Liberalism and nationalism in R ussia. B oris C hicherin as a modernist nationalist

  This article investigates the link between nationalism and liberalism in R ussia by looking at the way the leading spokesman of early R ussian liberalism, B oris C hicherin, combined liberal ideas with notions of nation‐building and the idea of the nation as a modernising phenomenon. The article argues that the young C hicherin, at least in the formative years of the 1850s, had an instrumental approach to liberalism. Liberalism served a specific purpose – to integrate the people and shape a community of active citizens so that R ussia could modernise. Chicherin was concerned with the formation of a modern nation‐state rather than the establishment of popular rule or political rights. In this sense, his thinking fits well into what, in the context of the O ttoman E mpire, has been called modernist nationalism.