The Politics of Eurasianism: Identity, Popular Culture and Russia's Foreign Policy
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The Politics of Eurasianism: Identity, Popular Culture and Russia's Foreign Policy
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786601629 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 01/12/2017 |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.20(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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The Politics of Eurasianism
Identity, Popular Culture and Russia's Foreign Policy
By Mark Bassin, Gonzalo Pozo
Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.
Copyright © 2017 Mark Bassin and Gonzalo PozoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78660-162-9
CHAPTER 1
Defining the "True" Nationalism
Russian Ethnic Nationalists versus Eurasianists
Igor Torbakov
When an empire ends, there are basically three main modes in which the post-imperial community can be reimagined: civic, ethnic and (neo) imperial. Russia's case is no exception. The country's liberals – clearly a "minority faith" – uphold the provisions of the 1993 Constitution that characterize Russia as a civic community of Russian citizens – rossiiane– enjoying equal rights throughout the entire territory of the country. For their part, Russian ethnic nationalists claim that the disintegration of the Soviet Union created – for the first time in Russian history – an opportunity to build a specifically russkii (Russian) nation, capitalizing on ethnic Russians' numerical strength within the borders of the Russian Federation. By contrast, the impertsy (champions of empire) – a disparate group of thinkers that also includes the Eurasianists – contend that Russia's current post-imperial condition is a mere prelude to the restoration of empire. They refer to the country's long-standing tradition, arguing that throughout its entire history Russia has never been a nation state – either ethnic- or civic-centred – but has always been an empire. This chapter will explore how the issue of Russian identity is being contested in the debates involving Russian ethnic nationalists and Eurasianists focusing primarily on the ethnic nationalists' critique of Eurasianism as well as on their efforts to craft a "true" Russian nationalism.
RUSSIAN NATIONALISM'S PERENNIAL DILEMMAS
Remarkably, the words "empire" and "nation" – essentially Western European concepts – came to be known in Russia simultaneously. They were introduced by learned churchmen (mostly of "Ukrainian" origin who drew heavily on Polish sources) between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, at a time when Russia had already evolved as an imperial polity. At first, these notions were used interchangeably as synonyms – as both basically meant a "sovereign state." It took almost two centuries before "nation" started to be interpreted in Russia mainly as a political community – the locus of people's sovereignty that is counterposed to the divine right of monarchs with its main attribute being political participation.
In Russia, the political understanding of "nation" posed before the people who espoused such a conceptual approach – Russian ethnic nationalists – two fundamental questions. First, who is russkii? Who is included in and who is excluded from the narod (community of Russian people)? And second, how should the ethnic nationalists treat the imperial state? Is it their state in its entirety or not? These two questions remained unresolved throughout both the imperial and Soviet periods of Russian history, which resulted in what Ronald G. Suny famously called an "incomplete nation-building." Not only were the ethnic nationalists unable to agree on how to define russkii, but they also found it difficult to identify with the imperial state, either tsarist or Soviet, because it tended to distance itself from Russian ethnic nationalism, seeking to preserve a delicate balance in a culturally diverse and multi-ethnic polity. To be sure, imperial bureaucrats could at times deploy Russian ethnonationalist imagery and highjack nationalist rhetoric (e.g. during the late imperial period and again during late Stalinism), but most of them were conscious of the supranational nature of the state they governed. "Since the time of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great there has been no such thing as Russia; there has been only the Russian Empire," Sergei Witte, Russia's prime minister in 1903–1906, wrote in his memoirs. The same applies in even greater measure to the Soviet Union whose very name excluded any reference to a particular ethnonational territory. True, the Soviet state did not become, as its founder Vladimir Lenin hoped, a worldwide proletarian commune but it definitely was not a Russian national homeland either. Among the fifteen Union republics of the Soviet federation the largest was called the "Russian" (Rossiiskaia) republic but the latter was also a federation whose many territorial units, noted Pavel Miliukov in his seminal 1925 essay on the "national question," "were named after particular tribes (narodnosti) so that the map of Russian administrative territories resembled a historical-ethnographic map. A regular Russian learned about the existence in Russia of the 'Mari' people and the 'Komi' (Zyriane) people – names that scholars knew from [medieval] chronicles."
How did the situation change after the Soviet Union's collapse? The 1993 Constitution characterizes post-Soviet Russia as the state of the "multinational people" – rossiiane. It inherited a legacy of Soviet federalism: a "territorialization of ethnicity" whereby a number of ethnic groups have their "national homelands" where they are recognized as "titular nations." There is no official document that would explicitly call ethnic Russians a state-bearing people; instead the government promotes a civic (rossiiskaia) identity that encompasses the Russians along with many other rossiiskie ethnicities. Ethnic Russians do not have their specially designated "national homeland" within the Russian Federation. Furthermore, there is one complicating aspect which did not exist before 1991: millions of Russians have found themselves "stranded" outside post-Soviet Russia's borders in what effectively is the post-imperial debris – the "newly independent states" that quickly transformed themselves into "nationalizing states."
Russia's current "post-imperial condition" is deemed unsatisfactory by the two largest groups of Russian nationalists. While the impertsy (including the Eurasianists as their subspecies) regard the present-day Russian Federation as a polity that is not "imperial" enough, Russian ethnic nationalists argue that the time has come to rid Russia of the residual vestiges of empire and build at long last a truly national state – the Russian state (gosudarstvo russkikh) in which national minorities would live alongside the Russian "master of the house." Debates between the two camps go back to the twilight of the Soviet era and the early 1990s: suffice it to mention the nationalist Russian historian Apollon Kuz'min's sharp criticism of the Eurasianist concepts advanced by the maverick scholar Lev N. Gumilev (Kuz'min accused Gumilev of Russophobia and of the intent to sacrifice the interests of Russian people for the well-being of the Turco-Mongol world) or the heated polemic between the ethnonationalist writer Kseniia Mialo and Eurasianists. Yet these debates, argue the representatives of the new generation of Russian ethnic nationalists, are increasingly becoming pointless because history itself has resolved the empire–nation dilemma for the Russians. First, the empire – the Soviet Union – has disintegrated. Second, contemporary Russia simply lacks resources for legitimating imperial/supranational power – as both dynastic and "ideocratic" principles are missing. Finally, following the Soviet Union's implosion, Russia has been profoundly reconfigured geographically: having shed its imperial dominions, Russia has shrunk down to what the late geopolitical thinker Vadim Tsymbursky called "its pre-imperial cultural and geographical core with solid and absolute Russian [ethnic] majority." These developments have radically changed the correlation between "national" and "imperial" projects in Russian history. In the past, argues Mikhail Remizov, Russian nationalism has served as a kind of "reserve historical project" for Russia and the Russian people: it coyly manifested itself at some turning points of the country's history but was in no position to seriously challenge the imperial mainstream. But now there is no realistic imperial project that could be a viable alternative to the national project. What remains are only the imperial phantom pains.
NEW-GENERATION NATIONALISTS COMING OF AGE
It is noteworthy that Remizov and other intellectual leaders of the new generation of Russian ethnic nationalists clearly distinguish themselves from their predecessors, styling their group (which, besides Remizov, includes Sergei Sergeev, Konstantin Krylov, Valery Solovei, Pavel Sviatenkov, Oleg Kil'diushov, Oleg Nemensky, Aleksandr Samovarov and Aleksandr Khramov) as the "Third Wave" of the Russian nationalist movement. Symptomatically, one of their first tasks has been to explore the complicated relationship between Russian ethnic nationalism and the Russian (imperial) state. They hold that this relationship needs to be thoroughly reinterpreted. Here is a brief summary of their take on this issue. The Russian state in all its historical forms (imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet) has been – and remains – anti-national. Throughout the Russian history there existed an eternal contradiction between the mass of Russian people (who served as a principal human resource for empire-building) and the largely cosmopolitan imperial elite. The contradiction between the narod and the elites seen by the common folk as the "other" generated an internal tension that would periodically burst out onto the surface during the periods of Russian smuta – the recurrent "time of troubles." Both in the 1917 Revolution and in the 1991 political upheaval there was an element of Russian national revolt against the empire. In both cases, it was a combination of the cultural and social protest against the rulers whose outlook on the fundamentals of social life sharply differed from that of the Russian masses. There is also an interesting paradox: in both cases (i.e. in 1917 and in 1991), the Russians managed to destroy the "anti-national" state but they did it under "cosmopolitan" slogans (internationalist communism in 1917, and universal values in 1991), and as a result ended up under imperial rule again.
The "Third Wave" ethnic nationalists also made a critical analysis of the Russian nationalist tradition and arrived at conclusions that challenge the basic étatist assumptions of both the impertsy and Eurasianists. First, they clearly see the objective anti-imperial role of Russian ethnic nationalism. Russian nationalism undermined imperial loyalty in two ways. In the empire's borderlands, Russian nationalism stimulated the rise of other ethnic nationalisms, while in the Russian core lands it was striving to make traditionally unconditional Russian loyalty to the state conditional – predicated on the Russian national character of the ruling regime. This is precisely the reason why both tsars and communist commissars were wary of Russian ethnic nationalists. Second, the "Third Wave" nationalist thinkers correctly note that the objective anti-imperial role of Russian nationalism has never been properly understood by nationalists, nor would they draw logical conclusions from it. The thing is that, subjectively, Russian ethnonationalists always wanted the impossible: they were longing for a Russian national state that at the same time would remain an empire. Thus they ended up having contradictory relations with the state: they challenged it as well as relied on it for support, being unable to give up the empire which they perceived as the most precious creation of the Russian people. Finally, the new cohort of nationalist thinkers conclude that, historically, Russian nationalism had a contradictory (and at times, hostile) attitude towards democracy. The objectively democratic character of nationalism as the ideology championing self-determination and people's sovereignty would almost never prompt Russian ethnonationalists to rise against the authoritarian political system. The explanation is simple: any attempt to realize full sovereignty for the Russians in the multi-ethnic, land-based empire would inevitably lead to other ethnic groups within the state seeking to exercise the same right. The result would be multiple secessions and the end of the imperial state, which Russian nationalists believed was "theirs" too.
Yet in a situation in which the old empire is gone, with a new imperial project looking increasingly impractical as it lacks both material and ideational resources, and with ethnic Russians now making up more than 80 per cent of the country's population, the new-generation nationalists seem to have fully embraced democracy. A Russian national state, their leading thinkers now contend, can be viable only if it is democratic. Such a political outlook sharply contrasts with the ideal of an authoritarian government championed by the impertsy and Eurasianists. It would appear, though, that what ethnic nationalists really want is "democracy of ethnic majority," which would help them impose their will on all those who, for whatever reasons, are not included in the russkii in-group. They flatly reject the ostensibly civic term rossiiskii as completely useless if not downright harmful, claiming that it has been introduced as a substitute of "Soviet" to again "dissolve" ethnic Russians in a supranational rossiiskii community. Furthermore, protection of minority rights does not figure prominently in their vision of the russkii nation. However, to believe that the workings of democracy (one man, one vote) will do the trick for them – mostly because ethnic Russians constitute an overwhelming majority of the population – is naïve. Any attempt to implement "democracy of ethnic majority" into practice in a multi-ethnic state is a recipe for disaster.
ETHNONATIONALISTS, EURASIANISTS AND THE INTEGRITY OF THE IMPERIAL GEO-BODY
One important implication of the Russian ethnic nationalists' embracing of democracy is that, unlike the statist/"imperial"/Eurasianist nationalists, the ethnic nationalists do not appear to be hell-bent on preserving the "territorial integrity" of the present-day Russian Federation at all costs, or always resorting to raw force against any "nationalist sedition" in non-Russian regions. By contrast, the creation of the democratic Russian national state, according to their view, might make the redrawing of the existing Russian state borders in certain cases inevitable. Some of the leading nationalist ideologues, such as Valery Solovei, foresee the secession of Northern Caucasus, Russia's classical imperial possession, as well as the possible loss of other "non-Russian" territories "during our lifetime." Solovei argues that many Russians have long stopped perceiving Northern Caucasus as an "inalienable part of Russia." In fact, he says, "it is perceived as an alien entity. A psychological alienation is but a prelude to political separation."
Yet the territory of the Russian state might not only contract; it might also expand – not least because of Russian ethnic irredentism. Russia's conduct in Ukraine is the case in point: Russian official propaganda often portrays the exploits of "Russian rebels" in Crimea and Donbas in unmistakably ethnic terms – as the struggle to reconquer parts of Rossia irredenta (territories historically and/or ethnically related to Russia but now under Ukraine's political control). Notably, the land grab in Crimea and the policy of fomenting and supporting pro-Russian separatism in Eastern Ukraine produced multiple and contradictory reactions on the part of Russia's nationalist milieu. Some segments of ethnic nationalists appear to be greatly impressed by the manifestation of "people's power" in Ukraine and seek to distance themselves from the Kremlin's vicious anti-Ukrainian propaganda campaign and its reckless military adventures. While supporting the need to safeguard political and cultural rights for the Russians in Ukraine, some Russian ethnonationalists have been quick to note Putin's hypocrisy: the Kremlin leader's sudden concern with the issue of self-determination of ethnic Russians in Ukraine seems to contradict his intent to suppress any genuine political competition within Russia itself. At the same time, the annexation of Crimea was enthusiastically supported by both the impertsy and Eurasianists as well as by the bulk of ethnonationalists – albeit for different reasons: while the former saw the move as the first step towards the rebuilding of empire, the latter hailed it as a successful example of the ethnic Russian reconquista. However, this second category appears to constitute a tiny minority among Russian nationalists. Aleksandr Khramov bemoans what he calls the persistence of the "neo-imperial paradigm" and criticizes various strands within the Russian nationalist movement – both supportive and critical of the Kremlin's Ukraine policy – precisely for their inability to see the developments through the Russian ethnonationalist lens. Some nationalists, for example, Dmitrii Demushkin and his allies, Khramov notes, do not see much sense in the local manifestations of Russian irredentism because these endanger the "unity of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians." From their point of view, instead of annexing "only Crimea," Moscow would have been better served if it found ways of bringing "entire Ukraine" under its fold. On the other hand, the majority of nationalists who did support the Kremlin's aggressive course also tend to interpret events from the "supranational standpoint" and see Russia's involvement into the Ukraine crisis "not the demise of the imperial project but, on the contrary, the first serious steps aimed at the resurrection of empire – simultaneously in its pre-revolutionary and Soviet incarnations." Even many key political actors in Crimea and in the secessionist regions in Eastern Ukraine do not conceive the unfolding drama as a Russian irredenta. The imperial idea, Khramov sadly concludes, still dominates the minds of many Russians and the decisive turn from the empire to a Russian national state should not be expected any time soon.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Politics of Eurasianism by Mark Bassin, Gonzalo Pozo. Copyright © 2017 Mark Bassin and Gonzalo Pozo. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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