*Originally published in 2025 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

Nationalism continues to arouse controversy with most observers continuing to believe it to be a negative phenomenon, although as Taras Kuzio (2002) and Oxana Shevel (2024) have shown, this is a far more complicated question. This is especially the case when scholars continue to misuse terms such as civic and ethnic to describe, for example, Ukrainian and Georgian presidents. Olga Onuch and Henry Hale’s (2022) book is an example of how Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been described positively as ‘civic’ and contrasted with his negative ‘ethnic’ predecessor Petro Poroshenko. In fact, both Ukrainian presidents have implemented similar policies on language, religion, national identity, nation-building and relations with Russia. After the Euromaidan Revolution, Presidents Poroshenko and Zelenskyy both removed Russian influence and soft power from Ukraine.

Scholars also have also routinely described only one side of the political fence in Georgia and Ukraine as ‘nationalist’ and the other side as ‘pro-Russian.’ It is never explained why only pro-Western political forces (e.g., Poroshenko in Ukraine, Saakashvili in Georgia) are ‘nationalists’ while their opponents (e.g., former President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, de facto ruler of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili) are ‘pro-Russian.’ Onuch and Hale (2022), Serhiy Plokhy (2023), Maria Popova and Shevel (2024), and Adrian Karatnycky (2024) describe Ukraine’s centre-right political forces as ‘nationalist.’ In Georgia former President Mikhail Saakashvili, leader of the centre-right United National Movement who was imprisoned in 2018 on flimsy political charges, was usually negatively described as a ‘nationalist.’

There has been insufficient recognition by scholars that ‘pro-Russian forces’ in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere can be also nationalists. It is also mistaken for scholars of Russia to confusingly inter-mix the terms ‘patriots’ and ‘nationalists’ when writing about Russia’s far-right who should be described as imperial nationalists and in some cases fascists (Kuzio, 2023). Meanwhile, it is mistaken to lump centre-right political forces in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere together with populist nationalists as ‘nationalists.’ Pro-Russian forces in Ukraine were supporters of a pan-Russian nationalism that included Ukrainians within a larger Russian people alongside Russians and Belarusians (Kuzio, 2024).

Understanding Nationalism

Nationalism can be both negative and positive; it just depends which type. Nationalism – even of the far-right variety as in Ukraine - can play a positive role in a country’s liberation from colonial rule, removing corrupt pro-Russian despots and mobilising public support for European integration. All three factors have been supported by Ukraine’s, but not Georgia’s, populist nationalists and far-right.

Two factors distinguish Georgia and Ukraine from each other. First, Georgian and Ukrainian nationalism have very different values, with Georgian nationalists favoring pro-Russian regimes and Ukrainian nationalists consistently combatting Russian influence in Ukraine. In Georgia and Ukraine, nationalists are electorally unpopular; nevertheless, during revolutions, they play an outsized roles as anti-Russian protestors in Ukraine and pro-Russian vigilantes in Georgia. In Georgia, nationalists are used as vigilantes by the pro-Russian regime with masked vigilantes in black attacking protestors, journalists and lawyers.

Second, Georgia’s Orthodox Church has........

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