Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 4 – Russia will
benefit from removing the ethnic content of the concept of a Russian nation,
Emil Pain says; but those benefits will largely be lost if such an entity
emerges as appears to be the Kremlin’s goal not autonomously from below but
rather as in the past imposed from above.
Yesterday, the Polit.ru portal
carried the text of remarks about “Popular Sovereignty or Official Natinality:
Alternatives of Nationality Policy in Russia” that the Moscow specialist on
ethnic conflicts delivered to the Fourth All-Russian Civic Forum last month (polit.ru/article/2016/12/03/pain/).
Pain says he welcomes the idea that “the
population of Russia should gradually get accustomed to the term ‘rossiiskaya
natsiya’ after decades of understanding the word ‘nation’ only in almost
exclusively ethnic terms.” And he adds that this is a step forward from the
1990s when the powers that be did not speak the word “nation” at all.
“But,” he continues, “there are ever
more clear signs” that what is being advanced subverts “the essential character
of the phenomenon: instead of the nation as a society” that controls the state from
below is “a nation” that remains subordinate to the state and is “’being
constructed’ in all senses of this word by the state from above.
And that trend, Pain says, “can be
called the latest historical cycle of the
re-animation of ‘official nationality’ which has always been opposed to the idea
of the civic nation as society based on the principles of popular sovereignty”
(stress in the original). He devotes the rest of his talk to showing why that
is the case and what Russians should do to stop it.
What is happening now, he begins, is
the third cycle in the history of the Russian state’s dealing with the use and
meaning of nation. In the first, which occurred at the beginning of the 19th
century, the regime worked to stratify and ethnicize the concept of nation so
as to delink it from its original idea as a call for the population to control
the government.
That resulted in Uvarov’s famous
trinity – Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality – and in Count Petr Valyuev’s
reduction of nation to the idea of nationality which he viewed not as a
political entity but as “a conjunction of cultural customs of this or that
people,” including the Russians. Pain points out that Valuyev also introduced the
term “the nationality question” which he equated with the threat of “ethnic
separatism.”
As a result of these efforts, Pain
continues, “the one time revolutionary content of the nation was put at the service
of imperial ideology and state interests [and] the suppression of the civic
qualities of the nation occurred successfully. Up to the beginning of the 20th
century, people simply forgot about the civic nation altogether.”
In the second cycle, Pain says,
Stalin shifted from a commitment during the first years of Soviet power to
fighting “great power chauvinism” and thus Russian nationalism as well to the “restoration
of the imperial idea of a hierarchy of peoples” with the Russians put at the
top as “the elder brother” of all the rest.
By the last years of his rule,
Stalin had introduced state anti-Semitism as the basis of policy and, drawing
on Uvarov’s ideological conception, insisted that “Russian-Soviet culture” not
only promoted paternalism and ‘a special path’ but was inherently in opposition
to the outside world.
In short, Pain says, “the Soviet variant of
official nationality was based on exactly the same three main elements of the Uvarov
original: “a negative ideological consolidation against foreign enemies,” the
belief that the Russian people found popular sovereignty and democracy alien,
and a commitment to paternalism.
Thus, under Stalin, “state nationalism developed but independent
nationalism was harshly persecuted. Even participants of student circles
who tried to study the works of Russian nationalists were repressed and
dispatched to the GULAG.”
That suppression was so successful
that “independent Russian nationalism which developed after the death of Stalin
during the Khrushchev thaw couldn’t elevate itself above the Valuyev ideas
about the nation as about an ethnic community,” a position that did not pose a
threat to the powers that be.
In the third cycle of this
development which is taking place now, the Putin regime finds itself in a
position where independent Russian nationalists have lost support in the
population largely because their words are no different than what people hear
on government-controlled television.
Thus, once again, the state is
trying to create an official nationality in order to block any aspirations for
popular rule. Unfortunately, Pain says,
there is little occasion for optimism that the Russian people are prepared to
fight against that at least in the near term.
“The most important consequence of
the cyclic reproduction of the idea of official nationality is the suppression
of the civic self-consciousness of Russians” and “the atomization of society”
of the kind described by Erich Fromm in his book, “Flight from Freedom.” Twenty
years ago, “almost 40 percent of Russians” said they believed they should force
the state to do what they want; now only 13 percent say that.
Thus, “the striving of Russians to the
realization of popular sovereignty is falling, and another important sign of the
growth of civic self-consciousness has not appeared in Russia – a desire to
take part in the administration of the country.” More than half of Russians say
they don’t want to be involved and don’t think they have a chance to be either.
What is taking place, Pain argues,
is “the de-politicization and de-civicization of Russians which have finally
lost the aspects of the nation in its initial understanding as a society which
controls the state and returned to the status of a population, a labor and
demographic resource” for the state.
“Without the development of
national-civic identity, a democratic system cannot exist.” Still worse, such a
society “cannot oppose the imperialism of the archaic periphery and the
political-administrative habits of Russian sultans.” Consequently, they will
spread ever more broadly across Russia.
“Unfortunately,” the ethnic
specialist says, “for the time being there is not political force visible in
our country which is capable of beginning the deconstruction of this imperial
consciousness. More than that, the discrediting of the basic ideas of a civic
nation is continuing, not only by the
authorities but by the opposition.”
According to Pain, “liberal society …
isn’t defending the idea of a civic nation. They are demonstrating the
stereotypical and Soviet-style understanding of the nation and do not
distinguish vertical, statist, and imperial consciousness from the horizontal
of the national.”
As a result, “today in Russia,
anti-liberal nationalism of the imperial type is being well supported by the
anti-national liberalism of the intelligentsia. All this undermines the desire
and faith of people in the possibility of society ever controlling the state,”
exactly what the current rulers of Russia want.
To overcome this situation, Pain
argues that there must be a new appreciation of the way in which the nation,
properly understood, is linked to the ideas of freedom and democracy, more
possibilities for the development of alternatives to the “stratified” nation on
offer, and the preparation of “’a road map’” for promoting “civic
consolidation.”
“Our research shows,” he says, that
in Russian cities, “horizontal ties” are being formed and are playing a key
role in blocking “the escalation of ethnic and religious conflicts.” And it is in Russia’s cities that there is
the greatest potential for the rise of mass protest attitudes, “although for the
time being most of that is shown in people voting with their feet.”
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