As I have been narrowing my focus as we approach our project proposals, I have found the recent conflicts in Eastern Europe to be particularly pertinent to my research. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has provoked a lot of questions among major news outlets and my peers alike regarding the motive and precedence of Russia’s unprovoked attack. President Putin (and I say ‘Putin’ rather than ‘Russia’ intentionally) justifies his ‘military action’ in Ukraine under the pretense of protecting Moscow supporters within Ukraine from the ‘bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime.’ These pretenses are awfully reminiscent of the former Soviet Union’s invasion, or what was referred to as a ‘peacekeeping mission’ at the time, of Poland for the sake of the Belorusian and Ukrainian minorities. In the search for a more informed understanding of these current conflicts, I find the origins and dissemination of ethnolinguistic nationalism and the constructions of national identity at the forefront.
Navigating the temporal and geographic framework of my research and contextualising this information through appropriate methodology has been my biggest obstacle thus far. Examining the national histories of origin hood in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, I have found myself slipping into the comfort of comparative history and its respective approaches. Identifying the links between these nations rather than comparing differences between their respective conceptions of ethnolinguistic nationalism and nationhood has proven to be quite difficult given the varying degrees of development of scholarship in each nation.
I have also found it troubling how the historical scholarship interchangeably uses the terms ‘state’ and ‘nation.’ While it is nearly impossible to avoid anachronistic hoops inherent to studying newer countries, I find it necessary for a clear distinction between the two terms.
With that being said, I hope to narrow my focus more as I have realized the enormous amount of scholarship necessary to grasp these concepts. I am leaning towards focusing on the dissemination of ethnolinguistic nationalism, but need to tighten my geographical and temporal scope.