Liberalism in Pre-Revolutionary Russia
Nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals were faced with a dilemma. They had to choose between modernizing their country, thus imitating the West, or reaffirming what was perceived as their countrys own values and thereby risk remaining socially underdeveloped and unable to compete with Western powers. Scholars have argued that this led to the emergence of an anti-Western, anti-modern ethnic nationalism. In this innovative book, Susanna Rabow-Edling shows that there was another solution to the conflicting agendas of modernization and cultural authenticity a Russian liberal nationalism. This nationalism took various forms during the long nineteenth century, but aimed to promote reforms through a combination of liberalism, nationalism and imperialism.
Susanna Rabow-Edling is an associate professor of political science and a senior research fellow at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden.
Routledge Studies in Modern History
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Liberalism in Pre-Revolutionary Russia
State, Nation, Empire
Susanna Rabow-Edling
First published 2019
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2019 Susanna Rabow-Edling
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Contents
This book has been very long in making. Like all scholars I have incurred many debts on the way to its completion and I would like to acknowledge them here. The project was first conceived at Cornell University where I was a visiting fellow in 20022003 supported by the Swedish Foundation for Internationalization of Higher Education and Research. Soon after my return from Cornell I took up a position at the University of Uppsala where the project continued thanks to the financial support of the Swedish Research Council. The multidisciplinary Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and its earlier manifestations as the Department of East European Studies and the Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, has always been a stimulating environment for the investigation of all things Russian. Among my past and present colleagues, I would in particular like to thank Kre Johan Mjr, Ann-Mari Stre, Mikhail Suslov and Igor Torbakov, as well as the professional services staff and the Director Claes Levinsson, for their keen support over the years. I also worked on parts of the book when I was a visiting scholar at Stanford University in 20102011, where I was hosted by the Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the recipient of an Anna Lindh fellowship.
Chapters and elements from the book have been presented at seminars, conferences and workshops at the International Conference on Conceptual History, Uppsala; the Association for the Study of Nationalities conference, New York; the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, London; the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, Cambridge; the Tartu Conference on Russian and East European Studies; the Aleksanteri Institute, Helsinki and the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University. I am grateful to the insights and constructive criticism offered by commentators and participants. I would also like to thank Max Edling, Victoria Frede, Kristian Gerner, Derek Offord and Susan McCaffray who have read, discussed or commented on parts of the book. George Gilbert and an anonymous reviewer offered very valuable comments on my Routledge book proposal.
Material in the book has appeared in The Decembrists and the Concept of a Civic Nation, Susanna Rabow-Edling, Nationalities Papers, copyright Association for the Study of Nationalities, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, www.tandfonline.com on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities; Liberalism and nationalism in Russia. Boris Chicherin as a modernist nationalist, Susanna Rabow-Edling, Nations and Nationalism, The author(s) 2012. Nations and Nationalism ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2012, reprinted with the permission of John Wiley & Sons Ltd; and From Subjects to Citizens. Republicanism, Nationalism and Literary Decembrism, in Grigorii Kazmyrchuk and Iurii Latysh, eds., Dekabrysty v Ukrayini (The National University of Kiev, 2013). I am grateful to the publishers and editors of these publications for permission to reprint this material here.
This book is the result of my long-standing interest in liberalism and nationalism in pre-Revolutionary Russian thought. Written over the duration of almost ten years, it examines major liberal tendencies in the period between the Decembrist revolt of 1825 and the October Revolution of 1917, focusing on the way liberal ideas were intertwined with notions of nation and empire in various ways. For quite some time now, scholars have pointed to the link between liberalism and nationalism in Western political thought. Students of nationalism have argued that the original idea of the nation that appeared at the time of the American and French Revolutions was a liberal idea, based on liberal concepts of popular sovereignty, liberty and the rule of law. Others have pointed to the fact that liberalism gave birth to modern nationalism in the sense that it presupposes a culturally homogenous society. In fact, liberalism was not just a cause of nationalism, or a contributing factor, but an essential part of modern nationalism. The notion of equal citizenship embodied in liberalism, directed at privileges and hierarchy associated with the old European order, is a crucial element in the formation of a national community. Nationalism began as a liberal idea and became an integral part of Western liberal thought. The development of nations was seen as a phase in human progress from small to larger collectivities. In the view of liberal ideology, the nation, that is, the viable extensive nation, was the stage of evolution reached in the mid-nineteenth century in a process that logically implied the assimilation of smaller peoples into larger ones.
