Understanding Contemporary Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism - Olexander Hryb Ukrainian Voices

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it approximates the ideal type of an ethnic community or ethnie (Smith 1991b, 210). This would be a common definition of the ethnic community as it is accepted in the English-language literature.3 In this way, ethnie is a culturally defined community that dominated in pre-modern political entities with a hierarchical structure. Smith assumes that to exist in modern times, ethnie must be politically suppressed by other nations, as in the case of the Basques. In the Soviet tradition, the term “ethnie” corresponds to the term “ethnicos,” or to the narrower meaning of the term ”ethnos.” The latter was defined as a stable human community that has historically formed on a certain territory and possesses common (relatively temporary) specific features of language, culture and psyche, as well as an “awareness” of its own unity and distinctiveness from other similar communities (self-consciousness) which was fixed in a self-given name (ethnic name—“ethnonym”) (Svod, 49).

      Smith and Llobera stress the socio-cultural nature of ethnic communities, as they are defined by religion, customs, language and collective institutions. Primordialists believe that it is these factors which are most important for nation-building, since new nations receive their crucially important collective myths and memories from a prior ethnic heritage. They also accept that subjective factors are crucial for nation-building.

      “Modernists” do not consider “ethnic communities” as central to the nature of nations, and underline the purely functional role of ethnic elements for nation-building. For Gellner, previously existing pre-modern cultures are only randomly turned into nations by the force of nationalism. Although previous ethnic boundaries could be important for the social and political security of the new national states, modernists stress that “ethnicity” turns into nationalism only when cultural homogeneity and continuity is conditioned by the economic fundamentals of social life. In other words, “modernists” highlight the objective (socio-economic) aspects in the relationship between ethnic communities and nation-building, where ethnicity is a situational or even random element.

      The Soviet term “ethno-social organism” or ESO creates, to a certain extent, some logical order within the framework of the debates described above. ESO was considered to be an ethnicos (ethnie) within a certain socio-economic unit (historically dependent on concrete socio-economic formations). In this way, ethnicos can exist within different socio-economic formations, while ESO exists always within a defined formation. Nation, for instance, is firstly an ethnicos or group of ethnicoses, and secondly an ethnicos which is included whithin a “capitalist” socio-economic unit. Only in the widest sense was it suggested to use the term “ethnos” to cover all periods of both ethnic and socio-economic development. In this way, we have a synthetic attempt to take into account (on the level of terminology) of the socio-cultural as well as the socio-economic nature of the national phenomenon, also taking into account the fact that, in the wider meaning, ethnos is a dynamic system and therefore a process. Soviet scholars stressed two main developments of this process. The first is “ethno-transformation,” where ethnic identification and membership is shifting or changing. The second is “ethno-evolution,” where ethnic identification persists. Soviet ethnosociology argued that the ethnosocial dynamic in the modern world has tendencies toward both the formation of new ethno-national units, and toward ethnic integration and internationalization. Simultaneously, it stressed the importance of diachronic (as well as synchronic) informational bonds between generations of ethnicos, generally seen in the context of ethnic history as the result of the common historical practice of a series of human generations (performed in specific material as well as spiritual attributes and fixed in their consciousness). Soviet terminology suggested the possibility of a synthesis of “perennial” and “modernist” Western approaches on the level of concepts and terminology, without ignoring their differences. This is possible partly because, in the Soviet terms, the ethno-social (cultural) as well as socio-economic aspects of ethnogenesis were equally reflected in a unifying manner.

      Dominant as it was, Soviet Ethnography had an alternative school of thought represented by the “bio-spherical” concept of Lev Gumilev and his theory of passionarnost’. Gumilev claimed that his theory was groundbreaking, and therefore claimed to have created a new direction in the social sciences, in fact a new science—“ethnology” (Gumilev 1993, 293). He denied the social origin of nations and insisted on their origin from nature. In a way, this could be considered similar to the “primordialist” approach, but Gumilev’s idea was more far-reaching. He tried to study the nature of “ethnos” by means of the natural sciences, and only additionally via a correlation with history.4 Since Gumilev’s theory has had a profound influence on nationalist thinking in Russia and Putin’s Eurasianism, it is important to consider the main points of Gumilev’s approach, which are the following:

       From the point of view of geography as a science, mankind could be considered an anthroposphere, i.e., one of the few spheres of the Earth. This sphere consists of a special substance—Homo sapiens.

       An anthroposphere, with all its ethnic subdivisions, is a part of the Earth’s biosphere. Since there are constant biochemical fluctuations and changes within the latter, ethnogenesis should be considered as a part of this natural process.5 In other words, ethnogenesis is a natural process or fluctuation of the biochemical energy of a biosphere`s living substance.

       The start of ethnogenesis, according to Gumilev, can be caused by an impulse of biochemical energy which, hypothetically, together with social psyche, creates a mutation that is the beginning of a new ethnicity. As he describes it:

      The burst of this energy (passionarnyi or drive impulse) creates movement which depends on the set of circumstances in a certain region of the planet—the geographical one, which influences the economic activity of ethnos; social and historical ones, which influence via the received traditions from previous ethnogeneses. <…> This formulation excludes the possibility to of identifying ethnoses with racial types because races are biological taxons and located on a level higher than historical time (Gumilev 1993, 78).

       For Gumilev, there was not and cannot be an ethnos with only one ancestor. All ethnoses have two or more ancestors. “Ethnic substrata, i.e., components of a forming ethnos in the moment of fluctuation of the biosphere’s living substance, are combining and creating a joint system that is a new, original ethnos” (Gumilev 1993, 84).

       Along with the social model of the nature of ethnos, Gumilev rejected the importance of collective (ethnic) consciousness as a determining factor for ethnogenesis. “The basis of ethnic relationships lies outside of the sphere of consciousness” (Gumilev 1993, 299). The author claims that the roots of these relationships are on the level of emotions: sympathy and antipathy; love and hatred. Furthermore, in the author’s view, antipathy and sympathy are strictly predetermined by unconscious feeling—complimentarnost`—which was formed on the basis of a natural stereotype of behavior.

       Gumilev identified the following phases of ethnogenesis: 1) a burst of creative activity caused by passionarnost` impact.6 At this stage, the new ethnos is born from substrates of the remains of previous ethnoses, which become a basis for a new ethno-social system; 2) an acmatic phase, an increasing development of ethnos which can lead to a break or even collapse of the ethnos but is usually transferred to a phase of inertia; 3) an inertial phase or, one could say, a period of “civilization.” The passionarnost` is decreasing smoothly; 4) a persistent phase, i.e., a transition from dynamic process to homeostasis. The ethnos can be regenerated or become a relic. Gumilev identified a life-span for ethnos—approximately 1,500 years from the moment of the impact until a final disappearance.

      Table 2. Ethnogenesis according to Lev Gumilev

Phases of ethnogenesis Energy Life-span of ethnos

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