Russians as Collectively and Symbolically the Elite of the Soviet System - Research Paper Example

 The question of whether Russians were “rulers” or “victims” is the focus of a whole volume by Hosking (2006). In a combination of standard historical overview and more detailed stories about individuals who lived through the soviet years as ethnic Russians, he makes a case that Russians were both victims and rulers during this period. The tone is sympathetic, leading some critics to conclude that he overstates the argument of victimhood (Schmemann, 2006) but his book does, however, illuminate the complex myths, histories and political concepts that characterize the position of Russians, as opposed to Georgians, Ukrainians, Chechens and other national groups, within the larger unit that was known as The Soviet Union. The predominance of the Russians within that huge territory is tacitly recognized outside the region, since most English speakers from the revolution onwards retain the overall term “Russia” and “Russians” for the whole soviet regime, but there is certainly an issue about how far this represents reality on the ground. This paper considers linguistic, ideological, historical and political dimensions of this question in turn and finally determines how far the Russians during the Soviet years were rulers of that system and how far they were victims. In the literature concerning modern Russian history there is a clear linguistic distinction between those who are russkii which means someone who is an ethnic Russian, native to that particular geographical area, and rossiiskii which refers to all those who come under the umbrella of the Soviet empire, located in many different smaller regions. The latter term is a derivative of the former, and emphasises the administrative and political affiliations of the people concerned, who may in fact be linguistically and culturally far removed from the Russian population. Difficulties with close definitions of this terminology appear to have been experienced long before the Soviet times, however, since as Weeks points out in his study of obrusenie or “russification” (Weeks, 2004) in late imperialist times, the Russian empire since Ivan the Terrible had always been a multinational state. This state may have officially tolerated diversity in languages, religious practices and culture, but “on the whole nineteenth century Russians… saw cultures and religions in a rather clear hierarchy.” (Weeks, 2004, p.472) Weeks concludes that there was an inherent ambiguity in the term “Russian” which even before the revolution could mean ethnic Russians as well as loyal subjects of the Tsar who came from different ethnic groups. The point is that the supposed ethnic and administrative distinctions between the words russkii and rossiiskii as used in Soviet times were theoretical more than practical, and the hierarchy with russkii in prime position was implied all along in the usage of both terms, even though it was not always explicitly stated. When we bear this in mind it influences the way that we read statements such as this by Hosking: “The Soviet project was an experiment conducted not only by Russians, but also on Russians, by the rulers against the ruled, by socialists against Christians, by townspeople against peasants,” (Hosking, p. 406). The fact is that these distinctions may make sense when theorizing about historical events, but they are shifting categories which are very hard to pin down in exact terms. It was not until the leadership of Yeltsin that the term rossiiskii came to be used more extensively and with a very clear intention to distance the larger unit from its smaller predecessor and promote multi-ethnic consciousness in the waning years of communist influence. The linguistic theories do not bring much clarity to this debate, but there were some clearer factors at work on other fronts. One of Hosking’s main arguments revolves around the ideological heritage of Russia. He notes that Russia borrowed many ideas from the West, because there was no single unifying indigenous belief system with which to foster national unity but that also “As part of its self-demarcation against the West, Russia actually generated two messianic ideas, one associated with Orthodoxy, the other with socialism.” (Hosking, 2006, p. 8). These two “messianic” ideologies clashed, and also only partially matched the community spirit of the Russian people which, Hosking argues, led to ongoing turbulence in the twentieth century. Stability was reached in what Hosking terms “neo-Russian imperialism” (Hosking, 206, p. 235) which revived many of the old thought patterns of the Tsarist period. It appears that communism did not eradicate these old anti-revolutionary tendencies, it merely buried them in a shallow grave, to re-emerge and haunt the struggling mature Soviet Union. Ambiguities in the position of Russia can be traced back to the early days of the revolution, when there was suspicion of intellectuals, aristocrats and any persons or groups closely identified with the Tsars was at its absolute height. The whole Russian ethnic people could be interpreted as coming into this category, and this explains why in the setting up of Communist Soviet systems, the Russians were treated differently, and arguably more harshly than any other ethnic group. This explains also why systems set up in other regions were not provided for the russkii, such as a separate communist party and various bureaucratic services of state. Leaders concerned with stability of the larger realm no doubt feared that a strong Russian state could too easily dominate its smaller neighbours both in terms of sheer numbers and in levels of sophistication and political experience. So it was that in the early days of the Soviet Union the Russian state was both privileged, in being treated still as the heart of the Union, but also disadvantaged, in that its core position meant a lesser share of political and administrative tools for local, rather than federal influence. They had a great advantage in so far as the Union used their language, and largely also their reputation, especially in dealings with other countries, but they also suffered some repressive actions. Hosking notes that there were moves from the very beginning to foster the development of each separate state in a process called korenizatsiia or “indigenisation” which had the objective to “encourage the non-Russian nationalities to develop their languages, their cultures, their economies and their administrative skills as part of the move towards the international proletarian republic” (Hosking, 2006b, p. 16) This is a clear indication of Lenin’s suspicion of Russian ethnic superiority and his attempt to create a better balance of power within the deliberately international republic structure. The Stalinist regime was equally suspicious of Russian ethnic forces, and many millions of Russian intellectuals were sent to the far corners of the realm, some in exile and some to take part in modernisation programmes, military operations or industrial ventures for the greater good of the union. This created a separation between the people and the land of their birth, and was a deliberate policy to prevent any insurgent tendencies from growing into organised rebellion. A further step in this direction was made when Stalin turned his attention to “the two most potent embodiments of ethnic Russia, the village commune and the Orthodox Church.” (Hosking, 2006b, p. 16). The attacks on these largely cultural targets were arguably more harmful to the Russian people than the deficiencies that they had in terms of structures. Religion and local ties were systematically broken so that Russians, more than any other ethnic group, were forced to see their identity in terms of the greater Union. Meanwhile in the areas beyond the Russia a massive and highly centralized systems for economic and political development was rolled out in all of the regions. Each smaller state had their own passports and local systems, but everything was channelled into the greater Soviet project, with very little concession to local conditions or preferences. Lapidus et al. note that the efforts of both Lenin and Stalin to keep the Russian state in check, while trying to update and modernise the largely peasant societies in large areas of the territory also had some unintended effects: “Despite policies intended to weaken or subvert national identities and loyalties, the Soviet period was also one of nation-building for many ethnic groups.” (Lapidus et al., 1992, p. 2) Hosking observes that this put the Russians in a position of being “custodians of the all-Soviet project” (Hosking, 2006, passim) and that so long as ethnicity was not seen as a particularly relevant issue in Soviet objectives, this was not a problem. In the early period, therefore, it would be fair to say that the Russian part of the Soviet Union did suffer from some historical persecution due to its association with the imperial past and its very strength and advanced development. This was, however, balanced by a certain privileging of their language and some aspects of their culture in the formation of the wider international republic. The middle period in the history of the Soviet Union coincides with the second world war, or as some called it “The Great Fatherland War” (Hosking, 2006, p. 189) and the emergence of the USSR as a world power with the technology and economic strength to match that other world superpower, the USA. The pressures of keeping up with the USA bound the different ethnic groups together and provided also a degree of motivation for unity despite gradually diverging local identities. The cost, however, in terms of quelling dissent from individuals or from national groupings, increased over time, and the Russians were disadvantaged in pursuing their own agenda, because they were trapped into a central unifying role by the communist regime. In political terms, then, the Russian state was not allowed to develop a fully functioning national apparatus to match those of its neighbours. This proved in the end to be a dangerous omission, since the emergence of ethnic tensions in the post-war period turned out to be a major factor in the disintegration of the communist regime. According to Khazanov it would be wrong to attribute the rise of nationalism to ancient hatreds from the tsarist period and beyond, but instead, he suggests, there are three factors which explain what happened: the unusually great diversity of the nations incorporated in the union; the fact that cultural and linguistic borders did not coincide properly with administrative and political ones, and the fact that the different regions had very different types and above all speed of modernization, which created in turn some very great imbalances. (Khazanov, 1997, p. 122). An earlier scholar identifies only two main ideological forces: “Russian history has known only two long-standing and steadfast traditions: the religious traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church and the political tradition of an expansionist authoritarian statehood.” (Boiter, 1982, p. 128) In Boiter’s view, writing in 1982 with some prophetic force, major elements of a Russian national consciousness survived the communist period and urged the people, under the leadership of cultural figures such as Solzhenitsyn, to exert pressure for a form of government which is more concerned with local and national issues and less of an imperial and expansionist ambition. There is widespread agreement that the discontentment of ethnic Russians was, in the end, a main contributory factor in the fall of communism. Just as Russia had an anomalous status at the start of the Soviet project, so it did also when it began to fail: “In many countries, the end of communist rule embodied the idea of national liberation and renaissance. In Russia, it was connected with the loss of superpower status and a diminished role of the country in international affairs.” (Khazanov, 1997, p. 121) The international failures were more significant in the ethnic Russian areas because there were fewer national victories to celebrate. Indeed there was hardly even a national identity to fall back on, since so much of the Russian people’s energy had gone into supporting the greater union. Emotional and symbolic attachments are important in national identity, and the lack of strong familial or mythical concepts for this region as set against the larger scale symbolic “Mother Russia” of the union were a very serious handicap. (Connor, 1994, p. 97) In some ways this situation resembles that of England when it was subsumed into the larger entity that is known as Britain. (Sakwa, 2006, p. 410) This disappointment at the loss of status and privilege crystallised into opposition to the regime: “The final and decisive conflict in the USSR, then, was not between Communism and anti-Communism, as the whole history of the Soviet Union might have led one to expect, but rather between Russia and the Soviet Union. How could that be? Was Russia not the heart of the Soviet Union? How could it confront its own country? (Hosking, 2006b, p. 14) The point is that Russia had become tired of being at one and the same time a victim of oppression from ruling elites and a main provider of manpower and resources for the pursuit of greater soviet goals. So long as the illusion of being at the centre, or even in a ruling position, could be maintained, the cost of supporting the lumbering communist regime was bearable. Once the benefits, however fragile these had always been, disappeared completely, a backlash from Russia was surely inevitable. (Beissinger, 1995, p. 166). In the long battle between Gorbachev and Yeltsin for the presidential position that would define the post-communist future of the former Soviet Union the issue of nationalism, and how that should be defined was crucial, as indeed was the emergence of a new criminal underclass which actively subverted communist rules in order to establish a new western-style free market economy. (Brudny, 2000, p. 253) Once again, Russia was at the heart of both of these issues, and Yeltsin knew how to tap into deep seated ethnic Russian resentment at Gorbachev’s policies. Dunlop notes that the rise of Yeltsin was closely connected with his view of the competing virtues of Russian and wider Soviet approaches: “By late 1989, it had presumably become clear to Yeltsin that his path to supreme power lay not through the structures of the increasingly weakened and unstable USSR but through those of the Russian Republic.” (Dunlop, 1993, p. 54). Yeltsin was well disposed towards Russian ethnic traditions but was careful also to assert the equal rights of other states to develop themselves in their own ways. He tried to harness nationalist feeling but retain an overview over all the other ethnic areas at the same time. This contrasted with the more extreme and pro-Russian position which was taken by Zhirinovski. Significantly, neither the liberal nor the radical nation-building approach seems to have helped Russia emerge from its victimhood into a stable and permanent national identity. In the years leading up to and during the break-up of the Soviet Union there was still a tension in the region between pursuing a federal route, with relative independence for states who willingly remain linked together, and yet another kind of neo-imperialism with all the pretensions of other version that have gone before. Within that framework there was a strong temptation for ethnic Russia to look backwards rather than forwards for inspiration. Hosking predicts that the future for Russia will continue to be fraught with difficulties and considerable confusion about national identity: “for some time to come Russia will be a residual empire rather than a nation state.” (Hosking, 2006, pp. 402-403). Hosking is not prepared to take a firm view on how far contemporary Russia will retain its attachment to concepts of empire, and how far it will relinquish such ideas in favour of a narrower Russian national identity. It is clear, however, that the ruler status that ethnic Russia enjoyed, and paid such a high price for in the past has been diluted in present times now that many quasi-independent former Soviet states look to America and other western countries for inspiration and models of nationhood. In conclusion, then, Hosking’s non-committal answer to the question whether Russians were a rulers or victims in the Soviet System is, as we have seen, based on sound reasoning and while it remains unsatisfying, it does nonetheless reflect the facts: Russians were collectively and symbolically the elite of the Soviet system, and many of them used this to their advantage. On the other hand many Russians bore the brunt of suspicion and oppression at the hands of officials and leaders, many of them ethnic Russians themselves, who were wary of this regions illustrious but non-communist past. References Allworth, E. (ed.) 1980. Ethnic Russia: the Dilemma of Dominance. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 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