As I left his office, he told me with a slight grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye, "In Russia we don't lose things. We just take a long time looking for them!" Touche, AM!Indeed - "Who Lost Russia?" should now be known as the question so tired that the Washington Post op-ed page wouldn't use it for a headline. Fred Hiatt's recent column there was instead headlined "Who's to Blame for Russia?" I was expecting a new twist to the discussion. But what were the first three words of the lede paragraph? That's right, "Who lost Russia?" The column actually contains a number of sensible observations, taken separately, but as a whole it doesn't quite hang together.
Of course, this little saying puts the familiar (and tired) question of "who lost Russia?" in a new light: maybe Russia isn't lost after all - maybe we're just still looking for it...
There are certainly a lot of things the Russian government is still "looking for" - a cohesive national idea that actually inspires people, for one, and maybe a decent plan to reform the military - but Rubashov's last sentence (talking about what "we're...still looking for") is interesting for another reason. Perhaps the foreigners who view Russia through the lens of our media have "lost" the real Russia in a blizzard of cliches and stereotypes. And perhaps - as has often been said in this ten-year-old debate - it was never ours to lose in the first place.
I like the idea of continuing to "look for" Russia, although I wish I were still there to do the looking myself. On the other hand, many Russians seem content to let it remain "lost," and it's probably not up to us foreigners to find it. Middle-class Russians, in my experience, are among the least politically introspective people around; you won't find them pontificating about the country's direction or identity, rather they're concerned about their next career move or vacation. There's nothing wrong with that - voter turnout, for example, is not very impressive in the US, and one of the good things about the new Russia is that people do have career mobility and opportunity - but the problem of Russia's lack of a cohesive national idea hasn't gone away, it's just been submerged for the time being in a flood of petrodollars.
"Sovereign democracy" - which has been floated as Putin's idea of a national idea (articulated at length by Vladislav Surkov and recently discussed by Sean Guillory in his interview at Siberian Light) - doesn't exactly trip off the tongue in Russian and doesn't strike me as particularly inspiring, although perhaps polling data from Russia would prove me wrong. Plus, it seems like one of its focal points is that Russia needs to find its own way, distinct from the formulas pushed on it by "the West" in the '90's - but that still doesn't fully articulate what way Russia should find.
I would certainly hope that the fears of some that Russian ethnic nationalism (of the ultra- variety, involving beating non-Russians and lots of blaming foreigners from both the near and far abroad) will become or is becoming some sort of national idea will not be borne out. Such ideas generally have wider appeal the poorer people are (and the more they need scapegoats for their material problems), so one might hope that the average Russian is feeling some sort of trickle-down effect from the oil money and that this would lessen the likelihood of a "Russia for the Russians" national idea becoming popular on a large scale. But the oil money can't be the only solution, although the idea of Russia as an "energy superpower" constituting a sort of national identity has been floated by at least one observer:
[P]ublic enthusiasm for the idea of Russia as an energy superpower is possibly the most important development. Russians have long complained of the lack of a “national idea,” which some interpret as a vision for statehood and others as a blueprint for economic development. The new concept has struck a chord with both groups. On one hand, it has the potential to mobilize Russian public initiative around a well-defined objective – energy dominance – like space exploration and military buildup did before. On the other hand, it raises the spirit of a public whose longing for a clear state policy of economic development has been repeatedly frustrated. But how feasible is the potential of this idea? [...]Although the best national ideas are those which appeal to different people for different but non-conflicting reasons, there does need to be some substance, and the lack of a unifying idea is not the kind of void that can be papered over forever with PR projects. The "energy superpower" idea is clearly feasible for the moment as an economic strategy (though not, one hopes, an overarching philosophy), but is it really the path to sustainable economic development in the long term, or will it just lead to a worse case of "Darvensazimus disease"* than Russia already has? It's not as though sticking a straw in the ground requires the scientific prowess of the people who launched Sputnik. On the other hand, it's not as if the scientific and military achievements resulted in a Soviet economic miracle.
[W]hat does the slogan of “energy superpower” mean in the end? It is just that: a powerful and flexible slogan that the next Russian president will likely find expedient to inherit from Putin. It appeals to practically everyone: The elites think the concept justifies the energy exports that are the source of their livelihood; nationalists see in it a tool to restore Russian greatness; entrepreneurs hope that the slogan will form the backbone of long-term state economic strategy and result in business stability; rank-and-file voters are willing to support political candidates who offer clear policies that drive personal income growth.
One would hope that the Russian people, with a legacy of great cultural and other national achievements (littered at times, to be sure, with corpses), would not settle for a role as suppliers of hydrocarbons to Europe, the Chinese, and the Indians. Nowadays, though, black gold is where the money is, and I don't see any latter-day Dostoevsky being able to tool around Moscow in a Maybach - or generating the coin to provide the government with the revenues to keep paying those increased pensions. So for the time being, the domestic financial stability and foreign-policy leverage provided by high oil prices are standing in for a real national idea.
In any event, while foreigners can try to help with civil society development programs (civil society development and "rule of law" being their own sort of "national idea"), it's probably too late for that - and ultimately the Russians will have to decide for themselves where Russia was lost and how to find it.
*Andrei Illarionov's catchy name for the combination of Dutch, Argentinean, Venezuelan, Saudi, and Zimbabwean diseases that he claimed Russia had a year ago - see the Powerpoint presentation linked to here for the background data he used to make this case.
5 comments:
With regards to this quesiton of the "national idea," I think it's useful to go back to the classic literature on nationalism, specifically that literature that deals with the creation of nations and the birth of the national idea.
One of the foremost theorists on nationalism, Ernest Gellner, argued that "the nation" was created by the state for a specific purpose. He asserted that the state required "interchangeable parts" for the economic machine, which meant workers that shared a common language and a common cultural understanding. Furthermore, others have recognized that the idea of "the nation" was required for state survival once modern warfare became a mass phenomenon in the 19th century. How else could states convince hordes of citizens to sacrifice their lives without some sort of unifying, motivating idea?
And so, the idea of the nation was born and people, according to Gellner, were nationalized through the schools.
Lyndon's point about Russia's need for a national idea is more nuanced than Gellner's basic framework, as the problem of the national idea goes beyond fighting wars and cogs in the economic machinery.
But Russia's basic problem is one that is well known to scholars of nationalism: what happens when you have a multi-national state? In that case, the unifying national identity cannot be based on the identity of any one nationality (Russia for the Russians, for example).
Take America, for example. It is no accident that we do not speak of "American" as a nationality, nor do we speak of American nationalism.(analytically speaking, it is better described as patriotism, as nationalism should be reserved for describing nationalities). Because of its multinational and multiethnic composition, America cannot be unified by the ideology of the nation. Rather, it has succeeded in replacing the nation with another ideology as the unifying "national idea." Specifically, it is the idea of liberal democracy and the American dream that hold together our multinational society.
As a multinational polity, Russia too requires some sort of unifying idea, as Lynon notes, one which transcends any particular national group. In other words, Russia needs an idea for "Rossiiskiy," not "Russkiy."
As such, they clearly have yet to find themselves, and as Lyndon points out, it's questionable whether they're even looking...
I'm so glad you two found each other. :-) I hope we can drink pink champagne in the streets somewhere together, or at least you two can after I pass out in my shaverma and devyatka!
Rubashov - yes, I vaguely recall Gellner from my long-ago Post-Soviet Nationalities class. The problem of "national identity" in a multi-ethnic state is even more complex in that it arises not only in huge countries like Russia. Consider relatively tiny - but still multi-ethnic! - countries like Georgia and Moldova. Both of them have problems that could on one level be seen as problems of various groups within the country not agreeing on a "national identity."
Russia is so big and so (potentially) wealthy that it's hard to imagine a Russian (Rossiiskii) national idea that doesn't somehow encompass ideas of power and a leadership role on the world stage.
Looking at an issue that is rather removed from domestic discussions of "national identity" but is still important for Russia's role in the world, I wonder whether Russia will always want to see itself as a spoiler or a counterweight to America and "the West" or whether it might instead be induced to join "the West." Perhaps the time for that has passed, and we should have tried to integrate Russia into NATO when the Russians expressed interest in this, if that was even genuine interest.
But at least Russia has things it can beat its chest about (size, resources) even when things aren't going so well.
What about the smaller post-Soviet countries? The Baltics had no problem - their interwar independence and unequivocal European orientation formed the national identity in those countries, while often marginalizing the Russian minorities (though I know I'm generalizing, and Russians in Riga might disagree). Belarus has failed in developing a positive national identity, at least so it seems from afar. Ukraine seems to have succeeded in determining that it is "not Russia" but may be too internally conflicted for the moment for us to say that it is definitely on the path towards integration with Europe.
Central Asia is a mess in this regard, although national myths have been created and in some cases (Kazakhstan) multi-ethnicity has been a part of them. Tajikistan's recent decision on "de-Russifying" family names is interesting in this regard.
One could discuss these issues almost ad infinitum and not run out of examples, topics, etc. But I just wanted to throw out the problems of Georgia and Moldova. Georgia's secessionist movements were stoked (if not created) by extreme ethnic nationalism under Gamsakhurdia, but what can the government do today to create an identity that is not "Georgia for the Georgians" and does not have overtones of the "Malaia Imperiia" tag that was sometimes stuck on Georgia by national minorities there?
In Moldova, I think it's clear that there was much less actual ethnic animus, and it was manipulated by elites in order to get a large piece of the MSSR's economic pie. Interestingly, since 1992 Transnistria (Transdniester, the PMR, whatever you want to call it) looks (from the outside, since it's hard to tell what people there really think) to have done a better job of creating a "national idea" or at least a sense of collective "patriotism" than Moldova proper has. Perhaps this is because it's easier to create a sense of collectivism among a smaller group of people with limited means, a convenient external enemy, and limited access to information and opportunities to leave.
Moldova proper has meanwhile been having a hard time determining what it really wants - access to Russian markets (denied to it by Russia for the time being) and a Russia-brokered solution to the Transnistria problem; or integration with Europe. The choice is obviously not that simple, but it does seem as though it's fundamentally a choice between Russia and Europe.
Anyway, I've already gone on for too long about this. Would be interested to hear your thoughts.
I think one thing that we have to remember about all the post-Soviet states (and their constituent nationalities) are that they are also post-imperial states (of course, some of the more volatile regions would still consider themselves colonized).
None of them, Russia included, are therefore the kind of self-contained and self-made "nation states" along the lines of France, which is usually served as the proptotypical example in the study of nationalization. Thus, it's necessary to consider the process and effects of empire on the formation of identity in the entire post-Soviet space.
[I should note at this point that I'm shamefully underinformed when it come to Georgia and Moldova, so let me know if any of this contradicts their experience]
If you start to look around the empire, you begin to notice that the areas that were nationalized before they became a part of the Russian or Soviet empires (the Baltics, western Ukraine) demostrate the most cohesive national identities today. I argue that a big part of that stems from the fact that they were already-defined and conscious nations at the time they were occupied. Thus, they were conscious of "the self" vs. "the other," a dialectic which I think solidified and reinforced the identity of "the self." Some of my own work has focused on this process as a way to explain transformations in national identity during Soviet rule, with a particular interest in how certain characteristics come to be considered typical of a nation's identity.
But what about the rest of the empire? In many other places, the best example of which is Central Asia, these "nations" per se did not exist and were more or less created by Soviet nationalities policy. There's some very good work done on this question by people like Terry Martin, Rogers Bruebaker, and Ron Suny. Thus, national identities in these regions were both shallower (in the sense of not having existed as long) and were created top-down. In other words, they were not entirely organic - while they did draw from local traditions and culture, the actual content of nationalization was tightly controlled by Moscow.
I think this explains why many parts of the former empire now struggle to define themselves, as their existing national identities are relatively thin. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the whole progress will continue to be an elite-driven affair, or whether it will eventually take on a more grassroots character.
So where does this leave Russia, the center or "core" of the empire? I'm not sure, and it's a question I've struggled with for some time. Because it was the occupier and not the occupied, it didn't experience the same identity formation process as the Balts and western Ukraine. Nor was its identity created and distributed somewhere else like Central Asia.
Recall the tsarist principles (Russia's "national idea," if you will) of "autocracy [of the tsar], Orthodoxy, and national spirit." The tsar and orthodoxy were crushed by the Soviets, and who knows what "national spirit" referred to - kind of a circular issue here. Interesting that they were not explicitly ethnic/national principles, though it may have been implied in orthodoxy.
And while those ideals were replaced by similar universal ideas in the Soviet era, the collapse of those ideas has left Russia without the big "national idea," Lyndon's observation that started this conversation. What we're left with is a massive multinational country that is struggling to define its own national characteristics.
The interesting thing about Lyndon's thought that Russia might come to define itself as "counterweight to the west" (or similarly, the "eternal third way") is that such an identity is entirely defined by what is external to Russia. It is an identity based on what Russia is not, not what Russia is. As such, I'm skeptical that such a principle of "negative identity" could develop from a political principle to a true pillar of national identity.
Of course, this void of unifying national ideas is what makes the rise of ethnic Russian nationalism so frightening. It is as if there's a huge hole to be filled, a huge opportunity to be had, just waiting for someone to step up. My great fear is that given such an opportunity, it will be far too easy for the "wrong people" to fill that gap.
By way of a brief and belated response, I saw a piece (a month old) that addresses some of the more interesting questions about Russian national identity on the basis of a recent poll asking non-ethnic Russians living in Russia (among other things) whether they self-identified as russkie or rossiiskie. Very interesting.
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