National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine

ISBN-13: 9780521576970 / Angielski / Miękka / 1998 / 460 str.

Ilya Prizel

Opis

This text is based on the premise that the foreign policy of any country is influenced by a society's evolving notions of itself. Applying his analysis to Russia, Poland and Ukraine, the author argues that national identity is an ever-changing concept, influenced by internal and external events, and by the manipulation of a polity's collective memory. The interaction of the narrative of a society and its foreign policy is therefore paramount, he maintains, going on to emphasize that this is especially the case in East-Central Europe, where political institutions are weak, and social coherence remains subject to the vagaries of the concept of nationhood.

Recenzje

' … Prizel's study bristles with thought-provoking insights …' Political Studies

Spis treści

Introduction: a statement of the arguments; 1. National identity and foreign policy: a dialectical relationship; 2. Polish identity 1795–1944: from romanticism to positivism to ethno-nationalism; 3. Poland after World War II: native conservatism and the return to Central Europe; 4. Polish foreign policy in perspective: a new encounter with positivism; 5. Russia's national identity and the accursed question: a strong state and a weak society; 6. Russian identity and the Soviet period; 7. Russia's foreign policy reconsidered; 8. Ukraine: the ambivalent identity of a submerged nation, 1654–1945; 9. Post-World War II Ukraine: birth pangs of a modern identity; 10. Foreign policy as a means of nation building.