Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 9 – Most people
blame the failure of civil society to emerge in Russia on the actions of the
authorities. That is “partially” true, but it isn’t the whole story, a St.
Petersburg sociologist says. In addition, responsibility for this shortcoming
lies with what he calls “’the public muteness’ and communication divides” in
Russian society itself.
This
week, Boris Gladaryev, a researcher at the St. Petersburg Center for
Independent Sociological Research, presented his findings on Russians’ “’public
muteness’” and the Moscow weekly, “Ogonyek,” interviewed him on them and on
their implications for the future development of Russia (kommersant.ru/doc/2578267).
For the last seven years,
Gladaryev said he has been observing public meetings of all kinds and is
proposing these terms in order to move beyond discussions about the development
or lack of development of civic consciousness and to frame the questions about
that process in more specific ways, particularly in terms of the ability or
lack of ability to reach agreement.
It is obvious to everyone that “in
order to present oneself as a community, one must reach some agreement.” But “the
paradox is that the majority of Russian unions almost completely lack this
minimal and absolutely necessary habit.”
Thus, it is worth talking about “public muteness” or the inability to
speak in ways that help create such agreement.
Even in the smallest meetings, he
continued, there seems no ability to carry out a conversation in such a way
that a decision “common and useful for all can be developed.” Instead, Russians
are interested and in an “aggressive” way to identify an opponent and decide
first and foremost on who is to blame.
“Sometimes this reaches the point of
absurdity,” Gladaryev said. And he gives
the example of an apartment house where the water had stopped flowing. Instead of trying to find out why and to
remedy that situation, the residents became “angry with one another” and sought
to find “those responsible” – as if that rather than turning the water back on
was the issue.
His
research and that of others show, the St. Petersburg sociologist continued,
that “practically any public assembly in Russia will not be able to have a
conversation and reach an agreement.” But just why that should be the case is
still unclear, although there are some suggestive findings already.
Historians
suggest, Gladaryev said, that this pattern reflects the lack of experience with
holding such discussions and a lack of a sense of efficacy, of the sense that
any common decision taken will have an effect.
And it is certainly true, the sociologist added, that Russians have had
only a brief experience with such discussions.
But
however that may be, there are clear differences in how they as opposed to
Europeans or Americans take part in public meetings. “In Europe,” he said, “people argue in order
to find some third position between two competing ones, to achieve at the end a
compromise. But [among Russians], it is customary to say that ‘there are two
positions: mine and an incorrect one’ or that ‘each has his own opinion’ and
one can’t argue about taste.”
In
Russian culture, the sociologist said, “compromise is usually conceived as a
partial loss and not a common win. And this concerns representatives across the
political and ideological spectrum … [Russians] do not trust their opponents an
don’t intend to listen to them seriously.”
That
reality, he continued, means that society is in a situation “when its members simply
have not mastered a public language” in which disputes can be aired and a mutually
agreed upon decision taken – even when that is what people say they are doing
and say they want to see happen as a result.
When
people cannot in fact do that, they search for enemies, sometimes first among
those they should be cooperating with and sometimes outsiders, and that search
for enemies rather than a search for a solution becomes an obstacle to the
emergence of the network of organizations that are included within the term
civil society.
Gladyarev
said that he had encountered a few exceptions to this pattern and gave as an
example a meeting of apartment owners and activists who were trying to block
the tearing down of their home. They did
work together toward an agreement, and he suggested that the reasons for their success
were the small number of people involved and the number who were active in
business.
Business
people, he argued, have to reach agreements to achieve their goals of making a
profit, and so they are more inclined to behave in that way in other parts of
their lives as well. Indeed, he said, “it is possible that
they are the only ones who are able to conduct negotiations effectively.”
That gives hope that Russians can
change as more of them become involved in business activities, but the process
will be slow because social change almost always is slower than political
change. One way to push things forward, he suggested, is for Russians to adopt
the parliamentary procedure manuals Europeans and Americans have lone employed.
That will force them to focus on the
need to find an outcome other than identifying new enemies, but unfortunately,
such manuals are a rarity in Russia today.
But
even more important than those technical steps, the sociologist said, is the
need for recognition that this is a problem, that “we have underestimated the
complexity of organizing the public sphere. Perestroika drowned in ‘a multitude
of voices.’ Even then we should have understood that discussion is not simply
glasnost but a mechanism with its own rules.”
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