Window on Eurasia: Navalny’s Nationality ‘Policy’
Potentially Dangerous, Gontmakher Says
Paul Goble
Staunton,
January 4 – Aleksey Navalny, who has
emerged as a leading opposition figure and possible future candidate, has voiced
his support for views on the relations between ethnic Russians and the
increasing fraction of non-Russians that could put Russia’s progress toward
democracy and the rule of law at risk, according to a leading Moscow writer.
Writing in his blog today, Yevgeny
Gontmakher, a leader of the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Development and a
frequent commentator on Russia’s domestic affairs, notes that on many issues
Navalny remains “a mystery” not so much in terms of biography but rather with
regard to his political ideas (echo.msk.ru/blog/gontmaher/845502-echo/).
Nowhere
is that more the case than Navalny’s position on ethnic relations, Gontmakher
says, but the prominent lawyer and anti-corruption fighter has said some things
and indicated that he subscribes to the ideas of others that should give pause not
only his supporters but even Navalny himself.
In
recent remarks, Navalny indicated that he “supports the idea of the formation
[in Russia] of ‘a national state’ as an alternative to ‘constructing out of
Russia a 19th century-style empire.” Given Russia’s formation
through conquest and its formal commitment to federalism, it is worth asking,
Gontmakher suggests, “what concretely he has in mind?”
Is he
condemning “attempts at restoring an empire? “Attempts at restoring (in one form
or another) of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union?” Is he showing “nostalgia
for imperial times which is still characteristic for a significant part of
[Russians]? Or does something imperial threaten us in the arrangements of
contemporary Russia?”
“Precise answers to such questions,”
Gontmakher insists, “are extremely important,” but what Navalny has said so far
provides few of them.
Gontamkher
notes that Wikipedia defines a nation state as “a constitutional-legal type of
state, which means that the latter is a form of the self-determination and
organization of this or that nation on a defined sovereign territory and
expresses the will of this nation.” In its ideal form, “all the citizens of
this state have a common language, culture and values.”
In Europe today, “there are a
large number of typical national states” which fall within this definition.
That is because, the Moscow commentator says, “there is an ethnos which first
of all forms the overwhelming majority of the population and second lives on
its own territory from time immemorial,” even if there are some national
minorities.
Russia, however, does not
correspond to these “two criteria” primarily “because of the second point. “Tatars and Bashkirs, Chuvash and Mordvins,
Chechens and Ingushes, Yakuts and Chukchis live on territories in which not so
long ago there were no ethnic Russians at all.” Consequently, the 1993
Constitution defined the country as a federation.
“It is possible,” Gontmakher
says, “that it was a mistake to split the truly ethnic Russian (Slavic) lands
into numerous oblasts and krays, and this is a subject for discussion about the
future arrangement” of the country. “But the presence of national republics and
districts is the only chance to escape from the imperial arrangement of Russia.”
In this regard, the Moscow
social scientist continues, the experience of Great Britain is instructive. That
country “freed itself from the imperial path not only by withdrawing from
colonies but also by the formation on the islands which remained to it of a
real federation based on ethnicity (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland).”
Gontmakher says that recently a
senior British foreign ministry official
corrected him when he spoke of the people of the United Kingdom as “Englishmen.”
The diplomat said that he should call them “Britons” instead.
For Russia, other parts of the
definition of a nation state are relevant. As far as a common language, “there
is no problem,” Gontmakher suggests, because “the Russian language is justly
the only state language throughout its territory.” But with regard to culture
and values, the situation is different, with many groups having their own
unique positions.
According to Navalny, “the
source of power” in Russia and other countries “must be ‘the nation, the citizens
of the country and not an elite stratum” seeking global domination. “But about
what nation should we be speaking” in the case of the Russian Federation?
Clearly even those members of ethnic minorities are not going to define
themselves as ethnic Russians.
They may be willing to define
themselves as “Rossiyane,” a non-ethnic term, Gontmakher says, but Navalny has
said he supports the NAROD group’s opposition to that term as a slight on
ethnic Russians. But such an attitude, Gontmakher says, “is thedirect path to
the splitting up of Russia into ethnic units,” to “a tragedy” like that of
Yugoslavia in which “the ethnic Russians would play the role of Serbs.”
By supporting NAROD’s views,
Navalny appears to place his faith in the exceptionalism of the ethnic
Russians, especially when he specifies that “the Russian people deserves the
right to live under democracy.” That is
beyond doubt, but why doesn’t he say anyting about “the remaining 20 percent of
the population of Russia which belongs to the non-Russians?”
Such silence by Navalny or
anyone else, Gontmakher concludes, suggests that “either the others do not
deserve this (and how then could there be a democracy of the European type?) or
that Russians deserve this as ‘a special case,’ something that is a very
dangerous idea in a multi-national country.”
The Moscow commentator continues
by saying that he agrees with Navalny that “there are problems and not small
ones in interethnic relations in Russia” and that this “concerns of course the
ethnic Russians as well.” That needs to be said, but if Navalny and others want
a European style democracy in Russia, they need to be inclusive not exclusive.
Failure to do so, especially by
those who hope to be leaders of the Russian Federation, can only point to disasters
in the future.
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