Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 15 – Despite Vladimir
Putin’s recent statements that Russians should more actively focus on
geography, there is one kind of attention to that subject which neither he nor
his Soviet predecessors has been interested in seeing develop: the study of
local regions or as it is known in Russian “kraevedeniye.”
In “Izvestiya” yesterday, Vadim
Shtepa, one of Russia’s most prominent regionalists, says that he welcomes
Putin’s call for more attention to geography but argues that the best way to
achieve that is by promoting a renewed focus on “kraevedeniye” because that is
the geographic subject closest to where people live (izvestia.ru/news/579442).
Unfortunately,
at present, the regionalist commentator writes, “geographic consciousness in the
largest country of the world can only with difficulty be called widespread.”
Instead, people focus on other things and treat an interest in “the geographic
specifics of various lands at best as something exotic.”
In
fact, among Russians, geography is often “subordinated to geopolitics and to a
centrally established all-Russian mission,” something that deprives people of a
knowledge of their own territories and has the effect of limiting the possibilities
for conversations among people from different regions.
The
reasons for this, Shtepa says, are not surprisingly to be found in politics.
Prior
to the Bolshevik revolution, “kraevedeniye” was “a natural part of the cultural
and social life of various guberniyas and cities down to the very smallest,”
Shtepa notes. The zemstvos pushed this, and the number of activities and
publications in that time was truly enormous.
For
the first decade after 1917, this interest coexisted with the Bolshevik focus
on the world revolution. And by the second half of the 1920s, there were more
than 1700 local studies organizations and institutions “which organized
expeditions and published precise maps and periodical journals.
But
in 1929-1930, the situation changed dramatically. With the launch of
industrialization and collectivization, Moscow increasingly viewed such
interest as being in conflict with its unitary and “deeply utilitarian”
policies and began to crack down. By the middle 1930s, “kraevedeniye”
organizations were closed and many local museums shuttered.
For
the next three decades, the very word “kraevedeniye” was almost completely
forgotten, but beginning in the 1960s, people around the RSFSR began to take a
new interest in its subject, as shown by the formation of the All-Russian
Society for the Preservation of Nature and of Historical and Cultural
Monuments.
That
interest continued and even led to the appearance of local studies as an
elective in many schools. But trying to make it obligatory won’t promote “kraevedeniye”
but rather will alienate people precisely because it will reflect the typical
top-down mandatory approach that kills off so many things.
“An
active and lively interest in geographic knowledge can be awakened only by the
development of local study projects,” Shtepa argues, and there
are organizations and even websites which can help. Among those are “Zalesye” (zalesje.net/) and Merjamaa (merjamaa.ru/). There are also many wonderful
films about local life, but so far, these have received more recognition abroad
than in Russia.
Focusing on local
histories do not set regions against one another, he argues. “On the contrary,”
this respect for the past and present in each can be the basis for linking them
together.
Unfortunately, in Russia, there is “a powerful worldview obstacle,”
the tendency to think in terms of “a two-dimensional scheme of ‘the capital and
the province.’”
As evidence of
this, Shtepa cites his experience at a Moscow roundtable several years ago
where participants were asked to draw a geographic map of Russia. “Alas, the
result was predictable.” Most people drew the borders of the country and then
put “a star where Moscow is.”
Such “schematism,”
he says, “can be overcome only on the basis of a federative worldview, with the
active popularization of various regional brands which in contemporary
economics are becoming ever more an instrument of territorial development.”
“Kraevedeniye”
must play “a key role” in this, Shtepa says, because the knowledge of one’s
local area and the development of love for it lead logically to knowledge and
love for the country as a whole. If Moscow insists on loading people up with
more “geopolitical abstractions,” then this chance will be lost. And any maps
will be useful only for drivers.
.
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