Nationalism and State Control in Russia: a Weakened Social Consensus

Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X

Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

Marlène Laruelle Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University [email protected]

ABSTRACT Nationalism in Russia is played out on several registers. It is the instrument by which the ruling elites succeed in effacing (at least superficially) their internal divisions and unifying the political spectrum under their banner. It can also be likened to a new form of state-proposed social contract, an attempt to remobilise society to its advantage by drawing on those elements of its cultural reservoirs that form a consensus around the theme of patriotism. Lastly, for the tiny proportion of the population committed to radical right-wing parties, it makes it possible to mobilise against the “other” at a time when massive social discontent is being expressed in xenophobic terms. Nationalism is therefore akin to an amalgam that reveals the multiplicity of current social and cultural experiences in contemporary Russia. Through nationalism, those who have lost out as a result of the reforms formulate their critique of the present and their nostalgia for the past, whereas the elites and the middle classes that have gained from these changes express their satisfaction and belief that Russia will win the game of globalisation. Keywords: Russia, extreme right-wing, nationalism, xenophobia, patriotism

RESUMEN El nacionalismo en Rusia se desarrolla en diversos registros: es el instrumento por el cual una élite diri- gente logra superar, al menos de forma aparente, sus divisiones internas y unificar el espectro político bajo su bandera; se puede también asemejar a una forma renovada de contrato social propulsada por el Estado que intenta aprovecharse de la apelación a elementos del sustrato cultural con capacidad para generar consensos en torno al patriotismo; por último, para una pequeña porción de la población comprometida con los partidos radicales de derechas, el nacionalismo facilita la movilización contra el “otro” en tiempos en los que el descontento social masivo se expresa en términos xenófobos. El nacionalismo es como un conglomerado polifacético que revela la multiplicidad de experiencias socia- les y culturales vividas en la Rusia contemporánea. A través de él, quienes fracasaron en las reformas formulan sus críticas y su nostalgia por el pasado, mientras que las élites y las clases medias que se han beneficiado de estos cambios expresan su satisfacción y confianza en que Rusia ganará el juego de la globalización. Palabras clave: Rusia, extrema derecha, nacionalismo, xenofobia, patriotismo Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

Nationalism is an interactive phenomenon whose function is to integrate citizens and legitimate the choices made by the elites, while also guaranteeing social cohesion during periods of crisis. In Russia, it is fuelled by trauma coming in the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which then led Russian society to hope for some form of conservative modernism. Nationalism plays out on several registers. It is the instrument by which the ruling elite succeeds in effacing, at least in appearance, its internal divisions and in unifying the political spectrum under its banner. It can also be likened to a new form of state-proposed social contract, an attempt to remobilize the society to its advantage by drawing on those elements of its cultural reservoirs that form a consensus around the theme of patriotism. Lastly, for a minimal bracket of the population committed to radical right-wing parties, it makes it possible to mobilize against the “other” at a time when social discontent on a massive scale is being expressed in xenophobic terms. Nationalism in Russia is thus not restricted only to the extreme right or to marginal groups but, rather, it seems to be associated with some sort of political, social, and cultural normality. In contrast with the member states of the European Union, Russia has not undergone erosion of its nation-state regulatory powers to the advantage of supranational instances. Neither does it belong to the category of countries that have just come out of a colonial past and virtually have to build a new political identity from scratch. Affirming its historical continuity beyond the changes of political regime (Tsarist Empire, Soviet Union, Federation of Russia), Moscow can base itself on a long state tradition, but also an imperial one, which presently obliges it to conceive itself as a nation-state. It now has to learn how to construct a new social consensus that makes it possible both to internalize all the changes experienced over the last two decades and deal with globalization-related changes, such as the phenomenon of migration. National identity is not immutable. Rather, it is a structure in evolution, subject to perpetual renegotiation, and symptomatic of the constant adjustment of societies to new geopolitical political, economic, and social givens. With all its contradictions and ambiguities, the nation remains the privileged framework of expression of citizenship, and shows – if proof were needed – that national identities are subject to a continual process of reinvention.

A NATIONALISM ANCHORED IN THE TRAUMAS

OF THE 1990s

During the perestroika years, the intellectual scene in Russia was dominated by debates over interpretation of its Stalinist past and the rediscovery of different kinds of discourse on the “Russian idea” (russkaia ideia). This latter debate inspired part of

2 Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Marlène Laruelle

the Russian intellectual world in the 19th and early 20th centuries, uniting it in the idea that national essence was imbued with such atemporal traits as messianism, Orthodox spirituality, and a sense of collectivity or the spiritual community (sobornost’). These notions have gradually expanded to envelop the set of debates on identity, from the first Slavophiles in the 1830s up to contemporary doctrinaires whose self-assigned mission is to define the nation. Together with ecological questions, the lifting of the taboo on the Tsarist regime, and the rehabilitation of Orthodox faith, these issues, under discussion since the 1960s among specific dissident milieus and institutions such as the Writer’s Union of the Soviet Union, occupied an increasingly important place in the birth of public opinion in the second half of the 1980s. Generalized questioning as to the empire’s disintegration, spurred on by the conflicts that sub- sequently broke out in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Moldova, fed into Russian national angst linked to the collapse of Soviet unity. In the first years of the 1990s, this quest for identity was inscribed in political and intellectual discourse that expressed a desire to establish a “normal country”, one based on “universal values”. Most members of the elite saw Western Europe as a model and were concerned to put an end to the specific model of development adopted by the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, this way of thinking was not universally accepted. Very soon, voices of dissent were raised, including that of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) which arose in 1993 out of the ashes of the defunct CPSU, in chorus with that of the Patriarchate of Moscow. These two camps pushed a contrasting conception highlighting the specificity of Russia’s civilization. The Communist Party produced an elaborate doctrine on nation- hood based on a updating of the “Russian idea”. It claimed that Russian identity is defined by both the conciliarity (sobornost’) notion and the preeminence of the state (statehood or gosudarstvennost’) or, in other words, no great Russian power can exist without spirituality inspired by Orthodoxy in whose direct lineage Communism is inscribed (March 2002). For its part, the Church, and in particular the Metropolitan Kirill, leader of the Orthodox Church and head of the Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, who is regarded as the institution’s chief ideologue, put forth the idea that Orthodoxy is more a religion of the community than of the individual (Rousselet 2000) and sought to theorize the existence of an “Orthodox civilization” with its own values. From 1992-1993 onwards, the violent nature of economic and social changes has been such that the general approval that had been given to the transition to a market economy quickly dissipated. As a consequence of these unprecedented changes, the term “democracy” took on increasingly negative or even insulting connotations in public opinion since it was increasingly used to define politicians who turn a blind eye to the pillaging of the country’s riches by oligarchs. References to European prominence tailed off, democracy was assimi- lated to the ravages of capitalism, and political rights were considered secondary in the face of the material stakes of individual survival.

Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) 3 ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

Throughout the 1990s, the fledgling Russian regime had to deal with several shocks that had their part to play in the devaluation of the Western model (Sakwa 2007). The violent confrontation between the President and the Supreme Soviet in the fall of 1993 summoned up the specter of civil war and revealed how much the partisans of westernization disdained democratic debate in favor of concentrated presidentialization of the regime. Russia’s loss of influence in post-Soviet space; the discrimination to which Russians were subjected therein, especially in Latvia and Estonia; the stymied secessionist conflicts in Transnistria (Moldova), South Ossetia, and Abkhazia (Georgia); and the establishment of an anti-Russian axis for all intents and purposes unifying Ukraine and Georgia, exacer- bated the geopolitical humiliation of the world’s second power. Then, in 1996, the defeat of the Russian army during the First Chechen War was experienced as yet another trauma. Chechnya then became, and even today remains a fixation, the festering wound of Russian fears. A third turn of events occurred during Russia’s 1998 financial crisis, which had fol- lowed upon a difficult international situation: the stances taken by Western countries in the Yugoslav wars and NATO’s eastward expansion crystallized the resentment of Russian citizens who were shocked because Moscow’s viewpoint had not been taken into account. The need to be respected on the international scene and the re-assertion of Russian power thus became recurrent themes in official discourse, which consolidated around this general feeling of an insecure identity. In 1999, the outbreak of the Second Chechen War pushed security discourse to extreme limits: xenophobia, rampant Islamophobia, and the “war against terror” were to become the motors of public action. In this context, the nationalism/patriotism nexus was presented as a key clause of the contract that the state sought to make with society. Issues including personalization of power in the presidential figure, the discourse on threats to national unity, a return to great power status as a crucial element in the country’s survival, mistrust of the West, and a generalized suspicion of collusion among Russia’s enemies, have thus come to constitute the primary references of political power since the early 2000s.

THE 2000s: NARROWING THE POLITICAL FIELD TO PATRIOTIC SLOGANS

Nation-loaded references have dominated Russian political space in the twenty-first century. From the mid-1990s onwards, fears that the country would be blighted by polari- zation took the form of a will for reconciliation around patriotic slogans in order to dilute ideological opposition between parties. During his two presidential mandates, Vladimir

4 Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Marlène Laruelle

Putin thus did no more than to legalize, structure into a logical whole, and dress up with an ideological backdrop processes that were already at work in the Yeltsin era. In January 1994, the Kremlin announced that liberal reforms would thenceforth be conducted in a less radical manner. In February, the Duma, dominated by the LDPR and the CPFR, voted in favor of an amnesty for the putschists of August 1991 and the insurgents of October 1993. In 1995, Boris Yeltsin lifted the ideological ban that had been imposed on patriotic themes by organizing festivities for the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. A year later, on June 12 – the national day of celebration for the 1990 Declaration of Russian sovereignty – the president maintained that “the most important thing for Russia is the search for a national idea, a national ideology” (El’tsyn o natsional’noi idee, Nezavisimaia gazeta, July 13, 1996, p. 1). The government news- paper, Rossiiskaia gazeta, launched a competition on the new Russian idea and collected hundreds of slogans sent in by readers. During Yeltsin’s second mandate new figures employed patriotic discourse as they took up position on the political checkerboard: General Alexander Lebed (1950-2002), the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, and Yuri Luzhkov, Mayor of Moscow, (Raviot 2007). By maintaining that there was no shame in seeing Russia as a strong-arm state in domestic policy and a great power in foreign policy, these partisans of a “third way” underpinned the patriotic discourse and marginalized the pro-Western tone of the last liberals. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, references to the homeland were no longer confined to politicians seen as eccentrics, radicals, or bearers of a fascist threat but were advanced by respected figures with close associates in decision-making circles. In the legislative elections of 1999, the idea that Russia had to take its own specific path of development garnered consensus among the purportedly liberal parties, all of which analyzed the country’s situation from the same critical standpoint. From its inception, the presidential party, then called Unity, deftly picked up on this need for consensus and turned Vladimir Putin into the embodiment of national reconciliation. In these early years of the twenty-first century, the Kremlin has dominated partisan life thanks to United Russia, the party that, in the name of national unity, has tended to monopolize political representation and proposals. In the legislative elections of Decem- ber 2003, the two so-called opposition parties, traditional propagators of nationalist themes, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDPR and Gennadi Zyuganov’s CPRF, were joined by a new formation, Rodina (“Motherland”). A self-proclaimed advocate of leftist politics, Rodina brought together nationalist figures from marginal circles, people who were able to create an alliance and to transform discourse once considered radical into a “politically correct” doctrine. All four parties in the Duma have based their legitimacy on nationalist rhetoric ever since, as demonstrated during the December 2007 elections. The theme of nationalism, expressed under the label of “patriotic”, thus became the prevailing political language

Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) 5 ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

of Russia, in the sense that all the parties use it. No political figure, whatever his or her function, can gain legitimacy without claiming an attachment to the motherland and without justifying his or her doctrinal choices in accordance with the supreme interests of the nation. Hence, patriotic sloganeering allows the ruling elites to decide on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the political offer because the structuring issue is the internal competition that characterizes the bureaucracies in power rather than a contest between different visions of the world (Raviot 2008). United Russia has therefore succeeded in merging patriotic references and their consensual character into a single conservative political ideology, one which presents itself as a midway path between two forms of extremism, the liberal model of the 1990s and its wholesale rejection by nationalist and Communist currents.

DOES PATRIOTISM ALLOW FOR A NEW FORMULATION OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT?

The patriotism promoted by the Kremlin has turned out to be a container without content, as the themes advanced remain general and broadly consensual: regain great power status and be listened to again in the international arena; be able to speak on equal terms with the great powers in the diplomatic, energy and military domains; update the imperial tradition by defending the Kremlin’s right to supervise the “Near Abroad”; fight against the nation’s demographic fragility through birthrate boosting measures; recentral- ize the country by lifting the taboo on the Russification of Russia; stop all undermining of central power, which is equated with a threat to the integrity of the state; affirm the state’s historical continuity beyond differences of political regime and the shifting of borders. Great power, statehood, preservation of the nation, empire or the motherland: all these notions have become the most banal ideological labels. The ideological referents of the authorities are partly inspired by the famous three- some “Autocracy, Nationality, Orthodoxy”, which was formulated during the nineteenth- century reign of Nicolas I (1825-1855) by Sergei Uvarov (1786-1855), who used the three terms to define the fundamentally conservative character of the regime. The current patriotic consensus, however, is structured mainly around Soviet nostalgia, which draws on a fount shared by the whole population, transcending social and ideological divisions and even, although in a more limited way, age groups. When the field is narrowed after this stage of generality the consensus dissolves and qualifications appear in the degree of Soviet nostalgia and its relation to religion, and the ethnic or imperial definition of

6 Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Marlène Laruelle

Russian identity. Two big issues, migration policy and national policy, divide the ruling classes since they raise the question of Russia’s national identity in practice and not simply as a matter of doctrine. However, a distinct ideological hardening appeared after the mid-2000s, in particular with regard to the education system: patriotic educational programs were created for young people and newly rewritten history textbooks were infused with national commitment, all of which confirms that the Kremlin is trying to engage in a new round of indoctrination. The authorities have understood that the long-term political project of United Russia could only come alive through a re-politicization of society to its own advantage (Sakwa 2008). The idea, therefore, is that getting people to reject humiliation and self- deprecation will work to bring about economic revival and the reorganization of society on an autonomous basis. In other words, patriotism is designed to bring out in citizens a capacity to “stand on their own feet” and make their own contributions, for example, by agreeing not to dodge military service, by having children, by showing solidarity for the elderly, by renouncing alcohol, by engaging in charitable activities, and doing all of this in order to make up for the virtual non-presence of the state in these social domains. However, such conformism covers up deep antagonisms and does not guarantee that the state will be able to model society in the way it intends. This has been proven, for example, by the manifest distance between the patriotic declarations of the young people and their massive rejection of military service (Daucé, Sieca-Kozlowski 2006). Patriotism is posited as a label of social legitimacy. A declaration of patriotism is a conformist gesture by which each citizen affirms his or her acceptance of the rules of the game, and displays an interest in the res publica, without this in any way affecting private life or requiring practices to be modified. All citizens are thus encouraged to internalize a normative discourse on the legitimacy of the nation and the referents which embody it. However, very diverse practices can be found under this label. Not all social classes have the same tools at their disposal to interpret the discourse emanating from the authorities. People who identify with national minorities and also the regional elites of the republics advocate a different sort of patriotism, one with decidedly more federalist accents based on greater respect for the country’s national and religious diversity. Churches and associations also want to feed into the reserve of symbolic elements comprising patriotism by contributing their own specific focuses and issues. In order to do so, however, they must contend with the government, which considers that it has the monopoly on expressions of national identity. Finally, the ideological range that is within reach of each individual remains broad: one may feel oneself to be a patriot and simultaneously criticize the established elites, or be committed to political or social activities without validating the Kremlin’s political agenda, or wield patriotism not as a type of conformism but, on the contrary, as a mode of social distinction. The effectiveness of patriotism therefore remains limited because it interferes with many social registers.

Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) 7 ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

THE WEIGHT OF THE TSARIST AND SOVIET PAST: NATION-STATE OR EMPIRE?

The relationship between state, nation, and empire has constituted one of the Gordian knots of Russian history since the sixteenth century because the state’s borders never systematically coincided with those of the collectivity defined as Russian. During the middle Ages, the principalities of Moscow and Novgorod expanded their possessions toward the northwest by assimilating the Finnish and Hungarian populations. After Kazan and Astrakhan were taken, in 1552 and 1556 respectively, a feat marking the victory of Moscow over the Mongolian Golden Horde, Tsarist Russia made advances into Siberia: the Urals were crossed in 1581, the Cossacks gained access to the Pacific Ocean after 1680, Alaska was brought under Russian authority in 1741, and the Crimean Khanate, a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, was integrated in 1783. In the nineteenth century, Russia set out on a long conquest of the Kazakh steppes and the desert of Central Asia, a process that, in 1895, brought it – together with Great Britain – to establish Afghanistan as a buffer state between the two great European empires in Asia. Throughout its existence, the Tsarist state never really elaborated either a colonial ideology or uniformized practices vis-à-vis the set of con- quered peoples, in part for historical reasons pertaining to the multiplicity of situa- tions of territorial expansion and also the cultural diversity of the peoples under its jurisdiction. Its administrative net was therefore regularly remodeled (Cadiot 2007, Kappeler 1994). In Soviet times, the authorities sought, rather, to establish a “nationalities policy” in order to normalize the relations between the centre and the national periphery. The history of the USSR is thus marked by constant readjustment between the de facto supremacy granted to the Russians and the institutionalization of national identities favoring broad recognition of the minorities. With interruptions in the 1930s, the Soviet Union institutionalized positive discrimination for national minorities, assigning them, to varying degrees defined by the central power, specific identities, territories, and administrative and cultural rights (Martin 2001). Thanks to its indigenization policy, in particular under Brezhnev, it allowed for the emergence of some national, political, and intellectual elites and unwittingly prepared the ground for the declarations of independ- ence of 1991. However, ethnic Russians also enjoyed a privileged status in the USSR and were seen as the country’s “vertebral column”. In its earliest years of existence, the Bolshevik state had fostered a broad Russification of the empire and aspired to central- ism as a means to put an end to its multiple political and territorial divisions. In the 1930s, when Stalin gave official status to the theme of the Russian “big brother”, the corollary was physical liquidation of the national communists who had sought to instill

8 Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Marlène Laruelle

socialism in the non-natives. This exultation of patriotism escalated with the country’s entry into war in 1941, leading to the deportation of millions of individuals belonging to the category of “punished peoples” for their alleged collaboration with the enemy.1 Since the end of the Soviet period, Russia has been a federal state grouping together more than 80 juridical “subjects” of which 21 are national republics. At the start of the 1990s, the sudden disappearance of the USSR gave rise to concerns in society over the national territory. The new independent Russia appeared to be threatened by implosion thanks to the claims of the national minorities, in particular in the North Caucasus and the Ural-Volga region. The painful loss of the empire thus demanded reflection on the definition of the new Russia, on its capacity to adopt the model of the nation-state, and on its ability to construct a rossian (rossiiskii) civic identity that would erase the distinction between ethnic Russians (russkie, representing about 80% of the population) and the national minorities. Proud of the 180 ethno-cultural groups recognized in the 2002 census, the Russian state claims the existence of “Russia’s multinational people” among whom ethnic Russians have no privileged status. However, in the legislation enshrining nationalities policy, Russians are endowed with the role of being the first among equals, since the “needs and the interests of the Russian people [russkii, in the ethno-cultural sense, M.L.] must be fully reflected in the federal and regional programs” (Sokolovskii 2008). Nevertheless, since the turn of the century, growing numbers of politicians have stated that they are in favor of the proposal, regularly put forward by radical nationalists, to grant to ethnic Russians the status of eponymous people. Half of the population seems to support the idea of having a law to define the specific status of the Russian people as the eponymous people of Russia, whereas one third are opposed to it (Obshchestvennoe mnenie 2006. Ezhegodnik, 2006: 6). The term rossian (in the sense of rossiiskii), which defines the civic but not ethno-cultural identity of citizens, is coming under increasing criticism, even in the Kremlin. In addition, for several years now, the central authorities have been encouraging the merging of various “subjects” and want to have a limit of fifty entities, which means that some national republics or districts will have to disappear. This weakening of federal structures is seen as the first step in the “Russification of Russia”, and would entail at least partial questioning of the gains made by the national minorities. This could well involve reinforcing the Russian language at the expense of the minority languages as well as granting a superior status to Orthodoxy and, last but not least Moscow’s requisitioning of wealth in the form of economic resources. This recentralization is provoking tensions between center and the periphery, as the national republics are balking against any reduction in their autonomy.

1. This massive deportation began before the war, some time in 1937 for the Koreans of the Far East, and continued in 1941 for the Germans of the Volga. For the populations of the Caucasus, it lasted until 1944.

Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) 9 ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

Russian doctrines, then, continue to focus on one central question: is Russia a European type of nation-state with Asian possessions, or a specific sort of Euro-Asian state? In the latter case, can it be likened to a Habsburg-style of multinational empire or to a pioneer American state? In Russia today one sees a parallel rehabilitation of the terms nation-state and empire, both of which are conceived in opposition to the idea of a civic Russian nation, which is criticized for its abstraction. Russia has a long tradition of managing national diversity and has had to contend, for two decades now, with a growing number of identity claims, both from the national minorities and from the majority Russian population. Notwithstanding the supremacy granted to Russian cultural referents (language, culture, and religion), the organs of power, as well as the official religious bodies, boast of the country’s history of national tolerance. They thus successfully fall into line with the Soviet tradition of conceiving in essentialist terms the different ethno-cultural groups of the country, yet do so in the contemporary mode of the Anglo-Saxon conception of multiculturalism (Malakhov 2007).

THE PARADOXICAL PLACE OF THE EXTREME RIGHT

In this context, development of radical parties situated on the extreme right of the political spectrum is largely prevented since the nationalist argument is already in the hands of the government parties. However, the rise of xenophobia in Russian society has also facili- tated the constitution of a strong skinhead movement and groups committed to fighting against immigration. During perestroika, the diverse currents that crystallized in the heart of the Pamiat (Memory) Association – a veritable “cadre school” (Pribylovskii 2007) for Russian nationalism – animated the post-Soviet scene. From the early 1990s, many associations and small extra-parliamentary political parties attempted, without much success, to find a social niche. By 1995 Panorama, the center devoted to studies of Russian political life, listed more than a hundred organizations that it classified as nationalist (Verkhovskii, Pribylovskii 1996). Two main parties dominated in terms of numbers of activists (some tens of thousands) and doctrinal structuring: Russian National Unity, led by Alexander Barkashov, and the National-Bolshevik party (NBP) of Eduard Limonov. With the notable exception of the latter group, most of these extra-parliamentary parties, whose apogee was in the 1990s, disappeared rapidly and were replaced by new movements with more radical political (references to Nazism) and religious (neo-Pagan movements) conceptions. The majority of these have taken killing of persons defined as “enemies of the Russian nation” as one of their central themes.

10 Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Marlène Laruelle

The small extreme-right parties refuse to play the electoral game and encourage their supporters to opt for street action over representative political life. All of them have faced regular legal reversals for inciting racial hatred, fiscal fraud, associating with criminals, or illegal ownership of arms. They are often close to mafia networks and engage in lucrative commercial activities, in particular in the private security services. On the level of doctrine, only the NBP is distinguished by its anarchist revolutionary theories, whereas the other currents combine, always in specific blends, calls for dictatorship, allusions to the “Russian idea”, a culturalist or racialist vision of the nation, Orthodox and/or neo-pagan religious referents, more or less refined anti-Semitic and xenophobic arguments, and symbols that are more or less overtly borrowed from Fascism and from Nazism. Their militants are often former members of armed forces (army, militia) plus street children, whose recurrent recruitment makes it possible to swell their ranks. From the end of the 1990s, the only major extreme-right grouping to have had any substantial social rootedness has been the skinhead movement, which allegedly includes about 50,000 people, a figure that would make Russia the country with the largest number of skinheads in the world (Shnirelman 2007). Largely inchoate at the beginning, this current was gradually structured into a multiplicity of associations and succeeded in going beyond the doctrinal cleavages that divided the small extra- parliamentary parties by re-centering its actions on xenophobia and migrant-hating. Although the movement initially recruited its members among very young adolescents from the weakened social classes in the suburbs of large cities, it progressively gentrified. In the big cities, the skinheads now come from the middle classes that have benefitted from the economic boom since 2000. These skinheads dress in more expensive clothing and enjoy greater access to technological fads and fashions (mobile telephones, etc.) and are more westernized in their daily lives. They are also notable for their claims based on economic patriotism: children of small-business owners or traders, they oppose the competition supposedly represented by migrants (Laruelle 2009). Moreover, their enemies are no longer only foreigners but also homosexuals, political opponents (supporters of the NBP, anarchists, anti-globalization activists) and young people with an “overly westernized” lifestyle (punks, rappers, skaters…). Skinhead violence intensified in the early 2000s: Pogroms at markets where persons identified as foreigners work are regularly in the news. By 2010, the SOVA Center census counted 38 people killed and 377 wounded as a result of racist violence, considerably fewer than in 2008 (Verkhovskii, Kozhevnikova 2011). These acts of violence go largely unpunished, because legislation is virtually ineffective. The struggle against extremism has become the foremost argument used by the authorities for reducing public freedoms, in particular of the press and NGOs. Legislation aims solely at countering movements such as the NBP which undermine the Kremlin’s authority, and ignores those that stir up racial hatred. Accordingly, the vast majority of racist attacks are categorized by the Justice Ministry

Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) 11 ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

and the Procurator as acts of delinquency, using the pretext of damage to goods while no recognition is given to the aggravating circumstances of extremism (incitement to racial hatred). Focusing public opinion on the topic of migration has also made it possible for the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) to take up more space in the Russian political and media scenes. Created in 2002, and essentially comprised by skinheads, the movement attracted public attention during the Kondopoga pogrom in 2006 and has since presented itself as an association that unites all extreme-right movements. In particular, it took on this role after it led the “Russian marches”, nationalist demonstrations organized since 2005 to celebrate National Unity Day on 4 November. The Movement has become the main channel of communication between the various radical movements, in particular the skinheads, some political parties in the Duma (the Liberal Democratic Party, members of the former Rodina party and also of the presidential party United Russia), and bureau- crats dealing with migration issues. It played a central role in reorganizing the nationalist spectrum around the unifying theme of xenophobia prior to its being banned in April 2011, after which its activists have been trying to reorganize themselves into a new movement.

XENOPHOBIA AND RUSSIA’S FRAGILE SOCIAL CONSENSUS

The rapid, massive rise of xenophobia contributes towards weakening the multinational and multi-religious edifice that is Russia. All the sociological surveys concur that about two-thirds of the population is concerned about the arrival of labor migrants, mainly natives from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. This xenophobia does not only target foreigners in the legal sense of the term, but also the country’s own national minorities (Leonova 2004, Gudkov 2005) from North-Caucasus. Accordingly, since the start of the 1990s, a broadly prevailing anti-Chechen feeling has generalized into “Caucasophobia” and, after 2001, has morphed into rampant Islamophobia. This xenophobia is having an impact on increasingly wider social and political milieus. While in the early 1990s it seemed closely correlated to the political vote, this link has gradually disappeared so that, as of the start of the 2000s, there has been no direct relationship between the expression of xenophobia and extremist political sympathies. A broad social consensus unrelated with political orientation, social class, educational level, income level or age, is thus emerging via the key themes of chauvinism. Sociological surveys even confirm that young people and the intellectual elites manifest the highest levels of xenophobia (Dubin, Gudkov 2007).

12 Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Marlène Laruelle

Fear of migrants, especially from the Caucasus and Central Asia, has thus proved to be one of the mainstays of national reconciliation in Russia, since it defines alter- ity: far from dividing citizens into social classes, ideological influences, and cultural milieus, xenophobia creates unity. The influence of radical groups may be limited but they are widely tolerated and are considered more as “heavy-handed” patriots than as dangerous, criminal elements of society. This tolerance for the expression of ideas that one would describe as radical gives the impression of very widespread extreme nationalism. The terms must therefore be inverted: widespread extreme nationalism is not explained by the influence of the extreme-right but, on the contrary, this right- wing is easily able to express itself in Russia because the social and ideological context willingly tolerates it. One of the real turning points in the unleashing of racist speech occurred during the events of Kondopoga in 2006. A second episode, the events of Manege Square in Moscow in December 2010 inflamed racist expression and fostered the formation of bands of ‘Russian’ and ‘Caucasian’ youth groups from the North Caucasus who were ready to “do battle”. They also made it clear that youth nationalism would be one of the elements of the electoral campaign of 2011-2012. Hitherto, all attempts to organize nationalist parties that are independent of the Kremlin have failed, but today a new generation of militants aims at a “politically correct” anti- migrant xenophobia, one with European culture and norms of actions, and adopting models like those of Le Pen, Berlusconi, and Haider. They see the recent success of the extreme right in Nordic countries as confirmation of their idea. In the current state of the Russian political system, no party can win at the elections unless it is validated by the Kremlin. The radical groups are therefore not des- tined to win elections, and will even have difficulties in presenting for them. However, the nationalists could conceivably emerge as a powerful political party if there were any in-depth transformation of the political system entailing the Kremlin’s losing control over political expression and hence greater pluralism, or if a moderately xenophobic populist movement took shape among the ruling circles to impose its ideas as the official current of the Kremlin. Nationalism, in its xenophobic, anti-immigrant expression, will not disappear quickly as the social, cultural, political and ideological mechanisms that nourish it will remain present and even intensify in the years to come. However, it is likely that the anti-western bent of Russian nationalism will diminish since anti-European Slavophile precepts are losing relevance in contemporary Russia, especially among the younger generations. The country is therefore likely to develop closer ties with European models of xenophobic populism, with greater capacity for violence and greater social tolerance for that violence.

Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) 13 ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

CONCLUSION

Nationalism is not unlike a set of guises that reveals the multitude of lived social and cultural experiences in contemporary Russia. The losers of the reforms resort to it to formulate their critique of the present and their nostalgia of the past (Oushakine 2009), whereas the elites and the middle classes that have gained from these changes don it to express their satisfaction and belief that Russia will win the game of globalization. The Russian state, for its part, hopes simultaneously to control the xenophobic pressures emanating from society and to channel them to its advantage. It creates a form of nationalist demand but, at the same time, seeks to co-opt or eliminate altogether mobilization in the name of the nation when it does not initiate it or cannot control it. Under the auspices of the presidential party, United Russia and the presidential administration, it also attempts to enforce the logic of different kinds of social regimentation. The authorities interpret the promotion of a certain sort of “enlightened patriotism” or “administrated nationalism” as an instrument that not only facilitates the country’s authoritarian modernization inspired in the USSR even while it adopts a capitalist model, but also accelerates the country’s normalization a process identified with the passage to the nation-state but also a return to imperial memory (thereby lifting the taboo on the necessary “Russification of Russia”). It probably even promotes a certain sort of westernization, even if this is carried out by military means, as previously happened under Peter the Great. In Russia, the nation is a federalist slogan: it covers a broad social spectrum, ranging from the racist violence of the skinheads and the massive but diffuse xenophobia of the population through to the affirmation of cultural and material satisfaction of the elites and the belief in a better future for the middle classes. The nation is increasingly the subject of a process of reinvention over the last two decades as Russia has faced changes of unprecedented radicality: the loss of its empire, the shrinking of its borders, the disappearance of communism, change of political regime, social transformation of great magnitude and opening up to the world. The sentiment, largely dominant in Russia, of belonging to a specific civilization has thus successfully been registered, in terms of contemporary culturalist theories and discourse on the right of peoples, as legitimization of anti-globalization. As Jean-François Bayart notes, “the identity illusion” (Bayard 1996) presently constitutes one of the privileged modes of response to globalization. Russia is therefore part of phenomena that are far more global and by no means specific to it.

14 Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Marlène Laruelle

Bibliographical references

BAYARD, Jean-François. L’Illusion identitaire, Fayard, Paris, 1996. CADIOT, Judith. Le Laboratoire impérial. Russie - URSS (1860-1940), CNRS-Editions, Paris, 2007. DAUCÉ, Françoise; SIECA-KOZLOWSKI, Elisabeth; Dedovshchina in the Post-Soviet Military. Hazing of Russian Army Conscripts in a Comparative Perspective, Ibidem Verlag, Stuttgart, 2006. DUBIN, Boris; GUDKOV, Lev. “Nevozmozhnyi natsionalizm. Ritorika nomenklatury i ksenofobiia mass”. In: Laruelle, Marlène (ed.) Russkii natsionalizm v politicheskom prostranstve (issledovaniia po natsionalizmu), INION, Moscow, 2007, P. 276-310. GUDKOV, Lev. “Smeshchennaia agressiia. Otnoshenie rossiian k migrantam,” Vestnik obshchestvennogo mnenija, Vol. 80, No. 6 (2005). P. 60-77. KAPPELER, Andreas. La Russie, empire multiethnique, Institut d’études slaves, Paris, 1994. LARUELLE, Marlène. In the Name of the Nation. Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia, Palgrave/ MacMillan, New York, 2009. LEONOVA, Anastasia. “Nepriiazn’ k migrantam kak forma samozashchity”, Otechestvennye zapiski, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2004): http://www.strana-oz.ru/?numid=19&article=921. MALAKHOV, Vladimir. Ponaedali tut. Ocherki o natsionalizme, rasizme i kul’turnom pliuralizme, NLO, Mos- cow, 2007. MARCH, Luke. The Communist Party in Post-Soviet Russia. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002. MARTIN, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939, Cornell University Press, Ithaca – London, 2001. OBSHCHESTVENNOE mnenie 2006. Ezhegodnik, Levada-Centr, Moscow, 2006. OUSHAKINE, Sergei. The Patriotism of Despair: Nation, War, and Loss in Russia, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2009. PRIBYLOVSKII, Vladimir. “Le mouvement Pamiat, ‘école des cadres’ du nationalisme russe durant la per- estroïka”. In: Laruelle, Marlène (ed.) Le Rouge et le noir. Extrême droite et nationalisme en Russie, CNRS- Éditions, Paris, 2007. P. 99-114. RAVIOT, Jean-Robert. Qui dirige la Russie ?, Lignes de repères, Paris, 2007. RAVIOT, Jean-Robert. Démocratie à la russe. Pouvoir et contre-pouvoir en Russie post-soviétique, Ellipses, Paris, 2008.

ROUSSELET, Kathy. “L’Église orthodoxe russe entre patriotisme et individualisme, x x e siècle. Revue d’histoire (April-June 2000). P. 13-24. SAKWA, Richard. Putin: Russia’s Choice, Routledge, London, 2007. SAKWA, Richard. “Putin’s Leadership: Character and Consequences”, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 60, No. 6 (2008). P. 879-897. SHNIREL’MAN, Viktor. “Chistil’shchiki moskovskikh ulits”. Skinkhedy, SMI i obshchestvennoe mnenie, Academia, Moscow, 2007, 2nd edition 2010.

Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) 15 ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X Nationalism and state control in Russia: A weakened social consensus

SOKOLOVSKII, Sergei. “Essentsializm v rossiiskom konstitutsionnom prave (na primere terminologii, izpol’zuemoi v konstitutsiiakh respublik v sostave RF)”. In: Laruelle, Marlène (ed.) Russkii natsionalizm: sotsial’nyi i kul’turnyi kontekst, NLO, Moscow, 2008. VERXOVSKII, Alexandr; PRIBYLOVSKII, Vladimir; Natsional-patrioticheskie organizatssii v Rossii, Moscou, Panorama, 1996. VERKHOVSKY, Alexander; GALINA, Kozhevnikova; The Phantom of Manezhnaya Square: Radical Nationalism and Efforts to Counteract It in 2010 (Moscow: SOVA Center, 2011).

16 Revista CIDOB d’afers internacionals, n.º 96, (December 2011) ISSN 1133-6595 - E-ISSN 2013-035X