This article explores the dilemma of the small Bohemian Lands/Czechoslovak nation (-state) in staying “in” or “out” of the larger Habsburg supranational entity in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. It does so mainly through the language of political economy (on national wealth creation and redistribution) articulated in the opinions and political actions of Czechoslovakia's two founding statesmen, the first president, Thomas G. Masaryk, and the first prime minister, Karel Kramař. The article argues that their choice of staying “in” the large imperial space was premised upon renegotiating a better political and political–economic deal for the Bohemian Lands, whereas the option of abandoning it and of forging the Czechoslovak nation-state was essentially based on political reasons. And while both advocated an interventionist role for the state in the economy during the imperial period, they considered such a prerogative even more essential for their new nation-state.

This article begins with an observation of a contemporary and yet reoccurring political dilemma that small nation-states face with respect to larger states in being either inside or outside of supranational political entities regarding political and economic asymmetries. Employing an intellectual history approach, the article explores this dilemma with reference to the Georgian nation in late-nineteenth century Tsarist Russia and the early twentieth century, when that territory briefly became a nation-state: It explores this through the language of political economy articulated in the thoughts and actions of two founding Georgian national intellectual and political figures, the statesman Niko Nikoladze and Noe Zhordania, who was one of the first prime ministers. It argues that conceiving of the nation(state) primarily in economic terms, as opposed to exclusively nationalist ones, was more conducive to the option of remaining inside a supranational space.

Four-centuries-long encounters between the Ottoman Empire and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy/Russian Empire point to complex relations that have been triggered and defined mostly by territorial, trade disputes, and wars, and maintained by diplomatic rivalry and occasional military alliances. Starting as friendly encounters during Sultan Bayezid II reign at the beginning of the 16th century, these relations, essentially and persistently asymmetrical, reveal an initial and long Ottoman dominance over the Muscovy/Russian side; one that lasted from the early 16th to the late 18th century—whereby the two sides shared no direct borders, traded and did not fight each other until the late 17th century—followed by a late 18th-century and mid-19th-century Russian ascendency. This ascendency was achieved largely thanks to the military reform that Tsar/Emperor Peter the Great undertook, namely, the establishment of a standing and professional army and consequentially due to the many wars that Russia won throughout the 19th century; the decisive ones being those fought during the reign of Empress Catherine the Great. The mid-19th century and the early 20th century—which witnessed the implosion of the Russian Empire due to the Bolshevik Revolution and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France—was a long period that saw few and brief military alliances, contested trade relations and yet continued wars. It was ultimately marred by an Ottoman drive to counterbalance Russia’s dominance, while the latter sought to preserve it, by involving other European powers (British and French)—the most crucial moment being the British, French, and Ottoman armies defeating the Russian one in the Crimean War (1853–1856)—transforming their bilateral interactions into multilateral but unsustainable relations.

Arguably, an account of modern Georgia is one about the country’s emergence as a political nation (independent republic and nation-state) in the region of the Caucasus—geographically straddled in between the Eurasian landmass—and the challenges of redefining, developing, and preserving itself. It is also about how it was forged under and often against its powerful neighbors, most notably the tsarist Soviet and Russian state, and about its equally uneven interactions with other neighboring nations and nationalities within its political borders. And while one cannot put a precise date on the cultural and political processes as to when this modern Georgia emerged, the late 19th century is that period when people within the two tsarist governorates of Tbilisi and Kutaisi interacted more intensively among themselves, but also within the imperial cultural and political centers of St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as beyond the imperial confines, in Central and Western European capitals. This in turn—following impactful events: the 1861 tsarist Emancipation of Serfs, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the First World War, the February and October Revolutions of 1917, the brief making of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (1918)—led to a diffusion of and reaction to political, economic, and cultural ideas from European and imperial metropoles that on May 26, 1918, culminated with the establishment, for the first time, of Georgia as a nation-state: the Georgian Democratic Republic. A social democratic nation-state in its political content, the political life of this first republic was cut short on February 25, 1921, by the Red Army of a re-emerging Russian (Soviet) state. In the ensuing seventy years in the Soviet Union—initially, from 1922 to 1936, as a constitutive republic of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and then as a separate Soviet Socialist Republic until the implosion of the union in 1991—the republic and its society experienced the effects of the making and unmaking of the Soviet Marxist-Leninist modernization project. Especially impactful for the republic and its society was the period of the 1930s and 1940s under the hyper-centralized rule of the Georgian-born Soviet Communist Party leader Joseph V. Stalin: a period marked by implementation of a centrally planned economic model and political purges as well as a consolidation of the nation’s ethnocultural and territorial makeup. Also important was the late Soviet period, particularly that under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whereby thanks to the economic and political reforms undertaken in the later 1980s, calls for the recovering of the republic’s political independence were intensified and ultimately realized. This happened on April 9, 1991—with the first Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, declaring the independence of the Republic of Georgia before the Soviet Union’s dissolution on December 26, 1991—and its international recognition would come easily and fast. But what would prove difficult and slow, from the outset, was building a European-style nation-state—meaning a liberal democratic order based on the rule of law and a market society—as was the case in the brief presidency of Gamsakhurdia (1991–1992). The latter’s term was marred by an ethnopolitical war in the South Ossetian region and brought to an end by a civil war fought in the capital city of Tbilisi and the Megrelian region. It continued to be difficult during the long and interrupted presidency of the former Georgian Communist Party boss, Eduard Shevardnadze (1995–2003)—the 1995 Constitution established a semi-presidential system of government—in which an ethnopolitical war with Abkhazia started and ended (1992–1993), state institutions stabilized, and a pro-Euro-Atlantic as opposed to a pro-Russian foreign policy was articulated, but state corruption also thrived. A European-style republic appeared closer during the full-term “hyper-presidency” of the Western-educated president Mikheil Saakashvili (2004–2013), marked by concrete steps toward Euro-Atlantic integration (NATO membership and EU partnership/toward membership) and a distancing from Russia as well as top-down neoliberal domestic reforms. But the republic was scarred by a war with Russia in August 2008 and a growing authoritarianism at home. It remains so despite a shift, since 2013, from a presidential to a parliamentary republic with the last directly elected president being the first woman president, Salome Zurabishvili (2018–). Since 2012, the Georgian Dream Party—established by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili (prime minister, 2012–2013)—governs the republic by pursuing Western-oriented domestic reforms, EU and NATO integration, and a nonconfrontational position against Russia. The latter continues to undermine the country’s territorial integrity, having recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s independence in 2008 and maintaining its military bases there.

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