants to night locales. Chenggis Khaan’s figure
inspires also the return to herding celebrations (Tsagaan Sar) and
wrestling competitions (Naadam).
On the day of Naadam people crowd the streets of Ulaanbaatar and
meet to go to the stadium or racing tracks to watch wrestling, horse
racing and archery. These have a strong connection to the Chenggis
legacy and represent the Mongolian identity through the sports played
mainly by men, reconfirming the values of traditional manhood and
linking men with his victorious army. Manly games are said to have been
played as celebrations after successful battles during and since Chenggis
Khaan; they were re-organised into sporting competition after the 1921
Revolution in an effort to enhance national spirit. Similarly, after the
174 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

1990s, Naadam and related games have experienced a revival with


increasing numbers of sportswomen taking part alongside men,
although only within the discipline of archery.
The Mongolian New Year’s celebrations Tsagaan Sar (White Moon) is
an important holiday marking the inauguration of Chenggis Khaan and
as such also the birth of the nation. Importantly, it is also a family- and
home-centred celebration. Tsagaan Sar is often referred to as a
celebration of kinship requiring visits among peoples’ kin both in cities
and in rural areas (Sauer 2001; Humphrey 1992). It is therefore the space
where social relations can be formed and reproduced (Højer 2004). As a
traditional event that was not recognised by the socialist authorities and
was not celebrated publicly during socialist rule, it regained popularity
after 1990 as a token of national celebration but also as a model event
where people could reconvene and reconfirm social ties.
Favouring Buddhist faith (or so it is told) and clad in traditional
clothes, Chenggis was and remains the only candidate for the figure of
father of the nation in Mongolia (Kaplonski 1998:42). Albeit there are
notions of ‘motherland’ that some scholars have identified during the
period of socialism, the socialists’ effort at building a civic, sedentary and
modern nation in contrast to the peripatetic, traditional and, as such,
backward Mongolian put the Great Khaan in the firing line of socialist
ideologues. He did play a part in the Soviet narrative of Mongolian
history, but his role therein resembled that of a backward and
traditionalist leader of a nomadic nation (Kaplonski 2015). Currently
Chenggis legacies are more often connected to features of ‘undisturbed
modernity’ and he like no other represents the spirit of unity among this
peripatetic nation and the wide steppe (Humphrey 1992). In discussions
and interviews with Mongolians they often mentioned the establishing
of diplomatic immunity, common currency, equal access to judiciary for
all people, free trade, common international law and inter-religious
dialogue as Chenggis’ lasting contribution to Mongolian legacies.
The symbolic figure of the former leader of Mongolians is fused with
both the religious and pastoral traditions of Mongolians, further
legitimising his pivotal status in the toolbox of nation-building. It is
therefore unsurprising to see the figure of Chenggis Khaan incorporated
into the narratives on Mongolian-ness and underpinning the official
narrative of nation state building in Mongolia, be it in everyday
practices, in consumer products, in services and referred to in people’s
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 175

actions. Chenggis is also at the centrepiece of altars in people’s homes:


the space that used to be designated to Buddhist altars before socialism,
today contains representations of the great leader with oil lamps and
incense, as well as personal inscriptions tailored to the private
understanding of the importance of Chenggis Khaan to the household
members (Humphrey 1992).
Framing the ‘national’ history around a leader and establishing a
collective memory of the particular historical figure are often coupled
with a personality cult towards the leader. The effects of the personality
cult in Turkmenistan as discussed by Polese and Horak (2016) closely
resemble those we observe in Mongolia and related to the figure of
Chenggis Khaan, projecting Mongolians’ past experience onto the
present and situating them firmly in the familial contexts. Thus,
combining traditional and spontaneous nation-building tools casts a
much wider net for popular support to the central historical figure as is
the case in Turkmenistan. Here, the legacy of Chenggis is the
main source and the central reference point for the emergent identity of
the nation.
However, it is mostly men who are expected to participate in and
steer the ceremonies as they used to be done, or so it is believed, during
the times of Chenggis. Unsurprisingly, thus, masculinity is often
equated with the virtues that Great Khaan apparently had: having a
strong and resilient body, being able to wrestle and drink copious
amounts of alcohol (Bille and Kaplonski 2015). The manly games
enhance the role of masculinity in nationalist discourse. These reflect on
Mongolians’ understanding of themselves as part of a nation based on
traditional ways of life, living in the countryside, taking care of five
types of livestock (horses, cattle, sheep, goats, camels), negotiating
relationships with the land spirits – all placed mainly in manly realm by
the gendered division of labour.
There is, however, some mention of women in the narratives
connected to Chenggis Khaan too. The much-read Weatherford’s
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World recounts a story about
women in Chenggis Khaan’s life and, through that, in the Mongol
empire as such. Ho’elun, his mother and especially his wife Borte, are
portrayed as important figures and, while not in a position to make
decisions, they shape the rationale of Chenggis’ decisions. For example,
the tale of Ho’elun teaching her sons to stand together rather than apart,
176 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

‘because separate arrows can be broken more easily’, not only translates
into tactics to be used in battles. It is also widely indicative of an ideal
relationship between members of the same kin, as well as the role and
influence of women as holders of sagacity which they can – and are
expected to – put to use over hot-headed men, helping with making
decisions appropriate for the kin. Weatherford took the task to continue
placing women within the narrative through his later book too: The
Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan
Rescued His Empire, which the author built around ‘The Secret History of
the Mongols’, claiming that sections referring to the might of women in
the Mongol empire went missing in the book. The book on Mongol
queens; however, is not nearly as widely read and referred to as the
Chenggis Khaan one. And yet, it reflects on the efforts to include women
in the traditional narratives of the nation, even if only through their
relationship with men.

Contribution of Women to Mongolian


Everyday Nation-Building
The pivotal role of Chenggis Khaan in the national narrative makes men
responsible for playing the key role and as such entrusts them with
upholding the virtues of the nation, while women feature only in
supporting positions throughout. The division of labour with clear tasks
and ritualised behaviours facilitates conformism with everyday nation-
building and maintains avenues for recreating routines underpinning
formal nation-building. At the same time, this rigidity opens avenues
for women to tacitly challenge tradition where necessary. Only some
women’s roles are prescribed by men and they make their own decisions
about the family, e.g., by initiating a divorce (Terbish 2013). Also, as
women do not take their spouse’s name, this ensures that children
identify as belonging to the mother as well as to the father (Michelet
2015). This, suggests Paula Sabloff, allows men to maintain connection
with their mothers throughout their lives (Sabloff 2001). This gives
space for women to negotiate with men their role in nation-building also
in terms of traditional tools and how they are applied across generations.
Traditionally, women have been free to choose their partners in
Mongolian society, an obligation rather than a practice to facilitate
nation-building. Upon completing formal education, women are often
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 177

pressured to either find employment or a husband or rather both, soon


after their graduation. For many young educated women the choice of a
spouse proves a difficult one. Those men embodying the ideals of ‘pure’
Mongolians and performing the practices constituting the nation as
discussed previously are often a mismatch for educated women desiring
to make their living in the comfort of the city. Thus, while pastoral men
might come across as ideal and suitable for perpetuating the image of a
nomadic nation, modern Mongolian women often target men with
similar educational and professional pathways and rather city-bound
lifestyles. There are simply not enough of them for everyone deserving,
increasingly leading women to postpone marital arrangements despite
the rising societal pressures and stigma of childlessness.7 Thus women
rather resort to avoid engaging with the traditional narratives
altogether rather than changing them beyond household. Along with
the responsibility to ensure the continuation of the Mongolian nation,
this has put the pressure on men, rather than on women, to procure and
multiply the stock of the Mongolian nation regardless of the availability
or of the willingness of women to marry.
Thus, and similarly to other societies reversing changes that took
place during ‘socialist modernity’, some Mongolian men take up the
responsibility of safeguarding the purity of Mongolian nation from
the extreme opposite of Mongolian-ness: an influx of foreign blood into
the ‘veins of the nation’. These sentiments are directly translated into
attitudes of dislike of and avoidance of foreigners, though not being
directly related to perceived threats to the existence of the nation
(Billié 2015). It has been reported that groups claiming to ‘protect the
nation’ are punishing Mongolian women spotted together with
foreigners.8 These attacks against the women have often been referred
to in personal communication as ‘understandable’, even if not
‘legitimate’ in the light of the threat to a ‘nation’ being posed by the
opportunistic foreigners, especially by the Chinese. As in other social
contexts where the traditional mechanisms of social cohesion are
eroding, it is Mongolian men who can and do assume their role as
modern-day Chenggis Khaans, delivering on the expectations impressed
upon them by society returning to the pre-socialist ideals of nomadic
kinship, ties with the nature and heroism in the face of external
adversaries. These acts of men (and in some cases, women) serve as
examples of a ‘spontaneous nation-building’ practices where a group acts
178 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

out on their own conviction of what constitutes a nation. Some of these


nation-building practices rely on male experiences of memory,
humiliation and hope that are in fact efforts to protect the nation.
Here, the women are the ones invoking these feelings, especially
humiliation and hope and therefore appear to be in need of protection,
often from themselves in the name of the nation (Nagel 1998).
This further illustrates the point that the traditional nation-building
tools are gendered in their message and approach and as such are being
used by those whose status is more secure in societal hierarchies.
The perceived need of the nation for protection is seen in most
traditional societies as an appropriate way to impose rigid social norms
on women in the name of the ‘national’. As such, Mongolian men are
tasked with sustaining ‘their’ nation because ethnicity is passed through
the father’s bloodline, making men – not women – responsible for
reproducing the nation (Bille and Kaplonski 2015). Thus, while women
are exposed to fewer pressures to re-enact Mongolian ideals, there is
continuous expectation to comply with despite complaining about
expectations from the kin which constitute everyday nation-building
guided by traditional roles for men, as well as for women (Mayer 2000).
The impact of top-down nation-building in public on what is
believed to be of import for private individuals has been effectively
penetrating practices in domains away from the public eye. The
importance of community-conforming behaviours has been exacerbated
by the hard landing of the economy, which made the roles traditionally
exercised in and guarded by the kin obligatory for families to maintain
viable social and economic ties. This allowed family and community to
exercise pressures similar to those of social and national cohesion
on representatives of both genders in Mongolia and pressed for the
return to status quo ante and ‘traditional’ roles after the demise of
‘socialist modernity’. In the Mongolian case, women are relegated to
assistants of men in everyday nation-building. Although housework is
largely a female responsibility: keeping the fire and preparing the food,
making choices about what is being consumed, purchased and sold,
women remain agents of nation-building in the ger only. No doubt, there
is some leverage that they can attain when raising the new generation of
Mongolians; at home they are the primary agents of socialisation for
children and have considerable potential to bring about the flexibility
into interpretations of nation community and family.
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 179

The gendered nature of nation-building is not new to academic


scholarship; the feminist literature on nations and nationalism sees
production of gendered hierarchies central to any nation-building
efforts. That women’s supporting role in nation-building is not claimed
by women themselves, but relegated upon them by men has long been a
research agenda. Some studies suggest that exclusion of active female
participation from the nation-building borne by men relegates women
to actors maintaining tradition, defined in either ethnic or national terms.
In her study of nationalism in South Korea, Laura C. Nelson finds that
the roles of women in nation-building were gendered and limited to
heterosexual maternal roles, even though women performed the same
labour roles as men (Nelson 2000). Similarly, the increase of female
participation in public life outside their ‘traditional’ domain has not
translated into their increased visibility in the formal nation-building
practices in Mongolia. As stressed by Billé, the nation-
building discourse in Mongolia is not only sexist, but also highly
heteronormative (Billié 2015). Along these lines women often engage
with the established attitudes towards building a nation, but they are
involved with social norms that are ambiguous at best, counter-
productive at worse, as they validate the masculinity enwrapping the
nation-building.
Mongolian society is not particularly unique in that its men are
challenging ‘their’ women’s independence and act on women’s choices
when these align badly with traditions re-established after the end of the
(no doubt, pro forma) socialist gender equality. We claim that it is not
only the return to the ‘traditional modernity’ of pre-socialist Mongolia
that has been (successfully?) resurrected and emphasises the ger-centred
lifestyle of the steppe nomad as a proxy connection to the great legacy of
Chenggis Khaan. The resultant narrative does explain why Mongolian
men perceive women to be at particular risk of becoming an object of
foreign malicious intent and requires a wholesale return to ‘history’
before it took ‘time off’ under the socialist regime. However, this
narrative does so at the expense of reducing men to irrational actors at
the service of the national collectivity, tasked with protection of
‘Mongolian bones and blood from intermixture with the foreign’ and
thus legitimising their actions as sets of fundamentally traditionalist
commitments. It also reduces women to passive subjects, not active
actors with agency.
180 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

This view of the return to gendered perceptions of the public space is


part and parcel of the reversed social ordering of national hierarchies.
During the socialist era, gender equality was seen as a tool to aid
modernisation of Mongolian society as a whole. But economic hardship
of the early post-socialist years – rather than the culturally determined
preferences for nomadism – have driven hordes of Mongolians out of
urban spaces and forced many to return to nomadism as something most
of them believed they could do best. Indeed, while for some the return to
nomadism meant fewer social pressures and offered greater and more
familiar, structure to social interactions, those Mongolians remaining in
cities found it no less challenging to negotiate their obligations vis-à-vis
family members, community and the nation as a whole.
Linking what is valuable and what is valued for both men and women
in the maintenance of national collectivity is at the centre of the everyday
nation-building in Mongolia. While the transition from socialism has
been hailed as an example of successful building of a nation on distinctly
non-European foundations, it becomes increasingly clear that the
everyday experiences of nation-building are deeply affected by the
exposure to Western thinking: when it comes to the role of a singular
leader and male tutelage of the social order, the role of pre-socialist
‘traditional modernity’ and of the ‘place for the nation’ in nature – there
are multiple parallels to nation-building processes in other post-socialist
regions, e.g., in the Baltic States.

Conclusion
This chapter has examined the unanticipated impact that the view of
men as agents of the Chenggis Khaan tradition has on opportunities for
women to engage with and change the societal and cultural norms
forming the core of Mongolian nation-building. We set this claim in the
context of nation-building in Mongolia but looked specifically at the
role allocated to women in this context; we searched for the space females
could carve out for themselves to pick and choose from the toolbox of
national identities believed to be glorious and predominantly nomadic.
Therefore while it is ultimately women who pick and choose what is
being promoted and passed on to their children in the context of limited
social contacts in the steppe, few take up opportunities to raise children
outside the canon of the acceptable to the ideal-bound Mongolian.
MAKING MODERN MONGOLIANS 181

As such, to be mothers and raise the new generation of Mongolians,


many women have already attained higher levels of education than men.
They are also more vocal when it comes to making strategic choices
about what is important for children, e.g., by ensuring that they too are
accessing education and are at ease with a combination of more
traditional and more modern ways of life, regardless of where they live.
We expected to see Mongolian women as agents of social change who
transform and update the meanings of what it means to be a modern
Mongolian not despite, but because of their gender or indeed their
projected gender roles. But, of course, we are far remote from an overtly
unrealistic perception which exempts women from the social and
cultural context in which they themselves have been raised and
socialized. All Mongolian women are themselves the products of their
mothers’ socialisation to seek out and embrace change under socialism,
something that explains the increasing drift into urban spaces by those
females who do not want to or cannot adapt to expectations placed on
them in the steppe. Indeed, for many, moving into towns and accessing
higher education is nothing but an avenue for leaving and not
challenging the traditional Mongolian ways, particularly those norms
and traditions staked up for and by men. So we gain an impression that it
is inside the households and by means of mothering the modern
Mongolians that some parts of Mongolian society circumvent the
Chenggis Khaan-focused narrative of nationhood without explicitly
challenging it. Women can do so by selectively choosing those aspects
of Mongolian nationhood that are readily available to pass on to their
children and as such combine the sets of past norms and traditions, that
are already driving post-socialist nation-building, as well as societal
modernisation.
Whereas men are constrained in envisaging their choices, we have
claimed that women’s role in the nation-building is contingent on
opportunities they determine for themselves as there is little of
traditional, that is, culturally prescriptive, norms that regulate their
choices and little of that is independent of men’s roles. This is because
both the socialist and post-socialist eras have offered women greater
choices both at home (in gers and in communities), in public and at the
interface of the two (in choices of education, maintaining relationships
with men and raring children). These should have put the prospect for
the modern Mongolian nation firmly into women’s hands and allowed
182 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

them to have a powerful impact on the future direction and speed of


social change in Mongolian society. However, in reality they do not; our
chapter has explored some of the reasons for which nation-building
remains an implicitly male domain in Mongolia, specifically through
engagement with traditional and well-accepted gendered nation-
building tools.

Notes
1. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Czech Development Cooperation
2012. Available at www.mzv.cz/file/1057324/Czech_development_cooperati
on_web_EN.pdf (Accessed 25 September 2016).
2. During UNAOC Fourth Global Forum, Doha, Qatar, 12 December 2011.
3. Tsolmon Begzsuren & Dolgion Aldar, Gender Overview Mongolia: Desk Study
(2014). Available at https://www.eda.admin.ch/content/dam/countries/
countries-content/mongolia/en/SDC-Gender-%20Overview-Mongolia-%
202014-EN.pdf (Accessed 25 September, 2016).
4. Franck Billé and Christopher Kaplonski, Mongolia: Unravelling the Troubled
Narratives of a Nation. Available at http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/m
ongolia-unravelling-the-troubled-narratives-of-a-nation (Accessed 15 October
2016).
5. Jack Weatherford connects this to the heritage of Chenggis Khaan, as he led the
fight of nomads against the ‘civilised’ world – sedentary populations, above all,
the farmers. Though according to Weatherford this fight continues ‘in the minds
of Mongolians,’ (Weatherford 2004, 264).
6. Jackson reflects on this in her work on the role of mining companies in nation-
building in Mongolia and the popular rejection of the vision of modern
Mongolian nation through development via resource-extraction. Mongolians
rather see mineral excavation and harvesting minerals as antithetical to national
customs and rely on traditional narratives about their relationships with the land
to forge perceptions about the ‘space of a nation’. Jackson, ‘Imagining the
mineral nation: contested nation-building in Mongolia’.
7. As Franck Billé notes on his fieldwork, childlessness was often seen as a curse, not
as an informed choice (Billié 2015).
8. Though the radical nationalist groups operating along these interpretations of
national purity exist mainly in Ulaanbaatar, similar actions have been told to
have happened in other cities, too.
CONCLUSION

WHEN POST-SOCIALISM MEETS


THE EVERYDAY

Abel Polese, Oleksandra Seliverstova,


Emilia Pawłusz and Jeremy Morris

We started this book to fill what we saw as a surprising gap. In spite of a


voluminous literature on post-socialism in which identity represents a
major direction and in spite of an emerging attention to everyday
identities, the two approaches rarely met. Indeed, browsing through
electronic resources and catalogues we have found a lot on identities, but
everyday identities were studied only by a minority of younger scholars.
It would be unfair, though, to claim that little or nothing exists on
the topic. The everyday is a term that has come to popularity recently.
A number of scholars, including on post-socialism, have helped us in
shaping our approach for this book (see, for example, Humphrey 2002;
Laitin 1998; Rausing 2004; Wanner 2010), even if they have not
mentioned the everyday in their approach or title.
We were lucky, in our search, to be approached by and to be able to
identify a number of young and more senior scholars who were either
working on the everyday in the region or were fascinated by our
approach to the point to propose a chapter. Their diversity of approaches
has helped us to reshape our ideas and also to expand the scope of our
research to aspects of the everyday that we had not considered before.
By doing this, we hope to have been able to make for expanding the
parameters for academic scrutiny of social integration and identity
184 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

construction at the everyday level with particular attention to post-


socialist societies. There is much research on the relationship between
identity and everyday practices beyond the region and in particular in
the Western world. But this does little justice to a variety of practices
that we observe and that seem to us idiosyncratic to post-socialist spaces,
to the point of justifying them as a special category, at least for empirical
studies. We hope, by doing this, to be able to challenge and then
contribute to the general debates on the issue.
Emphasis on top-down institutional and political approaches to
understanding identities sometimes obscures the multifaceted ways in
which the construction of identity happens at the everyday level.
This was the rationale behind expanding the scope of our investigations
to consider and integrate more ‘banal’ forms of nationalism, more
people-centred modes of consuming identities so as to integrate the
micro with the macro, the institutional and the societal, the formal
and the informal. While we have noticed a tendency to dismiss or
underplay these practices as insignificant, it is time to acknowledge
that individuals have latitude to perform their national identities in
complex ways.
The never-ending civic-ethnic debate ascribes voluntary practices
to civic attitudes, as opposed to essentialistic views on the nation
(Breton, 1988). By making the case for the value of ordinary people’s
consumption we illustrate the capacity of ethnic nationalism to evolve
into a voluntary, and therefore more civic, phenomenon.
This call for a focus on bottom-up phenomena is in no way intended
to underplay the role of the state. Our book concentrates on the everyday
level as a domain in which we study processes of nationalism and the
agency of ordinary people in them, but all these behaviours evolve
and spread in a context that is defined culturally, territorially and
administratively by a given state. Citizens may reproduce, affirm and
even amplify ideas on nation generated by political elites. But it is
important to keep in mind the existence of an everyday unspoken and
complicit dialogue between the state and its people, although both parts
might, from time to time, forget about the existence of such complicities
and synergies.
By so doing we wish to integrate that body of nation-building
literature that had tendencies to ignore or simply failed to acknowledge
the role of the people in identity-formation processes, as opposed or at
CONCLUSION 185

least integrating state-originated measures. Not only are people able to


adapt to what a state proposes, they also have the capacity to contest,
renegotiate and, in some case, to oppose them. If not as organised forms
of resistance, for instance through politicisation of an issue, then at least
silently in their mundane life.
If we start from this view, we can justify the fact that sometimes a
pop song of a local band, a homemade meal or the familiar sound
of a bothersome TV advertisement can evoke stronger patriotic or
nationalistic feelings than any official national symbol or a public
celebration of an official holiday. Such small details found in everyday
life remain often unnoticed and thus not worth attention. However,
several authors have already warned us that the incapacity to notice
them, the fact that these aspects are seen as ‘natural’, part of our daily
life, is their real strength (Billig 1995; Fox 2016; Skey 2011). They
penetrate and embed our daily life to the point that we stop noticing
them or notice them only when they become absent, which then
becomes perceived as the ‘unnatural’ state.
Everyday practices, particularly the very basic ones, are common all
over the world. What makes a difference is the way people perform them
and in the belief that they do so in a unique way for their community.
This book has been an attempt to reassess the role of people’s agency,
manifested through daily choices of non-political and non-politicised
actors, to suggest that even simple actions, if performed by a sufficient
number of people, can have an impact on national identity. The key
question here is what number is ‘sufficient’, since, as Connor (2004)
pointed out, there is no accepted, or acceptable, benchmark telling
us how many people need to accept an identity or a marker before a
community can consider itself a nation.
However, by highlighting the problem of scale, our assumption is
that it is possible to go beyond existing approaches in nationalism
studies that tend to focus on phenomena of great social and political
magnitude – wars, conflicts, break-ups of empires. In spite of their
attractiveness and their obvious explanatory value, these approaches tend
to ignore micro processes and routine practices in which identities or at
least markers, are sustained (Thompson 2001).
In this respect, the chapters in this book shed light on the importance
of the everyday, whose focus is highly valuable, in particular when
formal identity markers proposed by the state and elites prove
186 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

insufficient. Such markers can be renegotiated or rejected or be in a state


of contestation that involves several various social or cultural groups.
Ultimately, the chapters in this book suggest that an inquiry into the
everyday allows us to unpack this contestation and unravel alternative
identity choices or alternative sources of its production that are
meaningful for some parts of society.
In the light of this, we have argued that identity construction is also a
mundane, quotidian practice that emerges from practice more so than
theory. The fact that it can be regarded as unconscious, casual or
unintentional does not deny its social importance. As was noted some
years ago, if all informants come to the same conclusion and ascribe
this identity choice to chance, then chance alone cannot explain this
outcome. For example, in the post-socialist context, the migration to
Ukrainian identity in the city of Odessa happened and this was
mentioned by all informants in the given study, after a particular episode
in each informant’s life (Polese 2009, 2010). Each episode was distinct,
leading them to think that this conversion was the byproduct of chance.
However, when every single individual moves in the same direction,
social scientists rarely talk of chance and look for hidden or latent
patterns, that most likely are invisible not because they are not there but
because have not been discovered yet.
Our daily choices of a certain product, hobby or participation in a
cultural activity may embed a cultural or identity choice that,
underpinned by our attitude, remains invisible, subconscious, unnoticed
but also tacitly accepted by us or others and is, therefore, reinforced by
the fact that we do not see anything special in a particular choice
(Fox 2016). By force of this, the very concept of identity construction,
but also nation-building, can integrate a number of elements that have
emerged throughout this book. First, we see a continuous line between
formal and informal actors (see Eriksen 1993 for formal and informal
nationalism) but also factors that frame people’s understanding of the
nation. In other words, in a framework looking at inclusion-exclusion
mechanisms and dynamics, which are crucial for the definition of
national community, both the political and the (apparently) non-
political matter. Our post-functionalist view allows us to suggest that
identity-construction is a practice (thus identity performance) rather
than a mere teleological process with a pre-defined end goal (beyond
functionalism). By doing this, we acknowledge that the process of
CONCLUSION 187

identity-formation is contested, fractured and, although ‘hot’ at times


(Ehala and Zabrodskaya 2014; Polese 2014), influenced by macro but
also micro processes contained in daily routine that may be regarded as
mundane or even apparently uneventful.
Ultimately, individual and collective identities are informed by a
synergy of one’s own personal experience, embedded in the society that
the individual lives in and the reaction of the society to the declaration or
acknowledgement of a given identity. Acknowledging the role of
the individual is crucial to our discourse and approach, suggesting that
to understand identity construction and negotiation we need to attend to
the individual.
We do not claim here to have exhausted all the possible directions of
research for the everyday. Rather, we hope that our approach has helped
to shed light on the need for further research and for a better
understanding of the interactions between the individual and society and
how this affects identity at large. Our main focus has been the post-
socialist world for two reasons. One is that such approaches have
remained largely underexploited in our target region. The other is
that, as others have indicated (Caldwell 2002; Humphrey 2002), the
region has much potential to contribute to the debate on why everyday
practices, such as consumption or use of certain practices, products and
ideas can ultimately influence national identity. This leads us to suggest
the need for more embedded studies and a larger use of qualitative
methodologies, in order to appreciate the fact that identity is a dynamic
phenomenon and may at times fluctuate. If we were to suggest a
departure point, we could say that it is worth devoting more attention to
the increasing importance of popular culture, Internet and social media
as political arenas are important for self-definition, especially in the
context of contestation of what the state says.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, L.L., 1999. Invention, Institutionalization and Renewal in Uzbekistan’s


National Culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(3), pp. 355– 73.
Adely, F.J., 2012. Gendered Paradoxes: Educating Jordanian Women in Nation, Faith,
and Progress. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Agarin, T., 2011. ‘Civil Society Versus Nationalizing State? Advocacy of
Minority Rights in the Post-Socialist Baltic States’. Nationalities Papers, 39(2),
pp. 181– 203.
Agnew, J., 2004. ‘Nationalism’. In J. Duncan, N. Johnson and R. Schein, eds,
2004. A Companion to Cultural Geography. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
pp. 223– 37.
Allen, A., 2002. ‘Power, Subjectivity, and Agency: Between Arendt and Foucault’.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 10(2), pp. 131– 49.
Alsayyad, N., ed., 2001. Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage: Global Norms
and Urban Forms in the Age of Tourism. London: Routledge.
Alvarez V.A., 2007. ‘(Re)Presenting Identities: National Archipelagos in Kazan’.
Nationalities Papers, 35(3), pp. 457– 76.
Amirov, V.M., 2015. Antigeroy: nekotoryye osobennosti konstruirovaniya
otritsatel’nykh obrazov v zhurnalistike voyennykh konfliktov. Politicheskaya
lingvistika, 2.
Anderson, B., 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.
Anderson, B.A. and Silver, B.D., 1984. ‘Equality, Efficiency, and Politics in Soviet
Bilingual Education Policy, 1934– 1980’. The American Political Science Review,
78(4), pp. 1019– 39.
Antonsich, M., 2015. ‘The ‘Everyday’ of Banal Nationalism – Ordinary People’s
Views on Italy and Italian’. Political Geography, 54, pp. 32 – 42.
Appel, H., 2000. ‘The Ideological Determinants of Liberal Economic Reform:
The Case of Privatization’. World Politics, 52(4), pp. 520– 49.
Apple, M.W. and Christian-Smith, L.K., eds, 1991. The Politics of the Textbook.
New York: Routledge.
Archer, R., 2009. Paint Me Black and Gold and Put Me in a Frame. Master’s
Dissertation. Central European University.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 189

———, 2012. ‘Assessing Turbo-Folk Controversies: Popular Music between the


Nation and the Balkans’. Southeastern Europe, 36(2), pp. 178– 207.
Arel, D., 1995. ‘Ukraine: The Temptation of the Nationalizing State’. In
V. Tismaneanu, ed., 1995. Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New
States of Eurasia. New York: M.E. Sharpe. pp. 157– 88.
Åslund, A., 2007. Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and
Democracy Failed. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International
Economics.
Bailey, B., 2000. ‘Language and Negotiation of Ethnic/Racial Identity Among
Dominican Americans’. Language in Society, 29(4), pp. 555– 82.
Bamana, G. and Sėndėnzhavyn, D., 2008. On the Tea Road: A Journey into Mongolian
Life and Culture. Ulaanbaatar: Admon Printing House.
Bar-gal, Y., 1994. ‘The Image of the “Palestinian” in Geography Textbooks in Israel’.
Journal of Geography, 93(5), pp. 224– 32.
Barley, R., 2013. An Anthropological Exploration of Identity and Social Interaction in a
Multi-Ethnic Classroom. PhD. Sheffield Hallam University.
Barthes, R., 1961. Pour une psycho-sociologie de l’alimentation contemporaine,
Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 16(5), pp. 977– 86.
———, 1964. ‘Rhétorique de l’image’. Communications, 4(1), pp. 40 – 51.
Baum, M.A., 2002. ‘The Constituent Foundations of the Rally-Round-the-Flag-
Phenomenon’. International Studies Quarterly, 46(2), pp. 263– 98.
Becker, H.S., 2008. Outsiders. New York: Free Press.
Bekus, N., 2010. Struggle Over Identity: The Official and the Alternative ‘Belarusianness’.
Budapest: Central European University Press.
Bell, D. and Valentine, G., 1997. Consuming Geographies: We are Where We Eat.
London: Routledge.
Bénéı̈, V., 2008. Schooling Passions: Nation, History, and Language in Contemporary
Western India. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
Benwell M., 2014. ‘From the Banal to the Blatant: Expressions of Nationalism
in Secondary Schools in Argentina and the Falkland Islands’. Geoforum, 52,
pp. 51 – 60.
Biddle, B.J., 1979. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. New York:
Academic Press, Inc.
Bigo, D., 2002. ‘Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the
Governmentality of Unease’. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 27(1),
pp. 63 – 92.
Billé, F., 2015. ‘Nationalism, Sexuality and Dissidence in Mongolia’. Routledge
Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia, pp. 162– 73.
Billé, F. and Kaplonski, C., 2015. Mongolia: Unravelling the Troubled Narratives of a
Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Billig, M., 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.
———, 2009. Reflecting on a Critical Engagement with Banal Nationalism –
Reply to Skey. The Sociological Review, 57(2), pp. 347– 52.
Blagojević, G., 2012. ‘Turbo-Folk and Ethnicity in the Mirror of the
Perception of the YouTube Users’. Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU LX, 2,
pp. 155– 70.
Blakkisrud, H. and Kolstø, P., 2011. ‘From Secessionist Conflict Toward a
Functioning State: Processes of State- and Nation-Building in Transnistria’.
Post-Soviet Affairs 27(2), pp. 178– 210.
190 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Bloch, A., 2003. Red Ties and Residential Schools: Indigenous Siberians in a Post-Soviet
State. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
———, 2014. ‘Citizenship, Belonging, and Moldovan Migrants in Post-Soviet
Russia’. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 79(4), pp. 445– 72.
Boli, J., Ramirez, O. and Meyer, J.W., 1985. ‘Explaining the Origins and Expansion
of Mass Education’. Comparative Education Review, 29(2), pp. 145– 70.
Bonikowski, B. and Gheihman, N., 2015. ‘Nation-State as Symbolic Construct’. In
Wright., J.D., ed., 2015. The International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral
Sciences. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier. pp. 309–14.
Bougdaeva, S., 2016. ‘Health and Nation-Building in Russia’. In R. Isaacs and A.
Polese, eds, Nation Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet Space: New Tools and
Approaches. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 226– 47.
Boym, S., 2002. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.
Breton, R., 1988. ‘From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism: English Canada and Quebec’.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 11(1), pp. 85 – 102.
Briffault, E., 1846. Paris à table. Paris: Hetzel.
Brown, A.N., 2005. ‘Language and Identity in Belarus’. Language Policy, 4(3),
pp. 311– 32.
Brubaker, R., 1994. ‘Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and
Post-Soviet Eurasia: An Institutionalist Account’. Theory and Society, 23(1),
pp. 47 – 78.
———, 1996. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New
Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———, 2004. Ethnicity Without Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brubaker, R., Feischmidt, M., Fox, J. and Grancea, L., 2006. Nationalist Politics and
Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Oxfordshire: Princeton University
Press.
Brunnbauer, U., ed., 2004. Studies on South East Europe, Volume 4: (Re)Writing
History: Historiography in Southeast Europe After Socialism. Munster: Lit
Verlag.
Bunzl, M., 2000. ‘Jews, Queers, and Other Symptoms: Recent Work in
Jewish Cultural Studies’. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 6(2),
pp. 321– 41.
Caldwell, M.L., 2002. ‘The Taste of Nationalism: Food Politics in Post-Socialist
Moscow’. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 67(3), pp. 295– 319.
Campbell-Smith, M., 1967. Marketing the Meal Experience: A Fundamental Approach.
Guildford: University of Surrey Press.
Carter, T.J., Ferguson, M.J. and Hassin, R.R., 2011. ‘Implicit Nationalism as
System Justification: The Case of the United States of America’. Social Cognition,
29(3), pp. 341– 59.
Caşu, I., 2008a. ‘Modernization of the Moldovan SSR Following the Soviet Example:
Failure or Success?’ In Rusu Şefan, ed., RO – MD/Moldova ı̂n două scenarii/ RO –
MD/Moldova in Two Scenarios. Chişinău: Centrul pentru Artă Contemporană –
[KSA:K]: 39 – 44.
———, 2008b. ‘Identity Policies in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Moldova’. In Rusu
Şefan, ed., RO– MD/Moldova ı̂n două scenarii/ RO– MD/Moldova in Two Scenarios.
Chişinău: Centrul pentru Artă Contemporană – [KSA:K]: 75 – 84.
Cheskin, A., 2013. ‘Exploring Russian-Speaking Identity from Below: The Case of
Latvia’. Journal of Baltic Studies, 44(3), pp. 287–312.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 191

Chevalier, J.F., 2013. ‘Local Language Education in Southern Siberia: The Republics
of Tyva and Altai’. Sibirica (12)3, pp. 56 – 84.
Chinn, J., 1997. ‘Moldovans: Searching for Identity’. Problems of Post-Communism,
44(3), pp. 43 – 51.
Chinn, J. and Kaiser, R., 1996. Russians as the New Minority: Ethnicity and
Nationalism in the Soviet Successor States. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Cimpoeşu, D., 2010. Republica Moldova, ı̂ntre România şi Rusia 1989– 2009.
Chişinău: Biblioteca revistei Limba Română, Tipografia Serebia.
Ciscel, M.H., 2006. ‘A Separate Moldovan Language? The Sociolinguistics of
Moldova’s Limba de Stat’. Nationalities Papers, 34(5), pp. 575– 97.
———, 2007. The Language of the Moldovans. Romania, Russia, and Identity in an
Ex –Soviet Republic. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Coe, C., 2005. Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools: Youth, Nationalism, and the
Transformation of Knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Connor, W., 1967. ‘Self-Determination: The New Phase’. World Politics, 20(1),
pp. 30 – 53.
———, 1972. ‘Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?’ World Politics, 24(3),
pp. 319– 55.
———, 2004. ‘The Timelessness of Nations’. Nations and Nationalism, 10(1/2),
pp. 35 – 47.
Corsaro, W.A. and Eder, D., 1990. ‘Children’s Peer Cultures’. Annual Review of
Sociology, 16(1), pp. 197– 220.
Coser, L.A., 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Routledge.
Cowan, R.S., 1983. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from Open
Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books.
Csergő, Z. and Goldgeier J.M., 2004. ‘Nationalist Strategies and European
Integration’. In Z. Kántor, B. Majtényi, O. Ieda, B. Vizi and I. Halász, eds,
2004. The Hungarian Status Law: Nation Building and/or Minority Protection.
Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University. Ch. 9.
Cusack, I., 2000. ‘African Cuisines: Recipes for Nation-Building?’ Journal of African
Cultural Studies, 13(2), pp. 207– 25.
Cwiertka, K.J., 2006. Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity.
London: Reaktion Books.
Danailova, V. et al., 1966. Narachnik za gotvarskite rabotnici. SofiJa.
Danero I.J., 2013. ‘Constructing National History in Political Discourse:
Coherence and Contradiction (Moldova 2001– 2009)’. Nationalities Papers,
41(5), pp. 780– 800.
Daniels, S., 1993. Fields of Vision. Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England
and the United States. Oxford: Polity Press.
Danilov, A.A. and Kosulina L.G., 2004. Istoriya Gosudarstva i Narodov Rossii:
Uchebnik Dlia 7 Klassa Obsheobrazovatelnoi Shkoly (History of the Statehood and of the
Peoples of Russia: Textbook for the 7th grade pupils of comprehensive school). Moscow:
Drofa.
Dechev, S., 2010. ‘Balgarska, no ne tochno shopska. Za edin ot kulinarnite simvoli’.
Balgarski folklor, 36(1), pp. 125– 40.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari F., 1980. Capitalisme et Schizophrénie. Paris: Editions de
Minuit.
———, 1988. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London:
Bloomsbury Publishing.
192 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

De Mooij, M., 2013. Global Marketing and Advertising: Understanding Cultural


Paradoxes. London: Sage Publications.
Deutsch, K. and Foltz, W., 1966. National Building. New York: Atherton Press.
DeRouen, K., 2000. ‘Presidents and the Diversionary Use of Force: A Research
Note’. International Studies Quarterly, 44(2), pp. 317– 28.
Desbiens, C., Mountz, A. and Walton-Roberts, M., 2004. ‘Introduction:
Reconceptualizing the State from the Margins of Political Geography’. Political
Geography, 23(3), pp. 241– 3.
Dimou, A., ed., 2009. ‘Transition’ and the Politics of History Education in Southeast
Europe. Georg Eckert Institute. Göttingen: V&R unipress.
Di Giovine, M.A. and Brulotte, R.L., eds, 2014. ‘Introduction: Food and Foodways
as Cultural Heritage’. In M.A. Di Giovine and R.L. Brulotte, eds, 2014. Edible
Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
pp. 1 – 27.
Douglas, M., 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo.
New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Douglas, M. and Isherwood, B., 1996. The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of
Consumption with a New Introduction. 2nd edn London: Routledge.
Dubin, B., 2011. Rossiya nulevykh. Politicheskaya kul’tura. Istoricheskaya pamyat’.
Povsednevnaya zhizn’. Moscow: ROSSPEN.
Edensor, T., 2002. National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. London:
Bloomsbury Academic.
———, 2006. ‘Reconsidering National Temporalities Institutional Times,
Everyday Routines, Serial Spaces and Synchronicities’. European Journal of Social
Theory, 9(4), pp. 525– 45.
Ehala, M. and Zabrodskaja, A., 2014. ‘Hot and Cold Ethnicities in the Baltic States’.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(1), pp. 76 –95.
Eidheim, H., 1969. ‘When Ethnic Identity Is a Social Stigma’. In F. Barth, ed.,
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, pp. 39 – 57.
Eklof, B., Holmes, L.E. and Kaplan, V., eds, 2005. Educational Reform in Post-Soviet
Russia: Legacies and Prospects. New York: Routledge.
Eley, G. and Suny, R.G., 1996. Becoming National: A Reader. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Eriksen, T.H., 1993. ‘Formal and Informal Nationalism’. Ethnic and Racial Studies,
16(1), pp. 1 – 25.
Escudé, C., 1988. ‘Argentine Territorial Nationalism’. Journal of Latin American
Studies, 20(1), pp. 139– 65.
Etnografija na Balgarija. T.2., 1983. Materialna kultura. Sofija: BAN.
Gavrilova, R., 1999. Koleloto na zhivota. Vsekidnevieto na balgarskiJa vazrozhdenski
grad. Sofija: UI ’Sv. Kliment Ohridski’.
Fabrykant, M. and Buhr, R., 2016. ‘Small State Imperialism: The Place of Empire
in Contemporary Nationalist Discourse’. Nations and Nationalism, 22(1),
pp. 103– 22.
Faller, H., 2000. ‘Transforming Soviet Language Ideologies into Post-Soviet
Language Policies in Tatarstan’. Anthropology of East Europe Review, 18(1)
pp. 81 – 6.
Farrer, J., 2005. ‘Disco “Super-Culture”: Consuming Foreign Sex in the Chinese
Disco’. In K. Gelder, ed., 2005. The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge.
pp. 479– 90.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 193

Fehérváry, K., 2002. ‘American Kitchens, Luxury Bathrooms, and the Search for a
’Normal’ Life in Postsocialist Hungary’. Ethnos, 67(3), pp. 369–400.
Ferguson, P.P., 1998. ‘A Cultural Field in the Making: Gastronomy in 19th-Century
France’. American Journal of Sociology, 104(3), pp. 597– 641.
Flandrin, J., 2002. L’ordre des mets. Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob.
Finkelstein, J., 1989. Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners. Oxford: Polity Press.
Foley, D.E., 1990. Learning Capitalist Culture: Deep in the Heart of Tejas. Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Foster, R.J., 2002. Materializing the Nation: Commodities, Consumption, and Media in
Papua New Guinea. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fox, J.E., 2006. ‘Consuming the Nation: Holidays, Sports, and the Production of
Collective Belonging’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(2), pp. 217– 36.
———, 2016. ‘The Edges of the Nation: A Research Agenda for Uncovering the
Taken-for-Granted Foundations of Everyday Nationhood’. Nations and
Nationalism, 23(1), pp. 26 – 47.
Fox, J.E. and Miller-Idriss, C., 2008. ‘Everyday Nationhood’. Ethnicities, 8(4),
pp. 536– 76.
Foxall, A, 2013. ‘Photographing Vladimir Putin: Masculinity, Nationalism and
Visuality in Russian Political Culture’. Geopolitics, 18(1), pp. 132– 56.
Fradenburg, L. and Freccero, C., 2013. Premodern Sexualities. New York: Routledge.
Frith, S., 1996. ‘Music and Identity’. In S. Hall and P. Du Gay, eds, 1996. Questions of
Cultural Identity. London: Sage. pp. 108– 27.
Gaidar, E.T. and Chubais, A.B., 2011. Razvilki novejshej istorii Rossii. Moscow:
OGI.
Galbreath, D., 2005. Nation-Building and Minority Politics in Post-Socialist States:
Interests, Influence and Identities in Estonia and Latvia. Vol. 8. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Gaufman, E., 2017. Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the
Ukraine Crisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gaufman, E. and Walasek, K., 2014. The New Cold War on the Football Field:.ru
vs.pl. Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media,
12, pp. 55 – 75.
Gellner, E., 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
———, 1991. ‘Nationalism and Politics in Eastern Europe’. New Left Review, 1
(189), p. 127.
Geraci, R., 2000. ‘Ethnic Minorities, Anthropology, and Russian National Identity
on Trial: the Multan Case, 1892– 96’. Russian Review, 59(4), pp. 530– 54.
Gerov, N., 1978. Rechnik na balgarskija ezik. v.5. Fototipno izdanie. Sofija: Balgarski
pisatel.
Getmanchuk, A., S. Solodkyy, Y.Y. and Zarembo, K., 2011. Scenarios for the
Development of the Transnistria Conflict. Challenges to European Security. Kiev:
Institute of World Policy.
Giddens, A., 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
———, 1986. ‘Action, Subjectivity, and the Constitution of Meaning’. Social
Research, 53(3), pp. 529– 45.
Gilman, S.L., 1999. Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gilman, S., 2013. The Jew’s Body. New York: Routledge.
194 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Girardelli, D., 2004. ‘Commodified Identities: The Myth of Italian


Food in the United States’. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 28(4),
pp. 307 – 24.
Goffman, E., 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday.
Gorenburg, D., 2005. ‘Tatar Language Policies in Comparative Perspective: Why
Some Revivals Fail and Some Succeed’. Ab Imperio (1), pp. 257– 84.
Gotthardi-Pavlovski, A., 2012. Narodnjaci ili turbofolk u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb:
Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Filozofski fakultet.
Gotvarska K., 1904. Sastavena spored knigata na Marija Redelin. Sofija: Izd. i pechat
na Ivan K. Bozhinov.
Greenberg, R., 2008. Language and Identity in the Balkan: Serbo-Croatian and its
Disintegration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Grujić, M., 2013. ‘Turbo-Folk u Srbiji i reprezentacija žena: prividna transgresivnost
jedne muzičke produkcije’. Balkanija, 4, pp. 86 – 102.
Gudkov, L., 2005. Obraz vraga. Moscow: OGI.
Gunitsky, S., 2015. ‘Corrupting the Cyber-commons: Social Media as a Tool of
Autocratic Stability’. Perspectives on Politics, 13(01), pp. 42 – 54.
Gurova, O., 2016. ‘Political Consumerism in Russia After 2011’. In B. Beumers, O.
Gurova and S. Turoma, eds, 2016. Cultural Mechanisms of Political Protest in
Russia. London: Routledge. Ch. 5.
Hadzhijski, I., 1974. ‘Bit i dushevnost na nashija narod’. In Izbrani sachineniJa, v.2.
SofiJa: Balgarski pisatel.
Halikiopoulou, D., Mock, S. and Vasilopoulou, S., 2013. ‘The Civic Zeitgeist:
Nationalism and Liberal Values in the European Radical Right’. Nations and
Nationalism, 19(1), pp. 107– 27.
Hall, K., 2008. ‘Leaving Middle Childhood and Moving into Teenhood:
Small Stories Revealing Identity and Agency’. In K. Hall, P. Murphy and
J. Soler, eds. Pedagogy and Practice: Culture and Identities. London: SAGE
Publications. Ch. 6.
Hammersley, M. and Woods, P., 1993. Gender and Ethnicity in Schools: Ethnographic
Accounts. New York: Routledge.
Hassin, R.R., Ferguson, M.J., Kardosh, R., Porter, S.C., Carter, T.J. and Dudareva,
V., 2009. ‘Précis of Implicit Nationalism’. Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences, 1167(1), pp. 135–45.
Häyrynen, M., 2000. ‘The Kaleidoscopic View: The Finnish National Landscape
Imagery’. National Identities, 2(1), pp. 5 – 19.
Hearn, J., 2007. ‘National Identity: Banal, Personal and Embedded’. Nations and
Nationalism, 13(4), pp. 657– 74.
Herzfeld, M., 2014. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State. New York:
Routledge.
Hirschfeld, L.A., 1998. Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture, and the Child’s
Construction of Human Kinds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hobsbawm, E., 1990. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———, 1991. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. 2nd
edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., 2012. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 195

Hobsbawm, E. and Rudé, G., 2014. Captain Swing. London: Verso Books.
Hong, W. 2009. ‘Reading School Textbooks as a Cultural and Political Text:
Representations of Asia in Geography Textbooks Used in the United States’.
Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 24(1), pp. 86 – 99.
Höpken, W., 1996. Oil on Fire? Textbooks, Ethnic Stereotypes and Violence in South –
Eastern Europe. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung.
Horák, S. and Polese, A., 2016. ‘Personality Cults and Nation-Building in
Turkmenistan’. In R. Isaacs and A. Polese, eds, 2016. Nation Building and
Identity in the Post-Soviet Space: New Approaches and Tools. Oxon: Routledge.
pp. 159– 75.
Horváth, I. and Kiss, T., 2015. ‘Depopulating Semi-Periphery? Longer Term
Dynamics of Migration and Socioeconomic Development in Romania’.
Demográfia, 58(5), pp. 91 – 132.
Horvath, R., 2015. ‘The Euromaidan and the Crisis of Russian Nationalism’.
Nationalities Papers, 43(6), pp. 819– 39.
Humphrey, C., 1974. ‘Inside a Mongolian Tent’. New Society, 30(630), pp. 273– 5.
———, 1992. ‘The Moral Authority of the Past in PostSocialist Mongolia’.
Religion, State and Society, 20(3/4), 375 – 89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/
09637499208431566.
———, 2002. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
Hutcheson, D.S. and Petersson, B., 2016. ‘Shortcut to Legitimacy: Popularity in
Putin’s Russia’. Europe– Asia Studies, 68(7), pp. 1– 21.
Isaacs, R., 2010. ‘“Papa”– Nursultan Nazarbayev and the Discourse of Charismatic
Leadership and Nation-Building in PostSoviet Kazakhstan’. Studies in Ethnicity
and Nationalism, 10(3), pp. 435– 52.
———, 2015. ‘Nomads, Warriors and Bureaucrats: Nation-Building and Film in
Post-Soviet Kazakhstan’. Nationalities Papers, 43(3), pp. 399–416.
———, 2016. ‘Cinema and Nation-Building in Kazakhstan’. In R. Isaacs and
A. Polese, eds, 2016. Nation Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet Space:
New Approaches and Tools. Oxon: Routledge. pp. 138– 58.
Isaacs, R. and Polese, A., 2015. ‘Between ‘Imagined’ and ‘Real’ Nation-Building:
Identities and Nationhood in Post-Soviet Central Asia’. Nationalities Papers,
43(3), pp. 371– 82.
———. Nation-Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet Space: New Tools and Approaches.
London: Routledge.
Ismailov, M. and Ganieva, N., 2013. ‘In Search for the Russian National Identity:
Do History Textbooks Hold the Answer?’ Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the
Social Sciences, 5(2), pp. 366–92.
Jackson, S.L., 2014. ‘Imagining the Mineral Nation: Contested Nation-Building in
Mongolia’. Nationalities Papers, 43(3), pp. 437– 56.
Jenkins, R., 2004. Social Identity. London: Routledge.
———, 2011. Being Danish: Paradoxes of Identity in Everyday Life. Copenhagen:
Museum. Tusculanum Press.
Jones, A. ed., 1994. Education and Society in the New Russia. Armonk,
NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Jones, R. and Merriman, P., 2009. ‘Hot, Banal and Everyday Nationalism: Bilingual
Road Signs in Wales’. Political Geography, 28(3), pp. 164– 73.
196 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Kaplonski, C., 1998. ‘Creating National Identity in Socialist Mongolia’. Central


Asian Survey, 17(1), pp. 35 – 49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02634939808
401022.
———, 2000. ‘Reconstructing Mongolian Nationalism: The View Ten Years on’.
Mongolian Political and Economic Development During the Past Ten Tears and Future
Prospect, pp. 328– 65.
———, 2005. ‘The Case of the Disappearing Chinggis Khaan: Dismembering the
Remembering’. Ab Imperio, 4, pp. 147– 73.
Kassarova, B. and, Dimchevska, S., 1933. Gotvarska kniga s polezni upatvanija za
mladata domakinja. Sofija: Izdava Pridvornata knizharnica Iv. B. Kasarov.
Kärjä, A., 2006. ‘A Prescribed Alternative Mainstream: Popular Music and Canon
Formation’. Popular Music, 25(1), pp. 3 – 19.
Karpov, V. and Lisovskaya, E., 2005. ‘Educational Change in Time of Social
Revolution: The Case of Post-Communist Russia in Comparative Perspective’.
In: B. Eklof, L. Holmes and V. Kaplan, eds, 2005. Educational Reform in Post-
Soviet Russia: Legacies and Prospects. London: Frank Cass. pp. 23 – 55.
Kasza, G., 2002. ‘The Illusion of Welfare “Regimes”’. Journal of Social Policy, 31(2),
pp. 271– 87.
Kefeli, A.N., 2014. Becoming Muslim in Imperial Russia: Conversion, Apostasy, and
Literacy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Keillor, B.D. and Tomas, G. and Hult, M., 1999. ‘A Five-Country Study of National
Identity: Implications for International Marketing Research and Practice’.
International Marketing Review, 16(1), pp. 65 – 84.
Kemmelmeier, M. and Winter D.G., 2008. ‘Sowing patriotism, but Reaping
Nationalism? Consequences of Exposure to the American Flag’. Political
Psychology, 29(6), pp. 859–79.
Kertzer, D.I. and Arel, D., 2002. ‘Censuses, Identity Formation, and the Struggle
for Political Power’. In D.I. Kertzer, and D. Arel, eds, 2002. Census and Identity.
The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. pp. 1 – 42.
Khazanov, A.M., 1983. Nomads and The Outside World. 2nd edn Madison, WI:
The University of Wisconsin Press.
Khasanova, G., 2005. ‘Nation-Building and Values in Russian Textbooks’. In
P. Kolstø and H. Blakkisrud, eds, 2005. Nation – Building and Common Values in
Russia. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. pp. 269– 99.
King, C., 1994. ‘Moldovan Identity and the Politics of Pan-Romanianism’. Slavic
Review, 53(2), pp. 345– 68.
———, 2002. Moldovenii. România, Rusia şi politica culturală. Chişinău: Editura
ARC.
Kinnvall, C., 2004. ‘Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the
Search for Ontological Security’. Political Psychology, 25(5), pp. 741– 67.
Kiradzhiev, S., 2001. Sofiaa kakvato e bila 1878– 1943. Geografski i kulturno –
istoricheski izsledvanija. Sofija: Svjat.
Klumbytė, N., 2010. ‘The Soviet Sausage Renaissance’. American Anthropologist,
112(1), pp. 22 – 37.
Knott, E., 2015. ‘Generating Data Studying Identity Politics from a Bottom-Up
Approach in Crimea and Moldova’. East European Politics & Societies, 29(2),
pp. 467– 86.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 197

———, 2015. ‘What Does it Mean to Be a Kin Majority? Analyzing Romanian


Identity in Moldova and Russian Identity in Crimea from Below’. Social Science
Quarterly, 96(3), pp. 830– 59.
Knudsen, H.I. and Frederiksen, M.D., eds, 2015. Ethnographies of Grey Zones in
Eastern Europe: Relations, Borders and Invisibilities. London: Anthem Press.
Kolossov, V., 1999. ‘Ethnic and Political Identities and Territorialities in the Post-
Soviet Space’. GeoJournal, 48(2), pp. 71 – 81.
Kolstø, P., ed., 1999. Nation-Building and Ethnic Integration in Post-Soviet Societies: An
Investigation of Latvia and Kazakhstan. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
———, 2000. Political Construction Sites: Nation-Building in Russia and the Post-Soviet
States. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
———, 2014. ‘Russia’s Nationalists Flirt with Democracy’. Journal of Democracy,
25(3), pp. 120– 34.
Kolstø, P. and Blakkisrud, H., eds, 2016. The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism,
Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000– 15. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Koren. S., 2017. ‘Twentieth-Century Wars in History Teaching and Public Memory
of Present-Day Croatia’. Studi sulla formazione, 2, pp. 11 –33.
Koren, S. and Baranović, B., 2009. ‘What Kind of History Education Do We Have
After Eighteen Years of Democracy in Croatia? Transition, Intervention, and
History Education Politics 1990–2008’. In A. Dimou, ed. 2009. ‘Transition’
and the Politics of History Education in Southeast Europe. Gottingen: V&R unipress.
pp. 91 – 140.
Koulouri, C. ed., 2002. Clio in the Balkans: The Politics of History Education.
Thessaloniki: Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe.
Krasteva-Blagoeva, E. 2010. ‘Vkusat na Balkanite: hrana i identichnost’. Balgarski
folklor, 36(1), pp. 7 – 20.
Kronja, I., 2008. ‘Čovjek tranzicije u mas-medijskom društvu (Slučaj Srbija)’.
Filozofska istraživanja, 109(28), pp. 97 – 106.
Kratki lekcii v pomosht na rabotnicite ot obshtestvenoto hranene za polagane proverochni izpiti
po MP. 1957. Unknown.
Kulyk, V., 2014. ‘Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan’. Ab
Imperio, 3, pp. 94 – 122.
Kuzio, T., 1998. Ukraine: State and Nation Building. London: Routledge.
———, 2002. ‘History, Memory and Nation Building in the Post-Soviet Colonial
Space’. Nationalities Papers, 30(2), pp. 241– 64.
Kymlicka, W., 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Laitin, D.D., 1998. Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near
Abroad. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lallukka, S., 2001. ‘Finno-Ugrians of Russia: Vanishing Cultural Communities?’
Nationalities Papers, 29(1), pp. 9 –39.
Larulle, M., 2008. Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire. Translated from French
by M. Gabowitsch. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.
——— ed., 2014. Russian Nationalism, Foreign Policy, and Identity Debates in Putin’s
Russia: New Ideological Patterns after the Orange Revolution. Stuttgart: ibidem-
Verlag.
———, 2015. The ‘Russian World:’ Russia’s Soft Power in Geopolitical Imagination.
Washington, DC: Center on Global Interests.
198 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Leese, M., 2015. ‘“We Were Taken by Surprise”: Body Scanners, Technology
Adjustment, and the Eradication of Failure’. Critical Studies on Security, 3(3),
pp. 269– 82.
Lekcii po obshtestveno hranene. 1969. SofiJa: Ministerstvo na vatreshnata targovija.
Levinson, B.A., Foley, D.E. and Holland, D.C., eds, 1996. The Cultural Production
of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice.
New York, NY: SUNY Press.
Lévi-Strauss. C., 1964. Mythyologiques. Le cru et le cuit. Paris: Plon.
Linde-Laursen, A.,1993. ‘The Nationalization of Trivialities: How Cleaning
Becomes an Identity Marker in the Encounter of Swedes and Danes’. Ethnos, 58
(3/4), pp. 275– 93.
Livezeanu, I., 1995. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building
and Ethnic Struggle, 1918– 1930. London: Cornell University Press.
Löfgren, O., 1989. The Nationalization of Culture: Constructing Swedishness.
Ethnologia Europaea, 19(1), pp. 5 – 24.
———, 1993. ‘Materializing the Nation in Sweden and America’. Ethnos, 58(3/4),
pp. 161– 96.
Lukić-Krstanović, M., 2010. Spektakli XX veka (muzika i moć). Beograd: Srpska
akademija nauka i umetnosti, Etnografski institut.
Lu, S. and Fine, G.A., 1996. ‘The Presentation of Ethnic Authenticity: Chinese Food
as a Social Accomplishment’. The Sociological Quarterly, 36(3), pp. 535– 53.
Mälksoo, M., 2009. ‘The Memory Politics of Becoming European: The East
European Subalterns and the Collective Memory of Europe’. European Journal of
International Relations, 15(4), pp. 653– 80.
Mankoff, J., 2009. Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics. Lanham,
MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
March, L., 2007. ‘From Moldovanism to Europeanization? Moldova’s Communists
and Nation Building’. Nationalities Papers, 35(4), pp. 601– 26.
Markowitz, F., 2000. Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Russia. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.
Marples, D.R.,1999. Belarus: A Denationalized Nation. Taylor and Francis.
Marvin, C. and Ingle, D.W., 1999. Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the
American Flag. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mason, J.A., 2009. ‘Internationalist Mobilization During the Collapse of the
Soviet Union: The Moldovan Elections of 1990’. Nationalities Papers, 37(2),
pp. 159– 76.
Mauss, M., 2001. Darat: Forma i osnovanie za obmena v arhaichnite obshtestva. Sofija:
LIK.
Mayer, T., 2000. ‘Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage’. In T. Mayer, ed.
2000. Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation. London: Routledge.
pp. 1 – 24.
McCracken, G., 1990. Culture and Consumption. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
McDonald, M., 2008. ‘Securitization and the Construction of Security’. European
Journal of International Relations, 14(4), pp. 563– 87.
McFaul, M., 2012. ‘A Precarious Peace: Domestic Politics in the Making of Russian
Foreign Policy’. International Security, 22(3), pp. 5 – 35.
Medvedev, S., 2016. Pominki po rokforu: pochemu ne udalos’ importozameshcheniye
syra. Forbes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 199

Miazhevich, G., 2007. ‘Official Media Discourse and the Self-Representation of


Entrepreneurs in Belarus’. Europe-Asia Studies, 59(8), pp. 1331–48.
Michelet, A., 2015. ‘Why Are Mongolian Infants Treated Like “Kings”?’ Inner Asia,
17(2), pp. 273– 92.
Migdal, J.S., 2001. State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and
Constitute One Another. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mihajlović Trbovc, J. and Pavasović T.T., 2013. ‘Who Were the Anti-Fascists?
Multiple Interpretations of WWII in Post-Yugoslav Textbooks’. In C. Karner,
B. Mertens, eds, 2013. The Use and Abuse of Memory: Interpreting World War II in
Contemporary European Politics. London: Transaction Publishers. pp. 173– 92.
Militz, E., 2016. ‘Public Events and Nation-Building in Azerbaijan’. In R. Isaacs
and A. Polese, eds, 2016. Nation Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet Space: New
Approaches and Tools. Oxon: Routledge. pp. 176– 94.
Miller, D., 1987. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Miller-Idriss, C., 2006. ‘Everyday Understandings of Citizenship in Germany’.
Citizenship Studies, 10(5), pp. 541– 70.
Miller, J.E., 2013. Nomadic and Domestic: Dwelling on the Edge of Ulaanbaatar,
Mongolia. PhD. University of California.
Mitrović, M., 2009. ‘(T)ko to tamo p(j)eva? Transnacionalizam u post –
jugoslovenskoj popularnoj muzici i njegove granice’. Etnoantropološki problem,
4(3), pp. 117– 43.
Mitzen, J., 2006. ‘Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and
the Security Dilemma’. European Journal of International Relations, 12(3),
pp. 341– 70.
Morozov, V., 2009. Rossiya i Drugiye: identichnost’ i granitsy politicheskogo soobshchestva.
Moscow: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye.
———, 2015. Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Morris, J., 2005. ‘The Empire Strikes Back: Projections of National Identity in
Contemporary Russian Advertising’. The Russian Review, 64(4), pp. 642– 60.
———, 2007. ‘Drinking to the Nation: Russian Television, Advertising and
Cultural Differentiation’. Europe-Asia Studies, 59(2), pp. 1387– 403.
———, 2013. ‘Net Utopianism in the Shadow of the ‘Silent Majorities’: Actually-
existing Internet Use in the Russian Margins’. Region: Regional Studies of Russia,
Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, 2(2), pp. 181– 200.
———, 2016a. Everyday Post-Socialism: Working-Class Communities in the Russian
Margins. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
———, 2016b. ‘Not Soft Power, but Speaking Softly: “Everyday Diplomacy” in
Field Relations during the Russia – Ukraine Conflict’. The Cambridge Journal of
Anthropology, 34(2), pp. 110– 26.
Morris, J. and Polese, A., eds, 2014. The Informal Post-Socialist Economy: Embedded
Practices and Livelihoods. London: Routledge.
———, eds, 2015. Informal Economies in Post-Socialist Spaces: Practices, Institutions and
Networks. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Morrissey, B., 2003. When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity. London:
Routledge.
Muršič, R., 2007. ‘The Balkans and Ambivalence of its Perception in Slovenia:
The Horror of “Balkanism” and Enthusiasm for its Music’. In B. Jezernik, ed.,
200 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

2007. Europe and its Other (i.e. The Balkans). Ljubljana: Filozofska Fakulteta,
Oddelek za Etnologijo in Kulturno Antropologijo, pp. 87–105.
Musteaţă, S., 2012. ‘Dilemele Republicii Moldova’. Archiva Moldaviae IV,
pp. 103– 24.
Mylonas, H., 20132. The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees,
and Minorities. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Nagel, J., 1998. ‘Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making
of Nations’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21(2), pp. 242– 69.
Najbar– Agičić, M. and Agičić, D., 2007. ‘The Use and Misuse of History Teaching
in 1990s Croatia’. In S. Ramet and D. Matić, eds, 2007. Democratic Transition in
Croatia: Value Transformation, Education & Media. College Station, TX: Texas
A&M University Press. pp. 193– 223.
Nelson, L.C., 2000. Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South
Korea. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Obedi i vecheri – kakvo da gotvja dnes? 1942. Redaktira nastojatelstvoto na d – vo
’Evdokija’, Sofija.
Ogbu, J.U., ed., 2008. Minority Status, Oppositional Culture, & Schooling. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Oleksy, P., 2012. ‘Discourse on National Identity in Moldovan Politics After 2009’.
Przegla˛d Strategiczny, 2, pp. 127– 35.
Olick, J.K., 2007. The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical
Responsibility. New York: Routledge.
O’Loughlin, J., Kolossov, V. and Tchepalyga, A., 1998. ‘National Construction,
Territorial Separatism and Post-Soviet Geopolitics: The Example of the
Transdniester Moldovan Republic’. Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, 38(6),
pp. 332– 58.
Oneal, J.R. and Bryan, A.L., 1995. ‘The Rally Round the Flag Effect in US Foreign
Policy Crises, 1950– 1985’. Political Behavior, 17(4), pp. 379– 401.
Ovchinnikov, A., 2015. Zakhar Prilepin Launched Designer Vatniks. Komsomolskaya
Pravda.
Painter, J., 2006. ‘Prosaic Geographies of Stateness’. Political Geography, 25(7),
pp. 752– 74.
Patakfalvi-Czirják, Á. and Zahorán, C., 2016. ‘Románok vagyunk és punktum.
Identitáskonstrukciók és hétköznapi stratégiák a mai Moldovában’. Magyar
Kisebbség, 21(1), pp. 99 – 159.
Pawłusz, E., 2016. ‘The Estonian Song Celebration (Laulupidu) as an Instrument of
Language Policy’. Journal of Baltic Studies, 48(2), pp. 251– 71.
Pawlusz, E. and Polese, A., 2017 (Forthcoming). ‘“Scandinavia’s Best Kept Secret”:
Tourism Promotion as a Site of Nation-building in Estonia (with a free guided
tour of Tallinn airport)’. Nationalities Papers.
Pawłusz, E. and Seliverstova, O., 2016. ‘Everyday Nation-Building in the Post-
Soviet Space. Methodological Reflections’. Studies of Transition States and Societies,
8(1), pp. 69 – 86.
Pedersen, M.A., 2011. Not Quite Shamans: Spirit Worlds and Political Lives in Northern
Mongolia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
———, 2012. ‘At Home Away from Homes: Navigating the Taiga in Northern
Mongolia’. In P.W. Kirby, ed., 2012. Boundless Worlds. An Anthropological
Approach to Movement. Oxford: Berghahn Books. pp. 135– 52.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 201

Petrescu, C., 2001. ‘Contrasting/Conflicting Identities: Bessarabians, Romanians,


Moldovans’. In B. Trencsényi, D. Petrescu, C. Petrescu, C. Iordachi and
Z. Kántor, eds, 2001. Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian
and Hungarian Case Studies. Budapest: Regio Books, Editura Polirom.
pp. 153– 78.
Pfoser, A., 2014. ‘Between Russia and Estonia: Narratives of Place in a
New Borderland’. Nationalities Papers, 42(2), pp. 269–85.
Piattoeva, N., 2009. ‘Citizenship and Nationality in Changing Europe:
A Comparative Study of the Aims of Citizenship Education in Russian and
Finnish National Education Policy Texts’. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41(6),
pp. 723– 44.
Pilkington, H., Omel’chenko, E., Flynn, M. and Bliudina, U., 2002. Looking West?:
Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures. University Park, PA: Penn
State Press.
Piot, P., 2012. No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses. New York: W.W.
Norton and Company.
Polese, A., 2009a. Dynamiques de nation building et évolution d’une identité
nationale en Ukraine. Le cas d’Odessa. Unpublished PhD thesis, Free University
of Brussels (ULB).
———, 2009b. ‘Ukraine 2004: Informal Networks, Transformation of Social
Capital and Coloured Revolutions’. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition
Politics, 25(2/3), pp. 255– 77.
Polese, A., 2010. ‘The Formal and the Informal: Exploring ‘Ukrainian’ Education in
Ukraine, Scenes from Odessa’. Comparative Education, 46(1), pp. 45 – 62.
———, 2011. ‘Language and Identity in Ukraine: Was it Really Nation-Building?’
Studies of Transition States and Societies, 3(3), pp. 36 – 50.
———, 2014a. ‘Between Official and Unofficial Temperatures: A Complication to
the Hot and Cold Ethnicity Theory from Odessa’. Journal of Multilingual and
Multicultural Development, 35(2), pp. 59 – 75.
———, 2014b. ‘Informal Payments in Ukrainian Hospitals: On the Boundary
between Informal Payments, Gifts, and Bribes’. Anthropological Forum, 24(4),
pp. 381– 95.
———, 2016. Limits of a State: How Informality Replaces, Renegotiates and Reshapes
Governance in Post –Soviet Ukraine. Stuttgart: Ibidem verlag.
Polese, A. and Horák, S., 2015. ‘A Tale of Two Presidents: Personality Cult and
Symbolic Nation-Building in Turkmenistan’. Nationalities Papers, 43(3),
pp. 457– 78.
Polese, A., Morris, J., Kovacs, B. and Harboe, I., 2014. ‘Welfare States’ in Central
and Eastern Europe: Where Informality Fits In’. Journal of Contemporary European
Studies, 22(2), pp. 184– 98.
Polese, A., Pawlusz, E., Morris, J. and Seliverstova, O., 2017 (in print) ‘On Informal
and Spontaneous Identities’. In A. Polese, J. Morris, E. Pawlusz and
O. Seliverstova, eds. Identity and Nationalism in Everyday Post-Socialist Life.
London: Routledge.
Polese, A. and Wylegala, A., 2008. ‘Odessa and Lvov or Odesa and Lviv: How
Important is a Letter? Reflections on the “Other” in Two Ukrainian Cities’.
Nationalities Papers, 36(5), pp. 787– 814.
Post, C., 2008. ‘American Homelands: Classroom Approaches Towards a Complex
Concept’. Journal of Geography, 107(4/5), pp. 194– 7.
202 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Prideaux, J., 2009. ‘Consuming Icons: Nationalism and Advertising in Australia’.


Nations and Nationalism, 15(4), pp. 616– 35.
Prizel, I., 1998. National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in
Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prina, F., 2015. ‘Linguistic Justice, Soviet Legacies and Post-Soviet Realpolitik:
The Ethnolinguistic Cleavage in Moldova’. Ethnopolitics, 14(1), pp. 52 – 71.
———, 2015. National Minorities in Putin’s Russia Diversity and Assimilation.
New York: Routledge.
Protsyk, O., 2007. ‘Nation-Building in Moldova’. In A. Suszycki and P. Karolewski,
eds. Nation and Nationalism: Political and Historical Studies. Wrocław:
Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe.
Pykett, J., 2009. ‘Making Citizens in the Classroom: An Urban Geography of
Citizenship Education?’ Urban Studies, 46(4), pp. 803–23.
Qvortrup, M., 2016. Book Review: Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin. Political
Studies Review, 14(1), p. 86.
Raento, P., Minghi, J., Cox, K., Davidson, F., Flint, C. and Herb, G., 2010.
‘Interventions in Teaching Political Geography in the USA’. Political Geography,
29(4), pp. 190– 9.
Rasmussen, L., 1995. ‘From Source to Commodity: Newly Composed Folk Music of
Yugoslavia’. Popular Music, 14(2), pp. 241– 56.
Rasmussen, L., 2002. Newly Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia. New York:
Routledge.
Rausing, S., 2004. History, Memory, and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia: The End of a
Collective Farm. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reed-Danahay, D., 1996. Education and Identity in Rural France: The Politics of
Schooling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reeskens, T. and Wright, M., 2013. ‘Nationalism and the Cohesive Society a
Multilevel Analysis of the Interplay among Diversity, National Identity, and
Social Capital Across 27 European Societies’. Comparative Political Studies, 46(2),
pp. 153– 81.
Rice, T., 2002. ‘Bulgaria or Chalgaria: The Attenuation of Bulgarian Nationalism in
a Mass-Mediated Popular Music’. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 34, pp. 25 – 46.
Richards, A., 1939. Land, Labour, and Diet in Northern Rhodesia: An Economic Study of
the Bemba Tribe. London: Oxford University Press.
Rius-Ulldemolins, J., 2015. ‘Barcelona and SEAT, a History of Lost Opportunity:
Corporate Marketing, Nation Branding, and Consumer Nationalism in the
Automotive Industry’. Enterprise & Society, 16(4), pp. 811– 46.
Rivera, L., 2008. ‘Managing ‘Spoiled’ National Identity: War, Tourism, and Memory
in Croatia’. American Sociological Review, 73(4), pp. 613– 34.
Roper, S.D., 2001. ‘Regionalism in Moldova: The Case of Transnistria and
Gagauzia’. Regional & Federal Studies, 11(3), pp. 101–22.
Rossi, M.A., 2009. Resurrecting the Past: Democracy, National Identity and Historical
Memory in Modern Serbia. PhD. Rutgers State University of New Jersey.
Roy, O., 2000. The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations. London: I.B.Tauris.
———, 2007. The New Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Birth of Nations. New York:
NYU Press.
Rumelili, B., 2015. ‘Identity and Desecuritisation: The Pitfalls of Conflating
Ontological and Physical Security’. Journal of International Relations and
Development, 18(1), pp. 52– 74.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 203

Rutten, E., Fedor, J. and Zvereva, V., eds, 2013. Memory, Conflict and New Media: Web
Wars in Post-Socialist States. London: Routledge.
Ryabova, T., 2011. ‘The Real Man of Politics in Russia (On Gender Discourse as a
Resource for the Authority)’. Social Sciences, 42(3), pp. 58 – 71.
Ryabova, T. and Ryabov O., 2013. ‘“Geyropa”: gendernoye izmereniye obraza
Yevropy v praktikakh politicheskoy mobilizatsii’. Zhenshchina v rossiyskom
obshchestve, 3(68).
Sabloff, P.L.W., ed., 2001. ‘Chenggis Khaan, Father of Mongolian Democracy’.
In P. L.W. Sabloff, ed. Modern Mongolia: Reclaiming Genghis Khan. Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
pp. 91 – 120.
Sauer, C., 2001. ‘The Resurgence of Tradition in a Post-Communist Society: The
Role of the Mongolian “ger” as a Vehicle for the Maintenance of Ideology and
Practice in the Diachronic Process of Mongolian Society’. Central Asiatic Journal,
45(1), pp. 63 – 127.
Savchenko, A., 2009. Belarus – A Perpetual Borderland. Leiden: Brill.
Schama, S., 1996. Landscape and Memory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Sbornik gotvarski recepti za zavedenijata za obshtestveno hranene, 1968. Sofija: Tehnika.
Schlosser, K., White, G., Leib, J., Dalby, S., Algeo, K., Jansson, D. and Zimmerman,
J. eds, 2011. ‘Nationalism in Geography Classrooms: Challenges and
Opportunities’. Journal of Geography, 110(4), pp. 166– 75.
Schwartz, B. and Schuman, H., 2005. ‘History, Commemoration and Belief:
Abraham Lincoln in American Memory 1945– 2001’. American Sociological
Review, 70(2), pp. 183– 203.
Scott, J.C., 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Scourfield, J., Dicks, B., Drakeford, M. and Davies, A., 2006. Children, Place and
Identity: Nation and Locality in Middle Childhood. London: Routledge.
Seliverstova, O. 2016. ‘“Consuming” National Identity in Western Ukraine’.
Nationalities Papers, 45(1), pp. 61 – 79.
Seliverstova, O., and Pawlusz, E., 2016. ‘Everyday Nation-Building in The Post-
Soviet Space. Methodological Reflections’. Studies of Transition States and Societies,
8(1).
Semons, M., 1991. ‘Ethnicity in the Urban High School: A Naturalistic Study of
Student Experiences’. The Urban Review, 23(3), pp. 137– 58.
Shelemay, K.K., 2011. Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 64(2), pp. 349– 90.
———, 2012. ‘Rethinking the Urban Community: (Re) Mapping Musical
Processes and Places’. Urban People, 14(2), pp. 207– 26.
Shapiro, M.J., 1999. ‘Triumphalist Geographies’. In M. Featherstone and
S. Lash, eds, 1999. Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World. London: Sage.
pp. 59 – 174.
Sharp, G., 1973. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Vol. 3. Boston, MA: P. Sargent
Publisher.
———, 2012. From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation.
New York, NY: The New Press.
Shkodrova, A., 2014. Soc gurme. Plovdiv: Zhanet 45.
Shleifer, A. and Treisman, D., 2005. ‘A Normal Country: Russia after Communism’.
The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1), pp. 151– 74.
204 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Shnirelman, V., 2006. ‘Rossiyskaya Shkola i Natsional’naya Ideya (“Russian School


and National Idea”)’. Neprikosnovennyi Zapas 50(6).
———, 2011. ‘From Social Classes to Ethnicities: Ethnocentric Views in
History Textbooks in Post– Soviet Russia’. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 2(2),
pp. 25 – 33.
Simonsen, S.G., 1999. ‘Inheriting the Soviet Policy Toolbox: Russia’s Dilemma over
Ascriptive Nationality’. Europe – Asia Studies, 51(6), pp. 1069– 87.
Skey, M., 2009. ‘The National in Everyday Life: A Critical Engagement with
Michael Billig’s Thesis of Banal Nationalism’. The Sociological Review, 57(2),
pp. 331– 46.
———. ‘“A Sense of Where You Belong in the World:” National Belonging,
Ontological Security and the Status of the Ethnic Majority in England’. Nations
and Nationalism, 16(4), pp. 715– 33.
———. National Belonging and Everyday Life: The Significance of Nationhood in an
Uncertain World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. (2015) ‘“Mindless Markers of the Nation”: The Routine Flagging of
Nationhood Across the Visual Environment’. Sociology, 51(2), pp. 274– 89.
Skořepová, Z., 2012. Akulturačnı́ strategie v hudebnı́ch sebeprezentacı́ch cizinců v České
republice. PhD. Fakulta humanitnı́ch studiı́ Univerzity Karlovy, Katedra obecné
antropologie.
Slavejkov, P.R., 1870. Gotvarska kniga ili nastavlenija za vsjakakvi gostbi. Carigrad.
Smith, A., 2008. ‘The Limits of Everyday Nationhood’. Ethnicities, 8(4), pp. 563–73.
Smith, G., 1998. Nation-Building in the Post-Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National
Identities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, W.R., 1889. Lecture on the Religion of the Semites. New York, NY: Appleton.
Sokolova, N., 2012. ‘Co – opting Transmedia Consumers: User Content as
Entertainment or “Free Labour”?: The cases of S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Metro
2033’. Europe – Asia Studies, 64(8), pp. 1565– 83.
Soysal, Y.N. and Schissler, H., eds, 2005. ‘Introduction: Teaching beyond the
National Narrative’. In H. Schissler and Y.N. Soysal, eds. The Nation, Europe,
and the World: Textbooks and Curricula in Transition. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
pp. 1 – 12.
Sperling, V., 2014. Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Spillman, L., 1997. Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the
United States and Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Springhall, J., 1987. ‘Building Character in the British Boy: The Attempt
to Extend Christian Manliness to Working-Class Adolescents, 1880– 1914’.
In J.A. Mangan and J. Walvin, eds. Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class
Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800– 1940. Manchester: Manchester
University Press. pp. 52 – 74.
Stalin, J., 1936. Marxism and the National and Colonial Question. Marxist – Leninist
Library; v 12. London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd.
Statistik, A., 2012. Migration & Integration. Figures. Data. Indicators. Wien: Statistik
Austria, Bundesanstalt Statistik Österreich.
Stevenson, N., 2010. ‘Kulturnı́ občanstvı́ – otázky konzumerismu, spotřeby a
politiky’. In T. Edwards, ed. Kulturálnı́ teorie: klasické a současné přı́stupy. Praha:
Portál. pp. 325– 47.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 205

Stojanović, D., 2004. ‘Construction of Historical Consciousness: The Case of Serbian


History Textbooks’. In M. Todorova, ed. Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory.
London: C. Hurst & Co Ltd. pp. 327– 38.
Strauss, A. and Corbin, J.M., 1998. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and
Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. London: SAGE Publications.
Sturm, T. and Bauch, N., 2010. ‘Nationalism and Geography: An Interview with
Rogers Brubaker’. Geopolitics, 15(1), pp. 185–96.
Subotić, J., 2011. ‘Europe is a State of Mind: Identity and Europeanization in the
Balkans’. International Studies Quarterly, 55(2), pp. 309– 30.
———, 2015. ‘Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change’. Foreign
Policy Analysis, 12(4), pp. 610–27.
Subramanian, S., 2013. ‘Building Brand Identity Using Nationalism – A Study on
the Commercial Messages in the Indian TV’. Language in India, 13(9), pp. 1 – 41.
Suleymanova, D., 2015. ‘Islam as Moral Education: Madrasa Courses and
Contestation of the Secular in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia’. Religion,
State and Society, 43(2), pp. 150–67.
———, 2017. (Forthcoming). ‘Education between Regionalisation and
Centralisation: Russian Education Reforms and their Implications for Schooling
in Tatarstan’. Europe – Asia Studies, 69.
Surak, K., 2012. Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice.
Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
Sztompka, P., 2008. ‘The Focus on Everyday Life: A New Turn in Sociology’.
European Review, 16(1), pp. 23 – 37.
Tajfel, H., 1981. Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Archive.
Terbish, B., 2013. ‘Mongolian Sexuality: A Short History of the Flirtation of Power
with Sex’. Inner Asia, 15(2), pp. 243 – 71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/
22105018– 90000069.
Thompson, A., 2001. ‘Nations, National Identities and Human Agency: Putting
People Back into Nations’. The Sociological Review, 49(1), pp. 18 – 32.
Tishkov, V., 1997. Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union: The
Mind Aflame. London: Sage.
Tolz, V., 1998. ‘Forging the Nation: National Identity and Nation Building in
PostCommunist Russia’. Europe– Asia Studies, 50(6), pp. 993–1022.
Tomlinson, A., ed., 1990. Consumption, Identity, and Style. Marketing, Meanings, and
the Packaging of Pleasure. London: Routledge: pp. 1 – 38.
Toynbee, J., 2002. ‘Mainstreaming, from Hegemonic Centre to Global Networks’.
In D. Hesmondhalgh and K. Negus, eds. Popular Music Studies. London: Arnold.
pp. 149– 63.
Trenin, D. 2015. ‘Russian Foreign Policy as Exercise in Nation Building’. Russia’s
Foreign Policy, Springer, pp. 30 – 41.
Trošt, T.P., 2012. Dealing with the Past: History and Identity in Serbia and Croatia.
PhD. Harvard University.
———, 2017. (Forthcoming). ‘Ruptures and Continuities in Ethno-National
Discourse: Reconstructing the Nation through History Textbooks in Serbia and
Croatia’. Nations and Nationalism.
Tsygankov, Andrej P., 2007. Modern at Last? Variety of Weak States in the Post-Soviet
World. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 40(4), pp. 423– 39.
206 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

———, 2016. Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Ţurcanu, I., 2010. Istoria contemporană ilustrată a românilor. Brăila: Editura Istros a
Muzeului Brăilei.
Uehling, G., 2004. ‘The First Independent Ukrainian Census in Crimea: Myths,
Miscoding, and Missed Opportunities’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27(1),
pp. 149– 70.
Velichkov, P., 2004. Sofijskite potajnosti. Sofija: Iztok –Zapad.
Ventsel, A., 2012. ‘This is not My Country, My Country is the GDR: East German
Punk and Socio-Economic Processes after German Reunification’. Punk & Post
Punk, 1(3), pp. 343–59.
———, 2016. ‘Language, Economy and Nation-Building in the Republic of Sakha’.
In R. Isaacs and A. Polese, eds. Nation Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet
Space: New Approaches and Tools. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 104– 17.
Verdery, K., 1991. National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in
Ceauşsescu’s Romania. Vol. 7. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
———, 1995. National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in
Ceauşescu’s Romania. London: University of California Press.
———, 2003. The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Post – Socialist
Transylvania. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Vetik, Raivo, ed., 2012. Nation-Building in the Context of Post-Communist
Ttransformation and Globalization: The Case of Estonia. Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.
Vlasova, T.A. and Plotnikova, A.P., 2014. ‘Udmurty ili Selyane? Osobennosti
Vospriyatiya Shkolnikami Markerov Selskoy Ethnicheskoy Kultury, Predstav-
lennykh v Bukvariakh’ (‘Udmurt People or Rural People? School Children’s
Perception of the Rural Ethnic Culture Markers, Presented in the Primers’)
Problemy Sovremennogo Obrazovaniya (Problems of Contemporary Education), 4,
pp. 202– 18.
Vukov, N. and Ivanova, M., 2010. ‘“Tradicionnite” Jastija i tjahnata regionalna
prinadlezhnost: nazvaniJa s regionalen proizhod v sbornici s gotvarski recepti v
Balgarija’, Balgarski folklore, 36(1), pp. 108– 24.
Wanner, C., 1998. Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post – Soviet Ukraine.
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press.
Weatherford, J., 2004. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York,
NY: Three Rivers Press.
Webber, S., 1999. School, Reform and Society in the New Russia. Springer.
Weber, E., 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–
1914. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
Wedeen, L., 2009. Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wertheim, S., 2003. ‘Language Ideologies and ‘“Purification” of the Post-Soviet
Tatar’. Ab Imperio, 1, pp. 347– 69.
Whitmeyer, J.M., 2002. ‘Elites and Popular Nationalism’. British Journal of Sociology,
53(3), pp. 321– 41.
Wigglesworth-Baker, T., 2016. ‘Language, Schools and Nation-Building in
Tatarstan’. In R. Isaacs and A. Polese, eds. Nation-Building and Identity in the
Post-Soviet Space: New Tools and Approaches. London: Routledge. pp. 81 – 103.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 207

Wilk, R., 1999. ‘“Real Belizean Food”: Building Local Identity in the Transnational
Caribbean’. American Anthropologist, 101(2), pp. 244– 55.
Willis, P., 1981. Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs.
Morningside Edition. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Wolff, K., 2007. ‘Strategic Essentialism’. In G. Ritzer, ed. The Blackwell Encyclopedia
of Sociology Online. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Worden, E.A., 2011. ‘The “Mock Reform” of History Education in Moldova: Actors
versus the Script’. Comparative Education Review, 55(2), pp. 231– 51.
Yerkes, M., 2004. Facing the Violent Past: Discussions with Serbia’s Youth.
Nationalities Papers, 32(4), pp. 921– 38.
Zamyatin, K., 2012. ‘The Education Reform in Russia and Its Impact on Teaching of
the Minority Languages: An Effect of Nation-Building?’ Journal on Ethnopolitics
and Minority Issues in Europe, 11(1), pp. 17 – 47.
Zaslavsky, V., 1982. The Neo-Stalinist State: Class, Ethnicity, and Consensus in Soviet
Society. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Zerubavel, Y., 1995. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli
National Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zdrálek, V., 2015. Mapping the Individual Musical Experience in Post-Apartheid South
Africa: A Bio-Ethnography of Township Dweler Lesiba Samuel Kadiaka. PhD. Praha:
Univerzita Karlova.
Zlatnij izvor zaradi domashno urezhdanje, 1870. Belgrad.

Internet Sources
Baker, C., 2007. The Concept of Turbofolk in Croatia: Inclusion/Exclusion in
the Construction of National Musical Identity [pdf]. Available at: http://eprints.
soton.ac.uk/66293/1/Baker_– turbofolk_2007.pdf (Accessed 20 May 2015).
———, 2007. Barometrè Santé Nutrition, 2008 Structure et Environnement
des Repas en Ile-de-France [pdf]. Available at: http://www.orsidf.org/dmdocum
ents/barometrenutrition/Environnment%20des%20repas.pdf (Accessed 20 May
2015).
Calus, K., 2014. The Ukrainian Crisis: A New Context for a Transnistrian
Settlement. Turkish Policy Quarterly Fall [pdf]. Available at: http://turkishpolicy.
com/Files/ArticlePDF/the – ukrainian – crisis – a – new – context – for – a – trans-
nistrian – settlement– fall– 2014– en.pdf (Accessed 15 September 2016).
Dijaspora TV. ʻDijaspora Uživoʼ, 2014. Available at: http://www.dijaspora.tv/them
enliste/kategorie/tv – sendungen.html (Accessed 20 January 2015).
Economist, T., 2008. Whataboutism. Come again, Comrade? Available at http://
www.economist.com/node/10598774 (Accessed 22 March 2014).
Eurobarometrul – Republica Molodova, Barometrul de Opinie Publică (2015).
Chişinău: Institutul de Politici Publice. Available at: http://ipp.md/public/fi
les/Barometru/BOP_04.2015_prima_parte_finale.pdf (Accessed 15 September
2016).
Eurobarometrul– Republica Moldova, Raport Studiu Delphi (Chişinău: IMASinc,
2004). Available at: http://www.ipp.md/public/files/Barometru/Etnobarom
etru/Raport%20de%20cercetare%20al%20studiului%20Delphy.pdf (Accessed
15 September 2016).
208 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Insomnia Club Available at: https://www.facebook.com/insomniaclubvienna?fref¼ts


(Accessed 15 September 2015).
Kommersant, 2015. Khryushi protiv khamona. Available at: ,http://www.
kommersant.ru/doc/2778168. (Accessed 24 May 2016).
Levada (2016). Sanktsii Zapada i produktovoye embargo Rossii. from http://www.
levada.ru/2016/08/18/sanktsii –zapada – i– produktovoe – embargo – rossii/.
Lurkmore (2016). Vatnik. Retrieved 24 May 2016, from http://lurkmore.to/%D0%
92%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA.
Meduza, 2015. Sovetskaya gazeta ili rossiyskaya? Otgadayte po tsitate, kogda eto
napisano: seychas ili polveka nazad. Available at: https://meduza.io/quiz/
sovetskaya – gazeta– ili– rossiyskaya?share¼3 (Accessed 6 August 2015).
ʻNaša Sudbinaʼ Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼J9bTLzkxy0U
(Accessed 13 April 2015).
Negură, P., 2012. “Criza identităţii naţionale ı̂n Republica Moldova: o problemă a
maselor sau o problemă a elitelor?’ Critic Atac. Online: http://www.criticatac.ro/
18605/criza – identitii – naionale – republica – moldova – problem – maselor –
sau– problem –elitelor/ (Accessed 15 September 2016).
———, 2015. ‘Republica Moldova la un sfert de veac de tranziţie: ı̂ntre un
comunism ratat şi un capitalism neı̂nceput?’ Available at: http://petrunegura.
blogspot.sk/2015/05/republica–moldova–la–un–sfert–de–veac.html (Accessed
15 September 2016).
Novaya Gazeta (2015). ‘6 avgusta v Rossii unichtozhili pochti 320 tonn
sanktsionnykh produktov’. Available at: http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/
1695720.html (Accessed 24 May 2016).
Obozrevatel, 2015. ‘V Rossii szhigayushchemu produkty Putinu pripomnili blokadnyy
Leningrad’. Available at: http://obozrevatel.com/abroad/82761–v–rossii–szhi
gayuschemu – produktyi – putinu – pripomnili – blokadnyij – leningrad.htm
(Accessed 24 May 2016).
Open Table, 1901 at Andaz http://www.opentable.co.uk/1901 –at – andaz (Accessed
20 May 2015).
Otarashvili, Maia and Hannah Lidicker (2014). ‘Geopolitical Implications of
the Ukraine Crisis: What is at Stake for Georgia and Moldova?’ Available at:
http://www.fpri.org/geopoliticus/2014/03/geopolitical–implications– ukraine–
crisis–what–stake–georgia–and–Moldova (Accessed 15 September 2016).
Polese, A., 2013. ‘Ucrânia: a construc ão nacional entre o real e o imaginário’,
E– Cadernos 19 Available at http://eces.revues.org/1588.
RBC (2015). ‘V Rossii nachalos’ massovoye unichtozheniye sanktsionnykh
produktov’. Available at: http://www.rbc.ru/politics/06/08/2015/55c32b649
a79470d911fcf8f (Accessed 24 May 2016).
RSN (2015). ‘Putinu dolozhat o petitsii protiv unichtozheniya sanktsionnykh
produktov.’ Available at: http://rusnovosti.ru/posts/382134 (Accessed 24 May
2016).
ʻStatistical Yearbook on Migration & Integration 2014: About 1.6 million People
with Migration Background Living in Austria.ʼ 2014. Statistik Austria, http://
www.statistik.at/web_en/statistics/PeopleSociety/population/077473.html
(Accessed 20 January 2015).
Transparency International. (2015). Moldova, Sociological Study: Corruption in Moldova:
Perceptions vs. Personal Experiences. Available at: http://transparency.md/files/
BIBLIOGRAPHY 209

images/Sociological_Study_ – Corruption_in_Moldova_ – _Perception_vs_


Personal_Experience.pdf (Accessed 15 September 2016).
TV Okto. ʻExYu in Wienʼ. (2014). Available at: http://okto.tv/exyu (Accessed
20 January 2015).
Top Music TV. ʻFlashbackʼ. (2014). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/
TVTopMusic (Accessed 20 January 2015).
Vesti.ru (2015). ‘Khryushi protiv’ ishchut v magazinakh sanktsionnyye Produkty.
Zavedeniata. Available at: http://zavedenia.com/ (Accessed 5 January 2015).
INDEX

Antimaidan, 110, 112– 13 consumption, 144, 146– 9


patriotic, 104– 7, 116– 17, 120– 1
Balkan party, 129– 30 Crimea, 116– 17
Balkanness, 130, 136 sanctions, 118–21
Barthes, Roland, 84, 146, 149 cuisine, 148, 157, 159, 161
Belarus, 85– 90, 96 – 102 Bulgarian, 147– 50, 154, 159– 60
belonging, strategies of, 18, 27, 29, 33 French, 159
Bender, 45 see Tighina Italian, 148
Bessarabia, 42, 46 – 7, 55 – 6 popular, 144– 50, 154– 5, 159,
bitov (home-style), 148– 52, 161– 2 160– 1
borders, 59, 61, 67, 74, 79 pre-modern, 157
Bulgaria, 38, 54, 134, 146 regional, 162
Bulgarians, 38 – 40, 54 – 5 restaurant, 160– 1
curriculum, 59, 61 – 6, 70, 72 – 3,
cafés, 125 –6, 129, 133, 138, 141 79, 81
Chenggis Khaan, 167– 8, 173– 6, 180
Chişinău, 39, 44 –52, 54, 56 diaspora,
citizenship, 24, 38 – 9, 42, 51, 54, former Yugoslav, 14, 126, 129,
81, 133 135, 142
clubs, 126, 129, 130, 132– 4, 138– 43,
148 environment, 59, 70 – 1
collective memory, 38, 44 – 6, 57 emigration, 39
column, Trajan’s, 45 ethnicity,
commemoration, 57 – 9 textbooks, 27
National Day, 45 Finno-Ugrians, 21, 27
communism, 59 ethno-cultural, 22, 39, 42
conflict, 6, 46, 49, European Union, 70
ethnic, 66 – 7 European, Europeanness, 60, 66,
Transnistria, 39 68– 70, 77, 80
INDEX 211

Farrer, James, 133, 140 Matryoshja, 43


female/woman/women, 165, 167, migrant, second generation, 135
168– 71, 173, 175– 81 minority,
foreign policy, 104– 7, 111, 115, 121 imperial, 43
Minsk, 98 – 9
Gagauz, 36, 38 – 9, 43, 55 Moldovanism, 41
Gayropa, 107, 114 ethnic, 41 – 2
gender, 65, 168, 170, 178– 9 civic, 41
roles, 169, 181 Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic,
geopolitics, 107– 8, 111, 114– 15, 41– 2
118, 121 monuments, 44, 46
Goffman, Erving, 19, 23, 28, 33 music,
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 96 – 7 consumption, 124, 126
Great Patriotic War, 115– 16, 118– 19 industry, 128
grey zone, 37, 39
nation, 4 – 9, 11 – 16, 164– 72, 174– 5,
identity, 36 –41, 43– 4, 46, 48, 50 –1, 177–8, 180– 1
53 – 4, 144, 145, 147– 9, 159– 60, nation-building, 5– 6, 8 – 11, 16, 18,
162 37– 42, 44, 60, 79, 81, 164– 8,
backstage, 19, 28 – 9, 32 – 3 170–2, 184, 186
‘crisis’, 36, 53 nationalising, 39, 44
ethnic, 8, 24 – 5, 29, 31, 33, 57, 60 nationalism, 43, 53, 55, 57– 8, 179,
European, 69 184–5
minority, 19 – 22 banal nationalism, 36 – 7, 48, 52, 58,
Moldovan, 41, 44 80 – 1, 84 – 6, 104– 5, 125– 6,
national, 2 – 7, 9, 13 – 16, 58, 60 – 3, 144, 184
67 –8, 73, 77, 79 – 80 ethnonationalism, 94
negotiation, 18, 19, 28 everyday nationalism, 2, 4, 10 – 12,
passing, 27 –8, 29– 30 58, 80, 104– 6, 121, 183– 7
politics, 38 – 41, 44, 47 – 9, 52 – 3 ‘hot’ nationalism, 36 –7, 39, 57– 60
post-socialist, 2 informal nationalism, 9, 15, 186
reconstrucion of, 58
Soviet, 49 Orthodox, 49, 54
ideology, 63, 65, 73 – 4
public,
Jewish, 38, 45, 55 space, 44
memory, 37, 44 – 7
Kishinev, 52 Putin, Vladimir, 4, 116– 19
Kosovo, 62, 64, 68, 72 – 5, 78 – 9
religion, 7, 29, 32, 84, 128, 172
language, 61 – 3, 68, 72 – 3, 77 – 8, 81 restaurant, 145, 147– 62
letters, Romania, 36, 38 – 53, 56
Cyrillic, 51, 73 Greater, 46
Latin, 51 language, 43, 47, 49 – 51
212 INFORMAL NATIONALISM AFTER COMMUNISM

Romanians, 39, 42 – 6, 48 –9, 51, stencil, 38, 46, 47


52 –3, 55 stigma, 19 – 20, 27 – 9, 31, 33
speaking, 41, 51, 55 symbol, 7, 9, 11 – 14, 44 – 8, 58, 61,
Russia, 85 – 96, 102 79– 81, 85 – 6, 95 – 102, 107– 8,
Russian, 115–18, 121, 128, 144, 185
citizenship, 54
Empire, 43, 46 Tiraspol, 39, 46, 47, 54
identity, 40, 43, 45, 52 Transnistria, 36, 39, 43, 46, 49, 51, 55
language, 39, 42 – 3, 48 – 9, state-building, 41
51, 53, 56 war, 46, 48
pro-, 43 – 4, 48, 50 Turkey, 38 – 9
russkii mir (the Russian world), 88
Ukraine, 4, 43, 49, 101– 2
schooling, Unionist, 42 – 3, 47, 54 – 5
post-Soviet, 18, 19 – 20, 21, 22 United State of Russia and Belarus, 87
Tatarstan, 21 – 2
self-presentation, 145, 147, 149, 160 victimhood, 72, 77, 79
Soviet Union, 38 –44, 46– 7, 54, 56 Vkontakte (VK), 107, 110, 112– 13,
collapse, 5, 85, 89 – 90, 106 117, 119
ethnic politics, 24, 38, 166
state, 39 Westernization, 95
weak, 37, 40, 55 Wolf,
state-building, 6, 17, 37 – 8, 41, 53 Capitoline, 44 – 5
statehood, 22, 24, 63–5, 68, 77, 79–80 World War II, 64 – 5, 72, 77
statue,
Lenin, 44, 46 youth, 126, 130– 3, 136, 138, 140

You might also like