"Rossianin"

[Serguei Glebov]

It is hardly a sign of "westernization" since definition of citizenship by
"blood" or ethnicity is absolutely not exclusively "eastern" invention. Such
definition of citizenship is still the law of the Bundesrepublik. Does
"German" refer to ethnic Germans or all citizens of the Bundesrepublik? I
wonder what would an average German say should a Turkish gastarbeiter be
called "German"?  And the French example of civic nationhood is also filled
with ethnic connotations of Frenchness. In general, the Hans Kohn
distinction between good civic western nationalism and bad ethnic eastern
nationalism has long gone from nationalism studies as naive and schematic.

On the other hand, "Russian" as "russkii"
 was used periodically to designate state and citizenship (e.g. manifestos -
"vsem russkim liudiam, bez razlichia ikh ver, iazykov i natsional'nostei)

The problem of russkii-rossiiskii is the problem of the growing national
consciousness of Russians within the imperial state that often presented
itself as a Russian national state. Correspondingly, the name of the
empire - Rossiiskaia - differed from the name of the ethnos - russkie. The
Soviet period did not make things any clearer, because USSR was a
supranational formation that was often taken to be a Russian national state.

Serguei Glebov


 actually a step towards westernization. It is all because
> "nationality" in Russian and in most Western languages means different
> things. In France (as elsewhere in Europe or in the US) anyone with a
> French passport is French, regardless of his/her ethnic origins.
> Consequently the French president addresses the nation by saying "Cheres
> Francaises et chers Francais" or something like that (I am deliberately
not
> using US as an example because everyone knows what an ethinc hodge-podge
> the US is, and there is no such thing as an "ethnic American").
>
> So instead of saying "dorogie grazhdane Rossijskoj federacii" which is
also
> an innovation (there were only "zakony Rossijskoj federacii", I believe;
in
> other words, "Rossijskaja federacija" had a very limited use prior to the
> break up) "Rossijane" was reintroduced as a unifying name. Thus the split
> between the blood and the citizenship has occurred and the new term
> reflected a new state.
>
> "Russian" means strictly the blood, and Nickolas II was only 1/256 Russian
> by that measure and resented by many because of that. Meantime one of his
> daughters refused to marry a Romanian saying that she is Russian and
> doesn't want to live abroad (and she was already 1/512 Russian by blood).
>
> For many Russians, someone named Isabelle Ivanov (or Ivanoff) not speaking
> a word of Russian and not knowing much about the culture, being the third
> or fourth generation born in France, would be Russian, but for French she
> is French.
>
> I believe this reflects the Eurasian element in Russian culture, since it
> is a more Eastern approach to one's identity. I was told that in Arab
world
> answering the question "Where are you from?" one actually speaks of the
> father, not oneself. For example, a man born and raised in Jordan told me
> that a proper answer for him is "I am from Jerusalem." because his father
> is from Jerusalem.
>
> Alina
>
> _____________
> Alina Israeli
> LFS, American University
> 4400 Mass. Ave. NW
> Washington, DC 20016
>
> phone:  (202) 885-2387
> fax:    (202) 885-1076
>
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