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Russian Nation-building from Yel'tsin to Medvedev: Ethnic, Civic or Purposefully Ambiguous?

2011; Routledge; Volume: 63; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09668136.2011.547693

1465-3427

Oxana Shevel,

Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics

Abstract This article surveys nation-building efforts in post-Soviet Russia. There have been five main nation-building projects reflecting the dominant ways of imagining the 'true' Russian nation but each has been fraught with contradictions and therefore have been unable to easily guide state policies. At the same time, a solution to the Russian nation-building dilemma may be emerging. This solution does not resolve the contradictions associated with each of the nation-building agendas but instead legalises the ambiguous definition of the nation's boundaries in the 1999 law on compatriots and the 2010 amendments to it. The fuzzy definition of compatriots in the law allows Russia to pursue a variety of objectives and to target a variety of groups without solving the contradictions of existing nation-building discourses. Notes http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/constit.html, accessed 12 November 2010. MP Nikolai Pavlov during first reading of the draft law on the migration registration of foreigners and stateless persons in the state Duma on 17 March 2006. Stenographic report available at: http://www.akdi.ru/gd/PLEN_Z/2006/03/s17-03_v.htm, accessed 20 October 2009. For a similar sentiment, see also an article by Vitalii Averyanov, head of the Center for Dynamic Conservatism, tellingly titled 'Russia without Russians (russkie),' which criticised the draft conception of nationality policy prepared by United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) in 2007 (Averyanov Citation2007). 'Tatary i Bashkiry vystupili protiv kontseptsii natsional'noi politiki RF', MariUver, 4 August 2009, available at: http://mariuver.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/tatary-bashkiry/, accessed 20 October 2009. The Mordvin activists also announced their support of this Tatar–Bashkir declaration. The groups that issued the appeal have been denounced as radical in the past, but, as Paul Goble (Citation2001) noted, the fact that the Finno–Ugric Mordvins joined the Turkic Tatars and Bashkirs in denouncing the draft 'suggest that the issues the appeal raises reflect the views of many people in that region and perhaps more generally as well'. For example, in 2003 Communist MP Georgii Tikhonov, previously one of the most vocal advocates of the idea that Russia should extend its citizenship to all former Soviet citizens, tabled an amendment to the citizenship law which proposed extending Russian citizenship to 'compatriots' whom he defined as 'members of ethnic groups indigenous to Russia who do not have territorial homelands outside the Russian Federation' (Tikhonov Citation2003). In 2006, a representative of Rodina party, MP Andrei Saveliev, argued that Russia's migration policy should be aimed at attracting ethnic Russians and 'representatives of indigenous peoples of Russia' (stenographic report of the first reading in the Duma of the draft law 'On registration of migration of foreigners and stateless persons in the Russian Federation', 17 March 2006, available at: http://www.akdi.ru/gd/PLEN_Z/2006/03/s17-03_v.htm, accessed 5 July 2006). Vladimir Miloserdov, chairman of the Russian (russkaya) Party, defined the indigenous peoples in this way during parliamentary hearings on the draft law 'On Russian [russkii] people' (Komitet po delam natsional'nostei Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Rossiiskoi Federatsii 2001). The same definition is contained in Tikhonov (Citation2003). These mergers eliminated four of the 10 autonomous okrugi by the end of Putin's presidency. Two other autonomous okrugi (Taymyrskii (Dolgano-Nenetskii) AO and Evenkiiskii AO) were merged with Krasnoyarskii krai but retained their AO designations. For details of the okrug mergers undertaken under Putin, see The Permanent Committee on Geographic Names (Citation2008). Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 12 April 2006. Proekt Federal'nogo zakona No. 369190-3 'Ob osnovakh gosudarsvtennoi natsional'noi politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii', available at http://asozd2.duma.gov.ru/work/dz.nsf/ByID/3A2741584A914D6B432571BB005B7A6E?OpenDocument, accessed 6 November 2010. 'Tatary i Bashkiry vystupili protiv kontseptsii natsional'noi politiki RF', MariUver, 4 August 2009, available at: http://mariuver.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/tatary-bashkiry/, accessed 20 October 2009. Israel, Vietnam and Spain are often cited as examples of states that have the same or lower percentages of the titular ethnicity and that are recognised as mono-ethnic. All of these arguments were made, for example, during the parliamentary hearing on the 'Russian idea' on 15 October 1996 (Gosudarstvennaya Duma Federal'nogo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii 1997), and during the 25 May 2001 hearing in the Duma Committee on Nationalities of a draft law 'On the Russian people' (o russkom narode) (Komitet po delam natsional'nostei Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Rossiiskoi Federatsii). In a 1995 poll by the Public Opinion Foundation 24% considered Russian passport ethnicity necessary to be a Russian (Tolz Citation1998b, p. 1015). In a December 2006 VTSIOM poll, 15% of those surveyed identified Russianness by ethnicity (VTSIOM Citation2006). Levada Center polls conducted in 2000 and 2008 found that the percentage of those who supported this idea partially or fully was consistent at 47%, while 43% (42% in 2000) opposed the idea, and another 11% were undecided (Analiticheskii tsentr Yuriya Levady 'Levada-tsentr'2008, p. 141). U.E. Temirov, 'Ethnopolitichestkii factor v razvitii rossiiskogo federalizma', undated publication of the Moscow Law Center, available at: http://www.lawcenter.ru/publisher/c30.htm, accessed 7 October 2009. In Russia, the registering of ethnicity in passports was abolished by a presidential decree in 1997. When Russia began issuing its new national passports in December 1997, these passports did not contain an entry on ethnicity. To love Russia and view it as a homeland, to know and love the Russian culture, and to have Russian as a native language were the top three characteristics necessary to be Russian according to February 1995 poll conducted by the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation cited in Tolz (Citation1998b, p. 1015). In a December 2006 VTSIOM poll, being 'brought up in the traditions of Russian culture' was the most popular option chosen by the respondents in answer to the question 'who would you consider Russian [russkii]' (VTSIOM Citation2006). The draft law was discussed in the Duma in April 2004. A text of the draft was published in Izvestia, 11 February 2004. 25 May 2001 Duma hearing on the draft law 'On Russian People', stenographic report, available at: http://rusvladimir.narod.ru/stenrus.htm, accessed 1 October 2006. Text available at: http://rusvladimir.narod.ru/prorus-s.htm, accessed 1 October 2006. As Tolz notes, the nineteenth-century Russian historiography maintained that Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were three 'branches of the Russian people' (narodnost), while the Soviet formula of 'three brotherly Slavic peoples' acknowledged the greater separateness of Ukrainians and Belarusians from Russians. In the 1990s, Tolz finds, the majority of nationalist intellectuals embraced the pre-revolutionary rather than the Soviet-era terminology (Tolz Citation1998b, pp. 999–1000). In a November 2005 poll, 81% of Russian respondents expressed the belief that Russian, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are 'three branches of one nation [narod]', while only 17% believed that they are different nations (Analiticheskii tsentr Yuriya Levady 'Levada-tsentr'2005, Table 21.1). Russian communists as well as nationalists frequently refer to the current Russian Federation as a 'stump' of the 'true' Russia. For example, Gennadii Zyuganov as quoted in Pain (Citation2009, p. 82). Brudny further emphasised that the executive elite's embrace of any particular nation-building agenda has been purely instrumental and dictated by the changes in the political balance of power rather than by intellectual commitment to any one articulation of the nation. The first manifestation of Putin's commitment to the rossiiskaya nation project was his programmatic article 'Russia at the turn of the millennium' (Sakwa Citation2004, pp. 251–62) which appeared in December 1999 when he was still Prime Minister and acting President of Russia. In it, Putin put the task of consolidating society around the common rossiiskaya idea at the top of his political agenda. 'Edinaya Rossiya' otkryvaet 'russkii proekt', available at: http://www.edinros.ru/text.shtml?4/7840, accessed 2 November 2009. Also see Azarov (Citation2007). For details on this campaign, which the International Federation for Human Rights characterised as a 'campaign of discrimination on the basis of ethnic criteria conducted at the official level', see International Federation for Human Rights & Grazhdanskoe sodeistvie (2007, pp. 29–43, 29). During a discussion of United Russia's 'Russian project' on NTV between the project head Ivan Demidov, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Baburin, the talk-show host asked Demidov if, as an ethnic Russian, he is 'twice Russian' (dvazhdy russkii)—because he is both an ethnic Russian and a member of the Russian political nation, while non-ethnically Russian Nemtsov is not ('Diskussiya o russkom proekte, zapushchennom "Edinoi Rossiiei"', NTV, 11 February 2007, transcript available at: http://www.nemtsov.ru/?id=705059, accessed 15 November 2009). 'Patriarch Kirill preedlozhil vvesti v oborot ponyatie "strana russkogo mira"', Interfax, 3 November 2009, available at: http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=dujour&div=370, accessed 4 November 2009. Pain supports this conclusion by emphasising that 'both nationalists and imperialists see the ethnic majority as the only potential subject for a revived empire' and that 'the idea of political domination in Russia by ethnic Russians … is upheld by representatives of both trends' (Pain Citation2009, pp. 77–78). Federal Law No. 179-FZ from 23 July 2010 (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 27 July 2010). The 1999 law contained such a provision although no compatriot identification cards were ever issued (Chepurin Citation2009; Grafova Citation2009). The provision on a government-issued compatriots identification card was removed in July 2010. Instead, according to the authors of the draft, organisation of compatriots abroad may choose to issue membership cards to their members that could serve as a proof of one's self-identification as Russia's compatriot according to Article 3 of the amended law (Ministerstvo inostrannykh del Rossiiskoi Federatsii Citation2010a). Further, according to a version of the same sample form contained in the FMS-issued memo to compatriots wishing to resettle in Russia (Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation Citation2007, p. 15), there is no expectation that Vladimir Kuznetsov who was born in Kyrgyzstan in 1967 would know Kyrgyz, as he answers 'no' to the question of whether he knows any foreign languages. The 2008 version of the form leaves the 'other languages' line blank. State Programme 'On measures to assist in the voluntary resettlement of compatriots living abroad to the Russian Federation', approved by Presidential decree No. 637 on 22 June 2006, available at: http://www.fms.gov.ru/programs/fmsuds/files/ukaz637.pdf, accessed 2 November 2009. Solodovnikov (Citation2007) reports a similar definition of compatriots by the Chairman of the Directorate on Compatriots of the FMS. Deputy Foreign Minister Grigorii Karasin's comments while introducing amendments to the 1999 Compatriots Law in the Duma on 4 June 2010 available at: http://www.cir.ru/docs/duma/302/2170564?QueryID=3158778&HighlightQuery=3158778, accessed 1 August 2010. Stenographic report of the Duma discussion of the report by the acting head of the Ministry of Interior Aleksandr Chekalin, 'On main directions of migration policy', 15 March 2006, available at: http://www.akdi.ru/gd/PLEN_Z/2006/03/s15-03_d.htm, accessed 12 November 2009. The amendments exempted participants in the compatriots resettlement programme from the five-year residency requirement, acquisition of permanent residency permit, and proof or a legal source of income and knowledge of the Russian language. When the compatriots resettlement programme was launched, the government estimated that some 300,000 people would relocate overall, 100,000 of them in the first year (Tyazhlov Citation2006). In 2007, however, only 685 people moved. This number rose to 8,346 in 2008 and 9,219 in 2009. By July 2010, some 22,000 compatriots resettled to Russia under the programme (Smolyakova Citation2010). Konstantin Zatulin submitted these amendments between the first and the second reading of the 2010 amendments to the compatriots law. All of them were rejected, as is evident from a table of amendments available at: http://asozd2.duma.gov.ru/main.nsf/(ViewDoc)?OpenAgent&work/dz.nsf/ByID&BE35593D9BCB8068C325775700579C35, accessed 1 August 2010. MP Aleksand Krutov of the Rodina party during the 17 March 2006 first reading of draft amendments to the law on the legal status of foreigners, stenographic report available at: http://www.akdi.ru/gd/PLEN_Z/2006/03/s17-03_v.htm, accessed 7 October 2009. Similar ideas were voiced also during the 15 March 2006 discussion of the main directions of state migration policy. 'Svetlana Gannushkina: Migranty v Rossii absoliutno bespravny', Deutsche Welle, 28 January 2008, available at: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3093566,00.html, accessed 7 October 2009. MP Kalashnikov's comment during the 4 June 2010 debate in the Duma, stenographic record available at: http://www.cir.ru/docs/duma/302/2170564?QueryID=3158778&HighlightQuery=3158778, accessed 1 August 2010. Specifically, Brudny argued that 'using ethnic definition [russkie] allowed the ruling elites to interfere in the affairs of former Soviet republics under the pretext of defending compatriots', while 'civic interpretation of the nation [rossiyane] served as a weapon against the leaders of ethno-territorial formations within the Russian Federation' (Brudny Citation2001, p. 98).