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nach Petersburg von Kioto nach Tokio. Wege und Ziele von Modernisierung im Petri-

nischen Russland und in Meiji-Japan is again openly comparative of these two empires

and is thus able to say much more about modernization than studies that focus on one

example in isolation. Beyond these, there are a couple of valiant but rather weak attempts

at imperial comparatives with a nod to the Festschrifts honoree. Yes, there are TWO

articles comparing Russia to Switzerland. To be fair, Michael Khodarkovskys piecefocuses on the North Caucasus, but beyond establishing that they are both landlocked

and mountainous, theres just not much to say. Again, courageous, and perhaps tongue-

in-cheek, but such an article ultimately points most egregiously to the problems of a

Festschrift.

One of the strongest contributions, and perhaps best-labeled sub-imperial, is Rudiger

Ritters Das Imperium entlasst seine Kinder. Identitatsbildung durch Geschichte in

Belarus, Polen und Litauen nach 1989, which fascinatingly traces the post-imperial,

neo-national history writing of these three new republics. Unsurprisingly, Belarus lacks

the pre-history of the others and has had the hardest time finding a Belarusian

essence. A similar theme arises in a few of the several essays that have Ukraine as thefocus, such as Frank Sysyns The Persistence of the Little Rossian Fatherland in the

Russian Empire: The Evidence from The History of Rus or of the Little Rossia,

which traces the transformation of this text into a fundamental building block of nineteenth

century Ukrainian nationalism.

Despite my rather harsh opening to this review, I hope the preceding two paragraphs

have indicated that this collection does have something for almost everyone interested in

Russian imperial history, and more widely, those looking for good examples of imperial

comparative history. Beyond what I have mentioned, there are a few articles that could

be argued to be at least somewhat comparative in flavor, but there are at least eight that

do not even pretend to conform to the instructions the editors surely provided. AndreasKappeler is a great historian and he should be very honored that so many people put so

much time and effort into this volume honoring him. But my duty as a book reviewer is

to the larger public, and I cannot recommend the purchase of this volume to anyone.

Robert L. Nelson

University of Windsor

rnelson@uwindsor.ca

# 2011, Robert L. Nelson

Globalization and nationalism. The cases of Georgia and the Basque country, by

Natalie Sabanadze, Budapest & New York: Central European University Press, 2010,

viii + 218 pp., US$ 40.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-9639776531

This book, based on an Oxford Ph.D. thesis, begins with the seeming paradox that

expanded globalization has not led to the demise of nationalism, but rather appears to

have encouraged its resurgence as a disintegrative and protectionist backlash against

the integrative and universalizing tendencies of globalization (p. 34). Author Natalie

Sabanadze, a Senior Adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities,

proposes the counter-hypothesis that globalization and nationalism are not contradictory

but complementary processes, in that forces of nationalism tend to develop pragmatic

relationship [sic] with globalization that serves political and security interests of a nationalcommunity (p. 4). Of particular interest to Sabanadze are instances of government-led

nationalism (p. 54). This can lead to the marginalization of extremist nationalist

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movements by governments which promote openness to the global community while

co-opting nationalist symbols or rhetoric, as in Saakashvilis Georgia, or on the other

hand the incorporation of populist nationalists into the ruling coalition, as appears to be

happening in Russia (p. 54).

As laboratories for exploring the relation of nationalism to globalization, Sabanadze

has chosen her homeland of Georgia, representing the new nation-states that emergedfrom the break-up of the USSR, and the Spanish Basque country, as a sub-state European

region where nationalism is both active and institutionalized. Of these two cases, I feel

more qualified to discuss the former (although I did note some remarkable parallels

between the different manifestations of nationalism in the Basque Country and Quebec,

where I have lived for the past 20 years). She traces Georgian nationalism back to move-

ments for cultural, linguistic and political rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries, when Georgia was part of the Russian Empire. She characterizes these move-

ments as Herderian, inclusive and self-critical (pp. 6876). The rather light colors in

which she depicts Georgian nationalism up to the Red Army invasion of 1921 serves to

heighten the contrast with her dark portrayal of the initial phase of post-Soviet nationalism,dubbed national fundamentalism and associated principally with Zviad Gamsakhurdia,

the dissident who became post-Soviet Georgias first president (pp. 8998). Sabanadze

places the blame on Soviet Georgian intellectuals, who, with the overt or covert support

of the leadership, fostered the primordialized and self-congratulatory concepts of national

identity which informed much of the exclusionary nationalist rhetoric of the late 1980s and

early 1990s (pp. 8188). This account rings true, but should be extended to include

Tsarist-period scholars who contributed to the modernist linguistic and ethnological

concepts of ethnicity which replaced earlier notions of Georgian identity rooted primarily

in religious affiliation. After a period of national apathy under the presidency of

Shevardnadze, nationalism reemerged in the new century in the form of competing move-ments, an anti-Western and anti-globalist strain (favorite targets of which include the

Soros Foundation and newly-introduced Protestant sects); and a pro-Western, Europe-

oriented nationalism encouraged by the government, especially after Saakashvilis rise

to power. (An interesting feature of these competing nationalisms, not developed by

Sabanadze, is that both make reference to Georgian Orthodox identity. The anti-globalists

oppose Orthodox morality to unhealthy trends, practices and cultural products imported

from the West, often accompanied by an orientation toward the fellow-Orthodox Russians,

whereas Saakashvili promotes Orthodox symbols as a sign of Georgias attachment to

Christian Europe).

Rather little is said in this book about Georgias ethnic minorities. The lesson learned

from the South Ossetian war of August 2008, which must have occurred just as the manu-

script was about to go to the printers, is that globalization is no protection from power poli-

tics (p. 111). The only extended discussion of Abkhazia is mostly about the politics of

cultural preservation (p. 178). The cases of South Ossetia and Abkhazia could have been

used to exemplify a longstanding scheme of transnational interaction and alliance-

making against which current relations between nationalism and globalization could be

assessed. The engagement of the Abkhaz leadership with Moscow for leverage against

Tbilisi, even as Georgians seek support from the West against Moscow, conforms to a con-

figuration of crossing alliances that has a long history (as any student of the Caucasus knows

well). Modern manifestations of crossing alliances, including several cases mentioned in

Globalization and Nationalism, typically oppose a pro-Western or genuinely globalistorientation to one based on perceived solidarity of religion (Islam, for example), ethnicity

(Russian support for co-ethnic minorities in the Baltic states, p. 177), or marginalization

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(the Basque party Herri Batasuna as the voice of those who have no voice in Europe,

p. 159).

My overall impression of this book is positive. The comparative approach has been

underused in studies of the political history of the Caucasus. Sabanadze lays the ground-

work and deconstructs some of the key concepts for future work in this direction. Her case

study of Georgian nationalism draws on Georgian-language sources, including some hard-to-find periodicals, which are inaccessible to many foreign commentators. The book is

attractively bound and printed, but the syntactic and lexical infelicities cropping up here

and there in the text indicate that the manuscript should have been looked over one last

time by a proofreader.

Kevin Tuite

Universite de Montreal/Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jenatuitekj@anthro.umontreal.ca

# 2011, Kevin Tuite

Language policy and language situation in Ukraine. Analysis and recommendations,

ed. by Juliane Besters-Dilger, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der

Wissenschaften, 2009, 396 pp., US$81.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-3631583890

The language situation in post-Soviet Ukraine remains among the most misunderstood,

misconstrued, and muddled aspects in the recent scholarship of that country. The

reasons for this state of affairs include an often uncritical reproduction of both Soviet

and Western stereotypical (western Ukraine vs. eastern; Catholic west vs Orthodox rest

of the nation, Ukrainian and Russian as mutually comprehensible languages, etc.) views

by researchers, difficulty in collecting statistically reliable data in a situation of post-

imperial trauma when potential informants give pollsters what they think the latter want

to hear, interpretation of data outside its historical, cultural, and socio-psychological

context, and a continued lack of sufficient command of the language by non-Ukrainian

researchers. Many western scholars still think that knowledge of Russian is sufficient

for them to do research, interview informants and pass conclusions.

The book under review is a collection of nine essays by Ukrainian and Western scho-

lars focusing on the language situation in Ukraine both in its internal dimension and

viewed in terms of international practices limited to Western democracies and precedents

where its contributors deem them applicable to or comparable with the case of Ukraine.

The language situation in that country is discussed on a general national scale as wellas in a number of more specific domains: regional (Odesa), sociolinguistic (surzhyk),

and socio-political (education, mass media, government administration and courts). The

analytical tools are drawn from five disciplines represented by the books contributors:

political science, sociology, sociolinguistics, anthropology and jurisprudence.

Chronologically the book is limited to the years immediately following the Orange

Revolution of 2004. The declared goal of the book is to discuss language situation in

all the mentioned aspects and articulate a set of policy recommendations for Ukraine.

Even though Ukrainian policy-makers are apparently targeted as the primary audience

of this collective monograph, it is an even more valuable resource for scholars of post-

modern Ukraine as well as of other countries in a postcolonial transition, not because ofthe dismissive treatment of science by politicians in Ukraine but primarily for a wealth

of very interesting material it offers in its descriptive part.

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