Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 24 – Nationalism in
open societies typically serves as a reinforcing link between the population
and its rulers, Dmitry Shusharin says; but in totalitarian regimes, it more
commonly serves as “an instrument of alienation of the individual from
humanity,” thus making him or her more subject to control by the powers that
be.
That distinction is especially important
to remember as one watches the evolution of Russian nationalism as Vladimir
Putin seeks to move Russia ever more completely from the incompletely open
society it was becoming after perestroika to a neo-totalitarianism political
system.
The Russian publicist developed this
idea in a book, Russian Totalitarianism. A New Edition several years ago, and
today, Novyye izvestiya has published a key except from it on exactly
this point (newizv.ru/article/general/24-06-2020/inostrantsy-eto-gady-imperstvo-otchuzhdaet-rossiyu-i-russkih-ot-chelovechestva).
“The Russian ruling elite,” Shusharin
says, “regardless of what it was called always was concerned not to allow the
formation of a civic Russian nation” of the kind that became the basis for the
rise of modern nation states elsewhere. “This has been a constant of Russian
politics and Russian history, regardless of the ideological form of the powers
that be.”
Russian autocracy and then Russian
totalitarianism were thus varieties of a common form of ethnic statehood of the
Russians which viewed all others as alien and a threat. That led those regimes
to work to “stop ethnogenesis on the entire territory of the empire.” The
supposedly internationalist Soviet system simply used different means to the same
end, he argues.
The Russian ruler in these systems
is “not simply the father of the people: he is part of the personality of each
representative of the people, a tribal head, an inevitably sacred figure who
requires not only physical but also spiritual defense,” Shusharin says. No
people under him is so closely connected with this idea than the ethnic
Russians. The others are viewed with suspicion.
One manifestation of this are the periodic
attempt to “declare all the population of Russia ethnic Russians” or to insist
that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. Under the tsars, the notion of “the
triune Russian people” consisting of Russians, Little Russians and White
Russians was official policy.
This idea remains in the
consciousness of Russians to this day. That means in turn that efforts to
oppose Russian imperialism and Russian nationalism are typically nothing more
than “amusing,” because the latter share more with the former than they are
usually willing to acknowledge.
“The goal of Russian imperialism” –
and that is the form of nationalism under its authoritarian and especially
totalitarian regimes – “is the alienation of Russian and Russians from the rest
of humanity. In essence, this is the core content of totalitarianism” and sets
Russia and its form of nationalism apart from others.
The Russian kind of nationalism does
serve as a prop for the Russian state but it also leads that state to promote
the idea that Russians are not one people among many but a people superior to
others and to view all opponents of Russia and Russians as fascists for
precisely that reason.
That has many dangerous consequences,
but it also means that the decision of the Ukrainian people to break away from
this concept and not the August putsch is what put an end to the Soviet
Union. “The Russian empire began to be
formed in Pereyaslavl and was born at Poltava.”
“And Ukraine inflicted on this
empire a mortal blow in 1991. Consequently,” when Russians like Vladimir Putin “talk
abut this as a geopolitical catastrophe, it became clear that the war of Russia
against Ukraine is something that could not be avoided.” Ukraine’s existence
threatens the self-understanding of fundamentally totalitarian Russian
nationalism.
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