Re: No longer about Israel or Kurds

[Chris Doss <lookoverhere1@xxxxxxxxx>]

The idea that Great Russian Chauvinism was
consolidated with Stalin is preposterous and almost
laughable if this was not a serious issue. Does not
the beginning of what would become the Russian State
go back at least 400 years?
---

Actually the idea of what it means to be "Russian" has
changed several times and the idea even of what a
"nationality" is in the Russian context has changed
and is changing. I wrote an article on this recently,
since I think it's a very interesting subject, Russian
national identity in the post-Soviet era. Anyway it
has usually been understood in a cultural and not an
ethnic or "racial" context, which you would expect
from such a multiethnic country in which people have
been intermarrying since time immemorial. Even
"full-blooded" ethnic Russians are part Slavic, part
Scandinavian and part Asian (Tatar/Mongol), which is
why they have those big wide eyes. Pushkin was
African, and nobody says he wasn't a Russian.

I am not sure that "Great Russian" is even a word in
contemporary Russian. I have never heard it or seen it
in print.





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