Readers » Russia

« back to Conference reader: Russia

Consolidating civic nationalism in Russia
Valery Tishkov

The concepts of nationalism and nation-building have long been the source of much controversy and debate among policymakers and experts. In Russia, these debates have contributed to the development of three main characterisations of Russian society and state:

1) Russia is a multi-nation state with a population made up of numerous nations, making it totally different from other states;

2) Russia is a Russian (in the ethnic meaning of this word) nation state with a host of other ethnic minorities whose members must either assimilate and become Russian or acknowledge that the ethnic Russian majority rightfully enjoys sole state-building status;

3) Russia is a national state featuring a multi-ethnic "Rossian" nation (Rossianye) underpinned by the Russian language and culture, and embracing members of Russia's other ethnic communities (usually defined as peoples, nationalities, ethnê, or nations).

Thankfully, it seems that today's authorities, including the current and former president, have embraced this final characterisation, which advances the notion of the Rossian people as a historical entity or civic nation. Whilst it has its opponents, particularly among the champions of ethnic nationalism, this interpretation of Russia's current identity has been accepted and supported by a large number of intellectuals and policymakers as the only feasible option for Russia. Indeed, the formula is in line with the state (civic) national identity that has been adopted and proven successful in other major multiethnic states around the world.

Background
Throughout the world, public policy discourses have come to embrace the perception of nations as territorial and political entities featuring complex, though integrated, social and cultural systems. No matter how ethnically or religiously heterogeneous some countries might be, they invariably define themselves as nations or nation states. There are, however, at least two variants of the presupposed "nation" that are important here.

First, there is the ideology of a "civic nation", which embraces the following attributes: the ethos of a responsible citizen; a unified educational system; a commonly shared vision of the country's past-both good and bad; a calendar and symbols; feelings of attachment to the country; and different degrees of loyalty to the state. The "civic nation" exists in contrast to the "ethnic nation", which embodies exclusively one or other ethnic community, often either a majority or minority of the given country's population. That community considers only its immediate members, rather than all fellow countrymen, to be part of the nation, and, in instances of ethnic nationalism, seeks its own statehood or some form of preferential status.

Clearly, there are important disparities between the two types of nationalism, especially given that ethnic nationalism stems from an ideology of exclusion and a rejection of diversity, while civic nationalism is based on an ideology of solidarity and readily integrated plurality. Extreme nationalism among ethnic minorities presents a risk to the state, and to civic nationalism, particularly if minority groups seek to secede from the state's fold through the use of force. Admittedly, ethnic nationalism on behalf of a dominant group can likewise carry some serious risks. If such a community attempts to claim exclusive ownership of the state, they in turn risk engendering ever more forceful ethnic nationalism among the various subordinated ethnic communities.

For example in India, Hindu nationalism on behalf of the Hindu majority has sparked a string of domestic civil-war-like confrontations. Given India's historical experiences of inter-ethnic discord, an effort is now underway to bolster the notion of an Indian nation that can encompass the country's multitude of ethnic, religious and racial communities, both large and small. Since the times of Gandhi and Nehru, local elites and the state have been working to shore up civic Indian nationalism as a counterweight to either Hindu nationalism or any other nationalism on behalf of ethnic or faith-based minorities. Thanks to a focused endeavour to sustain that ideology, India continues to enjoy its national integrity.

In China, the dominant Han people and the concept of the Chinese nation (Mindzu) largely correspond in terms of demography and core culture. None the less, the Han have been unable to promote themselves as the dominant state-making ethnic nation due to the 55 other non-Han ethnic groups (or nationalities) that exist in China which account for over 100 million people. Great-Han chauvinism, once attacked by Mao Tse-Tong, poses a threat to Chinese statehood for the very reason that it risks provoking discontent and separatism by non-Han communities, leading to the eventual disintegration of China. The concept of a civic Chinese nation peopled by the country's entire citizenry was thus developed a few decades ago, and it appears to be working well towards establishing and sustaining a unified Chinese national identity.

These two national identities, both civic and ethnic, similarly coexist in many other countries (Spain, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Canada, etc), Russia included. Understandably, such nations feature a complex ethnic, religious and racial mix of communities, yet the dominant culture, language and religion nearly always provides the national cultural framework: English for the British nation, Castilian for the Spanish, Han for the Chinese and Russian for the Rossian nation. Therefore, while there are certain unique features of Russia's national and nation-building trajectory, which will be explored further below, modern-day Russia is generally not exceptional in terms of its construction as a nation.

Nationalism in pre-revolutionary Russia
The co-existence of both a civic and ethnic sense of nationhood has been the cause of debate in Russia since the 18th century and the rule of Peter the Great. Outstanding public figures and key thinkers, from Mikhail Lomonosov and Nikolai Karamzin to Alexander Pushkin and Pyotr Struve, developed and sustained the Russian civic idea, or the concept of the Rossian (Rossianye) people. Their work sought to engender a primary identification with the land, symbols, strategic purpose and prestige of Russia. The very word "Russian" (Russki), which carried a mixture of competing meanings attributable to local customs, culture, and ethnicity, was itself hotly debated in terms of its relationship with the wider Rossian identity.

For example, according to Karamzin, being a Rossian primarily amounted to having the capacity to feel a profound bond with the homeland (not the Tsar alone) and seeking to be a "perfect citizen". This understanding of the notion of Rossian-ness was built on the basis of Russian culture and Orthodox Christianity (as well as on Catholic cultures in western Russia and Islamic ones in the trans-Volga region). It imposed itself as the dominant school of thought, marginalizing the potential for ethnic nationalism both at the country's centre but also across its far-flung provinces. Following on from this notion of a civic Rossian national identity, manifested in its various liberal-imperial and federalist forms, Struve quite rightly concluded that "Russia is a nation state" and that "while seeking to expand its core geographically, Russia has incrementally turned into a state featuring both national unity and multi-ethnic diversity."

This is not however, to forget that there was opposition to this civic project, particularly among supporters of an ethnographic Great-Russian identity, according to whom the territory and the dominant culture of the empire was the sole preserve of the ethnic Russian majority. In fact, the long-standing endeavour to reconceptualise the empire as a nation state of the Rossian "multipeopled nation" (as defined by Ivan Il'yin) had still not been fully completed by 1917.While this was understandable given the enormity of the task in such a geographically vast and ethnically diverse region, it was primarily the result of a narrow minded and ideologically disoriented ruling autocracy and political elite.

None the less, it would be remiss to overlook the fact that pre-revolutionary Russia, while an empire in the traditional understanding of the term, also embodied a nascent form of civic nationalism. Russia already invoked, in the minds of its many different countrymen, a clear understanding of national territory, national economy and national strategic interests. Furthermore, there existed a relatively large and both ethnically and religiously diverse stratum of educated professionals and civil servants. This intelligentsia, perceiving themselves as members of the single Rossian people and regarding Russia as their homeland, articulated the possibility of a plural yet unified Russian nation state. Indeed, more recent studies of nationalism argue that the very concept of a nation is largely constructed. In this view, pre-revolutionary Russia, far from being a historical anomaly, was in fact some form of emerging nation state with its national core being built around the Russian language and culture. It was the specific Soviet project, defined by its rejection of the past and in opposition to Tsarism, which constructed, disseminated and entrenched the perception of pre-revolutionary Russia as a patched up empire and "prison of peoples".

Reviewing the Soviet era
Under the Soviet regime, the nation-building project in the Rossian sense-which focused on reconceptualising Russia's overarching national identity-continued, but began to place far greater emphasis on recognising the rights and separate identities of Russia's ethnic groups. This new focus had certain benefits, allowing greater cultural autonomy to certain communities. However, the endeavour was taken too far, leading to a process of large-scale social and cultural engineering, to the point of constructing new socialist nations where only loose ethnic communities existed previously. From 1926 onwards, Soviet population censuses were designed so as to fulfil relevant political-ideological guidelines, featuring a mandatory nationality question that forced all citizens to identify with the ethnic background of either parent. These systems of measuring and categorising the population thus resulted in the country being rigorously broken down into nations and ethnic groups, each group relating to a territorial region in the form of union or autonomous republics. In fact, it has been argued that the extent of the structural divisions put in place and the difficulties of managing new competing demands and grievances-particularly once the right to national self-determination was constitutionally enshrined-ultimately led to the disintegration of the USSR itself.

None the less, the Soviet model, while entrenching new ethnic and cultural divisions, also sought to provide a unifying ideology that would bind all the peoples of the USSR together. In this way, through narratives of internationalism and friendship among peoples, bolstered and enforced by iron-rule authoritarianism, the USSR fostered an ideology of Soviet patriotism. In fact, while such a reality was never admitted or acknowledged by the leadership, the Soviet people actually constituted a civic nation, with the USSR a form of nation state and the Soviet identity a form of civic nationalism. While its specific ideological framework was unique, the USSR was in many ways no different to other large and ethnically heterogeneous states that have been and are known as nation states, such as the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, UK, Spain and the even the People's Republic of China.

In fact, despite the radical upheaval of the 1917 revolution and the watershed shift that took place, a series of studies have convincingly argued that the USSR was an extension-in terms of its civic project-of the pre-revolutionary Russian state. While the terminology and political ideology of the Rossian people was replaced by that of the Soviet citizen, lines of continuity are definitely identifiable. In fact, while the Soviet multi-nationality project was arguably mismanaged, particularly in its overzealousness, even this era of Russian history, with its trials and accomplishments, meaningfully contributed to the consolidation of a civic nation in terms of entrenching similar social, cultural and behavioural patterns among Soviet peoples. The strenuous efforts that were made towards raising the status of certain ethnic minorities and embracing all communities within the civic fold can meaningfully be built upon in post-Soviet times if carried forward constructively.

A new Russian project
Today, it seems that progress is being made in the right direction, and indeed the two-tier national identity (both ethnic and civic), that has been developing over the past century of Russian history, is thankfully being practiced in everyday life. However, there are a number of practical recommendations that could further help to support this reality.

First, political leadership should uphold and maintain an emphasis on the legitimacy of this double identity. The civic Rossian identity must in no way be seen as denying the existence of ethnic Russian identity, Ossetian identity, Tatar identity, or that of any other peoples populating the country. However, the overall effort to sustain and develop the languages and cultures of the peoples of Russia should proceed hand in hand with acknowledging the Rossian nation and Rossian identity as a fundamental characteristic of its citizens. This must apply to ethnic Russians as to all other ethnic communities, with the status and prestige of being a Russian citizen always embodying this double civic and ethnic capacity.

Second, the nature of Russian population censuses must be changed to reflect this reality. Modern states have come to acknowledge multiple and non-exclusive identities at the community and individual level. In Russia, one-third of its people come from mixed couples. It is a mistake to require a mandatory registration of a single ethnic affiliation, and the forthcoming population census should allow for the registration of multiple affiliations. Finally, consistency in the use of terminology should be pursued, even to the point of changing the language of the law. The new Russian constitution continues to feature the concept of multinationality, but this would be best substituted by the concept of a "multi-peopled nation". A clear distinction should likewise be made between the use of the words nation or national in the official civic sense and their use in an ethno-cultural capacity. The state would be best advised, therefore, to refer to national priorities and strategic national interests as national policy, while the policy of sustaining and managing the country's ethno-cultural diversity should be termed ethnic or ethno-cultural policy.

Ultimately, it must be remembered that Russia is no exception among the world's nation states. A ubiquitous effort is under way across the globe to establish the concept of a nation as free from racial, ethnic or religious dimensions. Clearly, the nation is forged as the result of a sustained effort on the part of any given country's political and intellectual elites, articulating and disseminating their self-perception as a unified nation with a common set of values, symbols and aspirations, rather than driving to achieve ethno-cultural uniformity.

Russia itself already features a real community of Rossian nationals (Rossianye) sharing a single set of historical and social values, patriotism, culture and language. Thus, those elements in the Russian elite who continue to deny this reality must be set on the correct course. National identity can be developed through a host of tools and strategies, with the primary objectives being to assure civic equity, pursue education and awareness programmes, cultivate the state language, develop the symbols and calendar, and sustain cultural and mass-media activities. Following the completion of crucial political and economic reforms, the Russian Federation now needs to review its ideological and doctrinal documents underpinning the ongoing effort to achieve civic solidarity and national identity.

VALERY TISHKOV is director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Russian Academy of Sciences.