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The conceptualization of the terms “national consciousness” and “national identity” is widely used in debates about the nature of national phenomena. As John Shotters points out: “identity” has become the watchword of the time (Shotter 1993a, 188). Michael Billig notes that “the watchword should be watched, for frequently it explains less than it appears to” (Billig 1995, 60).

Social identity theory has been called “the most ambitious contribution to the exploration of social processes” (Eiser 1986, 316). The theory was conceived by Henry Tajfel, later developed into what is called “self-categorization theory” (Abrams and Hogs 1991; Taylor and Moghaddam 1994; Turner 1984; Turner and Giddens 1987). Though Tajfel’s theory was designed to explain national group identity, it was effectively used to explain the fundamental psychological principles of group identity in general.

Social identity theory holds that psychological principles are central to collective behavior, assuming that it is personal identifications that form a group out of free individuals. Tajfel was concerned specifically with national groups or in other words “nations.” According to the theory, this is the main means of categorization into human groups and communities. These categories therefore unavoidably divide people into “we” and “the other.” In answer to the question about what makes people categorize themselves, Tajfel explains that human beings naturally look for a positive self-concept or positive social identity. This search for positive self-identity leads individuals to categorize themselves into groups. Yet, to achieve a positive group identity, groups have to compare themselves (according to certain characteristics) with contrast groups—“the other,” and this leads to the emergence both of positive self-stereotypes and negative stereotypes of :the other.” The building up of positive self-stereotypes creates a positive group identity.

Both “primordialist” and “modernist” traditions adopt the basic assumptions of social identity theory. They differ, however, in respect of the content and ideological, social and political functions of national consciousness or identity. For “primordialists,” national identity is based more on a unity of history and culture rather than, for instance, ideology. That is why national identity, according to Anthony Smith, for instance, consists of a number of interrelated components—ethnic, cultural, territorial, economic and legal-political. We can distinguish two sets of dimensions—the first civic and territorial, the second ethnic and genealogical. In relation to these dimensions, Smith identifies external (territorial, economic, political) and internal functions of national identity. If the former connect the social unit with a concrete location within social space, then the latter work instead on the individual level of consciousness, defining, locating and socializing individual selves in this social unity. In this context, Smith argues that individual identities tend to be more situational or even optional, while collective identities are more pervasive and persistent.

Smith’s view of national identity is determined, first, by his concept of the ethnic origins of nations and, second, by the recognition of national identity as a part of the multiplicity of contemporary social and historical identities. This, again, situates the “primordialist” position on national identity much closer to the Soviet and, more generally, Eastern European tradition than the Western “modernist” one.

“Modernists” recognize the dual nature of the origin of national phenomena. According to Gellner, the appearance of nations was predetermined by socio-economic conditions during the transformation from an agrarian society to an industrial one. However, people’s loyalties and solidarity, which exist in social consciousness, determine the real boundaries of national units. Gellner sees nationalism as appearing first (on the basis of specific development of previous high cultures), and only then, as a result of its existence, are nations created. Gellner also stresses that nationalism as an ideology creates an artificial and false national consciousness (because of mythical inventions). However, according to the author, this pervasive national consciousness plays a functionally determinative role in nation-building. “Modernists” do not agree that national consciousness adopts myths and memories from previous ethnies. It is assumed that nationalist myths only profit from the defense of traditional folk culture, when in fact they are forging a new high culture. In this way, national consciousness is functionally important but “genetically” artificial.

Soviet Ethnography distinguished two meanings of the term “national consciousness,” according to the ethno-social and socio-economic content of the national essence.7 In the narrow meaning, national consciousness was equal to ethnic consciousness (Bromley suggested calling it ethno-national) and includes: ethnic identity, along with some knowledge of national history, national territory and the national state system. In a wider meaning, national consciousness was considered as the whole social consciousness of the nation (Bromley suggested the term “ethno-social consciousness of the nation”), which should include political, moral, aesthetic, religious and philosophical forms of reflection and awareness of the existence of the ethno-social organism.

Here it is necessary to mention that all Soviet social scientific inquires into the nature of group identity had to build on the “official” theory of Soviet Marxism, namely, the “theory of reflection.” This assumes that consciousness is a natural way in which individuals relate to the world via a system of knowledge which evolves as a social product and is fixed in language, in all its meanings. Consciousness “is the highest form of materia’s reflection” (Filosofskyi 1986). Support for the view was found in Engels and Marx (e.g., The German Ideology) as well as in the works of Russian psychologists like I. Sechenov and I. Pavlov (Zubkov 1990, 112), and remained unchallenged. Consciousness, therefore, was generally understood as a characteristic of “highly organized materia,” i.e., the human brain, with the main function being to “reflect” or create “subjective images of the objective world,” and in the Marxist tradition was to be considered as “nothing else but awareness of being” (Marx V.3, 24). Philosophers stressed that consciousness is a product of historical social practice, giving the answer in this way to the “main philosophical problem” (i.e., what is primary materia or consciousness). Sociologists believed that general elements of individual consciousness reflect “social existence” and, by adding to each other, build up a consciousness of society, which is already a separate spiritual system and not the simple sum of individual identities. “Consciousness of society” or social consciousness implements itself via philosophical, scientific, artistic, moral, legal and political ideas and expressions. In this way, social consciousness was considered to be relatively independent of individual identities as well as of social existence as such (Grushin 1987, Mikhaylov 1990). Psychologists defined consciousness in empirical terms as a multiplicity of constantly changing sensuous and cognitive images that appear to individuals as their “inner experience,” and are prior to their practical activity (Psikhologiya 1990, 369). This approach became so widely accepted that “the gnoseological aspect of consciousness as a concept was considered the least problematic” (Shkliar 1992, 62). However, a more critical review shows that this approach is not sufficient to understand the phenomenon of national consciousness. “Reflection theory” does not provide the answer as to how, when and why collective (national) identities appear.

For Soviet social scientists generally, the concept of national consciousness always included ethnic identity (as in the “primordialist” concept), and in the narrower meaning of the term, was even equal to ethnic consciousness (Likhachev 1945; Dashdamirov 1983). This might lead to the incorrect conclusion that Soviet Ethnography, on the issue of national consciousness, is incompatible with the “modernist” position. This is not entirely so. In cases where ethnicity has played a substantial role within a particular high culture, which creates nationalism, i.e., national consciousness, Gellner, for instance, tends to use the terms “ethnic” and “national” consciousness interchangeably. This means that there is a certain coincidence at least on the level of terminology between the theories of Gellner and, for example, Bromley. Moreover, when both authors work in a materialistic paradigm they are in absolute agreement that national (like any other) consciousness is a consequence of socio-economic conditions (that is Gellner’s main claim). The difference is that Gellner or Anderson assume only an occasional, random overlapping of ethnicity and national consciousness, whereas for Bromley such overlapping was naturally systematic. One of the possible ways of explaining this difference in their position can be found in Hroch`s identification of Western and Eastern models of nations, with different levels of emphasis on ethnic and civic determinants. Gellner recognized that China, for instance, is an exception to his theory. In any case, the preceding conditions illustrate that there is a high enough degree of similarity in the common understanding of national identity phenomena to claim that between “modernist” and “primordialist” theories, on the one hand, and the Soviet tradition, on the other, there is a common ground which provides adequate understanding of the same concepts.

Ukrainian scholars developed their own view on the matter after 1991. Zhmyr defined national consciousness as “a kind of group consciousness, which is based on social values, norms which define a person as belonging to a national community. National consciousness has the characteristics of a group consciousness and reflects the division between ‘we’ and ‘the other’ and in this way functions as a means of national integration. National consciousness should be considered as a higher level in comparison to ethnic consciousness” (Zhmyr 1991, 104).

National identity is understood by the Ukrainian scholars in a cultural context as all norms of “ethnosocial behavior.” It is assumed that “national” means “ethnic” in the wider sense, as it was considered in the framework of Soviet Ethnography. The Short Encyclopedia of Ethno-State Science states that “national identity assumes that a group of people share the feeling of a common past, present and future as well as a certain consensus concerning the principal issues of economic, political, cultural and social life, the current development of the state and its policy’ (Mala 1996, 98). The article on national self-consciousness by Pustotin (Mala 1996, 103), and the article on different levels of national self-consciousness by Rymarenko (Mala 1996, 103-104), among others in the encyclopedia, illustrate that generally Ukrainian scholars throughout the 1990s remained within the boundaries of the Soviet “sociospheric” concept, and worked within a framework of “reflection theory” from a methodological point of view. Despite some discussion of this problem (Hryb 1997), this was the dominant paradigm in Ukraine for explaining the processes of national identity. Gradually, however, such scholars as Heorhiy Kasyanov, Yaroslav Hrytsak and Mykola Ryabchuk introduced Western modernist theories of nations as “imagined communities” and national identity as a “daily plebiscite” (Kasyanov 1999). Ryabchuk arrives at the conclusion that Ukrainians formed two types of national identity: one of a modern political nation in Western Ukraine and another of Little Russians (malorosy) in Eastern Ukraine that mostly consists of a ‘surzhyk’-speaking population that neither embraces Ukrainian high culture nor belongs to the Russian ethnos (Ryabchuk 2011, 6). Hrytsak similarly argues that nation-building in Ukraine is defined by competition of different models of civic national identity based on language (Ukrainian and Russian) rather than the competition of Ukrainian and Russian national ideas (Hrytsak 2011, 60). Myroslav Popovych concludes that the Ukrainian national idea exhibits a contradiction between an “ethnic” and a “political” understanding of the nation and, therefore, the political nation in Ukraine could only be multicultural and inclusive of various nationalities (bahatonatsionalna) (Popovych 2005, 10). Vadym Bondar arrives at the conclusion, based on Ukrainian historiography, that a liberal, civic and inclusive form of nationalism has a fairly good chance of success in Ukraine despite inevitable competition from more narrow ethnic nationalism (Bondar 2012, 330).