DANISH INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES STRANDGADE 56 • 1401 COPENHAGEN K • DENMARK TEL +45 32 69 87 87 • [email protected] • www.diis.dk MARGINALITY OR PROVINCIALITY? PSKOV AND IVANGOROD AT THE INTERSECTION OF RUSSIA’S TRANS-BORDER RELATIONS Dr. Andrey Makarychev DIIS Working Paper 2004/18 DANISH INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES © Copenhagen 2004 Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS Strandgade 56, DK-1401 Copenhagen, Denmark Ph: +45 32 69 87 87 Fax: +45 32 69 87 00 E-mails: [email protected] Web: www.diis.dk Cover Design: Carsten Schiøler Printed in Denmark by Vesterkopi as ISBN: 87-7605-038-6 Price: DKK 25.00 (VAT included) DIIS publications can be downloaded free of charge from www.diis.dk Andrey Makarychev, Dr., is a Research Fellow at the Department of European Studies, DIIS DIIS WORKING PAPER 2004/18 Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................3 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................4 1. The Story of Marginality: Pskov between Moscow and Brussels................................................7 1.1. In Search for the Meanings of Marginality..............................................................................8 1.2. The European Union as an outside core...............................................................................12 1.3. Outside Margins: the Northern and the Eastern Dimensions ...........................................16 2. The Story of Provinciality: Inward-oriented Identity Markers...................................................19 2.1. Exclusionary Europeanization? ..............................................................................................20 2.2. Estonia's and Latvia's Versions of Exclusion .......................................................................22 2.3. Rediscovering Provincial Identity: Domestic Logics of Debate........................................30 Closing Remarks ...................................................................................................................................35 References..............................................................................................................................................38 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2004/18 Abstract My intention in this paper is to analyze the state of trans-border relationship between Russia, on the one hand, and Latvia and Estonia, on the other, in terms of interplay between central and non-central actors. Two basic concepts – that ones of marginality and provinciality – will be used as points of departure and compared with each other. Each of these concepts develops its own narrative and a discursive strategy. In some instances, these narratives may smoothly complement each other; and yet in other occurrences, they conflict in a manner that fuels “a battle of the story”. Conceptually, the paper is based upon the ideas developed by Noel Parker, Vladimir Kaganski and Dmitry Zamiatin that are adjusted to the study of trans-border relations. The paper argues that the Pskov oblast and the city of Ivangorod may be regarded as provinces and margins simultaneously, depending on the contextual frame under consideration. As parts of domestic conceptualizations, they would be better characterized as provinces, while entering the trans- national scene they may be labeled as margins. 2 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2004/18 Introduction The current Russian – Estonian and Russian – Latvian borders have, historically speaking, been quite volatile, unstable and changing. Thinking in terms of the life cycles of borders, one may assume that these borders are still in their infancy. For the time being, they are heavily influenced by a variety of factors of both domestic and international origin, and may therefore be differently conceptualized. My intention in this paper is to analyze the state of trans-border relationship between Russia, on the one hand, and Latvia and Estonia, on the other, seen in terms of interplay between central and non-central actors. Two basic concepts – that ones of marginality and provinciality – will be used as points of departure and also compared with each other. Each of these concepts develops its own narrative and a discursive strategy. In some instances, these narratives may smoothly complement each other; and yet in other occurrences, they conflict in a manner that fuels “a battle of the story”. The concept of marginality, as developed by Noel Parker, focuses on the questions the trans- border relations raise for the understanding of political space in general and the construction of Europe in particular. Conceptually, peripheries are presented as underdeveloped, inconveniently positioned, exposed to external dangers, and they are comprehended as subordinated territories. Alternatively, margins as rather autonomous spaces are able, under certain circumstances, to develop strategies of their own. Marginality, in Parker’s vision, is equated with new opportunities and openings for regional actors. Thus, territories located at the intersection of different polities and identities (“cross-roads actors”) are capable of comprehending how to make better use of their resources in terms of marginality through inclusive cooperation with adjacent territories. Margins are important components of different policy constellations because they usually have a room to maneuver and a meaningful degree of freedom in exploiting their location. Politically, margins are reluctant to accept that the core speaks for them; moreover, they may participate in defining the nature of the core itself1. The concept of margins may serve a good theoretical platform to study the trans-national roles played by non-central actors, since in order to qualify for a “margin”, the region has to exist in two-way relations with at least two cores. In the meantime, the marginality theory does 1 Parker 2000, p. 6. 4 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2004/18 not take into due consideration various natural differences between the two cores (one of them being domestic and the second one being foreign) and therefore fails to properly reflect the diverse patterns of core – margins affiliations and associations, which is well demonstrated in the case of Pskov. A different – and seemingly more nuanced - spatial concept is developed by Russian author Vladimir Kaganskii who offers a four-chain explanatory framework containing the categories of Center, Province, Periphery and Borderlands. He, like Parker, also draws a semantic line of demarcation between province and periphery as two alternative concepts of cultural landscape. This differentiation appears to be reasonably applicable to the study of regions like the Pskov oblast. Province is depicted as a self-sufficient area, where the historically indigenous population dominates the cultural landscape and saturates the cultural milieu with meaningful texts, signifiers and images. Province is seen as a “nucleus of typicality”, and a “base territory” for country’s self-identification. Without province being there the spatial system would turn into an amorphous entity compressed between center and its borderlands2. Pskov arguably qualifies for the status and the role of Russian province seen from this analytical viewpoint. The four constitutive elements of the above mentioned scheme are not mutually exclusive or antagonistic entities/constructs, since at certain junctures they may interpenetrate each other and converge. The center's elites may need to gain loyalty from the provinces. The provinces themselves might be interested in demonstrating this loyalty in order to ensure their stability that explicitly and intentionally may be represented as challenged by outsiders3. By the same token, borderlands and provinces may overlap to form a phenomenon called “border provinciality”, to employ the definition elaborated by Kaganskii. The concept of province, unlike that one of margins, gives priority to a variety of domestic liaisons between the center and non-centers, and is therefore mostly inward-oriented. This concept better grasps that at stake is not only international recognition of border regions’ actorship but also their domestic subjectivity. This approach is very much in tune with the tradition of treating borders not only as instruments of inter-state relationship but also as intrinsic social constructs serving the purpose of cementing national consolidation and internal solidarity. In fact, identities need borders to mature and come into force, and yet the ways of 2 Kaganskii 1997a. 3 Glinskii 2003. 5 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2004/18 making use of the borders as indispensable elements of identity-forming vary from one region to another. The second feature that makes province (in Kaganskii’s interpretation) different from margin (in Parker’s terms) consists of the rich cultural connotations. In political terms, province has to remain loyal to the (federal) center, albeit culturally it may challenge the center’s hegemony, offering a variety of alternatives formulated mostly in identity-related terms. Identity may be used as a legitimizing force for cultural alienation and distancing of a non-central actor either from a core, or from another non-central actor. Identity, by the same token, may become a source of integrative drive, and thus trigger de-securitization (i.e. play down alarmist and threat-oriented attitudes through perceptional