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RIA Novosti
The law of the Russian nation, proposed to President Vladimir Putin and approved by him adopted in the development of parliamentarians. This is not the first attempt to engage in national construction in the country during Soviet times, the party program contained a provision about the Soviet people as a historical community. “Ribbon.ru” asked experts to talk about how successful was the project and what is the fate of the new law.
Doctor of economic Sciences, Director of the Institute of demography HSE Anatoly Vishnevsky:
Of course, in the Soviet Union uttered the words which more adequately describes the reality, but because the state existed, then perhaps we can speak of the existence within it of a certain community. When the war began, fought by all citizens, they saw the natural defenses of this country, and therefore considered themselves a community.
Demagogy about a single Soviet people existed because the Soviet society was not flawless in terms of organization of international relations. But this refers to the games of power that had led them on the basis of their domestic political considerations, and not to people.
If to speak in General, the idea of a civic nation reasonable. Imagine that we re having some problems with the outside world. Then, of course, all citizens act in concert, and no one refuses, for example, from the mobilization of the army, based on the fact that he is not Orthodox, or any other differences. You can be anyone by religion or ethnic roots, but to feel like a citizen of the country.
This situation exists not only for us. For example, in the U.S. you can consider yourself African American or Latino, but an American citizen and to position yourself. No matter how it was called, the idea of national identity is the most important, while maintaining all other identities (national and other). It, however, should be excluded ethnic logic, which we cannot do. The USSR had all sorts of theories of indigenization, ethnic differences, which were considered always of great importance at all levels, in spite of the rhetoric about internationalism, not said to be realized in practice. Do not make a carbon copy of the concept of the Soviet people.
I’m afraid that the law of the Russian nation — it is also rhetoric. Why is it needed? Do our citizens have no idea about his civilian identity? USA consist of immigrants, but they all consider themselves Americans. If they have a law on this?
Head of School of cultural studies, HSE Vitaly Kurennoy:
I would not exaggerate the successes of Soviet power in the building of the Soviet people. If you look from a historical point of view, this is a very complex process which often swayed the pendulum in different directions. Since the formation of the Soviet Russia has not been solved, the Russian question. The biggest nation, the great Russian, in the USSR never had, unlike many others — for example, its Academy of Sciences.
Starting from the second post-revolutionary Congress of the party of national cultural policy was supervised by Stalin. There were identified the particular concept in which about any Soviet community were not discussed. It was assumed that should be the active phase of nation-building.
In the Soviet Union’s policy of homogenization (the tendency to make all things Soviet) was carried out. Perhaps the authorities felt that any risks associated with it — hard to say. In addition, you need to understand that the Soviet Union has always generated some kind of picture of yourself in developing countries — remember Lenin’s thesis on the right of peoples to self-determination. It was necessary in every way to show that our family of fraternal peoples each have their own national language, theatre and so on.
The project is the construction of a unified Soviet people is not realized. Within the Soviet system actively created and built the nation (to some extent at the initiative of the center, some at the initiative of the national intelligentsia), but the positive consequence of all this was the relatively bloodless collapse of the Soviet Union.
With regard to the law of the Russian nation, the top, of course, there are people who think they can construct anything. But my feeling, from the Soviet era everything goes according to his Soviet inertia. Government shows its concern about this issue, and that she will be able to actually build it is another matter.
In Soviet times, the level of educational, cultural policy, legislation has created mechanisms that did not allow so easy to implement any kind of homogenization at the example of a European nation. Moreover, a nation in the European sense — the product is quite old, resulting from a rather unpleasant violent policy.
Leading researcher of the Institute of sociology Leonti Byzov:
I believe that the Soviet people as a community was a reality. Perhaps this concept was not brought to an end, because those ideologues who hurried to call all of this a new historical community, a little ahead of time, but a certain tendency, common features of a single nation existed.
These features exist today. If you look at some people from Central Asia, they remained largely Soviet people, brought up by the Soviet authorities. But it was on the surface. Deeper factors of belonging to their ethnic group in the disintegration of the Soviet Union broke them. The Soviet community was not very sturdy, it buckles lay on the surface and has not stood the test of the first serious political crisis.
The same Ukrainian nation began to emerge only in the last 20 years. You are unable to find the difference between the average inhabitant of Dnepropetrovsk and Kursk and Nizhny Novgorod. In a sense, it was one of the people. But the political situation we are broke, and today we belong to different Nations. Soviet community retained some residual traits, but in General collapsed.
I think the nation-building process cannot be speeded up or slowed down the adoption of any law. The laws we have, as a rule, is not valid — that is, they are more a matter of ideological construction than a real mechanism.
Now we are dealing with a nation divided along ideological factors. We have the most sharply opposed to him a liberal minority that seems great from the point of view of interest, but is quite influential. It’s been said that to form a single nation in terms of the ideological split is very difficult. Before you make a law, it is necessary to think about closing that gap.
The same applies to regions. A lot of effort must be applied to residents of the Far East felt themselves full-fledged citizens of Russia in the conditions, when they actually divorced from her. Implicitly there are their processes of formation of its historical community that is different from the national average. So, in my opinion, the adoption of this law skorospeshnymi and without serious analytical work does not give any positive results.
The Russian nation can create some positive action program, which today is not. I had the impression that in the first decade of this century to 2011, the same slow and cautious program of modernization existed, while maintaining some safeguards for those populations that did not fit into it. It seemed that we move forward, we have our own way of modernization, though not very fast and forced, as proposed in the 90-ies. Now that feeling has vanished, calling into question the reality of uniting people around a positive program. A common vision of the future does not exist, and it is a very dangerous thing that undermines the possibility of forming a single Russian nation today.
Journalist, chief editor of the Internet magazine “Russian commentator” Yegor Kholmogorov:
First of all, let’s be honest, that no Soviet people in the ethnic and cultural sense — in the sense in which there are large historical nation — never was and never could be according to the terms of the organization of the Soviet system. There are, of course, the young modernist of the nation, such as, for example, the United States is a nation of migrants.
The peoples of the Soviet Union lived in those places in which they have always lived. Moreover, they had their own state — the Federal Republic. Them to maintain and develop culture: Uzbek, Latvian, Moldavian, Armenian… For some of these peoples of the Soviet period was a time of powerful cultural revival.
To talk about the fact that the people resident in their areas while still having their own quasigovernment, can merge into one nation, not serious. The original idea was absolutely absurd.
The result is that the mixing and the emergence of something close to the concept of the Soviet people occurred mainly in the cities due to two factors. The first is inter — ethnic marriages. The son of Armenian and Azeri with some of the conflicts these two Nations felt more Soviet than Armenian or Azerbaijani. The second factor, which was the replenishment of the Soviet people, is the loss of ethnic identity of Russian, the majority of the population. Russian identity in contrast to others, in the Soviet Union specifically does not support it. Some of the Russians had to lose her and immediately began to consider themselves at the ideological basis of the Soviet people.
But still the layer of carriers of the Soviet identity, which overlaps the old ethnic, was comparatively small. It was significant in the intelligentsia, party workers, but not among the masses. It is clear that as soon as you start the process of the collapse of the Soviet system and the national Renaissance in the era of perestroika, with all Nations, except the Russian, this identity came off the bullet. Already by 1989, all ethnic suburbs have become acutely nationalistic.
Just due to the fact that Russian national identity was suppressed much stronger in Russia, this process was delayed for a much longer time. But just when it recovered, there was talk about the Russian nation, and I think this is just some stupid setup. It is ground who are trying to turn back, and in those conditions, when, in addition to conflict, he did not rocks.
The Russian nation can not appear in the form in which it represents the authors of the law, as a synthesis and amalgamation of various peoples and Nations living on the territory of the country. To them this law constitutes an international criminal offence.
The Russian nation exists. She spelled out in numerous ethnographic reference books, encyclopedias and so on. Then suddenly it turns out that the Russian nation will be abolished, and instead, it will be Russian. Purely legally it may be regarded as a threat of genocide, because genocide is not always physical extermination. Ban for Armenians in Turkey and call themselves Armenians also a form of ethnocide.
The authors of this idea has entered very dangerous ground. Nothing but additional political conflicts in Russia, this story may not breed. This ill-conceived idea thrown hard on the President. I have never in the last two and a half years I never heard so much criticism as after the statement of the Russian nation. As mentioned in the mid-2000s, the President was set up.
Mr. Mikhailov (chair of the Department of national and Federative relations of the Russian Academy Vyacheslav Mikhailov — approx. “Of the tape.ru”), who are the loudest advocates of this idea, 70 years planted, proletarian internationalism in Lviv. Already by 1989, it became clear how successful was he in this capacity.
Director of the “Levada-center”, doctor of philosophical Sciences, sociologist Lev Gudkov:
Of course, the project of the Soviet people was more of a slogan than a reality. Practically and legally, this definition did not matter, because all this was regulated by regulations in a situation of an isolated country with very strict ideological control and repressive machine.
The meaning of it — to reiterate the thesis of the moral and political unity of the party and the people, the utopia of unanimity. Real life in the USSR was organized hierarchically at the national and Autonomous republics because of different levels of a state of the device determined different funding, different budgets and different legal practices.
The design of the state destroyed the ideology of one nation. This inevitably gave rise to a conflict of interest. System — Union Republic, Autonomous Republic, Autonomous province, and so on — were fraught with the collapse of the Empire, since it was already there the inequality. Therefore, to talk about the real Soviet people is not necessary, and it became apparent at a time when the pressure and state control weakened.
This concept began to fall apart in connection with the emergence of the movement for equality, the equation of the status of the Autonomous republics and demanding more rights for the latter. It blew up in the end of the Imperial structure. It seems that this experience does not comprehended. A desire to return to Soviet times — repeat the same mistakes.
In Russia no national idea can not be, except the negative that occurs before a phantom external threat, with the consolidation to the contrary. Common values to unite the Russians no, and they cannot create, they cannot be implanted. They appear only in the process of social relations, and very soon. Otherwise it’s an ideological fiction.