Revolution from the right: the Russian black hundreds movement and its place in the history of European far right parties and movements. Part II-II: The black hundred understanding of Russianness in the general European context of the history of nationalism and the consolidation of nations. The French revolution and the birth of the political nation and political eschatology

The Black Hundred understanding of Russianness was an integral part of the general European process of the consolidation of both ethnic and political nations against the background of competing understandings of the identity of individuals, groups, and societies. This article investigates the beginning of this grandiose process in the years of the French Revolution. For the first time on a mass scale in Europe, the French revolutionaries formulated the definition of the nation and began the establishment of norms for inclusion of people in the nation and exclusion of people from it. In these stormy years, the concept of Frenchness in the political sense took shape. One can detect large elements of continuity between the French revolutionaries' concept of Frenchness and the Black Hundreds' understanding of Russianness. What made the concepts of Frenchness and Russianness similar was the political definition of the nation, the establishment of norms of correct political behavior and criteria for the exclusion of individuals and entire categories of people from the nation and the usage of eschatological themes of the demonization of external and, especially, internal enemies of the country and people. However, there were differences between the French revolutionaries and the Black Hundreds. The Black Hundreds recognized the language rights of “the friendly peoples” in Russia despite Black Hundred support of Russification. The French revolutionaries undertook massive measures for the wiping out of local dialects of the French language and languages of ethnic minorities in the name of smashing the hotbeds of the spirit of “aristocratism” and the counterrevolution.