The presumption that ethnic identification would disappear with continuous modernization and globalization explains the relative loss of academic interest in ethnicity and identity politics before the fall of the USSR in 1991 (Freni 2011:6; Suny 1989:504). This event shocked political scientists as did the brutal inter-ethnic warfare in Yugoslavia that claimed thousands of lives right in the heart of Europe. There is little doubt that a collective search for identity and belonging is now at the forefront of global politics and is even behind such pressing developments as jihadism and terrorism (Attwood 2015). Ethnic nationalism has firmly entrenched itself in the West but is also threatening the Islamic world as well as post-colonial states of North Africa and Southwest Asia (Murphy 2010:770). Ethnic identification and ethnic prejudice reinforce each other (Meeus et al. 2010:319) and are behind the rise of the far-right movement in the West and even, as some claim, the election of Donald Trump in the USA (Chait 2016).
The disintegration of the Soviet bloc unleashed an immense wave of ethnic nationalism . While all 15 Soviet Union republics progressed to become independent nation -states, some inter-ethnic conflicts in that process “froze”: unresolved, they linger on, de facto separatist states executing full control of their territories with outside (read, Russian) support but no international recognition. Such are the separatist conflicts in Azerbaijan , Moldova , and Georgia . Nagorno-Karabakh , Transnistria , Abkhazia , and South Ossetia , respectively, have existed as de facto states for almost 30 years. Their very existence prevents Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Georgia from forging stronger ties to the West , be it closer association with the EU or NATO. While these three countries have been recognized as a “new and surprisingly enduring geopolitical space” due to the frozen conflicts (Toal 2017:4), I call these states a “buffer zone ” between Russia and the West. Located, as a foreign service official from Abkhazia labeled it, on the imaginary “border between the US and Russia” (Tania 2016), the three buffer states continuously vacillate between a pro-Russian and a pro-Western political orientation. This is happening at the time of the lowest point of the US-Russian relations since the Cold War, when any small trigger can lead to escalated confrontation. The geopolitical importance of the buffer zone , therefore, is difficult to overstate. An escalation of the frozen conflicts has the potential to disrupt the entire international system (Berg 2018:4).
Upon this backdrop, a peculiar collective identity development has taken place. Despite the dominance of ethnic nationalism (and defining the nation by blood relations) in the post-Soviet space (PSS) , Azerbaijan and Moldova have opted for a strikingly territorial definition of the nation (I assume that, broadly, citizenship rules stand for a national membership policy designed by the nation-state ). Both of these countries have bestowed citizenship on anyone born on their territories, a policy known as unconditional jus soli . It is typically contrasted to jus sanguinis (citizenship by blood). Today’s national membership is decided mostly by one of the two legal principles, together known as birthright citizenship (Ehrkamp and Jacobsen 2015:157). Jus sanguinis is ubiquitous but few states use jus soli , and especially its unconditional version, associated with liberal democracies and the American continent. In the USA, President Trump made unconditional jus soli a campaign slogan and recently threatened to eliminate it by an executive order leading to a wave of protests (Davis 2018). No such policy exists in the rest of the PSS , Europe or Eurasia, except for the two states mentioned.
While Moldova ’s democracy is somewhat tangible, Azerbaijan has been continuously criticized for its authoritarianism and a progressively worsening human rights record. Did these countries turn away from ethnic nationalism to reconnect to the residents of frozen conflicts ? This seems plausible. However, Georgia , the third buffer zone country, practices not only no unconditional jus soli but no jus soli elements whatsoever. Uncovering the reasons behind the persistence of citizenship policies of territorial nationalism (by territorial nationalism I mean, in this case, defining the nation by the territory v. by ethnicity ) in Azerbaijan and Moldova and their absence in Georgia is the grand task of this book.
I argue that citizenship policies of territorial nationalism (or their absence) in the three countries with frozen conflicts have been conditioned not by liberal-democratic development associated with civic nationalism but three factors: territorial integrity concerns, historical collective identity , and geopolitics of dual citizenship . These findings are based on archival and secondary sources and, more importantly, on almost 100 in-depth interviews with politicians, academics, constitutional lawyers, policy analysts, and journalists during my fieldwork stays in the region.
Why do I insist on the term “territorial ” nationalism and avoid the term “civic” nationalism ? In an attempt to clarify the continuous confusion surrounding the concept of civic nationalism , I have argued for a conceptual separation between “civic ” and “territorial ” nationalisms (Tabachnik 2019). Civic nationalism is territorial (it defines the nation by the territory of the state and not by blood), but it is also based on liberal-democratic values and is a product of modernity . Pre-modernist school of nationalism thought, on the contrary, testifies to the long history of the tension between blood and territory that goes back to pre-modern times (Hastings 1997; Myhill 2006). This tension may be an intrinsic attribute of land-based societies that had left the nomadic lifestyle behind. I, therefore, agree with scholars who, while recognizing nationalism and citizenship as products of modernity , see the political nation as a modification of pre-modern collective identity (Coleman 1995:49–50; Hastings 1997:29–30). The tension between ethnic and territorial collective identities has been going on continuously since pre-modern times and is parallel to the better-recognized one by the public debate, between ethnic nationalism and liberal democracy .
The ethnic/territorial tension is extremely impactful in Russia whose relationship with the West is at its worst due to, among other issues, Russia’s takeover of Crimea, its alleged role in the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine and its apparent efforts to meddle into Western political processes, all too reminiscent of Cold War tactics. To fully understand Russia’s motivations, it may be helpful to see Russia as “torn state” (in the words of Russian nationalist writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn) caught between its remaining imperial ambitions (and thus, a territorial understanding of the nation ) and the desire to reconnect to the 25 million ethnic Russians cut off in 1991 by the dissolution of the USSR (the ethnic understanding of the nation) (Zevelev 2001:52–53). Affinity with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine largely conditions Russian public opinion. Russian culture and language have been used as the basis for the expansion of citizenship to residents of post-Soviet states. This perspective is usually absent from Western analyses of the ongoing conflict between Russia and the West, as well as from their view of many other political developments in the globalized world, where an ages-old but little-noticed struggle to define collective identity by blood or territory , continues. The separatist conflicts in the buffer zone may be frozen, but they are ready to explode at any moment. Clashes between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh forces, for example, are almost ongoing.
A re-ignition of just one of these conflicts is likely to result in a clash between Russian an...