Nation-building in the Post-Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National Identities

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Cambridge University Press, Sep 10, 1998 - History - 293 pages
This book examines how national and ethnic identities are being reforged in the post-Soviet borderland states.
 

Contents

National history and national identity in Ukraine and Belarus
23
National identity and myths of ethnogenesis in Transcaucasia
48
History and group identity in Central Asia
67
Nation rebuilding and political discourses of identity politics in the Baltic states
93
Redefining ethnic and linguistic boundaries in Ukraine indigenes settlers and Russophone Ukrainians
119
The Central Asian states as nationalising regimes
139
Language myths and the discourse of nationbuilding in Georgia
167
Language policy and ethnic relations in Uzbekistan
197
Notes
224
Index
284
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Page 11 - The . . . hybrid is not only double-voiced and double-accented . . . but is also double-languaged; for in it there are not only (and not even so much) two individual consciousnesses, two voices, two accents, as there are [doublings of] socio-linguistic, consciousnesses, two epochs . . . that come together and consciously fight it out on the territory of the utterance.
Page 14 - fundamentals' of culture and identity. And, as such, it is about sustaining cultural boundaries and boundedness. To belong in this way is to protect exclusive, and therefore excluding, identities against those who are seen as aliens and foreigners. The 'Other' is always and continuously a threat to the security and integrity of those who share a common home.
Page 17 - In both literature and politics the post-colonial drive towards identity centres around language, partly because in postmodernity identity is barely available elsewhere. For the post-colonial to speak or write in the imperial tongues is to call forth a problem of identity, to be thrown into mimicry and ambivalence.