Vladimir Putin and the national question - inconsistencies and false premises in the prime minister’s article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta

In the “Political Text” series of materials, Forbes experts analyze articles by Russian politicians. Vladimir Putin has recently especially fallen in love with this genre - see the column “Political text: Putin is not for everyone” about the prime minister’s article in Izvestia. Next up is an analysis of articles by Grigory Yavlinsky, Alexei Navalny and others.

Vladimir Putin, having refused pre-election debates, preferred pre-election monologues. His second speech is devoted to the national issue and this time published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The main idea of the text is a decisive rejection of ethnic nationalism in favor of state nationalism while tightening migration policy measures. Putin is a statist, and national issues concern him to the extent that they affect the well-being and power of the state. This dry summary does not reflect the full richness of the content of the article, in which liberal-academic and conservative-religious views, seasoned with administrative revelations, coexist. The article deserves to be read carefully and “taken apart to its bones.”

I’ll leave behind the scenes stylistic trifles (“the people are a civilization”) and try to understand the essence of the statement proposed to all of us. I’ll start with the “smoldering melting pot” and the “collapse of multiculturalism.” Since its inception, the melting pot metaphor has meant social and political assimilation, the transformation of people of very different backgrounds into citizens of a single country based on the principle of shared values. In this sense, the concept is still workable. It’s another matter if you load it with ethnic meanings and assume that representatives of one nation can be “smelted” into representatives of another - then the cauldron will stop cooking or will cook a humanoid that no one will be happy with.

Another concept - multiculturalism - was born not at all from the desire to “give earrings to all sisters,” but from the need for national consolidation of states and the socio-legal integration of their constituent peoples. The main function of multiculturalism was contact, not separation. Multiculturalism and related policies were addressed to their own population. Although this population was made up of migrants, they were citizens of the country, its full members. Having arrived in Europe, multiculturalism changed its addressee and turned into a bureaucratized and institutionalized practice of relations with immigrants. It was this administrative multicultural project that failed. But we should not be ironic about the failures of others, but rather understand where failures occur, where we can fully rely on the mechanisms of self-organization and socialization working in a melting pot, and where and to what extent a targeted policy of the state and its institutions in the spirit of multiculturalism is needed, or, better yet, interculturalism.

Putin’s conclusion about the connection between the “failure of the multicultural project” and the crisis of the “national state” model, which he understands as built “exclusively on the basis of ethnic identity,” seems unexpected. It would seem that everything is the other way around, what are the problems with multiculturalism in an ethnically pure state, what is the challenge? It was in order to avoid these problems, to simplify the situation, that the Czechs divorced the Slovaks, and the Kosovo Albanians, after massacres and bombings, seceded from Serbia (I will not extend this list so as not to touch on the painful Russian realities). In Europe, of course, there are many countries that rely on ethnic identity, but the symbol of Europe is still nation-states. Nicolas Sarkozy or Silvio Berlusconi would probably be very surprised that their “nation states” are built along ethnic lines, and Angela Merkel, representing a country experiencing a serious guilt complex for the horrors of Nazism, would probably be indignant.

But, let’s leave these newcomers on the path of state building, Russia is a “historical state” with a thousand-year history, its “experience of state development is unique.” Can not argue. It’s just a pity that imperial ears and the idea of Russia’s special path stick out from this thesis. It is unlikely that today’s Russia can be called a historical state and put an equal sign, for example, between the Russian Federation and Russia. We are rather a young state, suffering from all the diseases associated with nation-state building and heavy heredity received from our parents. The Russian Federation, of course, has a history of its origins, but it is not a historical state.

Like any other country, we have our own characteristics, but there is little that is specific in “our national and migration problems”; in their origin and development they are close to all post-imperial countries. They arose even before the collapse of the USSR. Return migrations of Russians from the Union republics and the increase in the scale of ethnic migration to Russia were recorded by statistics back in the mid-1970s, at which time the “Russian question” began to be widely raised. The initiators of the “sovereignty venture,” of course, had little idea of the consequences of their decisions, but the need to somehow respond to changes in the country was in the air. What was happening was understood much better “beyond the borders of our state,” precisely because they had already gone through the path of the collapse of empires and did not ignore the experience of others. Although no one in the West expected the collapse of the USSR, even on the eve of the events that took place. An exception is Hélène Carrère d'Encausse's book “Glory to the Nations, or the End of the Soviet Empire,” published in 1990. But we considered “their” understanding as hostile machinations, and we continue to insist on this, believing that our situation is fundamentally different.

I will not dwell on quotes from Klyuchevsky, Ilyin and “early philosophical and religious works” - the heavy artillery supporting Putin’s attack on ethnic nationalism. I will ignore the assessments of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson as political speculators using nationalist arguments in the struggle for “political dividends.” I will only say about the choice of the Russian people in favor of a “multi-ethnic civilization”, loyalty to which they “confirmed time after time - and not in plebiscites and referendums, but with blood.” Bright! What could be more reliable than a contract sealed with blood, a kind of blood relationship! But somehow it smacks of the Middle Ages, it seems much better to come to national agreement in a plebiscite, as countries called civilized have been doing for more than a hundred years, than as a result of bloodshed. “Blood” in my mind is always associated with violence or sacrifice, and as Putin writes in the next paragraph (and I completely agree with him): “You cannot force someone to be together.” I also remember the VTsIOM polls of 1992-1993, which showed that the opinion about the progressive role of Russians in the development of other peoples was shared mainly by the Russians themselves, while other peoples held the opposite point of view. Then, in order to achieve national harmony in Russia, blood again had to be shed, and not a referendum.

The internal inconsistency of the text is also expressed in the thesis about the Russian people as “state-forming - in fact.” How can this declaration of the chosenness of Russians be correlated with very important discussions about the multidimensionality of the country, the need for fine-tuning policies that ensure its unity in diversity? Only by revising the postulate about the state-forming people. If Putin calls for “the harmonious development of a multicultural community,” then it must be recognized that all the indigenous peoples of Russia, and above all those who have their own statehood, are state-forming, especially since Russia is a federation. Russians bear the main responsibility for maintaining this statehood, since they are the most numerous people of Russia, the Russian language has the status of a language of interethnic communication, and Russian culture is global, having long ago transcended narrow ethnic boundaries. Then the meaning of the cultural code common to all will be clear.

I share the point of view on the need to develop a national policy based on civil unity, but I am confused by the presidential candidate’s belief in the need to “welcome and support the work of traditional religions of Russia in the educational system, in the social sphere, in the Armed Forces.” How can the secular character of our state be “preserved” while simultaneously clericalizing state institutions? Using the church as an influential corporation working in conjunction with political power and serving to strengthen it has never brought anything good to either the state or the church itself. In addition, the priority given to one of the faiths, recognizing it as the main state religion, will only strengthen interfaith contradictions and fuel interethnic conflicts.

The most controversial part of the article is the last one, devoted to migration policy. Here, arguments of an administrative and fantasy nature outweigh not only humanistic, but also rational reasoning. Putin repeats an important but half-hearted thesis about the need for a selective approach to migration and the selection of young, qualified, educated, etc. Correct, but only partly. Post-industrial and innovative countries experience a shortage of low-skilled workers; it is the latter who make up the bulk of immigrants employed in traditional production, agriculture, construction, trade, personal services to the population and other spheres of life.

It is not clear why Putin equates internal migrants with international ones, and in relation to both categories it is proposed to “tighten registration rules and sanctions for their violation. Naturally, without infringing on the constitutional rights of citizens to choose their place of residence.” What rights do we have when it comes to sanctions? But the most striking thing is that the tasks of overcoming the unevenness of territorial development in order to reduce the migration outflow from depressed and labor-abundant cities and regions of Russia also extend to the post-Soviet space. This is so unexpected that I will quote the entire paragraph.

“ The objective reasons for mass migration, and this has already been mentioned above, are colossal inequality in development and living conditions. It is clear that a logical way, if not eliminating, then at least minimizing migration flows, would be to reduce such inequality. A huge number of different kinds of humanitarian, left-wing activists in the West are advocating for this. But, unfortunately, on a global scale, this beautiful, ethically impeccable position suffers from obvious utopianism. However, there are no objective obstacles to implementing this logic here, in our historical space. And one of the most important tasks of Eurasian integration is to create for the peoples, millions of people in this space, the opportunity to live and develop with dignity .” What's it like? This is just how couriers, couriers, couriers are seen... - thirty-five thousand couriers alone, who galloped to all corners of the Eurasian space. In addition, migration solves not only the problem of earnings or poverty; there are many other, often sharply opposing motives, such as self-realization or saving one’s life.

And yet, despite all the eclecticism of the national program proposed to us, I would not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The article made several important points. Ethnic nationalism, including Russian, was unequivocally condemned, which was so lacking after the events on Manezhnaya Square. The question was raised about the need to maintain civil unity through a flexible policy that cannot be reduced to military-patriotic education and administrative measures. It was emphasized that the cultural code of Russian identity is associated with the nation-wide construction of the Russian state, which in our minds is associated with the country and its achievements. It was said that problems of interethnic relations often arise where social issues have not been resolved, therefore, solutions to many problems must be sought in the socio-economic sphere. An important thought was also voiced about the need for “subtle cultural therapy of the people,” although declared to be a multiethnic community, but affected by the “bacillus” of chauvinism and nationalism.

Political text: nationalism, Putin's style