The author bases his idea of a new stage in the theoretical debate over nationalism on the events of the late 1980s which he takes as fundamental evidence, such as the coming apart of the Soviet Republics and the neighboring states and the flood of critical studies opposed to the classical trend on nationalism. Researchers tried to discover new ways to think about nationalism. He notices the influence on new approaches of the cultural turn in social sciences because of the emergence of serious social movements in the last quarter of the twentieth century that challenged the presumed homogeneity of cultures and national identities in the West.