HBS assistant professor Rawi Abdelal received unexpected help from Shakespeare while researching why the fifteen former Soviet republics took divergent-and even diametrically opposed-economic paths in their relationships with Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

"When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's boyhood friends, come to visit him in Denmark, the young prince refers to his homeland as a prison," recounts Abdelal, author of the award-winning book National Purpose in the World Economy: Post-Soviet States in Comparative Perspective (Cornell University Press, 2001). "When Rosencrantz disagrees, Hamlet explains the difference in their opinions: 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'"

In a similar vein, says Abdelal, whether the post-Soviet states viewed reliance on Russia as good or bad or somewhere in-between depended on each state's point of view. "That's what I wanted to get at theoretically and analytically," he emphasizes, "the question of how to talk about a society's point of view about its relationship with other countries economically." He found himself intrigued by the roles that nationalism and national identity play in shaping a country's choices during "postimperial moments"-periods when the successor states of a collapsed empire have to reorganize their economic relations with each other and the world around them.

Unexpected Consequences

The theories Abdelal had studied as a scholar of international political economy did not adequately explain why, ten years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet republics had sorted themselves into three distinct groups: countries that sought reintegration with Russia, those that focused on integration with Europe, and others that took an ambivalent path that rejected close ties with either Russia or the West.

Three countries that exemplify these patterns are the focus of his book. Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine made choices about their post-USSR futures that defy traditional theories based on material incentives and power, Abdelal says. According to conventional wisdom, the most powerful republics like Ukraine and Belarus should have stood up to Russia, while a tiny Baltic state such as Lithuania should have buckled under. In reality, the opposite was true. Belarus embraced Russia completely. Ukrainians followed both Eastern and Western ways, depending on where they lived in the country. And little Lithuania opted to integrate completely with the West. "The realization that what these countries wanted depended on who they thought they were was a crucial moment for me in thinking about this question," he explains. History mattered in these societies primarily through how it was interpreted in the stories and ideas that comprise their national identity, according to Abdelal. His task was to understand the historical source of these collectively shared ideas.

Lithuania defined itself in opposition to Russia during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union because of a "constructed historical memory" of its period of independent statehood between the two world wars. "It is not the actual 'memories' of the interwar state held by contemporary Lithuanians that are important," says Abdelal. "The vast majority of Lithuanians today were not alive during the interwar years. What matters is that Lithuanians talked about 'the good old days' of independence-before the Soviets arrived-and passed these stories down through generations in a way that makes them meaningful to the leadership and public of the state even today."

That some of those stories are more myth than fact doesn't matter. For instance, Lithuanians say that proof of their "Europeanness" (as opposed to their "Eurasianness") is their country's location in the heart of Europe. In 1991, the government even established a "European park" near the capital city of Vilnius, complete with a small stone pyramid to mark what it described as Europe's geographical center.

	The nuances of how the Soviet republics defined themselves vis-à-vis Russia and the West were often missed by Western leaders, who feared that nationalism led only toward chaos.

"Not only do Lithuanians see themselves at the center of Europe, but they also say that Russia is not part of Europe. But both can't be true. Either Europe extends all the way to the Ural Mountains, some 800 miles east of Moscow, or Lithuania can't really be in the center of it," notes Abdelal. "But while these national stories can contradict each other or be problematic factually, they can still be powerful."

Belarus and Ukraine, on the other hand, had closer and more complicated historical relationships with Russia. During the Czarist era, for instance, the "Great Russians" of Russia made sure that the "White Russians" of Belarus and the "Little Russians" of eastern Ukraine spoke Russian and thought of themselves as a Slavic people. "Neither Belarus nor eastern Ukraine had ever been in a liberal political context," Abdelal explains. "Nor had central Ukraine, which also became part of the Russian Empire early on."

Western Ukraine, however, had never been ruled by Russia until it was incorporated into the Soviet Union after World War II; by then the region had a strong sense of nationalism, developed during previous decades while it was part of the relatively liberal Habsburg Empire and then part of Poland. "The divergence of historical experience between regions of what is now a single state continues to have a powerful impact on Ukraine's politics," says Abdelal.

Misguided Fears of Nationalism

The nuances of how the Soviet republics defined themselves vis-à-vis Russia and the West were often missed by Western leaders, who feared that nationalism led only toward chaos. In a famous 1991 speech in Kiev, for example, President George H.W. Bush argued against the breakup of the Soviet Union because he feared an onslaught of "suicidal nationalism" among all its subject states. Events proved him wrong.

"The irony is that countries with the most well-developed sense of national identity had no interest in putting national pride ahead of other interests. Instead, they did things like seek membership in the European Union," Abdelal points out.

According to his research, the context of nationalism cannot be underestimated. "The fact that nationalist movements arose in the Soviet Union that defined themselves against Russia and Eurasia and toward the West and democracy shows that there isn't any natural antipathy between nationalism and globalization. You can't speak about nationalism abstractly, as if there is just one malicious form of suicidal nationalism that is bad for politics. Unfortunately, that was the deep misunderstanding we had about the region in the early 1990s."

By studying other postimperial scenarios, such as those that occurred in Southeast Asia in the 1950s and Africa in the 1960s, Abdelal found a common theme among nationalist movements-a tendency to favor policies that were the opposite of those supported by the former colonial power.

Whereas some nationalist movements in the former Soviet Union were linked to capitalism, because communism had formerly been the prevailing philosophy, nationalist movements in postcolonial Southeast Asia and French West Africa turned toward socialism. In those regimes, capitalism and imperialism were viewed as ideologies that had oppressed people's national aspirations.

"The broadest theme of the book is that it is insufficient to look at the material facts of the world to try to understand what governments do," Abdelal says. "What struck me repeatedly in my research was that governments operate out of a national identity that they both take for granted and interpret less in terms of economic reality than their sense of their place in the world."

by Catherine Walsh

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The Aftermath
of Empire
A New View on Nationalism and Political Economy
Research by
Rawi Abdelal

Historically Speaking
Perspectives on the Past and Present
A Roundtable with:
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Nancy F. Koehn
Debora L. Spar and
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Star Guide
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Research by
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Prizes & Plaudits

Off the Shelf

Intellectual Capital