Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 26 – Since the
early 1990s, the Kremlin has promoted the revival of an imperial identity among
Russians, something that precludes anytime soon the development of a civic Russian one,
according to Emil Pain, a leading Russian specialist on ethnic conflict at Moscow’s
Higher School of Economics.
In a new book written with his
student Sergey Fedyunin, Nation and
Democracy: Prospects for the Administration of Cultural Diversity (in
Russian, Moscow,2017), Pain argues that “Russian liberals, having rejected the
idea of the nation have not been able to
Formulate
an image of the future which a large portion of Russians share.”
Instead, he continues, they have
watched in many cases seemingly passively as the Russian government since the
early 1990s and especially since 2000 has revived the notion of empire that by
itself makes impossible not only the development of Russian ethnic identity but
of Russian democracy.
The Open Russia portal has now posted
on line the chapter in Pain and Fedyunin’s book on “The Intentional Reconstruction
of Imperial Consciousness: Stages and Mechanisms” in which the ethnic
specialist makes this argument by tracing changes in Russian identity since the
end of Soviet times (openrussia.org/notes/716553/).
“Post-Soviet
Russia can serve as an obvious case of how imperial consciousness has literally
been imposed on a society.” When the Soviet Union fell apart, few Russians felt
they had lost anything by the exit of the non-Russian union republics.
According to polls in 1993, for example, “only 16 percent” expressed “the
slightest signs of regret” about that.
Instead,
Russians overwhelmingly saw themselves as becoming part of the West, and only
some marginal figures, “invoking ‘the will of the people’ without the slightest
basis,” promoted a special Russian path or imperial revival. But as the difficulties of making the
transition became clearer, by the mid-1990s, this positive view of the West
began to erode.
By
2001, two Russians out of three agreed with the statement that “the Western
variant of social organization in one way or another is not suitable for
Russian conditions and contradicts the way of life of the Russian people.” And that was true not only despite but
because changes in Russia “were less than for example in Poland or the Baltic
countries.”
Changes
happened there because re-entering Europe was the core national idea, Pain
continues; but “in Russia, there was no such defense mechanism in popular
consciousness: the movement toward Europe was not a goal in and of itself: On
the contrary, this idea depended on several others.”
As
a result, he says, “by 1990, another thesis had become popular [in Russia]: ‘Sovialism
was not so bad; rather its leaders were bad,’ and by the beginning of the
2000s, even the Soviet leaders were being rehabilitated.” The return of Stalin
from dismissive contempt to a central hero is a clear case of this.
Because
of the difficulties of the 1990s, “traditional Soviet stereotypes arose among
many Russians” including the notion that “stability and order” are only
possible with “authoritarian rulers.” But
that didn’t happen automatically. Instead, it was actively promoted by the
political elite for its own purposes.
As
a result, “in 2002, for the first time in 15 years … the disintegration of the
USSR was viewed by respondents [to VTsIOM polls] as the chief and most dramatic
event of this entire period.” And along
with this, Pain suggests, Russians rapidly revived the enemies the Soviet Union
had.
“In
1991, only 12 percent of those questioned considered the West (above all the
US) an enemy; in 1994, already 41 percent did; and in 1999, at the time of the bombing
of Belgrade, almost two-thirds – 65 percent – viewed the US as an enemy.” By
2014, this hostility to the West became “almost total.”
This
growth of hostility toward the West “is not connected in mass consciousness
with the revival of Soviet aspects of life in Russia,” Pain says. Rather most of them thought in the following
way: “Well we’ve changed and become a democracy, but the West as before doesn’t
love us [because of its] inborn Russophobia.”
“Alongside
the return of Soviet consciousness in Russia at the end of the 1990s was
gradually rehabilitated the idea of the empire in its pre-Soviet version.” And
while the country was called a federation, it “has acquired (or more precisely
restored) aspects of an imperial system.”
That
represents a clear departure from Soviet times when Russians had been taught
that empires and imperialism were by definition evil and to be rejected. But it
reflected the efforts of people like Aleksandr Dugin and Aleksandr Prokhanov to
promote the idea that a Russian empire was a good thing and should be revived.
But
it arose in popular consciousness less because of their ideas than because “empire”
became a business brand, the name of the most popular kinds of vodka, a
designation for the best classes of hotels, and even a term to capture the best
of taste or spirit. And “the
neo-imperial style became dominant in architecture and city planning.”
This
imperial consciousness “began to exert significant influence on political life”
and leading to the revival of “imperial aspects in the political life” of
Russia, the ethnic specialist continues.
The
only way this trend can be opposed, Pain says, is by redefining the nation in a
civic sense and “rejecting its traditional mythologization.” But for that to
happen, he argues, Russians must first define who they are “in relation to
power – subjects or sovereigns” because unless that happens – and in an
imperial system, it can’t – no redefinition will matter.
“The
development of the concept of civic nationalism” requires “the opening of the path
for the transformation of society on the basis of liberal values,
constitutionalism, and democracy.” But given the current imperial consciousness,
any discussion of this can’t be taken entirely seriously.
“Today,”
he writes, “Russia suffers from the reproduction of the model of imperial
nationalism which gives the country instruments from the past which are
unsuitable for life in the contemporary world.”
And one can’t count on “a positive evolution of Russian nationalism” in
this situation.
What
Russians call imperialism is in fact “post-imperial consciousness, which
includes nostalgia for the times of classical empires, resentment, and various kinds
of political fears.” It is characteristic “not only for Russian state power
supporters but also for representatives of various ethnic communities.”
But
it can and must be challenged head on because “the liberal opposition,” as the
numbers taking part in demonstrations show, “is more prepared for
self-organization than are the Russian nationalists.”
Tragically,
“etatism in essence is paralyzing social activity, but civic indifference is
compensated for by the cult of the leader” and the mythologization of the people
as “’ours.’” At the same time, however, there is hope because of the nature of
the imperial consciousness now on public view.
“The
very fact that imperial consciousness [in Russia today] does not have a clear
ethnic dimension and is not translated via the channels of cultural tradition
but rather is formed under the influence of socio-political circumstances and
direct construction indicates that there is a chance for the radical
reprogramming of such mass consciousness.”
That
may require a major national trauma as was the case with Germany or it may
occur as a result of evolutionary processes as was the case in France. But it isn’t something likely to be immediate
in Russia because “at present there is not a single political force which is
capable of beginning the deconstruction of imperial consciousness.”
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