Cultural nationalism and everyday resistance in an illiberal nationalising state: ethnic minority nationalism in Russia // Nations and Nationalism (original) (raw)
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Ethnicities, Nationalism and the Politics of Identity: Shaping the Nation in Russia
Europe-Asia Studies, 2015
THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD IN RUSSIA HAS REACHED THE quarter of a century milestone. The identity crisis widely acknowledged in post-Soviet research in its first two decades opened the way for policies aimed at the consolidation of an encompassing all-Russian (rossiiskaya) national identity 1 as a source of nation-building. Contention over political separatism and various regional scenarios of the politics of identity 2 are being superseded by the 'Russian (russkii) question'. Meanwhile strengthening ethnic identities look up to religious, language and cultural landmarks as reference points. The nation-building agenda is thus having to take in different repertoires of contention, and bridging cleavages within Russian society is not only and not primarily a question of elite-tailored politics of identity. It is about the formation and assertion of inclusive identities innate both to the Russian cultural tradition and to the needs of a community confronting the challenges of modernisation. In a multi-ethnic society like Russia, promoting inclusive identities is a core question for social modernisation. This agenda includes consolidating the nation as a political community sharing fundamental citizenship values. The 1993 Constitution sees the country as a 'multinational people'-a notion that finds differing interpretations in political and academic circles. There is, however, no consensus over the contents of such basic concepts as nationality and ethnicity, or on the use in public discourse of terms such as 'nation-state', 'national republics' (for which the official name is 'national-territorial formations of the
Mainstream Russian Nationalism and the “State-Civilization” Identity: Perspectives “from below”
Nationalities Papers, 2019
Based on over one-hundred interviews in European Russia, this paper sheds light on the “bottom-up” dynamics of Russian nationalism. After offering a characterisation of the post-2012 “state-civilization” discourse “from above”, I examine how ordinary people imagine Russia as a “state-civilization”. Interview narratives of inclusion into the nation are found to overlap with state discourse on three main lines: (i) ethno-nationalism is rejected and Russia is imagined to be a unique, harmonious multi-ethnic space in which the Russians (russkie) lead without repressing the others; (ii) Russia’s multinationalism is remembered in myths of peaceful interactions between Russians (russkie) and indigenous ethnic groups (korennyye narodi) across the imperial/Soviet past; (iii) Russian culture and language are seen to be the glue that holds together a unified category of nationhood based on common citizenship, language, culture and values. Interview narratives on exclusion show more deviance from state discourse: attitudes to the North Caucasus reveal the geopolitical-security, post-imperial aspect of the “state-civilization” identity, while stances toward non-Slavic migrants in city spaces reveal a degree of “cultural nationalism” that, while sharing characteristics with those of Western Europe, is also based on Soviet-framed notions of normality. Overall, the paper contributes to debates on how Soviet legacies and Russia’s post-imperial consciousness play out in the context of the “pro-Putin consensus”
This paper argues that nationalism is gaining strength in Russia. The recent demonstrations in Moscow and in various cities are revealing the fact that the growing nationalist tendencies in Russia are now deviating into a racist and xenophobic character. The paper defines Kremlin's policies to use nationalist ideas as tools to reconfigure general political discourse as being one of the most important factors in nationalism's recent resurgence in Russia. Thus, in an attempt to explore the main ideologies and concepts which shape Kremlin's nationalist doctrine, the paper takes a brief look into the development of the Russian idea, National identity and nationalism in Russia. Finally, the paper tries to make a clear definition of the ideology of state nationalism in Russia under Putin administration.
The Formation of National Identity in Contemporary Russia
Changing Societies & Personalities, 2017
This article examines the relationship between ethnicity and nationality in forming the national identity of the Russian people, emphasizing the danger of relying on the "ethnic" model of the nation developed in Soviet social science. Analyzing the fundamental documents of the Soviet State from the 1917 Declaration of the Rights of Peoples of Russia to the last Soviet Constitution of 1977, the author points out: (1) the significant contradiction between the proclaimed right of nations to self-determination and the principle of territorial integrity and, (2) evidence that a national policy based on the ethnic nationalist model created a peculiar "hierarchy of peoples" (so-called "titular" and "not-titular" nationalities). The challenges to the Soviet Union's national policy that took place during the 1990th and its consequences-the disappearance of the Soviet Union from the world map and subsequent movements toward breaking apart the Russian Federation (the sovereignty claims of Chechnya and some of the Volga republics)indicate that the tasks of a multi-ethnic state, such as solving national problems and harmonizing interethnic relations, require rejecting the ideology of ethnic nationalism, and moving toward the "de-ethnicisation" of nationality and the formation of a unified civil nation. Understanding that the transition to the paradigm of Russian national identity derived from civic nationhood is a complex and lengthy process, the author develops a multi-level model of the formation of Russian national identity comprised of (1) the basic level of cultural diversity, (2) the middle level of solidarity in the overcoming of cultural differences on the basis *The version of this article in Russian under the title "Formirovanie nacional'noj identichnosti v sovremennoj Rossii [Formation of national identity in contemporary Russia] (2016) has appeared in the journal Gumanitarii Yuga Rossii [Humanitarian of the South of Russia], 4, 53-60. Thanks to the editors for their permission to publish the translation of the article.
State-led Nationalism in Today's Russia: Uniting the People with Conservative Values?
In recent years, the Russian state has been described as becoming "more nationalistic”. In the time period encompassing the Sochi Winter Olympics, the occupation of Crimea, the war in Donbas that continues to this day, air strikes in Syria, and the state seeking new legitimacy during the deepening economic crisis in Russia, many notions have been connected to growing nationalism. But nationalism as such is an ambiguous concept. Moreover, there is hardly any state in today’s global system that could be said to be totally devoid of nationalistic argumentation. Therefore, the way in which the Russian state leadership is using nationalism in order to achieve its political goals requires a critical empirical study. Authoritarianism, conservatism, and even imperialism have been discussed as "new” features of the Russian state. But the change in the self-understanding of the Russian state is not a result of one factor, such as strengthening national pride, but rather a wide range of ideas that have been reshuffled in relation to each other. This Working Paper focuses on the state-led nationalism in this changing ideational environment between the years 2012 and 2016, and how it has been received by the people. To this end, the Working Paper will argue that the ethnic-civic dimensions are insufficient in themselves to explain the nature of the contemporary state-led nationalism in Russia, as the official discourse both blurs these boundaries and creates new ones. President Vladimir Putin’s language simultaneously seeks acceptance by the majority of the people and control over embodiments of ethnic nationalisms. Hence, the state-led nationalism today leans on the narratives of a nation that has a history of a multinational country where ethnic Russians are still "first among equals”. For a long time, the Russian state has been shaping nationalism by portraying an image of a united nation, held together by commonly shared culture, history, language and values. These common denominators have remained the same, but the emphasis has varied. Today, the cultural unity of Russians extends beyond the state’s geographical and political borders, and the shared values are defined from above in a more restricted manner. The official discourse aims at distinguishing the Russian nation from other nations, but also at framing the right ways to be Russian: morals and patriotism are prerequisites for belonging to the nation. The conclusion of this paper is that despite being ethnically inclusive at the level of discourse, the contemporary Russian nationalism produced by the state leadership is exclusive in its demand for conservative, traditional values.
Ethno-nationalist at last? Scholarly views on the essence of Russian nationalism today
The book "The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000-15" by Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud sets out to investigate a complex issue pertaining to the essence of Russian nationalism. It brings together twelve scholars from different countries to trace the vicissitudes of Russian nationalism over the last decade and a half from various angles – economic, political, religious, and societal. By consulting self-conducted public opinion polls, the book seeks to demonstrate a recent turn in Russian nationalism, which became more pronounced in light of the dramatic events in the Ukraine. The edited volume provides valuable, well-researched perspectives and could serve as a good introduction for those less familiar with the subject of Russian nationalism.
Eurasian Geography and Economics, 2020
For many years, issues of diversity management in post-Cold War Central and Eastern Europe (including Russia) were viewed through the prism of the multilateral minority rights 'regime' developed through the OSCE, Council of Europe and EU. In so far as all OSCE participating states asserted the importance of the concept during the early 1990s, minority rights came to be considered as a shared political field with the capacity to transcend competing nationalisms within CEE. Inevitably, however, this field encompassed widely varying and competing definitions of 'minority rights' and was created in a context of unequal power relations between West and East. Over the past decade or more, Russia-never wholly embedded within this concept of normative space-has increasingly challenged the multilateral framework rhetorically and in policy practice, as part of a more general shift towards bilateralization of minority issues and their instrumentalization by 'kin-state' actors within the region. Using new empirical findings from a 2014-17 project on practices of national-cultural autonomy (NCA) within Russia, this article demonstrates how today's Russian state-hailing its own approach to diversity management as superior to that of the West-increasingly seeks to coopt minority NCA bodies in Russia not only for domestic purposes but also in the service of external policy and geopolitical competition. Using data from interviews with NCA representatives, however, the article points to only limited success in this regard and assesses what implications this might hold for the future course of ethnic relations within Russia.
Contemporary Russian nationalisms: the state, nationalist movements, and the shared space in between
For several years, various nationalist groups and the Russian state have been competing over nationalism as a political concept and for popular support to nationalist claims. This paper analyzes the relationship between the state and anti-government, ethnocentric nationalistic groups that gather annually in an event called “the Russian March.” Emphasis is on the change in that relationship that happened in 2014, when the state added efforts to channel and mobilize the nationalists to its previous repressive and controlling measures. The article conceptualizes the competition over the nationalist argument in contemporary Russia as a case of dissentful and consentful contention in hybrid regimes, and shows how the dissentful nationalists have been forced to make way for the more consentful ones. Until recently, the room for maneuver for the radical nationalists was relatively wide. The events in Ukraine, however, divided the nationalists, and since 2014 radical nationalists have faced increased state repression. At the same time, pro-government nationalist actors have strengthened, and new players have appeared in the field. These developments tell us not only about the Kremlin’s diminished tolerance for dissentful contention, but also about the importance of the nationalist argument in Russian politics today. FULLTEXT AVAILABLE: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00905992.2016.1272562
The late 1980s and early 1990s were characterized by the sudden rise of nationalist movements in almost all Soviet ethnic regions. It is argued that the rise of political nationalism since the late 1980s can be explained by development of cultural nationalism in the previous decades, as an unintended outcome of communist nationalities policy. Soviet political and cultural nationalism is studied in historical and comparative perspective. All ethnic regions are examined throughout entire history of the Soviet Union (49 regions, 1917-91), using the structural equation modeling approach. This paper aims to make at least three contributions in the field. Firstly, it is a methodological contribution for studying nationalism: a ‘quantification of history’ approach. Quantitative values are assigned to historical trends and events. Having constructed variables from historical data, I use conventional statistical methods like SEM. Secondly, this paper contributes to the theoretical debate about the role of cultural autonomy in multiethnic states. The results rethink the notion of ‘cultural autonomy’ as solution of interethnic conflict. Cultural nationalism matters, it indirectly reinforces political nationalism. In both cases concessions in the cultural domain has not stopped the growth of political nationalism in the late 1980-s. Finally, the paper statistically proves that the break between early Soviet and Stalinist nationalities policy explains the entire Soviet nationalities policy. In fact, the late Soviet nationalities policy was inherited from the Stalin’s rule period. This finding revealed in other studies now gets statistical evidence.