Andreas Umland
Dr. Andreas Umland teaches at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, edits the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society,” and compiles the biweekly “Russian Nationalism Bulletin.” This article is a summary of an interview that he gave to the Russian-language information agency “Washington ProFile.”
The roots of Russia’s currently rising nationalism are threefold: pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. The idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” i.e. of a special Russian mission in world history, goes back several centuries. Russian nationalism had been – contrary to what many in the West believed – an important element of Soviet ideology ever since the 1930s. Like in the early 19th century when Moscow’s so-called Slavophiles applied German nativist thought to Russian conditions, ideas of various Russian nationalist movements today are often imported from the West.
A factor accounting for Russia’s recent nationalist resurgence is the mode of thinking learned in Soviet schools and universities – a Manichean world-view which sharply distinguishes between “us” and “them.” Although the basic definitions of “us” and “them” have changed, a number of Soviet stereotypes, for instance, about the US have survived glasnost until today.
The major determinant in Russian nationalism’s recent rise is that the Kremlin’s political technologists have discovered it as a tool suitable to reconfigure political discourse in general. In the Kremlin’s new political reality, Putin is not competing with alternative programs or parties. Putin’s opponents are not socialists, liberals or other Russian political movements. Instead, Putin is juxtaposed to Chechen terrorists, Estonian fascists, Georgian russophobes, Ukrainian neo-Nazis, American imperialists, Western conspirators, and, in general, to various non-Russians who desire to destroy, divide or, at least, humiliate Russia. In this atmosphere of paranoia, it is only logical that those opposing Putin are not acknowledged to constitute legitimate (not to speak of useful) political opposition. Instead, they are represented as a “fifth column” of the West, as traitors who are, in Putin’s words, skulking around foreign embassies like jackals.
This has made politics an easy game for the Kremlin: If the government is busy to defend the country’s pride and integrity, one cannot expect that all niceties of mass media independence, pluralistic public debate, or fair party competition can be observed. Instead of debating what is best for the country, political discussant are searching for a plausible pretext to label the opposite side an enemy of Russia.
The radical, often neo-fascist wing of Russian nationalism, naturally, has been rising together with the movement as a whole. To be sure, both the Kremlin and mainstream public discourse demonstratively condemn manifest expressions of racism. Yet, the extremists - whether active in the neo-Nazi skinhead movement or publishing in high-brow conspirological journals - are part and parcel of the xenophobic hysteria that much of Russian society has recently gotten into. A widespread fear among Russian and Western analysts observing the rise of Russian nationalism is now that the Kremlin could loose (or, perhaps, is already loosing) control of the genie it has let out of the bottle. Russian nationalism might transform from a political technology tool of the Kremlin into a societal force of a proportion beyond the limits of manipulation by the cynics in the Kremlin......Article conts (-)
Dr. Andreas Umland teaches at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, edits the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society,” and compiles the biweekly “Russian Nationalism Bulletin.” This article is a summary of an interview that he gave to the Russian-language information agency “Washington ProFile.”
The roots of Russia’s currently rising nationalism are threefold: pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. The idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” i.e. of a special Russian mission in world history, goes back several centuries. Russian nationalism had been – contrary to what many in the West believed – an important element of Soviet ideology ever since the 1930s. Like in the early 19th century when Moscow’s so-called Slavophiles applied German nativist thought to Russian conditions, ideas of various Russian nationalist movements today are often imported from the West.
A factor accounting for Russia’s recent nationalist resurgence is the mode of thinking learned in Soviet schools and universities – a Manichean world-view which sharply distinguishes between “us” and “them.” Although the basic definitions of “us” and “them” have changed, a number of Soviet stereotypes, for instance, about the US have survived glasnost until today.
The major determinant in Russian nationalism’s recent rise is that the Kremlin’s political technologists have discovered it as a tool suitable to reconfigure political discourse in general. In the Kremlin’s new political reality, Putin is not competing with alternative programs or parties. Putin’s opponents are not socialists, liberals or other Russian political movements. Instead, Putin is juxtaposed to Chechen terrorists, Estonian fascists, Georgian russophobes, Ukrainian neo-Nazis, American imperialists, Western conspirators, and, in general, to various non-Russians who desire to destroy, divide or, at least, humiliate Russia. In this atmosphere of paranoia, it is only logical that those opposing Putin are not acknowledged to constitute legitimate (not to speak of useful) political opposition. Instead, they are represented as a “fifth column” of the West, as traitors who are, in Putin’s words, skulking around foreign embassies like jackals.
This has made politics an easy game for the Kremlin: If the government is busy to defend the country’s pride and integrity, one cannot expect that all niceties of mass media independence, pluralistic public debate, or fair party competition can be observed. Instead of debating what is best for the country, political discussant are searching for a plausible pretext to label the opposite side an enemy of Russia.
The radical, often neo-fascist wing of Russian nationalism, naturally, has been rising together with the movement as a whole. To be sure, both the Kremlin and mainstream public discourse demonstratively condemn manifest expressions of racism. Yet, the extremists - whether active in the neo-Nazi skinhead movement or publishing in high-brow conspirological journals - are part and parcel of the xenophobic hysteria that much of Russian society has recently gotten into. A widespread fear among Russian and Western analysts observing the rise of Russian nationalism is now that the Kremlin could loose (or, perhaps, is already loosing) control of the genie it has let out of the bottle. Russian nationalism might transform from a political technology tool of the Kremlin into a societal force of a proportion beyond the limits of manipulation by the cynics in the Kremlin......Article conts (-)
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