The aim of this article is to provide a comprehensive explanation for the reasons behind governments' decisions to relocate and build new capital cities. The process of capital-building is not a mere phenomenon of urbanization; rather it is a process of “text inventing” for nation-building projects. To emphasize implications for identity behind city constructions, the paper will discuss urbanization practices of Soviet Yerevan and post-Soviet Astana. However, to verify the validity and generalizability of the proposed argument, the article will also briefly provide historical analysis of relocation of capitals from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and from Istanbul to Ankara. The reconstruction of the capital of Soviet Armenia, Yerevan, in the 1920s is important in understanding the role of Utopias in initiating identity transformations. The central conceptual premise of the article is Samuel Huntington's theoretical concept of a “torn country” and the redefinition of civilizational identity. One reason capitals have been relocated and new capitals have been built throughout history is a need to initiate a long-term transformation of identity.

Every nation has its own history and its own way to create civic culture. The problem of civil society in Estonia is rather specific being first and foremost related to the nation's cultural development and only then with its political development. The restoration of civil society in Estonia from 1987 to 1988 is based on our own historical experience of civil initiative rather than the example of the other post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe.

I am grateful to Andreas Umland and David Marples for their thoughtful responses to my piece and appreciate the invitation of the editors of Nationalities Papers to briefly reply. Because “Stalin's Populism” is an essay rather than an article devoted to empirical research, historiography or contemporary politics, some of the objections that Umland and Marples raise are a function of genre more than anything else. Other issues require more detailed engagement, however. As both responses indicate, “Stalin's Populism” elaborates upon an argument that I've advanced in a number of places about the USSR's rehabilitation of Russian historical heroes, imagery and iconography during the 1930s and 1940s. An enduring source of debate over the past half-century, this development has been variously attributed to Stalin's retreat from world revolution, his low confidence in proletarian internationalism, his wavering commitment to Marxism and his insecurity during the Second World War. It's also been seen as evidence of a turn toward nationalism and even fascism. I have long been frustrated by the schematicism of such accounts and offer here a more contingent interpretation situated specifically within the historical contours of the Stalinist 1930s. I have also grown frustrated by the hyperbole of the traditional literature's focus on Stalin's personal failings and ideological apostasy and suggest here that the policy changes in question display all the hallmarks of authoritarian populism, inasmuch as they advanced claims of Soviet state legitimacy and authority rather than Russian political autonomy or self-rule. Indeed, it is this official emphasis on party and state legitimacy and union-wide mobilization that leads me to use terms like “national Bolshevism” and russocentrism rather than Russian nationalism in regard to the Stalinist party line.

Long live the constitution! Long live the republic! Long live the people! Perish the nobility and the rank of the czar!

Nationalism in the East has long been considered to be different from nationalism in the West. Although Hans Kohn's famous dichotomy has been challenged, it still determines the way most people look at Eastern nationalism. Nationalism in the East is seen as authoritarian, ethnic and cultural in contrast to the democratic, civic and political nationalism of the West. According to the common view, Western nationalism is based on modern liberal, constitutional ideas, which makes it democratic, while Eastern nationalism is based on cultural belonging, which makes it conservative or regressive and hostile to foreign influence.