Tracing the Roots of Colonial History and Orientology in Russia (Cultura. Vol. XII, No. 1 (2015))

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology E-ISSN (Online): 2065-5002 ISSN (Print): 1584-1057

Advisory Board Prof. Dr. David Altman, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Prof. Emeritus Dr. Horst Baier, University of Konstanz, Germany Prof. Dr. David Cornberg, University Ming Chuan, Taiwan Prof. Dr. Paul Cruysberghs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Prof. Dr. Nic Gianan, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines Prof. Dr. Marco Ivaldo, Department of Philosophy “A. Aliotta”, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy Prof. Dr. Michael Jennings, Princeton University, USA Prof. Dr. Maximiliano E. Korstanje, University of Palermo, Argentina Prof. Dr. Richard L. Lanigan, Southern Illinois University, USA Prof. Dr. Christian Lazzeri, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France Prof. Dr. Massimo Leone, University of Torino, Italy Prof. Dr. Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain Prof. Dr. Christian Möckel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Prof. Dr. Devendra Nath Tiwari, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India Prof. Dr. José María Paz Gago, University of Coruña, Spain Prof. Dr. Mario Perniola, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy Prof. Dr. Traian D. Stănciulescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, Romania Prof. Dr. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Purdue University & Ghent University

Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Co-Editors: Prof. dr. Nicolae Râmbu Prof. dr. Aldo Marroni Faculty of Philosophy and Social- Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali Political Sciences Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Via dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti Scalo, Italy B-dul Carol I, nr. 11, 700506 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected] PD Dr. Till Kinzel Executive Editor: Englisches Seminar Dr. Simona Mitroiu Technische Universität Braunschweig, Human Sciences Research Department Bienroder Weg 80, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University 38106 Braunschweig, Germany Lascar Catargi, nr. 54, 700107 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected]

Editorial Assistant: Dr. Marius Sidoriuc Designer: Aritia Poenaru Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Vol. 12, No. 1 (2015)

Editor-in-Chief Nicolae Râmbu Guest Editors: I-Chun Wang and Asun López-Varela Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Umschlagabbildung: © Aritia Poenaru

ISSN 2065-5002 ISBN 978-3-631-66651-7 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-05998-4 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-05998-4 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2015 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

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CONTENTS

ALLEGORIES OF IMPERIALISM: BARBARIANS AND WORLD CULTURES

I-Chun Wang & Asun López-Varela 7 Allegories of Imperialism: Barbarians and World Cultures

David Lea 17 Sovereignty, Linguistic Imperialism and the Quantification of Reality

Abobo Kumbalonah 31 The Invention of a Philosophy: Postcolonialism in the Context of Akan Proverbs

Antonia Peroikou 45 Speaking (of) the Unspoken: Exploring the Mystery behind Friday’s Severed Tongue in Coetzee’s Foe

Temisanren Ebijuwa &Adeniyi Sulaiman Gbadegesin 57 Mediating Ethnic Identities: Reaching Consensus through Dialogue in an African Society

Shiuhhuah Serena Chou 71 Claiming the Sacred: Indigenous Knowledge, Spiritual Ecology, and the Emergence of Eco-cosmopolitanism

Stephen Joyce 85 The Fearful Merging of Self and Other: Intra-civilizational and Inter-civilizational Colonial Cultures in Richard E. Kim’s Lost Names

Oxana Karnaukhova 99 Tracing the Roots of Colonial History and Orientology in Russia

Michaela Keck 115 Culture-Crossing in Madison Smartt Bell’s Haitian Trilogy and Neo-Captivity Narrative

Mary Theis 129 Ideal Isolation for the Greater Good: The Hazards of Postcolonial Freedom

Maximiliano Korstanje 145 Constructing the Other by Means of Hospitality: the Case of Argentina

Liudmila Baeva & Anna Romanova 159 Challenges to Frontier Allegories: the Caspian Sea Region in Southern Russia

Soon-ok Myong & Byong-soon Chun 173 Cultural Politics of Otherizing Hijabed Muslims in Kazakhstan

Nurlykhan Aljanova & Karlygash Borbassova 18 Etiquette Rules and Intercultural Relations in Kazakh Society after Independence from the Soviet Union

Jinghua Guo 197 The Multi-dimensional Model of Cross-Cultural Interpretation as an Anti-centralist Tool in World Literature Perspectives

Huiyong Wu 211 The Impact of Confucianism on Chinese Representations of Japanese Imperialism as well as on International Relations

Simon C. Estok 221 Bull and Barbarity, Feeding the World

10.5840/cultura20151218 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 12(1)/2015: 99–114

Tracing the Roots of Colonial History and Orientology in Russia

Oxana Karnaukhova Southern Federal University, Russia B. Sadovaya Street, 105 Rostov-on-Don, Russia, 344023 [email protected]

Abstract. In this paper, I focus on the idea of identity hybridization, assuming that multicultural models, relevant for each type of state, depend on complex historical, socio-cultural, and political contexts. This hypothesis directs my inquiry into Rus- sia’s colonial and postcolonial past, contemplated in relation to European development as well as with similar situations in other parts of the globe. My review of intellectual discussions on the topic and of Russian Orientology in particular show that the complexity of Russian national identity can be traced back to contradictions within the process of European intellectual colonization, as well as to Russia’s realization of the Orthodox civilizing mission in its own empire. I propose the expres- sion “secondary orientalism” to refer to the Russian situation. Keywords: Eurasia, Colonial History, Nationalism, Orientology, Orientalism, Russia

INTRODUCTION

Orientology is the study of the indigenous cultures of the ancient East or the Orient. It developed particularly in the late 18th century after Euro- pean museums began to be filled with treasures from those remote regions, by then colonial territories. Thus, these studies were influenced by European modern imperial history and inevitable ties with civilizing atti- tudes and a naïve fascination with the exotic Eastern barbarians. In his 1978 book, Palestinan-American scholar Edward Said captured the es- sentialist patronizing attitude of the West towards Middle Eastern, Asian and African societies under the term “Orientalism,” and claimed that Oriental culture was a fabricated imperial version of the colonial Other, giving rise to the emergence of post-colonial and subaltern studies, particularly successful in the context of the Cold War (1947–1991), which split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, and left the Soviet Union or USSR and the United States as two superpowers with deep economic and political differences.

99 Oxana Karnaukhova / Tracing the Roots of Colonial History

Since the 1990s, the global informational panorama brought about by the media revolution has heightened collaboration between intellectuals across the world, triggering debates on the lacuna of identity politics at a transnational level. Today, Oriental Studies benefit from native research- ers in post-colonial areas who have provided more specialized insights on Middle Eastern studies, South Asian studies, or Sinology, for instance. Thus, Islamic Studies have reflected the discussion heightened following the New York attacks of September 11, 2011, after which certain areas perceived the Arab world and Islam as a threat to the West, echoing previous ideas about a fundamental conflict between East and West, popularized by Bernard Lewis in The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990) or in The Clash of Civilizations (1993) by Samuel Huntington, which involved characteristic orientalist positions in their tendency to see Islamic regions as a unified homogenous civilization. A similar stance was taken after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reconfiguration of Russian identities since the 1990s. Writing for the British journal The Telegraph in September 2002 Anne Applebaum in- quired if Russia was part of Europe or of Asia, and posing questions such as whether or not the “real” Russian capital was westward-looking St. Petersburg or inward-facing Moscow, or if the “real” Russians were the peasant inhabitants of the northern forests, the settlers of the Siberi- an open spaces, or the cosmopolitan aristocrats who created Russian literature, music and painting. Applebaum wrote of Russia’s ill-defined boundaries, of its open spaces and indeterminate, mid-continental geog- raphy are a source of confusion. Nowadays, the ongoing international crisis involving Russia and Ukraine over the control of the Crimean Pen- insula is a source of anguish for many people and continues to stage the conflicted interests between boundaries. Initial intellectual debates around origin and fate of Russian national identity gave birth to three set of paradigms. The first describes Russian identity through the lenses of Europe, finding its roots in German intellectual traditions, the Christian legacy, and the imperial legitimacy of the royal dynasty, much concerned with the idea of the uniqueness and great spiritual mission of Russia. In the second half of the 19th century, with the enlargement of powerful Russian colonial empire, Russian Orientol- ogists insisted on the need to turn to the East in search of cultural and ethnic origins, seeking alliances against Western economic pressures. However, in early 20th century, Russian liberals turned again to the West

100 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 12(1)/2015: 99–114 and based their ideas of civic-nation construction on the example of Frontier Theory in the United States of America, insisting on the leading and dominant role of ethnic Slavic culture in the process of a united imperial nation creation, dominance obtained through free competition (Struve, 2004). More recently, scholars have stressed the importance of multicultural exchanges in the process of civic-identity building under a common imperial consciousness (Kymlicka, 1995; 2000). The difficulties in the consideration of Russian national identity lie precisely in the complex ethnic multicultural and pluri-linguistic background. For instance, in French and English the word nation means the whole of citizens of a state without their national, ethnic origin. Nation is an ethnological or sociological term, meaning the whole of the people united under a sense of national consciousness, but in Russian the words “people” and “nationality” are used as synonymous. There are also additional, nuances in that the word nation is usually used in reference to a major ethnic group or population, and “nationality” is applied to smaller ethnic groups and minorities. Despite these obvious differences with the West, the operational discourse within “cultural imperialism,” the term used by David Morley (2006) to explain social change in non-Western cultures today, is still seen as repetitions of nation-state formation in 19th century Europe, where Europe is the norm and the archetype (i.e. Berman, 1982). This brief consideration on Russian national identification indicates that intellectual discussions can be traced back to the contradictions inherent in the process of European intellectual colonization as well as the realization of Russia’s Orthodox civilizing mission, explained in the following lines.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

One of the most wide-spread positions on nation-building and national identity is based on the famous functionalist tenets, bearing the imprint of Durkheim and Marx, of the British-Czech social anthropologist Ern- est Gellner. In 1983, Gellner published Nations and Nationalism where he argued that nationalism appeared as a sociological necessity in the modern world after agrarian and manual work became operated by machines with the consequent high degree of cultural standardisation of industrial societies. Thus, he claimed that “Nationalism is primarily a political prin-

101 Oxana Karnaukhova / Tracing the Roots of Colonial History ciple, which holds that the political and the national unit should be con- gruent” (Gellner, 1983: 1). For Gellner, in modern societies, the state is specifically concerned with the enforcement of order, a common language and culture, and the recognition of mutual rights and duties among citizens in virtue of the shared nationhood (Gellner, 1983: 4, 7). For Gellner, nations are a myth, created by nationalism, which is nothing but the crystallization of new cultures, not the awakening of old ones (Gellner, 1983: 49-55):

Nationalism is, essentially, the general imposition of a high culture on society, where previously low cultures had taken up the lives of the majority [...] of the population. (Gellner, 1983: 57)

Nationalism imposes homogeneity and centralizing policies which tend to assimilate the differences of minorities and marginal positions, something that has become more and more difficult with the growing mobility, rapid urbanization, labor and economic migration and cultural interpenetrations in our contemporary global world. Gellner recognized, however, that nationalism is not an all-powerful or all-pervasive political force, and that there are exceptional zones that have resisted the norm of “one culture, one polity”. He mentions Switzerland, Belgium and Cana- da. The last two cases confirmed his assumption that bilingual and multi- lingual states are less nationally stable than those that are monolingual. There are also successful industrial city-states, such as Hong Kong, which have not required nationalism to advance into modernity. Gellner also noted that nationalisms can be facilitated by special politics or by the dissemination of particular assumptions (Gellner, 1983: 127), and cited the example of his native land, the formation of the Czech national state which resulted from a coalition between Czech intellectuals and Western foreign policy. Gellner’s final argument stresses the functionality of a shared culture and language for the effective opera- tion of modern work organizations and bureaucracies. He also added a Durkheimian account that explained nationalism from an anthropologi- cal perspective, distinguishing three phases in the evolutionary process: tribal societies that worshipped their ancestors as spirits (and thus their own past community), agrarian societies that worshipped their rulers, and industrial societies that worship themselves as national (functional) citizens of a shared territory.

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Gellner’s typology (Gellner, 1983: 94) presented four nationalism- engendering situations: satisfied nationalism (characteristic of mature homogenous industrialism as in most European states where political unity corresponded with a more or less homogeneous cultural community, a situation that had led to an easy transformation of common cultural entity into a nation-state), classical liberal nationalism (in territories with differences in power/culture/education relationships, a situation which historically corresponds to the unification nationalism of the 19th century Italy and Germany; their unification came by means of the dissemination of cultural samples into wide social layers), ethnic nationalism (in territories with a privileged/educated central high culture and marginal low cultures, a situation which, according to Gellner, corresponds to the nationalism of Eastern, Slavic and Balkan Europe where peasant culture was unified and legitimated under a royal dynasty), and diaspora nationalism (characteristic of groups in transit, with varying access to high positions depending on their historical circumstances, like Jews, Greeks, Armeni- ans, overseas Indians in Africa, overseas Chinese in south-east Asia or the western areas of the USA, the Ibos of Nigeria, and so on). Finally, for Gellner, the contrast between Western and Eastern nationalism emerges logically from the dimensions of this typology (1983: 101). Gellner’s theory has been subject to diffuse criticism as it rests on ideas of social conflict predicated where ethnic, cultural or other diacritical marks accentuate the differences in access to power (Gellner, 1983: 101- 9). Besides, the four great waves of modern state-creation were occa- sioned, in a way, by international events such as the collapse or weaken- ing of empires: the formation of the states of Latin America in the 1820s and after, the new European states recognized by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I (28 June 1919), the new Asian, African, Car- ibbean and Pacific states established after 1945; and the states established after the former Czarist and Soviet empires after 1989–91. In the particular case of socialist and communist regimes, it can be said that they did not primary rely on nationalism in their first stage of industrialization. Furthermore nationalist secessionism within the indus- trialized states of what were the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia is an ac- complished fact, creating in some cases new national political units. However, even if Gellnerian markers may be present to fertilize nationalism, potentially secessionist movements might be prevented from being

103 Oxana Karnaukhova / Tracing the Roots of Colonial History successful by international pressures. An obvious example is the Russian- Ukrainian conflict today. In many territories, the boundaries and frontier-zones have not been established with respect for ethnic minorities. Instead they have only taken into consideration economical and strategic options. Besides, Gellner did not distinguish between exclusionary and integral nationalism, which have a strong ethnic and religious content (Wolfgang Mommsen mentions liberal, imperialist, fascist and contemporary nationalisms; 1990: 210-26). Exclusionary forms of nationalism have led to population expulsions, coercive assimilation, and even mass murder. Thus, for many scholars, Gellner’s typology oversimplifies the processes of national-identity development. Some believe the concept of culture should become even more central to policymaking than it is al- ready. Taking Western culture as focus, others believe that cultures in emerging parts of the world, such as Brazil or East and South Asia, should move towards the benefits of liberal democracy and progress. Yet, these positions are also suspected of Eurocentric and orientalist bi- as. Finally, there are arguments for multicultural citizenship (Barry, 2001; Joopke, 2004; Kymlicka, 1995; 2000) where the emphasis is also placed on escaping Western ethnocentricity. In European Modernity and Beyond: the Trajectory of European Societies, 1945- 2000 (1995), Göran Therborn signaled different types of multicultural societies articulated as follows: pre-Modern (Russia, Habsburg monarchy), New World countries (Canada, the USA), colonial and postcolonial societies (multicultural against their will), and postnational multicultural global communitoes (which includes Western Europe). Like Gellner, he notes that Western Europe shows monocultural trends up to the 19th-century, with the exception of Switzerland, and mentions the following markers: the exclusive position of Christianity, the common Roman and post-Roman imperial heritage, and racial uniformity. During the Enlightenment the linkage between nation and government (state) as well as between location/territory and culture (including language, religion and so on) was emphasized. For Therborn the most obvious source of multiculturalism in Europe was its imperial expansion throughout the world. Hence the importance of postcolonial studies lies in bringing awareness of the “Others.” Will Kymlicka (1995; 2000) has also stressed the importance of poly- ethnicity in the development of multiculturalism. Kymlicka distinguishes

104 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 12(1)/2015: 99–114 between ethnic groups and national minorities, a development of postcolonial societies, with unifying processes of homogenization that sought to consolidate empire and create a strong sense of a unique national identity. Although we can assume that not all contemporary ethnic groups are the product of the colonial period, the precipitation of ethnic identities becomes incomprehensible if divorced from colonial rule. In the case of the Russian empire, many colonial and postcolonial territories were excluded from the historical account of the nation’s imperial center. Thus, in order to build an argument for those who see Russian national identity as underdeveloped, it is important to consider the dynamics of localization as an essential feature of modernization, and look back at the political, social, and cultural transformations throughout the 19th century with three main concepts in mind: identity, belonging and ideology.

RUSSIAN ORIENTOLOGY

Vera Tolz at the University of Manchester has emphasized that, in its evolution, the Russian case differs from those of Western Europe. Tolz has examined the context of the Russian empire during the late 19th and 20th centuries. In her most recent book, Russia’s Own Orient, Tolz ex- plores perceptions of the East in Russia during Europe’s “Oriental Re- naissance” (1880-1920), a period of epistemological construction of an integrated Eurasian political and cultural space. John Plamenatz’s ideas on the differences between Western and Eastern nationalisms, Tolz indicates that the so-called “Russian Orientologists” (not Orientalists), followers of Viktor Romanovich Rozen, professor of Arabic and Persian studies at St. Petersburg University, saw no boundaries between the East and the West (2011: 5). Like Gellner, however, Tolz frames the debate in the context of power relations between state and society, indicating that the Orientologists saw themselves as empire savers, and promoted a non-European ethnic nationalism that looked to Central Asia and the Caucasus for the consol- idation of Russian cultural identity. Unlike Gellner, however, Orientolo- gists saw themselves influenced by peoples and cultures away from their political center, in many cases nomad groups, and rejected the East-West dichotomy anticipating the postcolonial discussion on the Western self and the Oriental other.

105 Oxana Karnaukhova / Tracing the Roots of Colonial History

Importantly, Tolz suggests that Edward Said’s notion of “Oriental- ism” may have been inspired in Rozen’s work. In particular, Tolz mentions three influential forces for Russian national-identity development. First, the peculiarity of Russian state-building, was shaped by neighbor- hood and its close relations with the Tatar-Mongol dynasties. Secondly, the way the Russian state was perceived by intellectual elites, and, finally, the relations between intellectual elites and the masses. Another important aspect of Tolz’s research is the question of discourse, and how it interacts with state power. As mentioned, Rozen’s followers were intellectuals and university professors of comparative cultural and literary studies. Vasily Vladimirovich Bartold (1869-1930), for instance, was specialized in the history of Islam and the Turkic peoples (Iran and Turkestan). In February 1917 he was appointed to the Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia. Similarly, Valentin Alekseevich Zhukovski (1858-1918) studied folklore, ethnography and history of Iran and in 1890 he was appointed to the imperial archeological commission for the study of the ruins of Merv (or Mary, the capital city of Mary Province in Turkmenistan, an ancient oasis city on the Silk Road) and Transcaspian antiquities.1 Most of these scholars became exiled under Bolshevik rule, and some were coerced into becoming informants. For instance, Vladi- mir Minorsky (1877-1966) who contributed to the study of Kurdish and Persian history (and served in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Persia, now Iran from 1904-1908), was made lecturer in Persian at London’s School of Oriental Studies in 1932, then reader at the Univer- sity of London, and finally professor at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge in 1948. Those Orientologists (Konstantin Smirnov, Vladimir Tardov, Konstantin Chaikin) who remained in Russia and unwilling to cooperate with the power institutions were imprisoned under charges of counter-revolutionary activities, and eventually executed.

WAVES IN RUSSIAN COLONIZATION AND THE QUESTION OF CIVILIZING MISSION

The Russian empire expanded in three waves of colonization. The first wave took place in the 16th - 17th centuries, involving the period of the colonization of Siberia under the influence of pre-capitalist clans of Stroganov, Demidov, etc.

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The second wave of colonization/modernization moved towards the Caucasus and Middle Asia during the 19th century. The third wave oc- curred in the 20th century and spread along the socialist project. The in- terest of this article lies in the first two waves, when the sense of Russian national identity and its imperial and colonial dimensions were created. Sergey Gradirovsky and Boris Mezhuev (2004) have noted that, up to Council of Florence (1438-1439) Russia had felt part of the Byzantine Empire. Progress toward East-West religious union did not materialized, and all hopes for a proximate reconciliation were dashed with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. After that, Russia imagined itself as the only Or- thodox Christian Empire and the successor of Byzantium. Thus, its expansion moved under the slogan: “Moscow is the Third Rome,” concep- tualized in the Eurasian discourse of modernism through realization of the civilizing mission and messianism, consolidating the feeling of uniqueness and differentiation from the Other, and the policies of isola- tionism and universalism characteristic of Russian relations with Europe and Asia. With this exceptionalism in mind, the goal of the state was to build boundaries, and the strategy included construction of buffer zone between neighbors. If colonialism could be imagined as the dark side of modernity, in the Russian context a colony was not just the “Other” of its metropolis but its “peculiar Other,” an antagonistic part of it. In its geopolitical and economic elements, Russian colonialism was similar to the Western model. Expansion was envisioned through lenses of economic relations, and territories were incorporated under the legit- imate power of the imperial crown. However, because of the multiplicity of ethnic and religious backgrounds, Russia postponed the distinction between the public sphere and patrimonial institutional domains. The emotional answer to the “sacrifice” of society’s legal power was mani- fested in the loyalty to the royal dynasty, as in the rest of Europe. While societal identity was connected to the territory of the state and the political dynasty of the crown. Cultural identity at the internal level, however, was in fact fragmented by disparity of citizens, and no idea of nationhood existed until the 19th century. The internal symbolic borders had been settled within the so called “elite” or exclusive government policy. Nationalities different from the ethnic Russian maintained privileges only within a network of personal interdependences. As the result the Russian imperial government suppressed construction of national identity and

107 Oxana Karnaukhova / Tracing the Roots of Colonial History replaced this process by the ideology of service and loyalty to a personified symbol of the power of the empire. In order to clarify the imperial dimension of Russian national identity, it is important to mention that the constituting element of belonging was viewed in terms of territory and not space. To be part of a territory meant to accept a certain collective identity articulated by the structures of institutional power, including administration, language ideology, and division of labor. Processes of disobedience and resistance included not just open rebellions but also latent of disagreements in the form of re- quests and petitions from peripheral Russian and non-Russian communi- ties. The specific universalism of the Russian empire was mostly expressed during the second wave of colonization in 19th century, and realized as the incorporation of different confessional worlds within the same borders. Regions with diverse faith grounds and with equal status were merged into the empire. There was nothing strange in such conception since colonial empires of the modern period expanded either through conquest of distant territories or by means of cultural dominance. This second way was embodied in the specific Russian imperial mission as bearer of the Roman Christianity. Interestingly, however, in Russia citizenship relations between the in- dividual and political entities were given by the fact of being born inside imperial borders, without the need for confessional belonging. The Rus- sian Empire had no conceptual ideology, which would reflect its position. Latently Byzantium imperial ideology still existed. Civil virtues were a first step in the engagement of citizens within Orthodox Christianity at a later stage. The idea of the loyalty to the state was articulated by histo- rian Nikolay Karamzin in 19th century. Karamzin described the state- building process as a sense of belonging to the royal dynasty and feeling of usefulness within the Russian empire. This situation was described as “the perfect citizenship,” a process of formation of pan-Russian civic identity. Karamzin persistently incorporated Russia into the European context, arguing that Russia possessed all the Western modern elements of good society. After the 19th century, the new impetus for the reconfiguration of identity and belonging was seen in the official slogan “Orthodoxy- Autocracy-Peoplehood” (in some translations – Nationality), elaborated and promoted by Count Sergey Uvarov in 1830s after the December up-

108 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 12(1)/2015: 99–114 rising of 1825. Interestingly, Nicolay the First was an active investigator of the event and of its social and cultural context. Critical thought was then assumed as tinted of liberalism, freedom, equality, and republican values, bordering illegality and blinding young under-educated people (Grech, 1990). Extremism was then considered as coming from wrong European translations into the Russian language, and the government took steps to set surveillance over the system of education. In 1832 Count Uvarov gave his notes to Nicolay with some suggestions, contain- ing the famous formula that begins with orthodoxy as the first and the most important component, used as the basis for “Russification” of the newly engaged Western lands. The second component, autocracy, was considered the most important. State guardianship was seen as necessary to people on their way to enlightenment and reason. Only the state had all resources to know the real needs of the nation and could coordinate the implementation of new ideas, setting the development of the country by means of education. The core element in Uvarov’s concept of peoplehood was language in Russia’s role as mediator between European and Asian Enlightenment. In 1810 Uvarov published the “Project of Asian Academy” where he tried to convince the Russian government to initiate a scientific institution for research on the East. Thus, the expansion of the Russian Empire moved along modern tendencies in Europe, fulfilling the messianic mission of Russia in Eurasia.

SECONDARY ORIENTALISM AND BORDERLANDS

Orientalist discourse has often been used by Russian intellectuals since the 19th century in construction of the triad East – West – Russia, where Russia played the role of the spiritual mediator. My argument in this paper, however, is that Russia’s “secondary Orientalism,” as Russia’s imperial and post-imperial colonialism is seen through double lenses: For Eu- rope Russia is Orient itself; for its Asian colonies Russia is the West. The beginning of the 19th century was marked with the active modernization of Russia, concerning all the spheres of life. However, the specificity of Russian modernization lies in its specific imperial character. A wave of “New liberalism” came into existence whose intention was to synthesize Western European ideas of nationalism into the Russian context which shared the following characteristics: a) an imperial type of state, based on the unitary principle of the center/periphery relations, a

109 Oxana Karnaukhova / Tracing the Roots of Colonial History centralized system of governance, and mechanisms for “Russification” of borderlands following the principles of the imperial center; b) a poly- ethnic population which according to the first Russian Census of 1897 included 125,6 million people, speaking in 130 languages, a plurality that demanded organizational principles in the relations between the center and the periphery; c) rising nationalism and separatism, as a result of “Russification” policies. The new liberal model introduced by the ideology of the Enlighten- ment prescribed the reconfiguration of relationships between the center and the peripheries within the unified imperial space, granting equal social rights and cultural equality to the diverse ethnic groups and religious minorities that populated the territory of the empire, as stated in the first issue of the journal “Liberation”.2 In September 1905, during the City and Regional Summit, liberals suggested to discuss the problem of national self-determination and decentralization. The initial idea was to keep the unitary structure of Russian empire. However, for Feodor Ko- koshkin (1906) political self-determination lead to the direct fragmenta- tion of Russia, as self-determination was implemented in creation of au- tonomous units of cultural and national specificity within the united Russian state itself. The sense of missionary nationalism, as Tolz calls it (2009: 298) was exemplified by figures such as Catherine the Great, who ruled a century earlier, between 1761 and 1796. Under the impact of the French En- lightenment, whose proclaimed mission was the unity of lands with different cultural and social structures (including religion), Catherine contemplated Russia in its Christian European identity, an idea also present in the reforms of Peter the Great who sought to incorporate European- ness in the Russian political, economic and cultural context. This messianic nationalism blurred the distinction between nation and state, and contributed to diversify Russian Europeanness. As in France, in Russia knowledge of non-Russian cultures was not to recognize them as equal to the dominant culture, but to incorporate them within a single civic community of useful citizens. Paul W. Werth has documented the shutting down of Kazan’s University’s chairs in Orientology in 1854 by Nicholas I. These events have been forerun by the refuse of Russian state to accept Tatars and some Mari ethnic groups previously baptized to confess Islam and local paganism. It was the test for the Orthodox Church in its role of servicing integration of multieth-

110 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 12(1)/2015: 99–114 nic population into the Russian Empire. During the 19th century while upholding basic level of otherness acceptance, the government tried to discipline the hierarchical confessional structure of the Empire. While diversity was acceptable at the distant peripheries, such situation was much more difficult for the central part of Russia. On the line between integrity and diversity the Russian government had to produce a new strategy. This tendency concerned also Orientology at Russian universi- ties, which had focused on the East’s major cultures to the detriment of Russian’s own Asian minorities. This situation changed under the leading figure of Nikolai Ivanovich Ilminskii’s missionary Orientology, who became the leading educator at Kazan and began to translate liturgy into Tatar language using a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet. Kazan authorities encouraged the use of native languages in religious discussions and prayers. These initiatives contributed to the promotion of non- Russians into teaching and clerical positions. After Ilminskii’s death in 1891, the Ministry of Education began to quietly dismantle the system on the grounds of its failure to achieve linguistic unification (despite its missionary success) (Werth, 2002: 233) Some of European historians (i.e. Hosking, 1997) have insisted that the impediment of state-building to national identity formation in Russia lines in its conditions of boundary-ness between East and West, and at a cross-roads of regions defined between sedentism and nomadism. This position could have resulted in a synthesis of the contradictory parts, the polarization of extremes in dramatic dissent, and the uncompromising confrontation of polarities. Several mechanisms were put in practice for solidarization as an ensemble of social virtues and regulations integrated in a unified society. Until the late 19th century this function had belonged to the Russian empire, personified in the figure of the monarch. In the 20th century, however, the specificity of borders became the general im- age of difference and of the existence of ethno-cultural diversity, condi- tioned not by the absence of cross-border mobility (in terms of people or of information), but by the presence of social processes of inclusion and exclusion. Such processes contributed to maintain non-stable differ- entiating factors where forms of collective participation changed. Ongo- ing interpretation of the notion and status of borders became a metaphor and, as a metaphor, it lost its particular nationalistic socio-political relevance, by turning into a universal cultural symbol.

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These considerations moved Russian Orientologists to look at the procedure of space production as one of the core moments in national identity formation. Space was not just a geographically defined notion, but a symbolical one. Symbolization also meant the construction of borders for further binary opposition: empire/colonies, West/East, Occi- dent/Orient, We/Other. In this case identification dealt with the narrative of borderlands. However, turning borderlands into a symbol has hidden the acts of the nation that construct the myth; acts such as immi- gration, economic and cultural policies that set relations of preference, exclusivity and social status. Thus, if empire was a system of control and hegemony promoting one part, the metropolis or center, over another (colony or periphery) in inequitable relations, the reconfiguration of borders serves a similar purpose. In his History of the Russian State 1818-1829, Nikolaī Mikhaīlovich Karamzin (1766-1826) supported the idea of a strong unified state power with confessional specificity (Orthodox) together with the promotion of the united national identity of all Christian Slavs. Since the 19th century, the logic of colonialism was reproduced through various waves of domi- nation. First establishing a system of control and governance in non- Western, non-Christian territories (Caucasus, Middle Asia, Siberia, and so on) that paralleled the one use in the West. Later using access to knowledge, mapping intervention in education as a new form of dominance. Soviet modernity had its own civilizing mission and model of national identity, secularized and assimilative multicultural, replacing the colonial control system by a type of national identity founded on the erosion of cultural memory, history and literacy of the colonized. In the 1990s, as Russia became an arena of the global movement of postcoloni- ality and neocolonialism, the slogan was “take sovereignty as much as you can.”

CONCLUSION

The collapse of the Soviet system has coincided with the beginning of new forms of global colonialism. Russia has seen a parallel process of postcolonial neoliberalism similar to the Western European system. In the contemporary situation, previous standards of imperialism have been destroyed, and new grids of power relations are emerging. As the rest of the world, Russia is the site of massive migrations and transformations

112 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 12(1)/2015: 99–114 that include socio-economic as well as cultural aspects. As in the rest of the world, the fight for power and control no longer takes place between the imperial center and its peripheries. Mechanisms of neo-colonialism include border manipulation and “meta-empire” creation, united not de- juro, but de-facto by means of the spread of the fabricated conviction of solidarity, and cultural means involving the management of language and education. As multiculturalism and cultural pluralism become central to the project of the nation, these very global-local multilayered hybridities work simultaneously “for and against” the most entrenched (and often violent) attempts to achieve national identity.

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1 ǑǽǲǯǺǻǾǿǵ ǔǭǷǭǾǼǵǶǾǷǻǰǻ ǷǽǭȌ. ǝǭǴǯǭǸǵǺȈ Ǿǿǭǽǻǰǻ Ǚǲǽǯǭ (ǙǭǿǲǽǵǭǸȈ Ǽǻ ǭǽȂǲǻǸǻǰǵǵ ǝǻǾǾǵǵ, ǵǴǱǭǺ. ǕǹǼ. ǭǽȂǲǻǸǻǰǵȄ. ǷǻǹǵǾǾǵǲǶ, Ȳ 16, ǞǜǮ., 1894). 2 Osvobozhdenie (Liberation), vol.1, 1902: 9 (in Russian).

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