National Identity in Russia from 1961 : Traditions & Deterritorialisation
National Identity in Eurasia I : Identities & Traditions
22-24 March 2009
New College, University of Oxford
Conference Abstracts
Opening lecture
Ron Suny (Michigan) 'The Contradictions of Identity: Being Soviet
and National in the USSR'
The modernist project of nation-making aimed to fix identities at the very time that transnational processes and supranational projects worked to confuse and complicate the certainties and stabilities of core identifications. In the USSR an elaborate menu of identities were available, but their ascription or their choice had serious consequences for individuals and groups. This talk explores the changing valences and affective attachments to various identities over the Soviet period in an attempt to understand the power and fragility associated with what people thought they were.
Panel 1: Eurasianism and Empire
Alexander Morrison (Liverpool) 'Aryanism,
Asianism and Imperial Citizenship in the British and Russian Empires'
The ruling elites of the British and Russian empires often made use of ideas of cultural and spiritual kinship with their Asiatic populations to legitimise Imperial rule. In the Russian case this took the form of ‘Asianism’, expounded by so-called Vostochniki such as Prince Esper Esperovich Ukhtomsky, who argued that Russia’s Sonderweg comprised a greater affinity with Asia than any other European power. On the British side it stemmed ultimately from the philological work of Sir William Jones, which had established the existence of the Indo-European family of languages, and was usually described in terms of ‘Aryan Brotherhood’ between Indians and Britons. These vague ideas of kinship could be rhetorically useful, but in neither Empire did they lead to a true form of Imperial citizenship, although the latter idea would become more influential in the second half of the 19th century.
Mark Bassin (Birmingham) 'Eurasianism from Trubetskoi to Dugin'
In this paper I will consider the continuities and fissures in Eurasian doctrine from its 'classical' articulations in the 1920s and 1930s down to its resurrection as 'neo'-Eurasianism after the collapse of the USSR. There is no question that Eurasianism today, as set forth in the writings of Aleksandr Dugin and others, differs substantially from its original formulations. Indeed, in many respects Dugin’s work resonates more authentically with contemporaneous European geopoliticians such as Halford Mackinder (the Heartland), Karl Haushofer (pan-regions) and Carl Schmitt (Großraum) than with Nikolai Trubetskoi and the other Russian émigré intellectuals who laboriously refashioned the image of Imperial Russia into that of 'Russia-Eurasia'. At the same time, however, there are entirely genuine affinities that serve to join the two periods, and these are arguably no less significant than the differences. Bringing these two distinct elaborations of the Eurasian idea into a single framework will provide important insights into what we might call the geopolitics of Russian national identity in the 20th century.
Alexander Titov (SSEES-UCL) 'Lev Gumilev and the Rebirth of
Eurasianism'
The
paper explores the dilemmas faced by Russian nationalist intellectuals in the
wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The conflict between the desire to
preserve the empire and the need to find a new justification for it was
particularly telling in the case of Lev Gumilev, a leading intellectual figure
during Perestroika. What emerged was a new ideological foundation for a
supranational identity aimed at binding together the countries of the former
Soviet Union which continues to exert its influence today.
Emel Akcali (Birmingham) 'Eurasianism: The New Geopolitics of
Kemalism in Turkey'
The paper addresses the development of Eurasianim in Turkey, as a new geopolitical discourse of Kemalism. The paper will first problematise the mainstream current academic interpretation of Kemalism. Second, it will contextualise and analyse the development of Eurasianism as a geopolitical discourse of Kemalism in Turkey. Third, it will scrutinise the feasibility of Eurasianism in Turkey, casting doubt upon its adoption as a viable foreign policy. Finally, the conclusion will summarise and discuss the findings and try to bring new insight to the analysis of Eurasianism as a geopolitical discourse in the making in Turkey and consequently to the way that the contemporary scholarly literature analyses meta-narratives.
Panel 2: The politics of nationality
Yoram Gorlizki (Manchester) 'Ethnic
Politics after Stalin'
The paper will provide preliminary findings from an ongoing ESRC-funded project on 'Networks and Hierarchies in the Soviet Provinces, 1945-1970' (www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/sovietprovinces), which examines the political dynamics of 30 regions across the USSR. The talk will focus on the emergence of a new kind of national politics after Stalin which assumed the form of 'indigenisation from below'. Special attention will also be paid to the role of ethnic leaders and national networks in this period.
Andreas Umland (Eichstaett's Institute) 'Public
Image Problems of the Post-Soviet Russian Extreme Right'
This paper argues that the paltry performance of ultra-nationalist parties in the 1990s can be explained by, among other reasons, a number of contradictions in their ideology, rhetoric, leadership, and symbols. These paradoxes have contributed to creating collective action problems for Russia's significant right-wing support. Thus, the major extra-parliamentary, paramilitary radical nationalist organization, Alexander Barakashov's Russian National Unity, used openly elements of the Nazi's public image like the swastika or Roman salute. The winner of Russia's first multi-party post-Soviet parliamentary elections, the so-called Liberal-Democratic Party is led by Vladimir Zhirinovskii, who is known to have a Jewish father and has made himself a name as a political clown. Russia's major New Right, counter-cultural party is lead by Eduard Limonov, a non-conformist writer who, among other things, described (alleged) homosexual encounters in one of his autobiographical novels. The, perhaps, strongest nationalist party throughout the 1990s was the increasingly Russophile and conservative Communist Party of the Russian Federation which, in spite of its manifest turn to 'national patriotism', did not abandon the attribute 'communist' thus opening itself to accusations concerning its leftist roots and responsibility for the Soviet crimes against Russian people and culture. These parties occupied various political niches in Russia's post-Soviet party spectrum, thus preventing the rise of other organisations with a more coherent public image, and acceptable leader. My hermeneutic analysis seeks to provide an ideographic explanation for why Moscow did not become Weimar, and the Russian extreme right was not able to take advantage of the deep Russian economic, social and cultural crisis of the1990s.
Galina Miazhevich (Oxford) 'Religious
Affiliation and the Politics of Post-Soviet Identity: The Maverick Case of
Belarus'
Belarus, which lies at the periphery of the former Soviet empire and functions as a borderland (pogranich’e) between Europe and Eurasia, and whose population represent multiple religious affiliations, offers a particularly interesting and important case study in post-Soviet national identity. The recent growth of ties between the neo-totalitarian Belarusian State and the Orthodox Church, which goes hand in hand with the State's undermining of the status of other religious confessions, has generated tensions in the Belarusian post-Soviet subject who must now negotiate a path between multiple national identity projects (Nativist/pro-European, Muscovite liberal, Creole, post-Soviet Eurasian/Slavic, East European socialist-collectivist). The state's attempts to influence directly (by closing non-Orthodox places of worship) and indirectly (through mass media propaganda) the population's religious stance via the imposition of a pro-Russian model has exacerbated the differences between Orthodoxy and other religions (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam). The official policy has not only fostered stronger ties between non-Orthodox believers, but has also facilitated the exploration by Belarusian subjects of correlations between their religious affiliations and the ethnic (Slavic/non-Slavic) and geopolitical components to their post-Soviet identities. In many cases this has led to the revitalisation of a hitherto dormant pro-Belarusian identity project. Drawing on both media text analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, the paper considers how this policy impacts upon 'alternative' religious identities and the challenge they pose to official mythologies. Crucially, it is expected that the analysis will shed light on similar processes at work within a (formerly) imperial centre (Russia) whose increasingly authoritarian path under Putin has recently been described ironically as one of 'Belarusization'. Finally, it will highlight contradictions within post-Soviet Belarus's official culture, which must differentiate itself from the imperial centre precisely by strengthening its lost, Orthodox-Slavic essence.
Doug Blum (Providence) 'National
Identity & Globalisation: The Politics of Youth Culture in
Post-Soviet Eurasia'
Is globalization in danger of diluting national identities and 'transnationalising' cultures? How can societies attempt to manage globalisation and become developed while maintaining a viable national identity? In a study of three globalising states and cities in post-Soviet Eurasia – Russia (Astrakhan), Kazakhstan (Almaty), and Azerbaijan (Baku) – Douglas W. Blum provides an empirical examination of national identity formation, exploring how cultures, particularly youth cultures, have been affected by global forces. Blum argues that social discourse regarding youth cultural trends – coupled with official and non-official approaches to youth policy – complement patterns of state-society relations and modes of response to globalisation. His findings show that the nations studied have embraced certain aspects of modernity and liberalism, while rejecting others, but have also reasserted the place of national traditions.
Panel 3: On the margins of Empire
Vera Tolz (Manchester) 'Imperial
Scholars and Minority Nationalisms in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia'
The paper will start by discussing local nation-building projects in Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia in the 1920s, which were a joint venture of Petrograd/Leningrad vostokovedy and leaders of the newly created ethnic autonomies. The paper will analyse how the ideas articulated by Russian scholars and their local associates in the early twentieth century resonate in the post-communist period, when the first generation of nationally-minded leaders from among the inorodtsy has been hailed as national heroes, whereas the role of Russian scholars has been usually denied.
Gulnara Abikeyeva (Almaty) 'Central
Asian Documentary Films of the Soviet Era as a Factor in the Formation of
National Identity'
['Документальное
кино
Центральной
Азии
советской
эпохи как
компонент
формирования
национальной
идентичности']
Soviet documentary cinema was primarily an instrument of propaganda and of the construction of the Soviet myth. We see this clearly in the films of Dziga Vertov and other not so outstanding filmmakers. However, national republics also produced documentary films resisting the mainstream and dealing with historical truths as well as with the local national character and traditions. One such film is The Kyrgyz Miracle - the best-known documentary film of B. Shamshiev and T. Okeyev. Another Kyrgyz film director, Melis Ubukeyev, also managed to do film with the title I Serve the Soviet Union, yet which is, somewhat paradoxically, emphatically anti-Soviet in content. Such films exist in every Central Asian country. This paper will analyse which themes and ideas were the most important for the development of a national consciousness in each of the five Central Asian republics.
Sergei Abashin (IEA-RAN, Moscow) 'Nation-Construction in
Post-Soviet Central Asia' ['Конструируя
нации в
постсоветской
Центральной
Азии']
After the collapse of the USSR, the post-Soviet states of Central Asia once more began the search for an ‘authentic’ national history dating from the days before Soviet, and indeed Russian, rule. Every country in the area starting attempting to create a canonical image of ‘its’ people (the ‘titular’ ethnic group in the state) – the traditional dress, food, habitations, folklore, songs, dances, behaviour standards, traditional moral values, rituals and so on which allegedly characterised this. Many elements attributed to this ‘national character’ have been integrated into the contemporary political structure – e.g. mahallia in Uzbekistan, the Aksakal courts in Kyrgystan, the people’s council in Turkmenistan, etc.); others have become obligatory references in architecture, sculpture and mural painting, and in various political and social rituals. On the one hand, historical tradition has come to be seen as the main source of the new national states’ legitimacy, a way of presenting local identity to the world and infusing modern existence with deep meaning and a sense of tradition. On the other, it has developed into a means of manipulating social consciousness and to the focus of contestation among different types of nationalism.
Olivier Ferrando (Sciences-Po, Paris) 'The
Russian Language on the Margins of the Empire: Education Language Policies and Practices in Post-Soviet Central Asia'
In Soviet times, the policy of nationalities used the language among other cultural criteria to differentiate ethnic groups and reinforce their collective consciousness. Most citizens were consequently guaranteed a school instruction in their own native language. Since 1989, Central Asian governments have endeavored to promote their State language in all areas of the public sphere. In the sector of education, new policies encouraged the use of the State language as the sole language of instruction. As a result the share of schools where education was run in Russian language or in any other minority language appreciably declined during the first decade of independence (1991-2001). In recent years however, Russian schools have recovered the attractiveness they had in Soviet times. Notwithstanding the mass departure of Russians from Central Asia and the resulting lack of Russian teachers, many parents request the opening of new Russian classes or schools. This revival of Russian as a language of instruction is related to geopolitical changes in the region, as well as the extraordinary fast, albeit recent, emigration trends of Central Asians to Russia. This paper proposes to examine the revival of the Russian language in the sector of education in three neighboring Central Asian countries, namely Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It analyzes, in a comparative way, the emphasis given to Russian in terms of both the education language (i.e. the primary language in which the education is run) and the language education (i.e. the teaching of Russian as a foreign language). From a State perspective, the paper investigates education language policies, particularly with regard to the production and provision of textbooks, as well as the training and recycling of school teachers. From a community or individual perspective, it seeks to understand the schooling practices that parents develop. A special attention is paid on non-Russian ethnic minorities, insofar as Russian represents neither their native language, nor their State language. I argue here that Russian, as a third and unexpected choice, embodies a new pattern of schooling strategy from parents who seek to maintain a quality education to their children and to ensure them future job opportunities in Russia. The paper is based on published material related to education and language policies in Central Asia, including statistics and data from Ministries of Education (MoE) of the three target countries. It is also supported by an extensive field work in the region since 1998. Interviews with MoE officials, local authorities and community leaders, school directors, teachers and parents where conducted from October 2006 to May 2007.
Panel 4: Nationality and religion
Nikolai
Mitrokhin (Moscow) 'Russian Orthodoxy and the Problem of
Nationalism in the USSR and CIS (1960s-2000s)' ['Русское
православие
в СССР-СНГ в 1960-е-2000-е
годы и
проблема
национализма']
My paper examines three central ideological doctrines that were laid down from the 1960s in the Russian Orthodox Church and which have direct relevance to nationalism. These are the ‘Pitersky’ [Leningrad/St Petersburg] line, the ‘Muscovite’, and the ‘Kievan’. The variations between these lines are considerable, from those supporting the creation of empire to a hard-line racist determination to free Orthodoxy from all ‘non-Russians’. The development and strengthening of these doctrines between 1960 and the start of the twenty-first century were determined by concrete social and political conditions in the USSR and its successor states. Their continuing importance in the present-day Russian Orthodox Church lies behind the panoply of different attitudes to nationalism that characterises the church’s representatives today.
Alexander Panchenko (IRLI-RAN, SPb) 'Popular Orthodoxy in
Twentieth-Century Russia: Ideology, Consumption and Competition'
The paper deals with the problem of the ‘popular Orthodoxy’ in twentieth-century Russia viewed both from the side of elites (state and church officials, scholars, cultural workers, etc.) and from the side of rural population. The dynamics of vernacular religious culture(s) in the Russian countryside can be discussed in terms of ideological and social struggle or competition and, at the same time, as various forms and types of ‘religious consumption’ related to the basic social, cultural and cognitive needs of ‘the ordinary people’. This leads us to the idea of multiple external and internal identities of those who were and are thought to be the subject of the ‘popular Orthodoxy’.
Victoria Arnold (Oxford) 'The Place(s) of Islam in Post-Soviet
Russia: Revitalisation, Manipulation and Conflict'
The size and indigenous nature of Russia's Muslim population, as well as the relevance of Islam to several important strategic priorities (not least the maintenance of territorial integrity and political control in Chechnya), have obliged the Russian government to make a conscious effort to integrate the faith and its adherents into the Russian state (российский ислам) and even into Russian culture and the idea of the nation itself (русский ислам), in order to be able to exercise some degree of control over Islamic practices and attitudes. This study examines the use of religious space in the pursuit of this policy, from official mosque visits and service broadcasts to state-supported programmes of mosque restoration in Chechnya. The ideal of 'Russian Islam' promoted in the official sphere does not, however, seem to have encountered much success on a local scale, as is evident from instances of conflict over Islamic religious space, in large part focusing on the specific location and/or landscape presence of mosques – the territorial expression of a view of Islam as something which does not 'belong', either in a particular place or in the space of Russian culture/Orthodoxy as a whole. Russia’s Islamic balancing act is hence reflected in a noticeable divergence between federal and local spheres in perceptions of the role and position of the faith.
Alisher Ilkhamov (SOAS) 'Localism
vs. Cross-National Mobility: Islamic Identity-Formation in Uzbekistan'
This paper explores the correlation between two sets of variables: (1) the current trends in the Islamic movements of Uzbekistan and (2) the process of cross-national communication involving the Uzbek civil society. Part of the onslaught on Islam by the former Soviet regime was the restriction of the Muslim population’s cross-border mobility and communication. The current political regime in Uzbekistan carries on, albeit only partially, a Soviet-style approach to religion. On the one hand, the Uzbek leadership claims allegiance to Islam and actively exploits Islamic symbols; on the other, it imposes a very restrictive, state-controlled version of Islam and oppresses any alternative forms and practices suspected of being influenced by foreign Islamic schools. This dual policy has led to the persecution of home-grown Islamic reformists, the closing down of branches of international Islamic networks, the expulsion of foreign missionaries, and the restriction of all forms of independent engagement with the wider Muslim world. The outcome of these developments is two-fold: (1) a new retreat of Islam into the private sphere of family and ritual life, a phenomenon akin to practices of ‘popular Islam’ in the Soviet era; (2) the emigration of Islamic networks operating in the public sphere, which are forced to seek refuge in the West, from where they then resume their outreach activity. The example of Uzbekistan exemplifies the post-Soviet conflict between a secular authoritarian regime and grass-roots Islamism, exposing the limits of this state’s domination over its Muslim civil society. The paper draws attention to the geographical mobility and cross-national spread of this civil society as a key source of its resilience and survival.
Panel 5: Nationality in memory and representation
Peter Holquist (Pennsylvania) 'From Estate to
Ethnos: Cossack Identity in the Twentieth Century'
This paper will address how over the course of the twentieth century the institutional forms and manner of public identification for Cossacks shifted from a model of a juridical estate to that of an ethnic group. The paper concentrates in particular on the impact of the revolution and civil war on the political forms of Cossack representation; on the role of Soviet nationality politics and Cossack organizations in the emigration during the interwar period; and the catalytic impact of the Soviet collapse on the emergence of new-form Cossack organizations.
Dmitry Baranov (Russian Ethnographic Museum, SPb) 'Archaising
Culture: Exhibition Strategies at the Russian Museum of Ethnography in the
Mid-Twentieth Century' ['Архаизируя
культуры:
экспозиционная
стратегия
Российского
Этнографического
музея во
второй
половине ХХ в.']
My paper examines the crisis in the representation of culture in the Ethnographical Museum (St Petersburg) and which was especially evident in the handling of the permanent displays and of temporary exhibitions in the 1930s-50s. I analyse the formation of a new conceptualisation of the representation of the ‘peoples of the USSR’, which facilitated a partial solution to this crisis. The techniques evolved at this point remained relevant until the very end of Soviet power (the late 1980s).
Rana Mitter (Oxford) 'Ghosts
and Memories: Commemoration of the War of Resistance against Japan in post-Mao
China'
This paper will examine the way in which experience of World War II in China was both similar to and different from that in the other major Eurasian Allied power to suffer invasion, the USSR. For both China and the USSR, the state was pushed to the edge of its capacity: China came very close to utter collapse, and its government fell within a few years, whereas the USSR proved more resilient. While concentrating on how the Nationalists and Communists refracted memory of war in China, the paper will suggest that the USSR provides important comparative elements that relate to its status as a large, vulnerable land power within Eurasia.
Birgit Beumers (Bristol) 'Nostalgia for a Soviet Past? National
Memory in Post-Soviet Cinema'
Traditionally post-Soviet historical films have focused on events and periods that could inspire a sense of pride in the viewer; this stands in sharp contrast to the loss of pride in the portrayal of reality in Russian cinema of the 1990s. Historical settings of post-Soviet films tended to focus on pre-Revolutionary times, on Soviet heroism during WWII or on the suffering of people during the Purges. Only in the late 1990s filmmakers gradually turned to the recent history of their country. Films began to show the latent violence during the 1950s (e.g. Pavel Chukhrai’s The Thief, 1997; Valeri Ogorodnikov’s The Barracks, 1999, or Leonid Maryagin’s 101st km, 2001. Alexei Uchitel’s Dreaming of Space (2005) juxtaposes the Soviet dream of conquering space with real life, while A Driver for Vera (Pavel Chukhrai, 2004) debunks the myth of a political Thaw. Films set in the stagnation era (e.g. Totalitarian Romance by Viacheslav Sorokin, 1998, or Vanishing Empire by Karen Shakhnazarov, 2008) explore the growing dissent with the Soviet way of life on a private level. The most recent period of Soviet history, the 1980s, is dismantled in such films as Alexei Balabanov’s Cargo 200 (2007) and Vadim Abdrashitov’s Magnetic Storms ( 2003), which show how the collapse of the Soviet system as a result of internal putrefaction rather than a desire for reform. None of these films glorify the Soviet past: instead, they reveal how people lived during those years, attempting to show real life on the screen, as opposed to the tidy and varnished reality shown in post-war Soviet cinema.
Panel 6: National cities
Dina Khapaeva (Smolnyi Institute) 'Post-Soviet
Moscow: Literary Reality or Nightmare?' ['Постсоветская
Москва:
литературная
реальность
или кошмар?']
Over the last ten years, a new image of Moscow has emerged in fantasy and fiction. This new image alters previous, Soviet representations of Moscow in much the same way as the architectural design of the Soviet capital has been altered since the mid-1990s. Indeed, Moscow, as no other Russian city, offers a favourite background for fantasy plots and actions, and a special setting for supernatural effects and activities. Is the reason for this the symbolic role performed by Moscow in representing the transformations undergone by post-Soviet society? How do suppressed memories of the Soviet past and Stalinism influence this image? And to what extent can fantasy be used as a literary source for understanding the hidden work of historical memory? The paper addresses these issues using fantasy novels by S. Lukyanenko, V. Panov, V. Sorokin, and V. Pelevin among others. Special attention will be paid to the role that the concept of ‘fictional reality’ (literaturnaya realnost’), as opposed to ‘dream’ or ‘nightmare’, can play in the analysis of literary texts in this context.
Levon Abrahamian (Yerevan) 'Yerevan:
Memory and Forgetting in the Organisation of Space of a Post-Soviet City'
['Ереван:
память
и забвение в
оганизации
простанства
постсоветского
города']
The
rapidly urbanised Yerevan will be observed through the old and new names of its
quarters, streets and squares, changes in planning and space formation, both
official and popular. The city, claiming to be almost twenty-eight centuries
old, seeks to rid itself of the past two-centuries of its history in order to
reshape its space in accordance with the national narrative. The space of the
city will be discussed in the context of the rallies of the late-1980s and 2008,
looking, in particular, at the competition between city squares in terms of both
function and shape, and also at the re-evaluation of the streets through marches
and political actions. Other topics to be discussed will include: monuments as
the city's key points and markers of national history, urban planning and its
cultural by-products, sacred and trade centers.
Alim Sabitov (Almaty) 'Kitsch in the
Contemporary Urban Environment of Kazakhstan' ['Китч
в
современной
городской
среде
Казахстана']
The paper will examine various manifestations of kitsch in the urban culture of Almaty – the biggest city in Kazakhstan. It will also discuss some theoretical aspects of the emergence and existence of kitsch as a ‘superstructural’ system of material culture.
Elza Guchinova (IEA-RAN, Moscow) 'Elista
between the USSR and the Orient: National and Ethnic Symbols in the City Text' ['Элиста
между
СССР и
Востоком: национальные
символы в
тексте
города']
In Soviet Elista, markers of local/individual identity were reduced to a minimum. In the post-Soviet Republic of Kalmykia, by contrast, the image of the city changed radically: from anonymously ‘Soviet’ it was transformed by assiduous ‘Orientalisation’. Pagodas, Buddhist temples, arches and columns, and dozens of monuments to the heroes of national epic bear witness to the search for the ‘national idea’ in the framework of the Russian federal state.
Panel 7: Transnational cities
Catriona Kelly (Oxford)
'"A European City in Russia": Living with Transnational History
in St Petersburg'
Referring to the 'European' character of St Petersburg is a common place in discussions of the city. One need only cite Wikipedia: 'Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western European styled city of Russia', or the title of the online travel journal cited in the title of my paper. Yet perceptions of the 'European' character of the city (also perpetuated in recent references by the local government to 'European standards' as a measure for social achievement) stand alongside significant changes in the population since 1917. With no more than 15 per cent of non-Russians living in the city permanently, St Petersburg compares, in terms of its minority populations, with Madrid, rather than with London or Paris, let alone New York. Pride in 'European' origins does not necessarily make the city's population welcoming to outsiders - indeed, it may be one factor behind intolerance of incomers from outside Europe. This paper, based on interviews and first-hand observation, sets out to explore some of the contradictions of inter-ethnic contact in the city during the recent past.
Robert Pyrah (Oxford) '(Back) towards a Hyphenated Identity?
Recent Academic and Cultural Discourses on L’viv's "Multicultural"
Past'
The city of L’viv, now in West Ukraine, has famously been subject to numerous ‘regime changes’, no less than four over the last century: from Habsburg Lemberg to Polish Lwów in 1918, through Nazi occupation to Soviet Lvov, finally to L’viv in 1991. This paper looks at the tensions in its identity, particularly its relationship to its multicultural past in the more monocultural present.
Bruce Grant (NYU) 'Cosmopolitan
Baku'
Among the many points of reflection in looking back on the last one hundred years in the Caucasus, a particular pride of place for Azeris comes in the status of Baku as a cosmopolitan city: a status claimed by historians who speak of the early twentieth-century border crossings between families and trade networks across Turkey and Iran; and more recently, a status claimed by residents of the city from the Soviet 1960s and 1970s, when the large urban area's diverse population is remembered so vibrantly for its jazz festivals and its internationalism. At the same time, however, the Azerbaijan SSR had one of the lower rates of intermarriage and out-migration of all the Soviet republics. What does cosmopolitanism mean in this context and what might it signal for Caucasian futures? What does it mean to look back on Baku's diverse past today, when so many borders across the Caucasus are rising, rather than falling?
Tsypylma Darieva (Humboldt University, Berlin) 'Transnational
Berlin: Russian Speakers in the City after the Fall of the Wall'
In a time of economic globalisation and cross-border migration after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German capital is increasingly turning into a transnational space where not only past and present collide, but where cultural, religious, economic and social dynamics are often influenced more by distant places than by their immediate surroundings. Berlin is central and unavoidable when exploring the interplay of transnational identities in a Eurasian context. Exemplary for its supposed homogeneity as a National Socialist capital, and then unique in its dividedness during the cold war, Berlin is today, twenty years after the fall of the Wall, celebrating its multiculturality and openness (Weltoffenheit) not only by featuring Little Istanbul, or a burst of African churches, for instance, but also by the significant presence of a population of Russian speakers from various parts of the former Soviet Union. In this paper I shall talk about Berlin as a creative transnational city with specific focus on the emergence in it of new Russian-speaking ‘Eurasian’ spaces. Why did the Charlottenburg district of Berlin become a symbol of the ‘Russian presence’ in Germany and why has it lost this status despite the large number of Russian speakers who are still living there? Referring to Russian newspapers, the Russendisko and Russian shops in Berlin, I shall discuss the place of transnational relations in this city’s landscape and the way in which they are altering the face of a European city in transition.
Panel 8: The Soviet national imaginary
Albert Baiburin (EUSPb) 'Soviet
Rituals and Identity: The Solemn Presentation
of the Soviet Passport' ['Советские
обряды и
идентичность:
торжественное
вручение
паспорта
The late 1950s initiated a process of transformation of Soviet rituals and invention of new rituals that was (according to the official version) initiated by calls from the Soviet masses. Letters from factory and collective farm workers suggesting new work festivals such as 'Hammer and Sickle', or 'Komsomol weddings' and 'age of majority celebrations' were regularly cited in the press. Unlike the festivals of the 1920s, these festivals and rituals were generally not radically atheist or 'revolutionary' in character, though they were supposed to loosen the still tenacious grip of religious ceremonies and holidays. Rather, they were intended to help create the 'new Soviet man' who was also celebrated at the Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party in 1961. 'The Solemn Presentation of the Soviet Passport' belonged to the category of 'civic and family' festivals and rituals (along with marriages, baby naming rituals, departure for service in the army, and so on). This category was extensively discussed at First All-Soviet Congress on the Implementation in Daily Life of New Civic Festivals held in Moscow in 1964. The 'Solemn Presentation of the Soviet Passport' marked the moment at age sixteen when young citizens received their first internal identity card, which specified their Soviet citizenship (along with their 'nationality', or ethnic group, and sundry personal information). By no means everyone went through such a ritual (many were simply handed their passport in the local passport office); to participate was intended as a reward for the most upright future citizens. While no one canonical version of the passport ritual existed, it always included patriotic texts and was intended to convey the momentous 'rights and duties' that were associated with being a citizen of the USSR. As one of the few Soviet rituals that has survived 1991, the 'Solemn Presentation of the First Passport' also has contemporary interest.
Andrew Jenks (California State) 'The
Cosmonaut Who Couldn't Stop Smiling: Yuri Gagarin and the Many Faces of Modern
Russia'
Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin was born twice: first on March 9, 1934 and again on April 12, 1961 (celebrated every year after that date as Cosmonaut Day). During his second birth he was born, not as a human being, but as a national icon, the world's first space traveler. Indeed, when Yuri Gagarin flew into space April 12, 1961, he became an instant idol and national hero – and remains so to this day. His biography is thus more than the biography of single man. It is also the history of a nation in the age of Mutual Assured Destruction and space travel – the embodiment of its hopes and dreams as well as its fears and obsessions.
Anna Kushkova (EUSPb) 'Surviving
in the Time of Deficit and the Narrative Construction of a "Soviet Identity"'
The paper will address the concept of the 'Soviet identity', which among other things is constructed by present-day informants through their distinct practices of adaptation to the alimentary deficit in the late Soviet time (1960-90s). Judging by the informants’ specific attitude to the importance and role of their 'survival experience', it may be argued that deficit presents a specific 'lieu de memoire' shared by people of middle and advanced age.
Vitaly Bezrogov (Moscow) 'Patriotic Education in Soviet &
Post-Soviet Primary Education, or Why One Shouldn't Have a Second
Homeland' ['Патриотическое
воспитание в
советской и
постсоветской
начальной
школе, или
Почему
нельзя иметь
вторую
Родину']
The paper will look at the content of first-year textbooks in native language and literature and will analyse recent paradigm changes in the education of national self-understanding in Russian primary schools. Focus will be on the ‘national’ and ‘liberal’ (‘globalisational’) politico-pedagogical paradigms of the 1990s-2000s, but the paper will compare these to Soviet approaches, especially those of the 1960s.
Panel 9: A new Russian national imaginary?
Hilary
Pilkington (Warwick) & Elena Omelchenko (Ulyanovsk) 'A
New Russian Patriotism? Russian National Identity through the Eyes of Young
People'
This paper will present the initial findings of a quantitative and qualitative sociological study (2007-08) of young people’s understandings and articulations of Russian national identity in two cities (St Petersburg and Vorkuta) in the North Western region of the Russian Federation. As this paper will be the first presentation of the findings of this study, it will concentrate on providing a comparative overview of the survey findings from the two cities. It will focus on outlining the processes and mechanisms of the reproduction of family, regional and national history including what young people know about these histories, where, and from whom, they learn them. It will consider also degrees of ‘rootedness’ or mobility in family and individual histories in the two sites of fieldwork and how this impacts on articulations of identity. Particular attention will be paid to providing an overview of the range of understandings of young people in the two cities of the notion of ‘patriotism’ -national, regional and local - and to gauging the level of tolerance and promotion of (ethnically) exclusive versions of Russian national identity.
Andrew Wachtel (Northwestern) 'Literary
Nationalism in the Contemporary Russian Novel'
From the beginning of the 19th century, literature in Russia has played a key role in defining national identity. Although in the immediate post-Soviet period the prestige of high literature and the importance of its creators appeared to diminish, important literary works have nevertheless appeared which both thematise the search for a new Russian cultural and political identity and propose visions of what it would look like. The talk focuses on four works published since 1995 by authors with a wide range of literary ambitions and political positions but linked by a central concern with debating and creating a new Russian national identity.
Nancy Condee (Pittsburgh) '"Tales
Told by Nationalists": Antilogy's Loophole'
This paper is interested in the circulation in cultural analysis of two opposed, but apparently compatible assertions: Russian culture as increasingly nationalist; Russian culture as increasingly imperial. By certain abstract parameters, these two terms would seem to be exclusive; by others, they accommodate each other without contradiction. Drawing from debates on nationalism among Ernest Gellner, Anthony Smith, Walker Connor, John Breuilly, and others, I argue two things. First, contemporary cultural examples of Russian nationalism—in cinema production, for example—tend to be ill-suited, even opposed, to contemporary understandings of nation-formation, at least in the modernist sense of the term. Second, "nationalism" is a productive term precisely because of its strategic failure to distinguish between empire-destroying and empire-preserving variants. Film directors Nikita Mikhalkov, Aleksandr Sokurov, and Aleksei Balabanov serve as passing references in this argument, though the focus is on their work than on the contingent advantages of terminological slippage.
Michael Gorham (Florida) 'Language
Culture and Economies of Mat in Post-Soviet Russia'
This paper looks at the most significant ways the language culture of the post-perestroika period reflected both newfound freedoms and growing tensions, more often than not in the form of a more 'democratic' linguistic playing field where the boundaries of the 'standard' or 'literary' language were challenged by the influx of non-standard discourses and foreign loans. The main phenomena – which have come to be known in markedly negative language as the 'vulgarization', 'criminalization' and 'barbarization' of Russian, witnessed first a rise, then a decline in symbolic value, in processes that comes to light in this discussion of competing and coexisting linguistic ideologies, economies and technologies of the 1990s.
Enquiries: russian-nationalism@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk