Non-irredenta

Sometimes I come across an attempt to present everything that has been happening in Ukraine since 2014 as “Russian irredenta”. Let me remind you that the unification of Italy in the 19th century under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi was originally called irredenta. Since then, irredentism has been called the desire of a nation to live in one national state. However, when it comes to the “Russian irredenta”, something immediately catches the eye - the “Russian irredenta” does not at all collect all those who wish voluntarily into one state. It “forces to be Russian” those who go to rallies under Ukrainian flags and, obviously, do not want to be Russian. Russian propagandists simply answer here: they say, all the years of the damned NATO dill propaganda, and we will now take it and propagate it back - and Orwellian TV repeaters appear, darkly plying along the deserted streets of Mariupol. But the answer is simple - there is no irredenta in reality.

The fact is that this “Russian nationalism”, which is now professed by the Russian authorities and grassroots enthusiasts like the “Sputnik and Pogrom” that died under the window, is not quite nationalism. This is what Benedict Anderson, referring to Seton-Watson, called “official nationalism.” At the beginning of the 19th century, looking at the wave of European national revolutions, starting with the French - European monarchs (especially Eastern European ones) began to feel how the throne was slowly staggering under the ass. The response to this was the appropriation by the monarchs of nationalist rhetoric (before that, the rulers of empires, strictly speaking, had no nationality at all). In the Russian Empire, this idea was first expressed by Count Uvarov in the 1830s with his ideologeme “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.” Where nationalism became the third pillar, designed to support the two values of the “old order”. However, the ideology of “official nationalism” began to be widely used only under Alexander III with his state “Russification”.

Official nationalism is neither nationalism nor empire. A sort of mixture of one with the other. From classical, mass and grassroots nationalism, the official differed in that it was launched from above and was essentially used to preserve dynastic rule. It differed from the empire in that the classical empire did not force its subjects to any identity and any language, but was an umbrella over “blooming complexity”. But official nationalism - roughly speaking, this is assimilation for the glory of the tsar-priest. In the Russian Empire, it took the form of Russification. Russified first of all those who were the most culturally close - Ukrainians and Baltic Germans (this is easier than Russifying the Turkmens). But, since the Russian Empire took up official nationalism quite late, it faced opposition in the form of local nationalism, which, moreover, did not come out of the state test tube, but were formed as grassroots mass movements (through the efforts of the local intelligentsia).

That is why Ukrainian nationalism is the worst enemy of Great Russian official nationalism. And therefore, there is no “Russian irredenta” in the normal sense of the word here. There is only a continuation of the old imperial policy, which conquers subjects, but at the same time seeks to “Russify” them for the convenience of management. And “Russian” in this context is not at all the one who speaks Russian, but the one who shares certain political values. Once it was “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.” Today, something completely syncretic with an admixture of the Soviet Victory Day and hatred for everything Western (except for money). But the essence is the same: the official “Russian” is the one who swore allegiance to the throne.

Mihail Pojarsky 2022-06-05