National Identity, Nation-Building, and Nationalism in Post-Communist Settings

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

How do national identities emerge and evolve, and how do they affect political preferences and participation? In addition to structural explanations like mass literacy, national intelligentsias play an important role in national identity formation. By elevating communal grievances, writers, artists, university professors and other cultural intelligentsia laid the foundation for independent national sentiment in former Soviet republics from Armenia to Azerbaijan. Evidence from Ukraine suggests that local contestation over religious belonging can further contribute to the crafting and consolidation of national identities. How citizens perceive acts of politicized remembering also affects the construction of national identity and contemporary policy-making. In addition, perceptions of international actor influence on domestic identity politics can generate greater nationalist sentiment and support for nationalist political parties. This panel interrogates national identity, nationalism, and nation-building efforts and their effects on political preferences and participation in a range of communist and post-communist states.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• The Role of National Intelligentsias in Nation-Building: A Nested Analysis - Matthew J Reichert, Harvard University

• ‘But THIS Is Our Ukrainian Church!': Identity and Religious Belonging in Ukraine - Oxana Shevel, Tufts University

• EU Influence and Nationalist Voting: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe - Roman Hlatky, University of Texas at Austin

• What Authorities Say, What People Hear: Memory in Russia - George Soroka, Harvard University; Félix Krawatzek, Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS)

• Public Support for International Criminal Tribunals: The Case of ICTY - Pëllumb Kelmendi, Auburn University

Chair

• Scott G. Feinstein Iowa State University

Discussants

• Sener Akturk Koç University

• Matthew J Reichert Harvard University