Causation necessarily is a complex subject. Any attempt to reduce it either to structural determinism or the complete autonomy of action fails to address seriously the fundamental paradox long ago identified by Marx: that human beings are interactive, communicative animals and therefore conscious creators of their destinies, but that the circumstances in which this occurs are given in part by the past and shape the ways in which we go about doing so.

In the previous chapter we saw initial evidence that three levels of causation operated within nationalism during the glasnost' period: pre-existing structural conditions, institutional constraints, and events. The first was most visible in the ways in which nationalism dominated the mobilizational cycle and was structured spatially, as nationalist mobilization encompassed some groups and segments of populations more than others. The second was apparent in the temporal structuring of nationalism, as the opening and closing of institutions altered the politics by which nationalism played itself out and led to a clustering of challenging actions at particular moments in time. The third functioned as both dependent and independent variable, as events became a greater element of their own causal structure within a context of “thickened” history.

In this chapter, I explore these three levels of causation and their interaction more systematically, providing further evidence of their presence, strength, and interrelationship through the ways in which they left their traces on the patterning of nationalist action.