Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 30 – Vladimir Putin’s
war in Ukraine has both divided Russian nationalists and sparked a discussion
among them about what they should be doing next. Memorial, in cooperation with Moscow’s Higher
School of Economics, organized a seminar on this at which three experts offered
their views (lenta.ru/articles/2016/01/30/nationalism/).
Valery Solovey, an MGIMO professor
and head of the New Force Party, says that two-thirds of Russians identify as
nationalists in a way that is not significantly different from patriotism but
only ten to fifteen percent support what might be called “political
nationalism.” And they are split between 80 percent who support the Kremlin and
20 percent who oppose it.
After the annexation of Crimea, he
continues, “Russian nationalists both those loyal to Putin and those his
irreconcilable opponents hoped to become the beneficiaries of the new
geopolitical dynamic put in place by ‘the Russian spring,’” with some dreaming
of a new empire and others about the formation of a genuine Russian nation
state.
But neither of these things
happened. Instead, what did was “the worst of all possible geopolitical
scenarios” as far as Russian nationalists were concerned: “a bloody and
senseless war in the Donbas” and the formation there of “military-criminal regimes
loyal to the Kremlin” but not to any Russian nationalist program.
Nevertheless, “the broad involvement
of Russian nationalists in this military-political adventure showed that their mobilization
potential was extremely insignificant.” “No more than 5,000” Russian volunteers
went to fight in the Donbas, a tiny number compared to Ukrainians who did so.
Russians as a whole have not come
out “sharply negative” against the war but neither have they “actively
supported it,” Solovey says, adding that his conversations with Russians suggest
that “the mass attitude of our fellow citizens to this conflict may be
expressed in the following way: we don’t understand its goals and we don’t want
to kill Slavs.”
“As a result of its participation in
the war in southeast Ukraine, Russia has suffered a bestial moral catastrophe.”
And that has had particularly negative consequences for Russian nationalists because,
despite the opposition of many of them to this war, “Russian nationalists have
now begun to be firmly associated with it.”
Russian nationalists, Solovey
continues, are experiencing “a serious moral collapse because the agenda they
could propose to society several years ago – ‘stop feeding the Caucasus’ and ‘stop
migration,’ has become entirely irrelevant and even dangerous.” Russians now
face an entirely different problem: “how to survive conditions of a
deteriorating economic situation.”
As
far as the future of Russian nationalism is concerned, the MGIMO
professor says, “it is obvious that the current most intense frustration of the
extra-systemic Russian nationalists is gradually being transformed into pain,
anger and hatred. From now on, there isn’t going to be any talk of compromise
with the existing regime.”
It is thus “completely possible,” he
suggests, that the situation of 2011-2012 will be repeated “when the
nationalists united with the liberals and left in political and social protest.”
Vladimir Milov, an economist and politician,
argues that “it is completely obvious that there exists an enormous demand in
contemporary Russian society for a respectable nationalist political force.”
Unfortunately, he continues, there are six reasons why such a force has not
emerged in the period since the demise of the USSR:
1.
At
the end of Soviet times, Russian nationalists unlike nationalists in other
reppublics “could not understand and accept the natural movement of [Russia]
toward market capitalism and liberal democracy of a Western type.” As a result, they were marginalized.
2.
The
liberal reformers of the 1990s “adopted the mistaken course of complete
rejection of Russian nationalism as a positive political phenomenon.”
3.
The
Russian government “actively opposed the appearance in the Russian political
mainstream of moderate nationalists fearing the appearance of an independent
political force capable of independently coming up with an agenda” different
than that of the regime.
4.
“The
nationalists themselves in their majority were completely satisfied with their
place in a marginal niche of the political spectrum.”
5.
The
nationalists a clear and convincing program about how to move forward.
6.
The
Ukrainian crisis split their ranks between the imperialists and the advocates
of a Russian nation state.
The prospects for Russian nationalists as
a political force will depend, Milov concludes, on their ability to give up
imperial notions, escape from archaic ideas, and back modernization. On all
those things will hinge their exit from the political margins into “the Russian
political mainstream.”
And Lev Gudkov, the head of the Levada
Center, offers a third perspective. He suggests that “Russian nationalism is a
deeply dependent phenomenon, reactive and anything but independent.” Already in
late Soviet times, Russian nationalists failed to take the lead in promoting
the national consolidation of ethnic Russians.
Moreover, instead of promoting
modernization and democracy as nationalists in Eastern Europe and many of the former
republics of the USSR, Russian nationalists showed themselves to be “extremely
conservative” at a time when society was moving in the other direction.
That was no accident, Gudkov continues. “Russian
nationalism always was a reaction to a crisis of the powers that be. For
example, it is a painful reaction to the unsuccessful modernization of the 1990s.”
Russian nationalists were marginalized and could only criticize not propose something
new.
“For example,” the sociologist says, “the
project of the creation of a Russian civic nation in current conditions could
not be realized because it contradicts the interests of the current regime.”
Other Russian nationalists, including neo-paganism and racial superiority, have
suffered a similar fate.
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