Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 29 – The Russian
government should reduce the attention it is paying to ethnic Russians and
Russian speakers in the former Soviet republics – a group he calls “Russian
World II” – and expand its attention to ethnic Russians and those who feel at
attachment to Russia elsewhere, a group he calls “Russian World I,” Vladislav
Inozemtsev says
Moscow should do so, the director of
the Moscow Center for Research on Post-Industrial Society, because Russian
World II includes people who are on the defensive and who want more from Moscow
than they can give in return while Russian World I is at the cutting edge of
development and can give far more back than an appeal to them would cost.
In today’s “Vedomosti,” Inozemtsev
notes that many in Moscow now talk about the “Russian world” carelessly and
sloppily, ignoring both its diversity and the costs and benefits for the
Russian Federation in dealing with one or another part of it. That, he argues,
needs to change
Inozemtsev says that “beyond the
borders of Russia there now live up to 35 million people who consider
themselves Russians and almost 60 million who call Russian culture their native
one.” He suggests that it is divided in three major groups: those who left at
the beginning of the 20th century and settled in the US, Canada,
France and Brazil, those who left after the collapse of the USSR, and those who
have remained in new independent states.
Each of these groups has a different
identity and different patterns of behavior, he continues. “The majority” of
the first has been “assimilated their new countries for a long time” and are
“linked with Russia only by symbolic cultural values.” Those in the second
don’t feel a break with Russia but “as a rule” have “a dual identity” and
accept the values of the globalized world.
The first two groups constitute what
Inozemtsev calls “Russian World-I;” the third forms “Russian World II.” The
first “world” arose “as a result of the free choice of more than 6.5 million people.”
Their descendents form significant parts of the population of the major
megalopolises of “the European cultural tradition.”
They have higher pay than the
average of the populations they live among – in the US, the average pay of this
group is 39 percent above the American average – they are well educated – there
are “more than 6,000 ‘Russian’ professors” in US colleges and universities and
“no fewer than 4,000” in European ones – and they have enormous wealth – more
than a trillion US dollars.
In short, “Russian World-I created
outside of Russia an economiy and an intellectual community, completely
commensurate with Russia itself: the technological and industrial production of
the companies under its control significantly exceeds the non-raw materials
sector of the Russian economy, and the share of those ‘representatives of
Russian culture’ living abroad in terms of the scholarly citation index and
number of Nobel Prize winners is higher than among citizens of Russia.”
“Russian World-II” is very
different, Inozemtsev points out. It is “a community of those who in its
majority have turned out to be incapable of leaving the countries formed after
the collapse of the USSR and those who have become ‘professional Russians’ who
do not want to adapt to the life of the new countries.”
It is thus not ahead of Russia, the
Moscow analyst says, but its “rearguard,” and because “its representatives are
forced to defend their cultural values in a relatively hostile milieu, they are
more oriented toward preservation than toward development and thus to national
and not global standards of behavior.”
“Russian World-II looks to the Russian state as the
fulfillment of its aspirations and therefore in part and not without foundation
is viewed in its countries as a fifth column of Russia which still further
complicates its situation.” Indeed, as these nation states strengthen, the
insistence of “Russian World-II” on their differences will “make these people
potential outcasts.”
At
present, Moscow is focused almost exclusively on supporting Russian World-II
and is ignoring Russian World-I. As a
result, “Russia is spending enormous sums on absolutely senseless and in part
harmful measures” and ignoring underlying trends such as the declining share of
ethnic Russians in neighboring countries.
Inozemtsev
says that the Russian government should change course, focusing on Russia World
I rather than Russia World-II. To that end, it should promote “responsible repatriation
and introduce jus sanguinis as the
basis for citizenship. Moreover, it should recognize and accept dual
citizenship.
And
Moscow should recognize that it would “receive a great deal more as a result of
the mass resettlement into Russia of ethnic Russians from the former USSR than
from the support of ‘administered instability’ in the post-Soviet space or from
the inclusion of masses of uneducated migrants who are alien to [Russian]
culture.”
At the same time, Russia could benefit as China has by
reaching out to the wealthy, educated, and technologically advanced “Russian
World-II” seeing it as a means to help transform Russia rather than as is the
case with “Russian World-I” as a break on such development.
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