Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 17 – Russian nationalists
have long insisted that a supra-national non-ethnic Russian identity not only
doesn’t exist but undermines Russian identity, but now one of their most
prominent theorists is arguing the unthinkable. According to Pavel Svyatenkov,
an ethnic Russian nation does not now exist while a Ukrainian nation very much does.
Svyatenkov says in an APN.ru article
today that his reflections on this point have arisen both because of the
divisions among those calling themselves Russian nationalists over what is
taking place in Ukraine and because of the strength of “inclusive” Ukrainian
nationalism, a quality that Russians must promote rather than denigrate if they
are to become a nation (apn.ru/publications/article32660.htm;
also at rus-obr.ru/opinions/33509).
Most people think that the Russian
national movement is about defending “the Russian people and a single Russian
identity,” Svyatenkov says, but if one considers the question more closely, it
turns out that what is called “the Russian national movement” consists of “a
great multitude of mini-identities,” Cossack, regional, fan clubs and the like.
Thus, instead of being a movement
itself, the Russian national movement “is in essence a union of subcultures,” something
that wouldn’t be a bad thing “if the subcultures existed on the basis of a
single Russian identity.” But that is
not the case. Instead, each represents its own “small ‘nation,’” and there is
no larger one.
“In other words,” Svyatenkov says, “people
call themselves Russian nationalists but do this on the basis of a subculture,
on that of their own mini-identity. And if Russians as a whole are a people but
not a nation, the subculture [of each] begins to replace the nation” as a whole
and undermines the possibility of its formation.
Ethnic Russian identity is nor
formulated clearly, something which becomes obvious if one compares it to
Ukrainian identity, which is based on “consciousness” and “the acceptance of
Ukrainism as an ideological anti-Russian doctrine,” which often takes the form
of the conviction that “’Ukraine is not Russia,’” as Leonid Kuchma titled his
book.
A very important quality of this
Ukrainian identity is its “ability to integrate outsiders: study Ukrainian and
say that you are a Ukrainian and ‘welcome to the club.’” But that is not how Russians who call
themselves Russian nationalists act.
Instead, many of them are in the business of excluding people on the basis
of genetic background or something else.
At present, Svyatenkov says, “the
concept of ‘a drop of non-Russian blood’ dominates,” which means that someone
who has any non-Russian ancestors won’t be accepted as a Russian even if he
wants to be and which has the effect of excluding from the Russian nation even
its national heroes like Pushkin and ultimately all Russians as well.
While it “deprives
Russians of Russian identity, this concept does not lead to the appearance of
any new self-identification.” Instead, it reduces Russians to the status of “a
nameless biomass which does not even have a self-designator” or its own state and which is easily infected by “the
virus of Soviet [-style] racism.”
The success of Ukrainianism as an inclusive national
project, Svyatenkov says, is having a demonstration effect on many of the
Russian mini-cultures such as the Pomors or Sibiryaks who are beginning to
think about advancing their own agendas by being welcoming to others but not
about forming a single Russian nation.
These groups have
not been successful so far because “Russians are still a sufficiently
homogeneous people” even if they are not a nation. “But gradually the split
will grow” given that the regime views the Russian as “a Eurasian slave who
does not have a Motherland” and “sooner or later” there will be “an explosion
of separatism and the formation on the basis of the Russian people of several,
already not Russian but possibly anti-Russian nations.”
The logic of
such groups who are “’running toward Ukrainianism’” is clear, Svyatenkov says,
and it can only be opposed by an analogous effort to promote an inclusive
vision of a Russian nation, one that accepts people on the basis either of
their origin or their desire to be a part of it and strives to form a single
nation with its own state.
“If Russian
identity is not made ‘inclusive,’” Svyatenkov warns in conclusion, “the split
of Russian identity will only deepen and not only on the Ukrainian issue. It
threatens to pass into the entire people. Preventing that from happening,” he
says, “is our task.” But it is quite clear from his words that this will not be
an easy one.
Svyatenkov is
far from the only one wrestling with this problem. In a survey of discussions
by scholars and politicians about it today, Anna Bryzgalova of Nazaccent.ru
cites the opinions of three others who are seeking to identify what a Russian
nation is or might be in the future (nazaccent.ru/content/13879-russkij-mir.html).
Raisa Barash, a researcher at the
Moscow Institute of Sociology, argues that the problem of the Russian nation today
is a reflection of the fact that “Russians were deprived of the chance to
realize their right to their own ethno-subjectiveness,” that is, of their right
to form their own state.
Because of that, she says, “Russian”
became a synonym of “Soviet” in Soviet times and now of “non-ethnic Russian” in
post-Soviet times. Events in Ukraine this year have sparked an interest among
many Russians to change that situation, but so far, the Russian state has not
been willing to allow such a development.
In Barash’s view, “Russianness is
not so much an ethnic as a socio-cultural reality. However, today it bears to a
significant degree a declarative character” only because of the failure of many
to be able to articulate with clarity what Russian “identity” means or should
mean other than in terms of the state.
Mikhail Starshinov, the first deputy
chairman of the Duma committee on nationalities, says that the only way for
this to change is for “the task of the ethno-cultural development of the Russian
people” to become the focus of “a separate federal program” so that the state
can structure this national identity.
But Dmitry Demushkin, one of the organizers
of the Russian Marches, is doubtful that will work. The state focuses on
Russians from time to time but never for very long. As a result, no real
changes have come from above. Instead, he implies, they must come from within
the Russian people themselves if they are to become a real nation.
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