After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires

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SPONSORED BY THE JOINT COJ\JJ\IITTEE ON THE NEAR AND l\1lDDLE EAST, SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

AFTER EMPIRE MULTIETHNIC SOCIETIES AND NATION-BUILDING

The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Jlabsburg Empires

EDITED BY KAREN BARKEY AND MARK VON HAGEN

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For ollr grandparolfs wbo u'cr,' bam ill tbl' IfflbJiJlIIg lind OttOIl/i/1I empires tllld /i-c, ..d /lIost ~/fheir li·pes fljia empire

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reserl'ed. Primed in 1Ill' llnited States Ilf,\mcric;1. ;-.J" part of this puhlicllionllla,' be ill an," form Of hy an~' ml~i.lIl", l'kctrollic or Tllel.. haniral, including phnto-

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C(lp~·. recording. or : I'ros/',' S,I"1'i,,' oftbl' Ot/Olllllli EllipilC, /860-190S (London: Routiedp;e, Ke)2;:ll1 Paul, 1,)78). 21. Selim Derinp;il, "Lep;itima,'y Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reip;n nf Abdulhamid II (1871>-1')09)," III ItTII,ltiOIl,,1 JOIII'II,zI or ilIi,/,/I" DISI Stlldi,'S 23, no. 3 (1991): 3-15-35'); also Rashid Klwlidi, "Society and Ideolo)2;\" in l.ate Ottoman Snia: Class, Education, Pmt(:~sion and Conl(:ssinn," in cd. John l~ Spagnola, i'I'obl,'llIs o(tbe Modern fUiddle East ill Ili.l'tori,ol 1',' D.·dille 'illif 1~1I1 o,-Ibt' H.d"(olllg Elllpir,', lS]s-191S (I.()ndon: Longm;II1, l,)g'), H:7. 6. Ibid., 26-1. Sel' also hn',in Ddk, Rc'I'Olld ,VIII iOIl lI/i.l'/Il: A So,'i,d ,llId 1'oIilicll/ Hi.itor\' oj" Ibi! Hilb.I/!/IIg O(ii,-,' 1I11/'./JllIg Elllpir,' 175()-1 ,iI: B,-ie!;' IIlId DokuIII1'111,' cellI' &slerr"i,·biscb-llIlg",.i."A'" III/Im- /lild AII.I·s..II/,»/ili1-- 1 .1'.1'5-191] (Craz: NCll~ehalln, 1')')-1), no. 1'), p. 21. /\ellrcnthal, who Iatn hccaml' I;m'i!!:n ministn (1,)06-1,)12), was at the time du:f-dL'-cahinet li'r the 1;,rei~1l IllinistlT, COllnt Gustal' I,jl- . no].."}-. 11. Isn',in Ik,ik, "The l-"all of ,\ustria-Hlingar:': Peacl', St,lhility, 'lIld Ll'~ititll,IC\"," in ed. Geir Lundestad, TIl"rowing ethc noregional inequality t(,l1mving the collapse of the project of national intq~ration. The hegemonic nation repudiate,l its own empire as the leadership of the tlmllcr t," in cd. Paul Cocks, Rohert Daniels, and Nancy \Vhittier Heer, 'II>, Drill/lllic, olSo·,·id J'olitin (Cambridge: Harvard Uni"ersity Press, 1'Iio), 337-51; 1\Ioshe Lewin, Tbc I'vll/killg cftbe So'l'id ~vstl'll1: Essay., ill t/.1,. So.-i,i/ Tbl'Orv of Illt",,·m/,. RII.Hia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985),43. 2-t. V. G. Khoros, "Istoricheskij l'crckrestok sotsializma," in ed. \'. 1'. Kisdc,' and I. 1\1. Klyamkin, SotSilllizlII: /,mti,,'or,·,./17:\,,/ si.lt,·lIIv (1\IOSL'(nv: IE1\ ISS, 1989), 100-101. 25. I. 1\1. Kl~'amk.in, "I'ochell1u pohezhdayut ntopii," in Kiselcv .1I1d Klyamk.in, SotIia!iZIII, pp. 226-228. 26. Holland Ilunter and .hnusz SZITmcr, Fau/tl' FOllndlltiolls: SO·I·id E,-ollolllic l'O/iCiC.I·, 1928-1940 (Princeton: Princcton Unin:rsity Press, 1':I'J2), 136-143. 27. (hInted in Alec Nm'e, '1'b,' So"i"t S)'.'I'I'/or\ Ac,'u/llI/ v(lbl' ColI"/",,, 0/1/,rlllS of nationhood-a civic and an ethnic one-each deriving from -distinct patterns of n'ltion-building. The Civ~!~?r~l1 is attributed to western Europe, where nation-building proceeded to incorporatc all citizens, overtime giving them individual, political and social rights. The ethnic fllfll1 is attributed to Germany, E,lstcrn Europe and the rest of the "late comers" to nationalism.' It has been described as a form of exclusive nationhood, defining the nation and providing the rights of its citizens based on cultural and ethnic criteria. Therc has been no serious explanation for these differences in forms of nationhood. l\lostly, explanations h,n'e filcused on the acti,-e resentmcnt and competition that Germany and Eastern European countries have tClt tllr western Europe, prompting them to concentmte and glori±)- their peculiarities, their nation, culture and language. The established theoretical models are unsuitable on three counts: first, cthnicity continucs to persist as an identit~, marker and second, ethnic and civic t(ll'Il1S of nationhood coexist in Eastern Europe. Third, the theoretical models do not take into account imperial legacies since western European cases were difterent in this aspect. The \Vestern-hased theoretical framework tiJI modern nation-building has to be rethought. The process of [lost-imperial nation-

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building pw\'ides us .m excellent opportunit.,· to do so. V'Ie attempt this by filCUSing on the tr.lditional contiguous empires-the Ottoman, I Lthsburg, Hmsi'111 alld on the SOI'iet Ullion-and only tangenti.llly comparing them with OI'Crseas colonial empires such as the British and the French empires.

Legacies of the Imperial Past The collapse of an empire leaves several leg.lcies for the politicd entities th'lt del'clop in its aftermath. Among these arc social and economic stnldures, st.ltl' institutions of a certain lunlrl' and strength, a particular set of elites, demo;:graphics, and an ovendl political cultural legacy. Unless all empire is destroyed through re\'oIUlion, much of its SOLid structure is reproduced in the post-imperial context. Two of the empires studied in this book, the Ot toman .lnd Habsburg, pnlYide cxcellent examples of this continuity. The Ottoman empire through cennlries of control man,lged to est,lblish a more or less unifimn (at least tnllation of a strongly secular Turkey that h,ls only recently been ch,lllcnged by Islamic IlHWements. The political leg,IC), of the Habsburg cmpire cannot hc the same since it never acquired a centralized bureaucratic state comparable iJ1 strength to that of the Ottomans. Closer to the Western European pattern, the Habsburg dynasty shrI11er ,-isioll, to be sure, SCl:lllS n~ccntly to have lost its hold on European Jlublic opinion. The alarmist rhetoric, scnsationalist headlines, and cataclysmic imagery ot 1990 allll· IlJ91, warning of thc imminent inundation of \ Vestern EurOpl" h~l,'e all but dis-

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appeared-no doubt because the expected onslaught ftiled to materialize. Tlw vision of mass ethnic unlllixing, however, remains powerful. I ts plausibility is enhanced by the Yugoslav refugee crisis, which resulted directly from the dissolution of a multinational state and the incipient reconfiguration of political authority along n~ltional lines.' I t is thus understandable that the specter of an ~l11alogous "unmixing of peoples" in [10st-SO\'iet Eurasia-the specter of "ethnic cleansing" on a vaster catl\'as-h~l\l11ts discussions of post-Soviet migration. \Vithout belittling the potential dangers of a chaotic and brutal unmixing of peoples in certain parts of the fonner Soviet Union, 1 seek in this paper to provide a more nuanced and differentiated analysis of the relation between political recontiguration and migrations of ethnic unmixing in post-Sm'iet Eurasia. Although such migrations are likely to be highly variegated, potenti~llly involving scores of ethnonational groups and migration trajectories, I focus here on a single set of Hows-on the actual and potential migration to Russia of ethnic Russians and other Russophone residents of the non-Russian successor states.' 1 restrict the scope of the discussion in this manner t()r both analytictl and substantive reasons. Analytically, this will permit a more sustained and ditferentiated discussion of the migratory dynamics of this group. Suhstanti"ely, not onl\' do the 25 -million-odd Russians represent b~' br the largest pool of potential ethnomigrants,' but the manner in which and extent to which they become invoh'Cd in migrations of ethnic utlmixing will be fraught with consequences for Russian domestic politics and for relations between Russia and the nonRussian successor states. I analyze the reflux of Russians from the ex-So"iet periphery in hroad historical and comparati,'e perspective, considering them alongside earlier post-imperialmigratiot1S that ensued when a ruling ethnic or national group in a multinational empire was abruptl~· transt()rmed, by the shrinkage of political space and the recontiguLltion of political authority along national lines, into a national minority in a set of new nation-states. Three such cases arc examined: Balkan l\Iuslims during and after the disintegration of the Ottoman empire, Hungarians after the collapse of the Habshurg empire, and Germans after the colLtpse of the I Iabsburg empire and the German Kaiserreich." From this excursus into comparative history I extract four general analytical poi nts, and hring them to hear on the post-S(}\·iet migration of Russians to Russia. I adopt this historiCll and comparative approach not because the past offers precise analogs of the present-it does not-but because consideration of a variety or partially analogous cases can enrich and improve our understanding of the intertwined dynamics of migration and pol itical reconfiguration.

Muslim/Turkish Migration from the Balkans Consider fIrst the Ottoman case. The protracted disintegration of the Ottoman empire spanned well over a century, from the late eighteenth century to the after-

Ill;\th of the First \Vorld \Var. Throughout this pl'l'iod, ,'!>lIIg 11lollllrr!1l', 1 S09-191 S (London: I-Llllli,h I Llllliiton, 1 Y-I8), 185tf 25.1\ hcartlll:Y, HUI/X"IT III/d ffa SU'(".I'.I'OI.l', 1', 1; lst\"1II ,\l(>cs~', "Radicalization and COllntcrrc\,,,llltion: 1\ Ltf!;yar I{dllf!;ccs fwm thc SlIcLTs",r Statcs .1 lid Thcir Role in 111111f!;;\I'\', 1\118-1 ')21," Ph. D. Diss., lJni\'l"rsi 1)' of Calil( >l'Ilia, Los Angeles, 1')73, ch. 2; l{othschild, Dl.lf C.·II/rl,1 LIiIO/,t', 1" 155. 26. Rothschild, F,a.,1 c,'lI/ril/ EI/I'UJ>l" p. 155. 27. l\ [ocsy, "Radic,tlization and C ollntcrrc\'olutiol1," pp. 8-(). 28. K'llman Janics, (.';::"·c/'O,.h"I1/.: ]>v/in' ,liId tbe lfllllgll,.iall .i1il/vrifV. 1945--IS (Ncw Yorl;:: Colllmhia lInin:rsin·l'rcss, 1, 50 .md rdig·jou . . toleralion, 1,1-1

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