HISTORY · NATIONALISM
Ronald Grigor Suny
Also known as: Ronald Suny, Grigor Suny, Ronald
American historian
Born in a peasant family in France, Ernest Renan supported himself through his adult life from his voluminous philosophical and historical writings and the sayings of his sister.
— from Becoming national
Most acclaimed
Becoming national
Being national is the condition of our times, yet never before has the idea of the nation been under such scrutiny. With the collapse of the bi-polar world of the Cold War, there has also been a parallel rise in the subnational - the claims of local, regional and ethnic minorities - economic globalization, American cultural hegemony, international migration, and diasporization. In Becoming National Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, two of the foremost authorities on nationalism, acknowledge these changes by combining a diverse selection of readings with a unifying introduction and instructive headnotes that move the discussion of nationalism onto a new and contemporary level. Each group of readings is introduced by a brief historical essay, and the readings are fully annotated. Emphasizing the recent intellectual advances and influential ideas of Miroslav Hroch, Benedict Anderson, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Lauren Berlant and a host of others, this book underscores the nineteenth and twentieth century nationalist theories to show not only where scholars of nationalism have been but where they are going. Drawing on the strengths of recent cultural studies, including race and gender identities, the editors show that though politics is the ground upon which nationalism is constructed, culture is the terrain on which it is elaborated and fought over.
The Soviet Experiment
1997
With a clear-eyed mastery of the historical issues and literature, Suny combines gripping detail with insightful analysis in a narrative that propels the reader from the last tsar of the Russian empire to the first president of the Russian republic. He focuses in particular on three revolutions, each identified with a single individual: the tumultuous year of 1917, when Vladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik takeover of the tsarist empire; the 1930s, when Joseph Stalin refashioned the economy, the society, and the state; and Mikhail Gorbachev's ambitious, and catastrophic, attempt at sweeping reform and revitalization that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union and to the victory of Boris Yeltsin. Rather than seeing the Soviet transformation as doomed from the beginning, Suny examines the complex, often incompatible themes running through Soviet history. He confidently moves from party debates and personal rivalries, to centuries-old ethnic tensions, to vast economic and social developments. He unravels tangled issues with ease, explaining "deeply contradictory" policies toward the various Soviet nationalities; Moscow's ambivalence over its own New Economic Policy of the 1920s; and the attempts at reform that followed Stalin's death. Suny's treatment of the Soviet breakup warrants particular attention, as he details precisely how Gorbachev's program unleashed forces that had built up during the previous decades - particularly the nationalism that had been shaped, ironically, by the Soviet structure of ethnically defined republics. Along the way, he offers a fresh telling of familiar as well as little-known events - capturing, for example, the movement of the crowds on the streets of St. Petersburg in the February revolution; Stalin's collapse into a near-catatonic state after Hitler's much-predicted invasion; Yeltsin's political maneuvering and public grandstanding as he pushed the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and then faced down his rivals.