'Platoon' Friendship of the Soviet Academic Diaspora.

This article responds to concerns about the ''diaspora' diaspora' effect on sociology of national identity and migration, and the related thought by about a national community as something more tangible and close-knit than just 'imagined' by . I refer to the ideas of the occupational 'platoon'- derived from and - and platoon friendship as representing the occupation-friendship-nationalism conflation. Having conducted narrative-biographic interviews with twenty-five Russian academics now residing in the United Kingdom and the United States, I look at how they understand their new, diasporic spaces as impacted by their Soviet platoon friendship - a feature that could be used as a criterion for recognising a putative diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]