http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1328/42/376161.htm
Russian Nationalism Threatens to Destroy the Russian Federation
13 April 2009By Paul Goble / Special to The Moscow Times The rise of
ethnic Russian nationalism, of the kind characterized by the slogan "Russia for
the Russians," threatens the country both directly by promoting countervailing
nationalisms among non-Russian groups and indirectly by making it more
difficult for Moscow to move toward a law-based state, according to a Moscow
analyst.
Even though there is some evidence that Vladimir Putin is beginning to
recognize this threat and is distancing himself from the phenomenon with which
he earlier played, Yevgeny Ikhlov argues in an essay posted online this week,
none of the strategies he has tried so far appears likely to work.
Indeed, there are many indications that if the current wave of protests
grows, Putin and his representatives will seek to deflect anger from themselves
by promoting the idea of "Russia for the Russians," a final throw of the dice
that will only exacerbate the agony of his regime and accelerate the
disintegration of the country.
A central element in debates about identity in the Russian Federation,
Ikhlov notes, concerns the relationship between "russkiy" and "rossiiskiy."
Most see the former as being ethnic and the latter being political or civic,
but the relationship between the two is historically far more complicated and
important.
A century ago, Ikhlov says, it was possible to conflate the two because
"russkiy" was a cultural term and for the overwhelming majority of people
living in the Russian Empire culturally equivalent to the political term
"rossiiskiy." But now times have changed, and efforts to restore their
equivalency are not only impossible to achieve but dangerous to try.
That can be seen if one considers the case of the American civic nation
that many Russians have viewed as the model. A century ago, "White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant (WASP)" culture defined what many understood to be "American," but
demographic change means that any effort to restore that equivalency would be
fatal for the United States.
"It is surprising," Ikhlov continues, "that those who propose just such a
transformation for Russia (which is the equal of the United States in
ethno-cultural diversity) - that is, the creation of 'a Russian political
nation,' - do not understand that just as instantaneous from the point of view
of history would be the disintegration of our country."
Instead, he says, they operate on the assumption that Russia has a close
analogue to the American WASP, the "RUPS," the Russian acronym for "a
Russian-speaking Orthodox Slav," an idea that infects the Moscow Patriarchate's
ideas on imposing a course of Orthodox Culture on all school children in the
Russian Federation.
"When a contemporary resident of Russia is offered Russian national
identity," Ikhlov says, "he is asked to accept the entire corresponding
historical path - great power rule, autocracy, serfdom, and bolshevism.
Naturally, the Russian tradition includes [other things as well, but] the main
thing is that the national tradition is formed around the force lines from
these phenomena."
And that in turn means that "the project of 'a [an ethnic] Russian
political nation is a proposal to all bearers of non-Russian socio-cultural
traditions to be swallowed up in the Russian tradition," because the Russian
powers that be at present "have nothing else to offer to Russian unity except
the payment of pensions and the likelihood of meeting [siloviki officers]."
Putin and some of those around him, Ikhlov suggests, understand this
danger at least in part, but what they are offering instead of "Russia for the
Russians" is unlikely to hold the country together either. And thus it is
possible to say that "the main historic sin of Putinism is its role in the
dawning collapse of the Russian Federation."
"A great state," the analyst argues, "can be based either on a great past
or on a great future. All that unifies in spirit the entire Russian population
is May 9, 1945. But the unifying theme of the war was completely exhausted by
Brezhnev". In Russian history, "every other event has the effect of dividing
the population."
Again, a comparison with the United States is useful, he says. "America
has a constitution, [it has] freedom and law. All the shortcomings including
Bush junior and cruel police actions can be removed by self-affirming
struggle.. There was slavery, [the Americans] defeated it. There was
discrimination against women, they rose up in struggle and won."
The Americans "oppressed immigrants and workers. They struggled,
suffered, and won. They defended the rights of unions. They fought against
racial discrimination. They fought against poverty. They impeached Nixon. They
put the CIA in its place. They elected Obama. Just like in the film, 'The
Belarusian Station': it was bad; it became better."
But Ikhlov says, "consider the course of Russian history: [the Russians]
overthrew the regime.they wanted order, they asked for a dictatorship, they
overthrew the regime, they wanted order, they asked for a 'vertical." And he
adds, "it seems to me that one might want to become a separatist just to avoid
being associated with such a history."
But it did not and need not be this way. "Russia ought to have been
united by freedom. If objective difficulties, I am not joking, do not allow the
establishment of full-fledged democracy (public power and individual rights),
then Russia should have been united by law. Just laws and an independent
judiciary . . . should have been the very principles of the government system."
Unfortunately, Russians "received not only authoritarianism. We have
received arbtirariness, rightlessness and sadistic cynicism - three in one - on
the part of the powers that be." And that in turn has been reinforced by the
development of "social passivity, xenophobia and subordination to those in
power, a cult of masochistic fusion with the hangmen."
As a result of this pattern and regardless of what Moscow is saying now,
Ikhlov says that he is "absolutely convinced that when the Putin regime will be
confronted by waves of mass protests, the entire network of agents and agents
of influence will be used in order to shout out 'Russia for the Russians!'"
And after that, just as the Russians did in 1991, "the agents among the
remaining peoples will not be worried by the inevitable question: Why must we
be subordinate to Russians?" Instead, these agents, just as the KGB did 20
years ago, will find themselves in "the same ranks with local ethnocrats," as
"the federation will have lost its last moral-political legitimacy."
But ethnic Russian nationalism is not only dangerous for those in power,
Ikhlov suggests, it can be "fatal for the unified opposition" as well, even if
the one or the other is prepared to "deceive" itself and its opponents by
asserting that it is "ready to consider as Russians all those who love Russia."
That notion, he says, was attractive "for assimilated [groups living in
Moscow] 40 years ago," but it is isn't for most other peoples now within the
borders of the Russian Federatin who will see it not as a suggestion that they
identify with "those who took the Reichstag and flew into space" but rather as
demand that they accept and approve the entire Russian past.
That is not something very many of them are prepared to do because today
"every ethnos [in the Russian Federation] has its own national mythology." And
consequently, ethnic Russian appeals to the national roots of that nation "are
reanimating historical conflicts which arose in medieval times."
An "objective picture" of Russia, Ikhlov insists, shows that the country
"is not simply an enormous space populated by different ethnoses and
representatives of different confessions." It "includes within itself several
swallowed up or undeveloped states." And "these potential states can be
conceived as countries/lands" because they view themselves as such.
More than that, the Moscow analyst continues, "Russia contains within
itself several alternative variants of state development" that are now
submerged but could reemerge. He lists six ranging from the lands beyond the
Urals without a history of serfdom and aristocracy to Novgorod the Great and
Pskov to the Turkic kingdom of the Middle Volga.
And because of that, he argues, "in Russia, the question of the rights of
regions is ineluctably connected with nationality policy since some of the
regions are 'embrionic states.'" And because that is so, the Russian Federation
can survive in its current borders only if there is genuine, asymmetrical
federalism, something the advocates of ethno-Russian nationalism reject.
Indeed, he points out, such people talk about "the restoration of Great
Russia (in the borders of the USSR) . primarily as an enormous national Russian
state with lands not having their own statehood or even autonomy united to it,"
a recipe, Ikhlov says, for disaster not only beyond the current borders of the
Russian Federation but within it.
The near term does not promise a good outcome given the increasing
"fascization" of the Russian state and the desire of many of the powers that be
to exploit ethnic Russian nationalism, the Moscow analyst says. The Russian
government may try to suppress the national republics within the Federation and
even add as provinces one or more of the "newly independent" states.
But that will not be the end of the story, because such efforts will
prompt the non-Russians within the country to leave in much the same way that
the union republics departed in 1991. And what will be left will be a much
smaller but "ethnically pure" Russian statehood, whose leaders may try to
compensate by declaring an Orthodox monarchy.
