The Russian Diaspora in International Relations: ‘Compatriots’ in Britain
2012; Routledge; Volume: 64; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09668136.2012.660764
ISSN1465-3427
Autores Tópico(s)Migration and Labor Dynamics
ResumoAbstract The article examines the harnessing of the contemporary Russian diaspora in certain domains of Russia's international relations. It looks specifically at Russian officialdom's ambivalent efforts at developing and engaging with a global network of state-backed diaspora associations, especially as instruments of cultural outreach. The focus is on the relatively recent implementation of this strategy in the West. The first half of the article discusses the ideological ambiguities of this project in general terms; the second examines how it plays itself out in practice, on the example of the United Kingdom. The article suggests that analysing the ambiguities established in the relationship between state and diasporic structures in this context is vital to understanding the current role of the Russian state in the politics of Russian diasporisation. Notes 1See the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) (Citation2007, p. 6). See also related reports for UK-based migrant communities from Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union: available at: http://www.iomlondon.org/publications.htm, accessed 20 June 2011. Most estimates cited since 2007 are higher and in the region of 400,000, although they remain provisional. 2In this article, the notions of 'soft power', 'cultural diplomacy' or 'outreach', which both state officials and political analysts might use to describe certain elements of Russia's 'compatriots project' as an instrument of foreign policy, are understood as value-laden and often rhetorical semantic frames, capable, in their own right, of modifying the meanings of this 'project' for whichever strategic or tactical purpose, depending on the particular discursive, performative or interactive context in which these concepts are deployed by particular agents, including scholars seeking to define and analyse Russia's sootechestvenniki strategy for broadly academic purposes. 3The term 'diasporisation' is here used to suggest an understanding of modern diasporas as a particular form of cross-border mobilisation (political, social, economic and cultural). The extent to which the contemporary Russian-speaking migrant body in the UK can be understood in diasporic terms remains open and debatable (Byford 2009b). The effectiveness or viability of 'diaspora' as a mode or process of transnational mobilisation depends both on objective historical and geo-political circumstances and on concrete agency by states, churches and political, commercial, civic and cultural organisations and entrepreneurs (Vertovec Citation1997; Van Hear Citation1998; Evans Braziel & Mannur Citation2003; Brubaker Citation2005; Evans Braziel Citation2008; Cohen Citation2008; Esman Citation2009). Nothing resembling a Russian 'diaspora' in this sense played any significant role in international relations between Britain and the USSR in the Soviet era (Keeble Citation1990; Pravda & Duncan Citation1990; Keeble 2000). 4See 'Gosudarstvennaya programma po okazaniyu sodeistviya dobrovol'nomu pereseleniyu v Rossiiskuyu Federatsiyu sootechestvennikov, prozhivayushchikh za rubezhom', available at: http://www.mid.ru/ns-dgpch.nsf/gpsdp, accessed 20 June 2011. 5See Lavrov (Citation2008, p. 4). For the response of the British compatriots' organisation see: 'Zayavlenie: golos russkoyazychnoi obshchiny Velikobritanii', available at: http://www.eursa.eu/node/1774, accessed 20 June 2011. 6The Moscow Government and its Dom sootechestvennika has been particularly active in this regard. See: http://www.mosds.ru/, accessed 20 June 2011. 7The most recent change, under Medvedev, has been the abolition of Roszarubezhtsentr, with the move of the sootechestvenniki project to what is now Rossotrudnichestvo. See http://rs.gov.ru/, accessed 20 June 2011. 8See http://www.russkiymir.org/, accessed 20 June 2011. 9'O gosudarstvennoi politike Rossiiskoi federatsii v otnoshenii sootechestvennikov za rubezhom', no. 22, item 2670, 24 May 1999 (No. 99-FZ). 10'O gosudarstvennoi politike Rossiiskoi federatsii v otnoshenii sootechestvennikov za rubezhom', no. 30, item 4010, 26 July 2010 (No. 179 FZ). 11Interviews with officials at the Russian Consulate and Embassy in London (anonymous), conducted in September 2008. 12 The broad question of imperial legacy in this context is beyond the remit of this article. Much work, from a wide variety of perspectives, has been carried out, for example, in the journal Ab Imperio: see http://abimperio.net/, accessed 20 June 2011. More specifically, see, for example, McDonald (Citation2011). 13For a discussion of the russkii mir idea in this particular context, see the interview with Tat'yana Poloskova, 'Russkii mir mezhdu imperiei i globalizmom', available at: http://www.russkie.org/index.php?module=fullitem&id=8665, accessed 20 June 2011. See also Poloskova (Citation2004). It is worth noting that the word mir is polysemic: although its primary and most common sense in this context is 'world', it can also mean 'peace', while the same term is used for the ancient Russian village community beloved of the Slavophiles. Both these other meanings are commonly alluded to in the promotion of the idea, depending on context and audience. See, for example, the Russkii Mir Foundation mission statement, available at: http://www.russkiymir.ru/russkiymir/en/fund/about, or the Russkii Mir portal, available at: http://www.russkymir.org/, both accessed 20 June 2011. 14Indeed, the new, more politically correct, term for the 'far abroad' (dal'nee zarubezh'e) is the 'traditional abroad' (traditsionnoe zarubezh'e), which avoids the suggestion that compatriots are somehow living far away from their 'historic Homeland', while perhaps also indirectly questioning what living 'abroad' (za rubezhom) means anyway, if one happens to be a sootechestvennik inhabiting 'the Russian world'. See 'Kompleksnaya tselevaya srednesrochnaya programma podderzhki sootechestvennikov za rubezhom na 2003–2005 gody' of the Moscow Dom sootechestvennika, available at: http://www.mosds.ru/Meria/meria_komp_prog1.shtml, accessed 20 June 2011. 15Insofar as migrant displacement entails a partially de-institutionalised social frame for articulating common social identities, it results in a higher than usual degree of diversity, improvisation, as well as reflexivity, while also laying bare multiple tensions in migrants' strategies of establishing and making sense of social bonds more generally (e.g. see Hall Citation2003). 16Many of the inconsistencies of collective diasporic identity-construction that accompany the sootechestvenniki project arise from the fact that this project has to be adapted to a wide diversity of Russian communities across the world, with considerable differences between communities in the near and the far abroad in particular. The official aim of the project is to bring the interests and self-understandings of the different Russian communities worldwide formally under a single ideological and institutional umbrella. For this purpose, the Russian foreign ministry and other organisations involved in the development of the compatriots network support global and regional compatriot congresses and other events, both in Russia and elsewhere. For congresses in St Petersburg (2006) and Moscow (2009), see http://www.mid.ru/ns-dgpch.nsf/newnav and http://www.mid.ru/ns-dgpch.nsf/congr, both accessed 20 June 2011. 17The transcripts of formal interviews are archived at the Oxford Life History Archive, available at: http://www.ehrc.ox.ac.uk/lifehistory/index.htm, accessed 20 June 2011. 18More details on the fieldwork and interviews are available in the Newsletter No. 1, pp. 7–9 (June 2008) of the project 'National Identity in Russia from 1961: Traditions & Deterritorialisation', available at: http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/russian/nationalism/newsletter.htm, accessed 20 June 2011. References to specific individuals involved in the processes discussed in the article are systematically avoided, in order to protect the anonymity of research participants. As already mentioned, the issues tackled in this article are conceptual and hermeneutic, rather than pragmatic, which means that the specificities of diasporic micro-politics are not essential to the article's core argument. 19See also the already mentioned IOM 2007 Mapping Exercise (International Organisation for Migration 2007) and the BBC 'Londongrad' project, available at: http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/in_depth/2007/londongrad/default.stm, both accessed 20 June 2011. 20The term 'marketplace' here should be understood in a broad and metaphorical way to include both material and symbolic forms of exchange: so not just the exchange of money, labour, products and services, but even more importantly, the simultaneous and interrelated exchange of information, favours and contacts. Insight into the expansion of this field can be gleaned, for example, from articles and advertisements in the Russian migrant press. Particularly informative in this respect, in the period 2007–2008, were the weeklies London-Info and Angliya. Classified adverts found in these newspapers are a useful source on less formal types of exchange. It is important to note that the boundaries of the 'marketplace' in question are necessarily fluid and that transactions within it are not confined to the Russian-speaking migrant body alone, but strategically extend to other, non-Russian-speaking, migrant groups, to representatives and institutions of the host society, as well as to the respective migrants' home countries. Of course, individual migrants vary considerably in terms of how much they rely on these migrant exchange networks, if and how exactly they use them, and how much access they have to which part of the network. These exchange networks are highly fragmented due to the uneven distribution of different forms of capital within the UK Russian-speaking migrant body. The dynamics of exchange within this 'marketplace' entail strategies of both cooperation and competition (Byford 2009b). 21Interviews with several Russian community activists (anonymous), carried out in the course of 2008. 22Interviews with officials at the Russian Consulate and Embassy in London (anonymous), conducted in September 2008, and an interview with another informant involved in 'compatriot' mobilisation internationally, conducted in October 2008. On the development of policy and rhetoric in Moscow during the 2000s see de Tinguy (Citation2010, pp. 193–204). 23On the first forum see, for example, Baikal'tsev (Citation2007, pp. 1, 4–5). 24 While focusing primarily on 'consolidating' a diasporic network, compatriot forums are also used as a means of co-opting sympathetic and interested Britons who are invited to take part in the forums. These include, for instance, representatives of organisations devoted to Anglo-Russian cultural exchanges, city twinning or charity programmes, academics and language teachers involved in Russian studies, as well as spouses of Russian migrants. While this has clear historical roots in Anglo-Soviet cultural exchange programmes (Barghoorn Citation1960), the rhetoric of 'co-option' at times takes an original form—that of the mock inclusion of British Russophiles among the 'compatriots', something made possible by the fact that 'compatriots' are at least at some level conceived as worthy of this title primarily on account of their loyal and active promotion of Russia and its culture outside Russian borders. 25What follows is based largely on formal and informal interviews with a wide range of Russian diaspora activists and participants of these forums (anonymous), carried out in 2007–2008. 26See http://www.russian-council.co.uk/, accessed 20 June 2011. The literal translation of this organisation's name is 'The Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots', although the Russian title has been officially (mis)translated into English as 'The Russian Speaking Community Council'. 27On the former see http://www.eurolog-uk.org/ and on the latter http://www.obshina.org/. On their quarrel see Obshchina's 'open letter', available at: http://www.obshina.org/news/—-otkrytoe-pis_mo-rossiyskih-sootechestvennikov-prozhivayushih-v-velikobritanii.220/, all sites last accessed 20 June 2011. 28See events listed on the KS website: http://www.russian-council.co.uk/ and also the activities of cultural outreach by the organisation Eurolog, whose representatives formed the original core of KS; see http://www.eurolog-uk.org/, both sites accessed 20 June 2011. 29For the official KS declaration see: http://www.eursa.eu/node/1774, as well as the related address by Sergei Lavrov, available at: http://www.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf/sps/7C471183066DF509C32574B4002 658DF, both accessed 20 June 2011. 30Interviews with Russian Embassy representatives and others involved in the mobilisation of the compatriot network in the UK (anonymous), carried out in September and October 2008. 31Wealthy businessmen and successful professionals have no interest in this particular form of diasporic entrepreneurialism and community politics, and would not invest in it, either socially or financially. Such groups have their own closed networking platforms (for example 'Russians in the City', for which see: http://www.russiansinthecity.org/) and their own exclusive kind of global mobilisation (for example 'project snob', for which see: http://www.snob.ru/), both sites accessed 20 June 2011. 32See: http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en, accessed 6 September 2010. 33On Russkii Mir centres see: http://www.russkiymir.ru/russkiymir/ru/rucenter/presentation.html. The second centre in the UK opened at Edinburgh University in May 2010, while a third started work at St Antony's College, Oxford in the autumn of 2011. Another such centre is scheduled to open at Durham University in the course of 2012, while similar plans are currently being considered at the University of Glasgow. These centres are designed as outposts of Russia's Russkii Mir programme of cultural outreach, although their precise use in the UK remains to be developed. British representatives of the institutions that have welcomed these centres emphasise their role in language learning or academic endeavours, insisting that they come with no other strings attached, while construing them as a natural form of international outreach, on a par with what any developed state is likely to do as part of its cultural promotion strategy. Russian migrants commonly express pride in these centres as testimony of the spread of Russian influence, but also, somewhat contradictorily, have a tendency to be far more cynical about them, interpreting them as a form of Russian state propaganda and a means of political infiltration. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAndy Byford Research for this article was carried out as part of the project 'Russian National Identity since 1961: Traditions and Deterritorialisation', directed by Professor Catriona Kelly (New College, Oxford) and funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/E509967/1). I wish to thank the participants of the conference National Identity in Eurasia II: Migrancy & Diaspora (Wolfson College, Oxford, 10–12 July 2009), as well as those who heard me present at St Antony's College, Oxford in 2009 and Sciences Po, Paris in 2010, for useful discussion and feedback on early drafts. I thank the two anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions for improvement. In addition to the anonymous participants of my research, I wish to thank the following individuals who helped with constructive comments and relevant information at different stages of this article's development: Catriona Kelly, Anne de Tinguy, Marlène Laruelle, Don Starr, Oksana Morgunova, Anna Pechurina, Olga Bronikova and Elisabeth Schimpfoessl.
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