One Russia, many worlds: balancing external homeland nationalism and internal ethnocultural diversity

Smith, D. J. (2021) One Russia, many worlds: balancing external homeland nationalism and internal ethnocultural diversity. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 62(3), pp. 372-396. (doi: 10.1080/15387216.2020.1801480)

Abstract

For many years, diversity management in post-Cold War Central and Eastern Europe was viewed through the prism of the multilateral minority rights “regime” developed through the OSCE, Council of Europe and EU. With all OSCE participating states asserting the importance of the concept during the early 1990s, minority rights were initially understood as a shared political field that could transcend rival nationalisms. This field, however, encompassed widely varying and competing definitions and was created in a context of unequal power relations between West and East. Russia – never wholly embedded within this concept of normative space – has increasingly challenged the multilateral framework rhetorically and in policy practice, as part of a more general shift toward instrumentalization of minority issues by “kin-state” actors within the region. Using new data from a 2014–17 project on practices of national-cultural autonomy (NCA) within Russia, this article demonstrates how today’s Russian state – hailing its own approach to diversity management as superior to that of the West – seeks to co-opt minority NCA bodies in Russia in the service of external policy and geopolitical competition. The article assesses how minorities respond to this strategy and the implications it might hold for ethnic relations within Russia.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Smith, Professor David
• Authors: Smith, D. J.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Central and East European Studies
• Journal Name: Eurasian Geography and Economics
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1538-7216
• ISSN (Online): 1938-2863
• Published Online: 29 July 2020
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor and Francis Group
• First Published: First published in Eurasian Geography and Economics 62(3): 372-396
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
169906		National Minority Rights & Democratic Political Community: Practices of Non-territorial Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Central and Easter Europe	David Smith	Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/L007126/1	S&PS - Central and East European Studies