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Post-Soviet Nationalism and the Future of Russia
Comment by Andreas Umland
Special to Russia Profile
01/15/2008
The Kremlins Nationalist Policies Could Have Serious
Consequences
The roots of Russias currently rising nationalism are
threefold: pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. The
idea of Moscow as the Third Rome, the belief that Russia has a
special mission in world history, goes back several centuries.
Contrary to what many in the West believe, Russian nationalism
was an important element of Soviet ideology beginning in the
1930s. Like in the early 19th century, when Moscows so-called
Slavophiles applied German nativist thought to Russian conditions,
ideas of various Russian nationalist movements today are often
imported from the West.
One of the factors accounting for Russias recent nationalist
resurgence is the way of thinking learned in Soviet schools and
universities a Manichean world-view which sharply distinguishes
between us and them. Although the basic definitions of us
and them have changed, a number of Soviet stereotypes, about
the United States, for instance, have persisted.
The major determinant in the recent rise in Russian nationalism is
that the Kremlins political technologists have discovered it as a
tool suitable for reconfiguring political discourse in general. In the
Kremlins new political reality, President Vladimir Putin is not
competing with alternative programs or parties. Putins opponents
are not socialists, liberals or other Russian political movements.
Instead, Putin is juxtaposed against Chechen terrorists, Estonian
fascists, Georgian russophobes, Ukrainian neo-Nazis, American
imperialists, Western conspirators, and, in general, to those non-
Russians who desire to destroy, divide or at least humiliate Russia.
In this atmosphere of paranoia, it is only logical that those
opposing Putin are not acknowledged as constituting a legitimate
(not to speak of useful) political opposition. Instead, they are
represented as a fifth column of the West, as traitors who are, in
Putins words, skulking around foreign embassies like jackals.
All this has made politics an easy game for the Kremlin. If the
government is busy defending the countrys pride and integrity, it is
impossible to observe all the niceties of freedom of the press,
pluralistic public debate or fair party competition. Instead of
debating what is best for the country, political discussants are
searching for a plausible pretext to label any outward opposition as
an enemy of Russia.
The radical, often neo-fascist wing of Russian nationalism,
naturally, has been rising together with the movement as a whole.
To be sure, both the Kremlin and mainstream public discourse
demonstratively condemn manifest expressions of racism. Yet, the
extremists - whether active in the neo-Nazi skinhead movement or
publishing in high-brow conspirological journals - are part and
parcel of the xenophobic hysteria that has recently consumed
much of Russian society. A widespread fear among Russian and
Western analysts observing the rise of Russian nationalism is now
that the Kremlin could lose (or, perhaps, is already losing) control
of this genie it has let out of the bottle. Russian nationalism could
transform from a political tool of the Kremlin into a societal force of
a proportion beyond the limits of manipulation.
A main difference between the Russian and Western forms of
nationalism is that, in the contemporary West, the intellectual and
political mainstream of a given country usually more or less clearly
distances itself from any strong nationalist movement. While the
Russian mainstream is quick to condemn racial violence, its
relationship to the worldview behind such violence is, in contrast,
ambivalent. Thus, authors who, in the West, would be regarded as
being far beyond the pale of permissible discourse, such as the
ultra-nationalist publicist Alexander Prokhanov or the ideologue of
fascism Alexander Dugin are esteemed participants in political and
intellectual debates on primetime TV shows. The bizarre, pseudo-
scientific ideas of the late neo-racist theoretician Lev Gumilev are
required reading in Russias secondary schools. Gumilev teaches
that world history is defined by the rise and fall of ethnic groups
that are biological units under the influence of cosmic emissions.
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that are biological units under the influence of cosmic emissions.
In recent years, the government has started to persecute racial
crimes more actively than before. This is likely because the
growing skinhead movement is damaging Russias international
reputation. Extreme nationalism has already made the Russian
Federation an unattractive study destination for dark-skinned
international students who are regularly beaten and sometimes
killed in Russias university towns. In trying to stem this tide,
however, the government deals only with the symptoms of the
phenomenon. To get to the root of the problem, the whole logic of
current Russian politics would need to be changed something
that a well-meaning ministerial bureaucrat obviously cannot do.
If the kind of nationalist developments that have taken place in
Russia over the past eight years continue into the future, we will
not only witness a second Cold War, but the Russian Federation
might become something like a new apartheid state in which
foreigners and non-Slavic citizens are treated separately from
white citizens of Russia by governmental and non-governmental
institutions. Given this trend, some observers do not hesitate to
speak of a Weimar Russia, comparing post-Soviet conditions to
those in inter-war Germany. Though it is not (yet) likely that
Russia will turn fascist, it seems even less probable that Russian
society will become more tolerant any time soon.
The Kremlin needs to fundamentally change the way it defines
Russias relationship to the outside world. It needs to take resolute
action against the already considerable infiltration of various social
institutions such as schools, universities, youth movements and
the mass media with radical nationalism. If this does not happen,
the Russians will be a lonely people, and Moscow will be an isolated
international actor in the new century.
Andreas Umland teaches at the National Taras Shevchenko
University of Kiev, edits the book series Soviet and Post-Soviet
Politics and Society," and compiles the bi-weekly Russian
Nationalism Bulletin." This comment is a summary of an interview
that he gave to the Russian-language information agency
Washington ProFile, Washprofile.org.
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