Pål Kolstø

University of Oslo · Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages

Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, various voices in the Russian public sphere have been trying to make sense of Russia’s new place in the world, its geopolitical horizons, and the identity of its people. One of the dominant trends that have emerged is Orthodox imperialism, which combines religious symbols and narratives with a geopoli...

John Færseths Spesialoperasjon: Ukraina og Russland 2004–2023 er en svært lesverdig og ryddig fremstilling av det kompliserte forholdet mellom Russland og Ukraina de siste 20 årene og gir en meget god bakgrunn for å forstå Russlands fullskala-angrep på Ukraina 24. februar 2022. John Færseth’s Spesialoperasjon: Ukraina og Russland 2004–2023 (Special...

From being a relatively neglected field, the study of de facto states has developed rapidly in recent years. As the break-up of the Soviet Union produced seven de facto states – four that still exist to this day (Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transnistria) and three that are now defunct (Chechnya, the Donetsk People’s Republic and t...

The cataclysmic upheavals in the Soviet Union during and after perestroika led to an upsurge of nationalism and ethnic conflicts. Not only the communist regime , but the unitary Soviet state exited the historical scene, leaving behind a power vacuum. Politics became a free-for-all: power was up for grabs, and nationalism in various guises – both as...

Lev Tolstoi was not only one of the world's most famous writers, he was also a deeply concerned thinker and hugely influential critic of the Church whose impact was felt long after his death. For an entire generation, Tolstoi set the agenda for ethical and religious thought, in Russia and beyond. Most of Tolstoi's main ideas drew on his Christian h...

This final chapter draws together the various strands in my research, and links up to the explanatory matrixes introduced in Chapter 1. I show how the ambiguity towards the Russian Orthodoxy that runs like a red thread throughout Tolstoi’s life and work is mirrored in equally strong ambiguity towards Tolstoianism and its originator in the assessmen...

For most people today, in Russia and elsewhere, all they know about Tolstoi’s relationship to the Orthodox Church is the Circular Letter that the Holy Synod issued against him in February 1901, usually referred to as his “excommunication.” The promulgation of this document was perhaps the most egregious miscalculation made by the Russian Church lea...

Tolstoi was well acquainted with the phenomenon of “holy wanderer” or “strannik”: His estate Iasnaia Poliana was located close to the main road to Kyiv where each summer scores of pilgrims passed by. However, in the Russian strannik concept, the focus is not – as for the pilgrim – primarily on reaching a sacred site, but on the journey, on being un...

The final chapter in the saga of the Russian Church and its relationship to Tolstoi came with the prolonged polemics over his burial in 1910. This controversy started immediately after the promulgation of the Circular Letter, which laid down a ban on burial with Church rites. The chapter contains a wealth of new material: Probably the most importan...

The Introduction presents the main scope and ideas of the book and discusses some theoretical approaches to the study of continuity and rupture in intellectual history, such as semiotics and sociology of knowledge, which can help to explain Tolstoi’s relationship to the Russian Church and to the religious environment in which he grew up. Although t...

Chapter 10 shows how the “Tolstoi phenomenon” was perceived by members of the Russian Church, why they saw him as a major threat, and how Orthodox believers discussed various strategies for combating this new heresy. Earlier, the Russian church had been confronted by various sectarian movements among the common people, on the one hand, and increasi...

In his first religious tract, A Confession (1884), Tolstoi claimed that for most of his adult life, until his “conversion,” he had been living as a “nihilist.” Closer reading of his diaries and letters, however, reveals a very different picture: Far more than most of his contemporaries in the Russian upper classes, Tolstoi had been preoccupied with...

One important reason why Tolstoi so fiercely rejected Orthodox dogmatics was that he considered a purely theoretical approach to faith, disconnected from the lives of the believers, to be useless. Therefore, he had far greater sympathy with the Orthodox mystic-ascetic devotional literature associated with the so-called Hesychast movement. Chapter 4...

In the book I do not give a full treatment of Tolstoi’s social ideas but concentrate on how his social teaching was influenced by Orthodox sources, in particular by the extremely popular fifth-century saint John Chrysostomus, who preached a kind of anarchist socialism surprisingly akin to that of Tolstoi. In his first religious tract after his spir...

In Russia in the nineteenth century, several Orthodox forms of spirituality flourished outside the established Church structures, in particular “the elder” (starets), “the holy wanderer” (strannik) and “the holy fool.” Tolstoi held these in high regard, also identifying with them, up to a point. Each of these spiritualities is examined in depth in...

The English expression “holy fool” is a somewhat misleading translation of the Russian phenomenon of iurodstvo. The word “fool” suggests that antirationalism was an essential element of this traditional folk spirituality. However, in the Orthodox understanding, asceticism, in the shape of struggle against the passions and a strive for moral perfect...

In the short story Father Sergius, Tolstoi tells about the guards officer Kasatskii who renounces his military career, enters a monastery, then leaves it again in order to become hermit. Finally, he ends up as a simple vagabond. The drama unfolds on the inner plane, but is reflected in three incidents when Kasatskii alias Father Sergius suddenly br...

Lev Tolstoi was not only one of the world's most famous writers, he was also a deeply concerned thinker and hugely influential critic of the Church whose impact was felt long after his death. For an entire generation, Tolstoi set the agenda for ethical and religious thought, in Russia and beyond. Most of Tolstoi's main ideas drew on his Christian h...

Lev Tolstoi was not only one of the world's most famous writers, he was also a deeply concerned thinker and hugely influential critic of the Church whose impact was felt long after his death. For an entire generation, Tolstoi set the agenda for ethical and religious thought, in Russia and beyond. Most of Tolstoi's main ideas drew on his Christian h...

Examination of dogmatic theology was the title of a huge, unwieldy tome that Tolstoi wrote after having read all the major compendia of Orthodox dogmatics in use at his time. Tolstoi scholarship has ignored this book – and it is easy to understand why: The stylist Tolstoi is conspicuously absent; the polemics against Orthodox theologians are so coa...

Boken Nationalism as an Argument in Contemporary Russia: Four Perspectives on Language in Action er Veera Laines ph.d.-avhandling som hun forsvarte ved Universitetet i Helsingfors i 2021. Den består av tre artikler, et bokkapittel og en lang og grundig innledningstekst. Alt i alt har Laine skrevet en solid, veldokumentert og teoretisk velfundert av...

The dynamics of peacemaking and the uneasy interplay of talks and violence in contemporary peace processes become increasingly nonlinear, complex, and unpredictable. In this special issue (no. 1(62), 2022), a mix of actors, dynamics and factors at the interface of peace processes and violence is narrowed down to contexts that involve de facto state...

Drawing on a long career of research into the history of nationalism and ethnic politics in Europe, Stefano Bianchini has written an erudite book on how the nationality factor affects European politics – state formation and state partition in particular. He presents a wide-ranging survey over la longue durée, and also argues a case: that state part...

Lev TolstoI developed his religious ideas in conscious opposition to the Orthodox faith in which he was raised. He was deeply imbued with Orthodox thinking and incorporated important elements of Orthodox spirituality into his religious system. However, in its basic structure, his teaching differed significantly from the Orthodox worldview. The elem...

"Traditional values" is a key trope in the conservative rhetoric dominant in Russian political and social discourse since Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has been a major source of this "conservative turn". Viewing moral and ethical questions as its special preserve, the ROC has sought, in relations with...

Russia as Civilization: Ideological Discourses in Politics, Media, and AcademiaPål Kolstø (University of Oslo, Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages) reviews Russia as Civilization: Ideological Discourses in Politics, Media, and Academia, edited by Kåre Johan Mjør and Sanna Turoma (Routledge, 2020).

Do authoritarian regimes engage in active export of their political systems? Or are they primarily concerned about their geopolitical interests? This article explores these questions by examining Russia’s policy towards Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria. In all three de facto states, Moscow is fully able to dictate election outcomes should...

What opportunities and trade-offs do de facto states encounter in developing economic ties with the outside world? This article explores the complex relationship between trade and trust in the context of contested statehood. Most de facto states are heavily dependent on an external patron for economic aid and investment. However, we challenge the w...

It is claimed that authoritarian regimes actively export their political systems. An alternative explanation maintains that authoritarian states are primarily concerned with geopolitical interests. Both explanations can produce coherent narratives. This article adjudicates among them by looking at Russia’s relations with Transnistria, South Ossetia...

Contemporary Russian Conservativism consists of 15 chapters by diverse hands but nevertheless has a high degree of coherence. The volume rightly highlights the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the promotion of conservativism and “traditional values”. Many of the participants in the media debates around this issue no doubt hold sincere views w...

The article discusses the post-Soviet de facto state of Abkhazia, and its relationship to its main patron, Russia. All patron–client nexuses are marked by a high degree of asymmetrical power – especially with de facto states, which depend upon the patron for their very survival. Thus, it is surprising to see how de facto client states repeatedly sh...

Iver Neumann begynte sin akademiske karriere som Russland-forsker, og selv om han senere har utvidet sitt repertoar av studieområder kraftig har han hele tiden beholdt også en interesse for Russland, både landets historie og dets aktuelle politikk. Han tok med seg sin brede teoretiske skolering inn i russlandstudiet, og tilførte dermed norsk russla...

According to Ernest Gellner's celebrated definition, nationalism is a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent. Based on this definition, Alexander Motyl has declared that ‘nationalism and imperialism are polar types’. Even so, dozens of books and articles have used the concept of ‘imperialist nati...

Revolution and War in Contemporary Ukraine: The Challenge of Change. Ed. Olga Bertelsen. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Societies, no. 161. Ibidem: Stuttgart, 2017. 430 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. Figures. $50.00, paper. - Volume 77 Issue 1 - Pål Kolstø

The dissolution of the Soviet Union has provided scholars with tremendously rich material for the study of comparative nation building. Not since the decolonization of Africa in the 1960s have so many new states been established in one stroke in one region. The post-Soviet states, moreover, have all the necessary prerequisites for fruitful comparis...

Today, the Russian Federation has the second largest migrant population in the world in absolute numbers. The chapter looks at what role these migrants – and migrantophobia – play in Russian contemporary identity discourse through the lens of the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections. On the eve of these elections, Muscovites identified the large numbers o...

In December 2016, Transnistria held presidential elections in which, after an exceptionally loud and dirty campaign, the incumbent yielded power to his main opponent. This article explores regime evolution in the breakaway republic through the prism of these elections. First, drawing on the literature on hybrid regimes, we ask what the recent campa...

Russian nationalism after Crimea is commonly depicted as aggressive and expansionist – but few Russian ethno-nationalists would accept this description. Quite the contrary: they would argue that ethnic Russians as the majority population find themselves under “under siege” from ethnic minorities. A case in point, they hold, is Stavropol Krai in the...

The Russian “winter of discontent” 2011–12, when tens of thousands demonstrated against the Putin regime, turned out to be a passing incident only, but it raises a number of important questions. Specifically, we would want to know why it suddenly was possible to unite the many disparate elements in the Russian opposition and make them march in unis...

The article examines the short but eventful history of the St George ribbon, which since 2005 has been used in Russia as a symbol of the Soviet victory in the Great Fatherland War. The ribbon ‘action’ has become a major societal and political event, involving millions of participants in various activities in the weeks leading up to Victory Day, 9 M...

The article analyzes how the nationalist segment of the Russian public has engaged in attempts to interpret and evaluate the Crimean annexation and the war in Donbass. The Crimean annexation was justified in the Kremlin by a novel use of nationalist rhetoric. Initially, this rhetoric paid off particularly well—boosting Putin's popularity ratings an...

The word ‘Balkans’ often functions as a stigma. Several authors have discussed the bloodbath during the wars in the former Yugoslavia with references to an alleged Balkan culture. Towards the end of the 1990s the term ‘Balkans’ entered the official vocabulary of the European Union, now with the prefix ‘Western’. ‘The Western Balkans’ became a commo...

After the conflagration of Tito's Yugoslavia a medley of new and not-so-new states rose from the ashes. Some of the Yugoslav successor states have joined, or are about to enter, the European Union, while others are still struggling to define their national borders, symbols, and relationships with neighbouring states. Strategies of Symbolic Nation-b...

Nationalism is featuring increasingly in Russian society and public discourse; not least as a reaction to what many Russians see as the uncontrolled influx of labour migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russian nationalism, previously dominated by ‘imperial’ tendencies–pride in a large, strong and multi-ethnic state able to project its infl...

Russian nationalism, previously dominated by 'imperial' tendencies - pride in a large, strong and multi-ethnic state able to project its influence abroad - is increasingly focused on ethnic issues. This new ethno-nationalism has come in various guises, like racism and xenophobia, but also in a new intellectual movement of 'national democracy' delib...

The article examines to what degree attachment to a former multinational state which breaks up may complicate national consolidation in new states, as was the case in the Soviet Union and Titoist Yugoslavia. In the former Yugoslavia such attachment is usually referred to as ‘Yugonostalgia’, and various opinions have been expressed about its strengt...

Despite its strong legal and historical claims to sovereignty, the Republic of Somaliland remains entirely unrecognized by the international community more than 20 years after it proclaimed independence from Somalia in 1991. Paradoxically, Somaliland’s lack of external legitimacy has, in some ways, facilitated the growth and development of its inte...

It is extremely difficult for a state to survive without international recognition; even so, some de facto states have been established and continue to exist. Others do not, and have been wiped off the face of the earth again. This article looks at one failed de facto state, the breakaway Serb Republic of Krajina (RSK) that existed for five years (...

The popular, stereotype perception of Russian anti-Semitism is marred by a number of misconceptions. It is generally believed that it originated among the peasants, partly as a result of religious bigotry and partly as a reaction against an alleged Jewish exploitation. In actual fact, pogroms almost invariably started in towns and cities, and the m...

In the 1990s, the concept of democracy was thoroughly discredited in Russia. It is therefore surprising to find positive assessments of democracy in recent Russian political discourse in an unexpected place: among anti-regime professed nationalists. The most well-known exponent of this is Alexei Navalny, but he represents a broader current. The art...

After the conflagration of Tito's Yugoslavia a medley of new and not-so-new states rose from the ashes. Some of the Yugoslav successor states have joined, or are about to enter, the European Union, while others are still struggling to define their national borders, symbols, and relationships with neighbouring states. Strategies of Symbolic Nation-b...

How have the Transnistrian authorities sought to consolidate de facto statehood in the absence of international recognition? Starting from the idea that the time factor will eventually transform secessionists into state-builders, this article traces how the processes of state- and nation-building promoted by the Transnistrian de facto authorities h...

Acknowledgements vii 1. Introduction 1 2. States Without Recognition 26 3. Surviving in the Modern International System 50 4. Internal Sources of Unrecognized State-Building 76 5. Rethinking Sovereignty and Statehood 102 6. Moving Toward Peace or War? 123 7. Conclusion 147 Notes 156 Bibliography 188 Index 203

Scattered across the globe there exist a handful of unrecognized statelets. Although some such entities have proven short-lived, others have demonstrated remarkable tenacity. The South Caucasian de facto states – Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh – have existed for almost 20 years now. This article offers a comparative analysis of how th...

This article looks at how Russia places herself in relation to one of her southern neighbours, Georgia, and vice versa. Russia and Georgia have recently been engaged in a short but full-fledged war, hence their interrelationship has been intensely debated in both countries. Both Russia and Georgia are, as it were, poised ‘between East and West’.As...

Among the post-Soviet de facto states, Abkhazia is unique in that the secessionists pursued self-determination in the name of a minority group. Today the ethnic Abkhaz enjoy a virtual monopoly on political power. Simultaneously, Abkhazia has developed a reasonably democratic political system. How has it been possible for the ethnic Abkhaz to monopo...

The article analyzes the coverage of the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 in three leading Russian newspapers, the official Rossijskaja gazeta, the tabloid Komsomol´skaja pravda, and the oppositional Novaja gazeta. A total of 247 articles on the war written in the three papers between 8 and 14 August 2008 were examined; in addition, seven journa...

De facto states are often dismissed as ‘failing states’. However, in Freedom House rankings of political rights and civil liberties, they sometimes perform better than their parent states – as has been the case with Nagorno-Karabakh. This article examines the development of democracy in Nagorno-Karabakh against a checklist of factors assumed to be...

In spite of the growing literature on discourse analysis, the relationship of discourse to violent/non-violent outcomes of conflict is an under-researched area. This book combines theories on ethnic conflict, identity construction and discourse analysis with a comprehensive and inclusive survey of the countries of the former Yugoslavia. It presents...

When the Soviet Union began to unravel in the late 1980s, many observers expected that the 25 million ethnic Russians who lived in the non-Russian republics represented an important group of people who could be mobilized by ‘empire-savers’ to stem this process. Russians who would end up as minorities in new nationalizing states, had little if anyth...

In Croatia, the relationship of the Catholic Church to the wartime Fascist Ustaša regime has been a bitterly divisive issue. The ecclesiastical leadership does not send official representatives to the main commemoration of the victims of the Ustaša terror, held in April each year at Jasenovac concentration camp, thereby giving the impression that t...

Among the many controversial problems in the history of Yugoslavia during World War Two few issues seem to agitate the minds in Serbia and Croatia as much as the Jasenovac camp, the largest of the concentration camps run by the Ustaša regime in the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The disagreements concern both the size and the charact...