Russia is a Russian Nation State and Will Remain One, Tishkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 28 – In a major article for Russia in Global Affairs, Valery Tishkov argues that Russia is a nation state as well as a civilization and that the current coronavirus pandemic crisis has made both statuses more important now and for the future than they appeared to many only a few years ago.

            The former director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology and a former Russian Federation nationalities minister, says that those who argue that “Russia is not a nation state and cannot become one are mistaken.” It is a nation state based on an ethnically informed state nation and will remain one (globalaffairs.ru/articles/nacziya-naczionalizm/).

            That reflects both international realities where nation states have become even more important as organizing principles of the international order in response to the crises of recent years and Russian realities including the state’s promotion of unity through civic nationalism in order to mobilize the population to achieve its goals.

            The senior Russian ethnographer says that “a state is made legitimate and vital above all by its population which has a feeling of national self-consciousness, when each generation passes through its own kind of daily referendum on attachment to and involvement with this state as to its own Fatherland.”

“One may call this country-based or civic nationalism,” he continues. “One may call its patriotism or national self-consciousness (identity).” And he adds pointedly “the differences here are not essential; they reflect the traditions of each country’s social sciences and everyday use of terms.”

Nationalism, whether “civic)” or “ethnic” presupposes that “each country must govern itself without interference from the outside, that the nation is the basis of state construction, and that the people is the only legal source of political power. It calls for the establishment of a single national identity on the basis of common social characteristics” which can be various.

According to Tishkov, “the majority of political leaders (‘leaders of the nation’) are by their convictions and actions to one degree or another nationalists, that is, the national interests of their countries are priorities for them and they defend them by all available means.” Among such leaders he mentions Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

It has been this kind of nationalism which has powered their response to the pandemic and to other global crises over the last 30 years. And that shows that the nation state not only remains central to the international system but is likely to be its dominant form for a long time to come, Tishkov continues.

Talk today “about the loss of the nation and nation states is a response to neo-liberalism and post-modernists thought with their denial of the quite strictly organized forms of social coalitions in favor of freedom of the personality, world rule, and private interest,” he says.

And consequently, nation building “on the basis of nations and civic nationalism (often with an admixture of ethno-nationalism or in symbiotic relations with it) was and remains the foundation of the successful and secure existence of this or that country.” Those who talk about the fading of a nation state either already have one or even have one to excess.

That is exactly the situation in Russia today, Tishkov argues. “The presence of radical nationalists among Tatars, Chechens, Sakha or other Russian nationalities does not deny the dominance among them of an all-Russian identity which links them to the [non-ethnic] Russian people.”

The same thing is true for ethnic Russians, “for whom there is no dilemma between ethnic Russian [russky] and non-ethnic Russian [rossissky].” Indeed, this commonality is reinforced for both because Russia is not only a nation state but a civilization in which many participate. And so it will remain. 

More than 20 Times since 1991, Russians have Tried and Failed to Create a Social Democratic Party

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 28 – Russians often talk about whether Russia is “a real democracy,” but they rarely discuss the more specific question as to “why in post-Soviet Russia the ideas of social democracy have not been taken up and supported,” Rosbalt commentator Leonid Smirnov observes.

            Given Russian concerns about social justice and about the role of the state in promoting that, he continues, one might have expected otherwise. But in fact, while almost all other trends in public opinion led to the revival of their own political parties, with regard to social democracy, these attempts have proven stillborn (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2021/03/28/1894199.html).

            Pavel Kudyukin, deputy labor minister in Yegor Gaidar’s government, notes that “over these 30 years, there have been no fewer than 20 attempts to create a more or less social-democratic organization.” But as of now, “the results are close to zero,” the result, he suggests, of the absence of horizontal ties and paternalist rather than competitive attitudes.

            But there may be a more fundamental reason, Yury Korgunyuk of INION says. “In reality, in the Russian Federation now, socialism is very well combined with conservatism and very poorly with democracy.” Those who might fight for socialism as democrats instead back authoritarian solutions like Putin’s constitutional amendments.

            Lev Gudkov, head of the Levada Center, concurs. While 25 to 27 percent of Russians call themselves social democrats, they understand this as “’socialism with a human face’” from Soviet times rather than as identification with any political movement that would fight with others for social benefits. Such people have “practically no interest” in politics as such.

            This represents a dramatic change from the period immediately after the collapse of the USSR. Tatyana Vorozheykina of the Free Unviersity, says at that time, interest in and demand for left of center and social democratic ideas and movements was very high given that the state had “ceased to paly any role in the structuring of social relations.”

            According to her, “Gorbachev also wanted social democracy and there was a drive toward self-administration in enterprises and cooperatives.” And if a clear alternative had been formulated, “it could have made its banner the development of capitalism from below.” But that didn’t happen.

            Unfortunately, both the traditional top-down approach to change and the state’s recovery of its dominant position did not allow this to happen. As a result, “there was not established a legal state, a legal judicial system and the defense of property” within which a social democratic movement could have operated as a union of intellectuals and workers.

            Finally, Konstantin Morozov of the Institute of Russian History says that underlying all of this is a change in the intelligentsia. Earlier it saw itself as allied with or at least the defender of ordinary people. But now it is out only for itself, and the people feel that and reject the leadership of those who “only push pencils.”

            The historian says he first felt this change in 1994 when, while riding a train, he listened to the comments of ordinary Russians and was for his troubles viewed by a Russian journalist in much the same way that an ethnographer might have viewed a wild and dying community, as a kind of freak, for having such interest.

            With the end of the Soviet Union, Morozov says, the intelligentsia “dispensed with a commitment to equality and to love for the people.” Now, as a result, members of the intelligentsia instead of supporting progressive ideas, “feed on right-wing conservative ones.” And that makes any social democratic project an almost impossible task.

 

At Current Rate, Moscow Won't Complete Domestic Vaccinations Until 2024

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 28 – Moscow is marking the 100^th day since it began vaccinating people against the coronavirus by announcing that it has given 10.6 million shots to Russians. That amounts to just over 100,000 a day and puts that country on course to vaccinate all of its residents in August 2024 (sprotyv.info/analitica/koronavirus-v-rf-moshh-ne-imejushhej-analogov-vakciny-ili-o-magii-cifr).

            Also today, the Russian government announced that it had registered 9088 new cases of infection and 336 new deaths over the last 24 hours, the former figure up slightly, the latter down, as the pandemic ebbs and flows in various parts of the country (t.me/COVID2019_official/2676 and regnum.ru/news/society/3226201.html).

            Vladimir Putin, having finally gotten the vaccine, said he felt no need to “ape” other politicians by being photographed when he received the shots. At the same time, he now says that getting the shot is “necessary,” raising the question of just how long vaccinations will be voluntary in Russia (regnum.ru/news/3227313.html and regnum.ru/news/3227281.html).

The Kremlin leader also said that he thinks Russia will reach herd immunity as far as the coronavirus is concerned by the end of summer and at that point all current restrictions against the spread of the virus can be lifted within the country (regnum.ru/news/3227271.html).

Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that the international community would achieve even more rapid success if it united in the fight against the pandemic but that efforts intended to promote such cooperation were being blocked by the United States (regnum.ru/news/3227277.html).

One place where Russian sales of the Sputnik-5 vaccine have run into trouble is Brazil, where local officials have again postponed giving it clearance for use because Russian officials have again failed to provide the kind of documentation that Brazil requires (echo.msk.ru/news/2812196-echo.html).

Meanwhile, in economic news, Anton Lyubich of Business Russia says that the decision of the Central Bank to end certain benefits to business borrowers now that the pandemic is easing will spark a wave of bankruptcy in the near future (ura.news/news/1052477813).

Putin’s Nationality Policy Follows Principles of Soviet Approach, Roshchin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 27 – Soviet leaders sought to marginalize all nationality issues because the USSR came into existence by doing just that at precisely the time when the other European empires did not; and that experience, social psychologist Aleksey Roshchin says, explained their approach until reality impeded and the USSR collapsed as well.

            That experience led not only the Soviet government to try to reduce ethnic issues to ideological ones and to present something it wanted as already having come into existence  but also the post-Soviet government to pursue the same course, with similar outcomes, he argues (lenta.ru/articles/2021/03/27/homo_soveticus/).

            In the first years of their power, the Bolsheviks, just like Vladimir Putin, focused on “strengthening the power vertical;” but after doing that, they turned to ideological measures, one of the most important of which was the idea of “a soviet people,” something so abstract that many remained unsure just what it meant.

            The most useful way to understand this idea, Roshchin says, is to recognize it as a form of “socialist realism,” as a description of what the powers wanted people to believe in but that had not yet come into existence. It was never really a description of “the existing order of things” but only as something people were supposed to believe in but rarely did.

            Most Soviet citizens could see that the ideas of a singular Soviet people dominated by friendship of the peoples were nonsensical, something they had to mouth in order not to get in trouble with the powers that be but hardly something they had to have their behavior toward others guided by.

            This wasn’t and isn’t “hypocrisy,” Roshchin says, but “as it were the next stage: people pronounced these words as mantras without understanding their meaning or even thinking about them. They were able not only to pronounce these words but even show the corresponding emotions” even though they didn’t act accordingly. Instead, they became “totally cynical.”

            Many outside observers didn’t understand this. For them, “the USSR was a single organism, one enormous social enterprise. The communist ideology served what in Western corporations is now called a mission. From the point of view of work, the Union was build precisely like an enterprise, one large enormous enterprise.”

            “In 1991,” the psychologist says, “this enterprise went bankrupt, when its debits and credits ceased to align.” For those who viewed the USSR in this way, “it wasn’t important whether Tajiks or Uzbeks worker there;” and “in this sense, for the West even more than for residents of the USSR, this was the country of the Soviet people.”

            Roshchin says that in his opinion, “homo soveticus was rather a designation used among our dissidents who left for the West and who promoted this term among American Russian specialists.” Unfortunately, most of these Western specialists use “Russians” in a similar way as the definer of the population of the country run by Moscow.

            “For the Western world this is the same as calling them the Soviet people but even simpler because they are now Russians,” Roshchin continues. “Up to now, all of this angers Tajiks and Uzbeks not to speak about Ukrainians and Belarusians.” Moscow, of course, was pleased and remains so.

            That led and may again lead to a situation like a peat bog fire. “When they burn, often no fire is visible and it seems that everything is in order.” But when it breaks through, it becomes obvious that the entire ground is burning up under those who assumed and assume that everything is stable.

            “The Soviet people as a construct was very important for the system,” Roshchin says. “It provided an idea to which people strove and almost reached … and that meant that nationality was not important.” Today, he says, most consider that “’the Soviet supernational community’ fell apart after 1991.” But “in fact, this is not the case.”

            “We know that the majority of the so-called post-Soviet elites, those who were at the head of Soviet republics after the disintegration of the USSR with all their strength worked for the disintegration of this community.” And they attacked anything like the Russian language that they thought could make it easier for Moscow to resume control.

            But a large share of the citizens of these countries are still living in a world which defined them as parts of the Soviet people and they still think that way because of the media they watch and the holidays they celebrate – and especially because of the rhetoric even when it operates with a minus sign that ties them together.

            Two groups of people are frightened by this reality, Roshchin concludes, the leaders of these countries and the countries neighboring the former Soviet space. The former fear there will be a re-integration of this region and the latter that if that should happen, they would be the next victims.

Bondarenko Wants Russian to be the State Languages and All Others Republic or Not to be Labelled ‘Official’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 27 – Dmitry Bondarenko triggered an explosion of anger in the non-Russian republics in February when he proposed making Russian the only state language in the country and stripping the languages of the republics of that status, labelling them only “official” languages (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/03/moscow-wants-to-strip-republic.html).

            Now, the senior official of the Federal Center for Education Law, has gone further and said that all languages in the Russian Federation other than Russian should have the same status as “official” or “regional” languages, with those of the republics in no way privileged over those of nations without such structures (business-gazeta.ru/article/503757).

            In his view that will raise the status of languages spoken by nations that do not have a state formation; but from the point of view of those which do, his proposal represents yet another Moscow attack on the prerogatives of the republics and the rights of their peoples. As a result, it is certain to spark even greater controversy.

            Bondarenko stresses in the course of an interview with Kazan’s Business-Gazeta that his primary concern is to fill legal lacunae rather than to define practice. At present, there are no clear definitions of “state language” or “official” ones, and therefore the debate about what to do takes place exclusively in terms of what people believe is their respective status.

            He argues that all 277 languages and dialects of the Russian Federation should be “official,” with Russian alone being the state language. That will ensure support for both all of the non-Russian languages rather than discrimination against or neglect of many of them and also for Russian which often has been neglected as one needing protection as well.

            The Moscow legal specialist notes that many of the numerically smaller national languages need greater support than they are getting – none of those still without an alphabet have received one since 1990 – and that identifying them as having the same status as republic languages will help them survive.

            But republic nations are unlikely to see things that way; and Bondarenko concedes, “from a political point of view, it may be premature to raise this question.” But he insists that they will benefit as well from clear legal definitions, although at least now many may choose to fight for having their primary republic language remain a “state” one.

            The Moscow scholar says that legal consistency requires that there be only one state language and that foreign experts can’t understand how Russia can have 34 such languages. That is vastly more than any other country has and is a source of confusion as well as of conflicts among their speakers. It is up to Russian law givers to end this problem.

‘World will See a Free Ichkeria and a Free Tatarstan,’ Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 27 – After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea, many Ukrainians urged that their country play up the national divisions within the Russian Federation as a warning to Moscow that its efforts to undermine other countries along ethnic lines could end by undermining Russia itself.

            These efforts appeared to peak in 2018 and 2019 when the Verkhovna Rada discussed and then passed a resolution urging Kyiv to focus the world’s attention on Russia’s nationality problems (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/05/ukrainian-parliament-calls-for-new.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/12/kyiv-to-focus-attention-on-moscows.html andwindowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/moscow-sanctions-ukrainian-deputy-who.html).

            The Ukrainian authorities subsequently made a number of statements on this issue and offered political asylum to ethnic activists from the Russian Federation that Moscow had been persecuting. But beyond raising awareness among Ukrainians about the Ukrainian regions inside Russia, the campaign appeared to be largely stillborn.

            Now, there is an indication that that may be about to change. Speaking on a Kyiv radio station, Aleksey Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, said that he was “confident” that the world will see “a free Ichkeria [Chechnya], a free Tatarstan, and Crimea back within the borders of Ukraine” (idelreal.org/a/31170513.html).

            And while he did not predict that this would happen soon, the security official did say that he was sure it would occur “within our lifetimes.”  What is striking is that again just as in the case of Poland and Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, it is Russia’s neighbors who have experience with it rather than larger powers which don’t that are moving in this direction.

            Their attention to these issues means not only that they will give encouragement to the peoples living within the current borders of the Russian Federation but that Ukraine and other neighbors like Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland are going to become ever more important sources of information about regions and republics less studied elsewhere.

Yerevan Likely to Turn on Moscow Even If Russia Were to Open a Second Base in Armenia, Karakhanyan Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 27 – Several opposition parties in Armenia are calling for a new security relationship with the Russian Federation and urging the opening of a second Russian military base there, but Simon Karakhanyan says these are passions of the moment and that Armenians will likely turn on the Russians and blame them for Yerevan’s losses in the Qarabagh fighting.

            The ethnic Armenian commentator for the Russian nationalist Rex portal says that Moscow should not be taken in by the statements Armenian politicians are making. Those reflect a natural obsession with security in the wake of a war; but they are unlikely to remain stable for long (iarex.ru/articles/80267.html).

            Indeed, he says, the incumbents in Armenia are opposed to a new security arrangement with Russia and to a new base; and the opponents are likely using such calls to set themselves apart from the government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rather than as a reflection of a true change of heart.

            Consequently, even if the opposition takes power, there is little reason to think that Armenia will change, Karakhanyan argues. “The main question is whether Russia needs a new base and a new military-political agreement which at any moment could become another argument for the accusation that ‘Russia didn’t help us even though it has two bases.’”

            “Event now,” the Moscow commentator says, “one can hear accusations against Russia that it didn’t help Armenia and that it is necessary to look for alternative” security arrangements because the tripartite agreements on Qarabagh gave Azerbaijan too much just as Moscow gave Kemalist Turkey too much at the expense of Armenia.

            Given how many Armenians already feel this way or are likely to in the future, Karakhanyan argues, Russia should not get itself tied down by any new military-political agreement with Yerevan “or build a new military base” there.

            Three aspects of Karakhanyan’s article are noteworthy. First, it is an indication that at least some in Moscow don’t want to open a second base either because of its costs or because it could create more problems with Turkey and Azerbaijan. Second, it shows that Moscow is not very confident that Yerevan is as ready to turn to Russia as some have suggested.

            And third, and most important, it constitutes a recognition that Moscow’s failure to intervene earlier and more successfully on Armenia’s side in the latest Qarabagh war means that even the Russian leadership now recognizes that it has lost Armenia as a reliable ally and that Armenians will never view Russia as their protector in the ways they did earlier.