I wrote this text at the request of my colleague on the Region.Expert website, its editor-in-chief Vadim Shtepa, after we had an exchange of views in the comments to the post in which I called the Kremlin propaganda “Russian”.
“Perhaps it would be worth writing not Ruska, but Russian,” suggested one Bashkir reader, historian and ethnologist, who believes that we need to remember the Russian opponents of Russian imperialism. He was supported by Vadim Shtepa, who pointed out that it is absurd to call the propaganda of Simonyan, Solovyov and Kadyrov “Russian” when many ethnic Russians do not support the Kremlin’s policies. At the same time, my namesake ironically reproached me with the fact that having in my political history participated in many distinctly Russian projects and even being their herald, I am now turning into a “Russophobe.”
In response to my counter-arguments, the editor invited me to formulate my vision for a site read by many Russian regionalists who might want to join our discussion. I accept this proposal and will try in my answer to highlight both the objective aspects of this problem and the personal ones.
Who are the Russians today?
The concepts of “Russian” and “Russians” can have many different meanings and dimensions, about which you can write not even hundreds of pages, as I did in past years, but many millions, as has already been done and will probably be done by others. However, if we are talking about politics and war, today these definitions are a designation of a very specific side, which positions itself as “Russian” and which is perceived as “Russian” by the outside world.
To this one can object that there are “other Russians” or “good Russians” who do not support it. There are, but they are not a political force, magnitude or unit of measurement. Just as the Germans did not become it in their time, who did not support the Third Reich and even tried to resist it, due to which for the whole world “Germans” and “German” were synonymous with “Nazis” and “Hitlerites”.
Vadim Shtepa and I have both long been supporters of regionalization and decentralization of the Russian ethnocultural space. With the beginning of Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine, understanding what long-term consequences it would have, I proposed consolidating the “good Russians” into a real force to those representatives of the Russian opposition who had such an opportunity, but instead, they ended up caricaturing this term. Vadim Shtepa criticized these undeveloped initiatives, believing that any “all-Russian” opposition would remain imperial and proposing instead to interact only on a regionalist basis.
In the end, the Russian opposition demonstrated its complete incapacity, and the “good Russians,” instead of a militant and political alternative to Putin’s “Russian world,” turned into a laughing stock and a punching bag on all sides. The only exceptions can be considered a few formations that position themselves as the Russian armed opposition, which are considered by the “Russian world” as “Russians”, and in the camp of its real military-political opponents objectively, at least for the moment, represent a politically marginal and non-subjective phenomenon.
Today I am forced to admit that in the Russian environment, there is no real request for reformatting and rethinking of Russian identity, from which an alternative to the current status quo could arise.
Who are the Russians and with whom?
At one time, in a dialogue with the security officer who recruited him, who told him: “We are Russians with you,” then dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn replied: “We are not Russians with you. ” It’s a beautiful story, and I’ve used it as a rhetorical device more than once myself. The problem is that back then the security officers could be told that they were raising not the Russians, but the Soviets, which was opposed by “real Russians.” Several decades passed and the security officers, putting aside communist internationalism, raised the most odious ideas of Solzhenitsyn himself. And today the main security officer of Russia calls himself not just a Russian, but the main Russian nationalist, and is waging his war under the banner of the struggle for the Russian people and the Russian world, and not for the “world revolution.” In the end, now they are all Russians – both followers of Solzhenitsyn and followers of Putin. You can, of course, try to repeat the same technique about them, declaring that “we are not Russians with you,” but it will be unclear – who are these “we” and do they really represent some kind of Russian alternative?
In this situation, the approach of Sergei Zharikov, also a veteran of Russian nationalism, who, unlike Solzhenitsyn, represents its radical variety, may seem more advantageous in this situation. Today Sergei is convinced that in a positive sense, Russian these days can only exist in the singular, while any attempt to consolidate Russians into some kind of plurality will end with what we see today in the face of the “Russian world.”
Well, in this sense, even today I do not renounce my Russian for myself, in the singular, realizing that I am a product of the Russian cultural and historical environment. However, I do not see collective forms of Russian, viable and capable as an alternative to the “Russian world”. And here we are already approaching the topic that the editor of Region.Expert proposed to discuss.
Vadim Shtepa has long been calling for a reorganization of the Russian ethnocultural space on regionalist, decentralist principles, appealing in particular to the legacy of the Novgorod Republic as an alternative to the Muscovite kingdom. Unlike him and the supporters of this approach, I still do not believe that to reformat Russian self-awareness, its bearers should indiscriminately abandon the Muscovite period – I have a different approach to this issue, which I once outlined in the book “The Unfinished Revolution.” But this is a separate story, which is hardly worth getting distracted by now. One way or another, Vadim Shtepa’s idea is that there is no need to give Russian to the imperial “Russian world”, but to promote Russian in its regional forms – as Siberian, Far Eastern, Ingrian, etc. Just as the Americans who rebelled against the British Empire continued to speak English and retained much of the British legal culture.
This approach is close to me, especially considering that this was the actual testament set out in the last programmatic article “Overcoming Nationalism”, my teacher and comrade-in-arms in the nineties, the author of the book “Rus against Russia, Russia against Rus” Professor Pyotr Khomyakov, some time later after its publication, he was captured by security officers and then killed in a colony shortly before liberation. In it, Pyotr Mikhailovich wrote that Russian nationalism is counterproductive, because Russians as a whole are incapable of becoming a single civil nation, and for this, they need to divide and create different civil nations on a regional basis, which in ethnocultural terms will still remain Russian.
However, today two circumstances are already beyond the scope of this approach. Firstly, we see that some regionalists who could well call themselves Russians no longer want to position themselves that way and consider Russian self-identification, at least in an articulated form, an obstacle to the formation of new national identities on a regional basis. Secondly, and not least the reason for this is the fear that the Russian self-identification of citizens of the new post-Russian states will turn into centripetal tendencies, posing a threat to their sovereignty.
From a practical point of view, I believe that taking into account these risks, one should not take a dogmatic position on this issue, as the Manichaeans from Altufev’s “post-Russian” sect do. That means, if tomorrow some kind of regional republic arises, positioning itself as Russian, but at the same time declaring its regional identity and unwillingness to sacrifice it, it would be absurd to reject such a version of “Russianness”. It’s the same as vice versa – if in an area perceived as ethnoculturally Russian, a new political project arises that renounces Russian self-identification, there is no point in imposing it on it.
However, from a theoretical point of view, as an ethnologist, I cannot help but raise the question with which any theoretical analysis of this problem should properly begin – about the definition of basic concepts.
Russian measurements
If we leave stereotypes aside and stick to the facts, it will become obvious that today’s use of the concept “Russians,” in which Simonyan, Solovyov, Ramzan Kadyrov and Sultan Khamzaev are Russians, actually corresponds to the political and legal practice of pre-revolutionary Russia. Indeed, in its Basic State Laws of April 23, 1906, there were “Russian subjects” as a synonym for “Russian subjects,” but there were no “Russian people” as an ethno-nation with a separate status.
But as a “nationality,” Russians officially appeared only in the Soviet period, or more precisely, under Stalin – under the meaning that the concept of “Great Russians” corresponded to in the Russian Empire. The latter hypothetically gave the opportunity to “Russians by nationality” after the collapse of the USSR to form a Russian ethno-nation, realizing Russia as basically Great Russia – the geopolitical successor of the Muscovite kingdom, but not the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. However, instead of this, the political class of Russia, which considers itself Russian and to which there is no objective reason to deny this characteristic, decided to restore the previous, pre-Soviet, Russian-imperial understanding of Russianness, which in ethnic terms extends in addition to the “Great Russians” and to the “Little Russians” with “Belarusians” (through “o”), and in political terms to all subjects of Russia (formally – citizens of the Russian Federation).
Therefore, when we talk about Russians today, we need to understand what meaning we put into this word. If we appeal to the Soviet understanding of “Russian by nationality,” then we must admit that it turned out to be historically short-lived and has been rejected these days, even though this is what subconsciously sits in the heads of many. If we are talking about “Russian subjects,” then today they are being led into battle by a new tsar. “loyal Russian subjects” are people of different tribes and religions, as has happened more than once in the history of Russia, and there is no real alternative to them in the form of “Russian citizens” and, in my opinion, is not expected.
There are three other possible meanings of this concept. The first is religious-ideological, according to which a Russian is a Russian Orthodox, a bearer of the messianic Russian idea. Neither I, nor my opponent, nor the majority of readers of this site fit it, and they are not interested in it. The second is Russian as a carrier of Russian language and culture in the broad sense, who can adhere to a wide variety of beliefs. Finally, the third is Russian as a Great Russian in the pre-revolutionary understanding (“Russian Little Russians” and “Russian Belarusians” are usually either bearers of the “Orthodox Russian idea of a triune people” or Russian culture in the broad sense). The last two dimensions can theoretically either be combined with the political self-identification of “Russian subjects” or exist separately from it; in turn, the first can be combined with all of them.
So, as for the Great Russians as an ethnic self-identification, it has a right to exist, although it is rarely widespread today, especially when it comes to a conscious understanding of what it is. At the same time, as a professional ethnologist who has studied this issue in sufficient detail, in the course of my research I concluded that from an essentialist point of view, Great Russians should be divided into northern and southern, as ethnologists such as Dmitry Zelenin did at the beginning of the 20th century. They can be considered as a single ethnic group, adhering to the ethno-symbolic approach of Anthony Smith, according to which an ethnic group is perceived primarily as a community of people who recognize common ethnic symbols and myths. However, in this case, the Great Russians will turn out to be more of an ethnopolitical concept than an ethnolinguistic or ethnocultural one – a product of Muscovite politogenesis, levelling out the ethnic differences of the essential components involved in it.
To some, this may seem like going into a completely theoretical jungle, but for example, in my case, it matters. My ancestors were on the paternal, “passport” Russian side – on the direct male side from the western Smolensk region, which in the ethnolinguistic sense was Belarusian land. Its inhabitants became “Great Russians” mainly as Russification progressed, and on my father’s mother’s side – from the Ryazan-Tambov region, from the “southern Great Russians”, who, as shown by the study of the Ryazan folk dialect by the pre-revolutionary Russian linguist Evgeniy Budde, spoke at the end of the 19th century in a dialect closer to Old Belarusian than to Northern Great Russian. To consider myself a “Great Russian”, I need to accept the Great Russian ethnic-symbolic complex, essentially Muscovite. I could do this, believing that it was subject to rethinking, leading to the formation of the self-awareness of a nation of a civil-republican type, and not one that is being built in the “Russian world.” However, since I do not see such prospects, it is easier for me, with my ethnic roots, to accept the ethno-symbolic complex of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, on the territory of which my ancestors, at least in the direct male line, lived for centuries and which contains the potential for such a national-republican evolution and is organic to my existence.
As a result, what remains is Russian culture in the broad sense. Well, to paraphrase Spengler, I have it, but I do not belong to it, and I do not see in it the platform on which to build an identity directed both to the future and to the past that is acceptable to me. At one time, one Roman – Dmowski, the future leader of Polish nationalists who, starting from the 18th century, tried to build a “great Polish nation” based on Polish high culture, called such an absolute bearer as another Roman – Skirmunt to the Polish faction in the State Duma. Skirmunt answered his namesake that he was only Pole by culture, but he chose the Belarusian national project, which was beginning to actively develop thanks to people like him. Someone, in turn, chose the Polish project and Polish identity based on the culture in which they were formed. Thus, in the end, two national projects took shape, each on its own grounds.
Is a Russian civil nation possible on grounds opposed to the imperial “Russian world”? Today it is the latter who speaks on behalf of “all Russians,” and I see no prerequisites for the fact that this can change radically. Therefore, as a bearer of Russian culture in the broad sense of the word, who spent decades of my life trying to rethink and reformulate Russian identity differently, I do not want to deny the obvious and continue to fight for something for which I see no chance of success and for which in my personal In case there is a closer alternative. But I respect those of my colleagues who continue to defend other, non-imperial interpretations of “Russianness.”
Vadim Sidorov
Регион-Эксперт
