Posted by Sean on March 12, 2006
As I’m sure many known, Belarus holds presidential elections on March 19. Unfortunately time doesn’t allow me to provide extensive comments on the Lukashenka government’s crackdown on the opposition. I hope to write something on the role of youth in the election in the coming days. In the meantime, let me point readers to some places that are providing news and analysis.
Radio Free Europe has sent up a special section called Belarus Votes 2006 which has daily coverage. I also recommend the hour long panel discussion (Real Audio Windows Media) on the elections sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Eurasian Home also has a special section on the elections.
I have only one quick observation about the reporting. I find it interesting, and frankly quite predictable, that the elections about being placed in a narrative of the Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. In ..read more
Posted by Sean on March 12, 2006
In his masterful narrative of Imperial Russian history, Russian: People and Empire, Geoffrey Hosking stated that Russian nationhood is caught in an irreconcilable binary between russkii and rossiiskii. The former signifies the ethnic category for Russian, which has its roots in the Slavs who established Kievan Rus’ in the 9th century, while the latter suggests a category for subjects or citizens of the Russian Empire despite their ethnic identity. Russian state and national development, agues Hosking, is in many ways characterized by the effort to reconcile these two concepts. “The great question for Russian leaders during the 19th and 20th centuries,” he wrote, “might be formulated as whether they could inculcate an analogous compound national identity in their empire’s more diverse elements.” (xxi)
Efforts to solve this question abound. Peter the Great attempted to create civic categories with his Table of Ranks, eschewing ethnic difference as something ..read more
