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1. What’s our favorite anecdote from your research for the book?
My favorite anecdote is a series of anecdotes. All involve how my curiosity about what Chicago buildings are made of often provoked the curiosity of strangers I met while doing my research. When I was photographing or scrutinizing the stone or brick of some architectural landmark, people walking by would stop and ask me what I was doing. As a result, I had wonderful conversations with office workers, attorneys, joggers, concierges, and even one bomb-sniffing police dog and his
3. How do you wish you could change your field?
I hope my book will help Chicago’s natural-history enthusiasts, architecture buffs, and visitors better understand just how much this great city can reveal, not only about its own history and geology, but also about our planet and its past more generally. And I want to change the perception that science, art, and civil engineering are separate worlds of perception. In fact they flow into and inform each other. They can be fully appreciated only when they’re set in this larger integrative context.
human companion. Chicagoans sometimes have the reputation for being gruff and dour, but I found them to be just the opposite.
2. What do you wish you had known when you started writing your book that you know now?
I wish I’d understood earlier just how significant— both architecturally and geologically— each of Chicago’s neighborhoods really are. Fortunately, I quickly came to understand just how much there is to discover in communities as far-flung and culturally diverse as Pullman, Humboldt Park, Englewood, and Edgewater. This city really is a world in its own right, and one a naturalist could spend a hundred lifetimes exploring.
Chicagoans sometimes have the reputation for being gruff and dour, but I found them to be just the opposite.
In my book Under Stalin’s Shadow, A Global History of Greek Communism I describe how the histories of Greek, Balkan, and, ultimately, European communism were intimately linked with the Soviet Union.
By accepting to join the club of global revolutionaries, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) participated in international organizations, which molded its political and structural function, as well as cultural and psychological identity. In reality, international institutions, such as the Balkan Communist Federation, the Comintern, and the Cominform, were not just external factors exercising an influence on KKE. On the contrary, these institutions, like the USSR and its fraternal parties in the Balkans and Europe, collectively shaped the personality of KKE’s leadership, character as a party, mentalities, and decision-making mechanisms over time. Inevitably, this process defined most of its domestic conflicts too. The Greek communists were pulled by local and international centrifugal forces, dividing them on issues related to political developments in Greece, the Balkans, and the USSR, as well as the shifting global order.
A key element in this complex and fickle world was that KKE was supposed to respect Moscow as a source and supervisor of international communism; it had to assist in the revolutionary struggle and defend the Soviet Union’s strategic interests, as defined by Moscow’s higher leaders. At the same time, it aspired to evolve into a coherent and strong party, capable of seizing power or, at least, competing for it in the domestic political sphere. Considering the conditions in pre-war and post-war Greece, these ambitions proved too demanding, if not contradictory and utopian.
The main reason behind this contradiction was KKE’s difficulty in bridging the internationalist world with its national political context, whose supreme legitimizing principle was the conviction that the interests of the nation – and not of the working class — were sacred. Proletarian internationalism, that is, the belief that communists were part of a global class struggle, as well as the most profound belief in the legitimacy of socialism, made communists all over the world bearers of an alternative answer to the question of “how [should] the world be governed.” For communists, the world could be governed outside and above the boundaries of the nation-state, which was bound to wither away under the inexorable historical laws of evolution.
Gradually, communism became identified with an empire, the USSR, and its policies and interests.
Gradually, communism became identified with an empire, the USSR, and its policies and interests. But with Stalin’s domination, “socialism in one country” became the “central idea” for which communists had to give their lives if necessary. The battle of all battles was for the survival of the USSR. This development turned the clash between internationalists and nationalists into one between Soviets and anti-Soviets.
And just like that, the Soviet Union turned into the main protagonist of communism, and its leaders became heroes in its history. For years, nothing could be considered communist in Europe if it was not pro-Soviet, signifying the russification of European communism.
For years, nothing could be considered communist in Europe if it was not pro-Soviet, signifying the russification of European communism.
But this had the reverse effect too. Europe penetrated Russia, maybe more deeply than the Soviets had imagined or desired. Besides, a significant part of Stalin’s foreign policy during the Second World War and early Cold War was nothing more than Russia’s attempts to move westwards, which practically brought Russia to the center of Europe.
In this respect, despite its authoritarian character, Stalin’s empire was a European-looking one.
Recently, Putin gave a different answer to the perennial debate about Russia’s place in European history and where the Eurasian border lies. Putin’s Russia has broken away from a tradition established since the Romanov dynasty, driving Russia away from Europe day by day. But without Europe, Russia will lose half its soul.
In the early 1920s, observing the life of the Russian literary diaspora in Berlin and pondering whether he should go back or stay in exile, the renowned formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky lamented, “Poor Russian emigration! It has no heartbeat. . . . Our batteries were charged in Russia; here we keep going around in circles and soon we will grind to a halt. The lead battery plates will turn into nothing but sheer weight.”1 This book revisits Shklovsky’s apprehension by situating it in another historical context: it explores the patterns of circulation, first publications, and reception abroad of contraband manuscripts from the Soviet Union in the 1950–1980s, covering the period from Khrushchev’s Thaw to the Stagnation era under Brezhnev. Since Shklovsky’s sojourn in Berlin, texts produced in Russia but denied publication at home had indeed continued to modulate the “heartbeat” of the Russian literary diaspora. But in the post-Stalin years, they also served as a weapon on the cultural fronts of the Cold War, laying bare the geographical, stylistic, and ideological rift between two seemingly disparate yet inextricably intertwined fields of Russian literature at home and abroad, a fracture that resulted from the political upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century. Tracing the outbound itineraries of individual manuscripts across Soviet state borders, as well as their
“repatriation” back home in printed form, this book is devoted to the history of literary exchanges between publishers, critics, and readers in the West with writers in Russia, whose clandestine texts bring the dynamics of these intricate relationships into focus. This is a cultural history of the “irregular heartbeat” of Russian literature on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, desynchronized as it were for political reasons and diagnosed on the basis of aesthetic and sociocultural symptoms caused by the dispersal of texts across different geographies and time zones.
A derivative of samizdat (self-publishing) and gosizdat (state publishing), tamizdat refers to publishing “over there,” i.e., abroad. Comprising manuscripts rejected, censored, or never submitted for publication at home but smuggled through various channels out of the country and printed elsewhere with or without their authors’ knowledge or consent, tamizdat contributed to the formation of the twentieth-century Russian literary canon: suffice it to say that the majority of contemporary Russian classics, with few exceptions, first appeared abroad long before they could see the light of day in Russia after perestroika. As the chapters of this book demonstrate, tamizdat mediated the relationships of authors in Russia with the local literary establishment on the one hand and the nonconformist underground on the other, while the very prospect of having their works published abroad, let alone the consequences of such a transgression, affected these authors’ choices and ideological positions. As a practice and institution, tamizdat was, consequently, as emblematic of Russian literature after Stalin as its more familiar and better-researched domestic counterparts, samizdat and gosizdat. This study aims to revisit the traditional notion of late-Soviet culture as a dichotomy between the official and underground fields by viewing it instead as a transnationally dynamic, three-dimensional model.
Historically and terminologically, “tamizdat” is younger than “samizdat,” a neologism that goes back to Nikolai Glazkov’s self-manufactured books of poetry from as early as the 1940s: typed by the author on his own typewriter, the title pages of these handmade editions were marked samsebiaizdat (“myself—by myself—publishing”) to mock the standard abbreviations of “Gosizdat,” “Goslitizdat,” and so on, that appeared invariably on officially sanctioned publications in Soviet Russia. Since the late 1950s Glazkov had become an officially recognized poet, but his pioneering practice, poignantly captured by the term “samsebiaizdat,”
later contracted to “samizdat,” became a true token of twentieth-century Russian literary history.2 But while “samizdat” suggests a handwritten or typed text that circulates locally without official sanction among a relatively narrow circle of initiated readers who continue to reproduce and disseminate it further, “tamizdat” implies a text with all the official attributes of a print edition that is published extraterritorially after it crosses the border of its country of origin. To be considered tamizdat, the text thus must enter a foreign literary jurisdiction where it assumes a new life (at least until it makes it back home in print form). Narrowly defined, “tamizdat” stands for texts that have twice crossed the geographical border: on the way out as a manuscript and on the way back in as a publication. Such was the fate of all texts analyzed in this book (with the exception of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, whose role in the drain of other manuscripts abroad, including Solzhenitsyn’s own, is explored in the first chapter). The vicissitudes of these texts’ travels varied, as did the actors involved.
The roundtrip journey of contraband Russian literature abroad and back home, from manuscript to print edition, involved many actors: an author whose name may or may not have been indicated on the cover and title pages, whether or not the publication was authorized; one or more couriers who smuggled the manuscript abroad manually or via a diplomatic pouch, with or without the help of the author’s local friends or foreign diplomats with mail privileges; an editor who received the manuscript once it had crossed the border and who prepared it for publication by their or someone else’s press or periodical; critics, who included Russian émigrés, Western Slavists, scholars, and journalists; émigré and Western readers—the first audience of the fugitive manuscript; then another courier (usually an exchange scholar, a graduate student, or a journalist), who smuggled the print edition back to the Soviet Union via embassy channels or otherwise, with or without an honorarium for the author; and finally, the reader back home, who may or may not have been already familiar with the text in question through samizdat (or even from an earlier publication in gosizdat).
Tamizdat thus combined elements of both the official and unofficial fields insofar as it attached a legal status to a manuscript that had been deemed illegal or refused official circulation at home. Although the etymological meaning of “tamizdat” may appear quite innocent, referring simply to a place of publication that lies elsewhere in relation to where the work was created, the political function of tamizdat was fully realized only when the text reunited with its author and readers
back home, thus completing the cycle. It is this dimension of tamizdat that made it a barometer of the political climate during the Cold War. Depending on the author’s standing with the Soviet authorities, the ideological profile and repertoire of the publisher abroad and its sources of funding, the international atmosphere in general, and the relationships between the two countries in particular, tamizdat often incriminated the author of a runaway manuscript to an even greater extent than had that same manuscript not leaked abroad but remained confined to the domestic field of samizdat. Operating from opposite sides of the state border, samizdat and tamizdat amplified one another and, at the end of the day, were bound to fuse into an ever more potent alternative for nonconformist Russian literature to find its way to the reader, albeit in a roundabout way.
The distinctive feature of tamizdat, however, remains geographic rather than political since the very climate of the Cold War almost irreparably blurred the line between the political and the artistic. Likewise, drawing a line between official and underground literary fields, including sam- and tamizdat, on the basis of aesthetic merit or “quality factor” hardly appears productive today, much as it may have been tempting decades earlier, when Dimitry Pospielovsky, the author of one of the first articles on tamizdat, claimed that “samizdat and tamizdat [include] the greatest writers and poets—both living and dead—of the Soviet era, while the bulk of the contemporary gosizdat output is grey mediocrity at best.”3 Such a politically driven approach, understandable at the time, is clearly shortsighted if only because the same authors sometimes published in both gosizdat and tamizdat (the former rarely precluding the latter, but not vice versa). Moreover, tamizdat critics themselves often praised and were eager to republish a work that had passed Soviet censorship and appeared in gosizdat, as was the case with Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Denisovich, Vladimir Dudintsev’s Not by Bread Alone, and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, to name but a few.4
Although the author’s physical whereabouts were not always a definitive factor for the readers of tamizdat in Russia in the 1950s–1980s (what mattered was that the edition itself came from abroad), the geographic principle adopted in this study does not allow émigré literature to be regarded as tamizdat, since it was both written and published abroad, within one geopolitical field. This terminological problem persisted long after tamizdat became a reality. For example, as late as 1971, Gleb Struve defined tamizdat as “émigré books by non-émigré writers,” thus highlighting the role of Russian emigration in channeling the
Figure 0.1. Mikhail Bulgakov. Master i Margarita. Roman. Foreword by Archpriest Ioann SanFrantsissky. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1967. Cover of the first book edition.
contraband traffic of manuscripts from the Soviet Union but avoiding the term that by that time was already widespread among “non-émigré” authors in Russia.5 Although the vast majority of émigré publishers and critics were poets and prose writers in their own right, their roles in publishing authors from behind the Curtain should be regarded as separate from their original contributions to Russian literature as writers and poets. Vladimir Nabokov’s fiction may have indeed been as forbidden a fruit in Soviet Russia as Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, first printed in Italy in 1957 and believed to be the first tamizdat publication. But the reason the latter is tamizdat and the former is not has less to do with the subject matter of the two writers’ oeuvre (deceptively apolitical in Nabokov’s case and somewhat more poignant in Pasternak’s) than with their geographical whereabouts in relation to those of their publishers. For the sake of consistency, when the author emigrated—as did Joseph Brodsky in 1972, Andrei Sinyavsky in 1973, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1974—only their publications abroad before emigration, not after, are considered tamizdat in this study.
Although historically and etymologically related, samizdat and tamizdat were, in more ways than one, mirror opposites. Apart from the obvious differences in their form of reproduction and circulation (handmade versus industrially published; distributed illegally to a limited underground audience versus readily available “aboveground” from bookshops and libraries), what sets them apart are their respective readers. True, both samizdat and tamizdat “offered authors two legitimate routes to audiences,”6 but the audiences themselves, especially in the early years of tamizdat, were geographically, politically, and culturally perhaps as divided as the authors of contraband manuscripts in Soviet Russia and their publishers, critics, and readers abroad. A remarkable example is the epigraph of Akhmatova’s Requiem:
Нет, и не под чуждым небосводом, И не под защитой чуждых крыл—
Я была тогда с моим народом,
Там, где мой народ, к несчастью, был 7
[No, not under foreign skies, / Nor under the protection of foreign wings— / I was then with my people, / There, where my people, unfortunately, were.]
The lines articulate the void between the “two Russias” after the Revolution, as well as the author’s unequivocal position vis-à-vis those who
by Valerie Kivelson and Christine Worobec
Faced with the lack of a victory in their February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials in the fall of that year began to justify the war as an existential crusade against Satanism and Satanists.
This past October at the 24th World Russian People’s Council, Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, parroted President Vladimir Putin’s September declaration that the West had embraced a Satanic religion. The battle against them, he prophesied, could ultimately result in the Apocalypse. Going a step further, Kirill named Vladimir Putin as the world’s “chief exorcist,” “a fighter against the Antichrist.”
Vladimir Putin (L) shown here with Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, November 2016. Kirill has declared Putin as “fighter against the Antichrist,” signaling rhetoric steering toward Satanism in current events.
On the same day, Aleksei Pavlov, assistant secretary of the Russian Federation’s Security Council, called for the “de-Satanization” of Ukraine. He pointed to an ostensible proliferation of Satanistic neo-pagan cults in Ukraine which had been “cooked in a witch’s cauldron.”
Invectives against the supposed satanic practices of Ukrainians are surfacing widely among Russian leaders and in the media. They describe the purported devil-worshippers as posing an existential threat not only in the framework of Orthodox Christianity, but also in that of Islam. Razman Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic, using an Islamic name for devils, says “de-shaitanization” of Ukraine is necessary. Dmitrii Medvedev, former president of Russia, proclaimed that the objective of the war was to “stop the supreme ruler of Hell, whatever name he uses – Satan, Lucifer or Iblis.”
This public preoccupation with Satanism mirrors Russia’s on-going calls for “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. The two charges are equally ungrounded and do similar work. Both de-Nazification and de-Satanization cast the opposition as the ultimate enemy, with whom reconciliation or compromise is impossible. In essence, the rhetoric has escalated the conflict into a civilizational struggle between East and West.
The proliferation of anti-satanic rhetoric defies historical expectations in several ways. First, the trend toward secularization of politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries encouraged
a misplaced confidence in Satan’s obsolescence. However, now he is back in the public eye in pressing and effective ways. Putin’s invocations of satanic dangers are of a piece with his systematic campaigns against the infiltration of Western “decadence,” meaning LGBT movements, into Orthodox Russia. Hostile rhetoric in three seemingly separate registers – nationalistic, homophobic, and apocalyptic — has ratcheted up since the invasion, suggesting that they are connected at a fundamental level. Patriarch Kirill’s remark about Putin as chief exorcist came in the context of a tirade against Gay Pride parades.
Furthermore, after studying witchcraft in early modern and modern Russia for decades, topics we discuss in our Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, 1000-1900: A Sourcebook, we come away quite surprised about the prominence of the imagined menace of Satan and Satanists in the Russian media. Whereas in parts of Catholic and Protestant Europe, witches were imagined as combatants in the army of Satan or the Antichrist, the idea that witches constituted a cult of Satan-worshippers was rarely invoked in the Russian (or, for that matter, Ukrainian) persecution of witchcraft.
Russian and Ukrainian witchcraft trials were comparatively less deadly and widespread than the witch hunts in parts of Western and Central Europe. One reason we suggest for this relative moderation is that witchcraft was never deeply associated with the Devil as it was in Catholic and Protestant Europe. Of course, Satan played a key role in the Orthodox world, but in the era of the trials, the idea of a satanic pact as the essence of witchcraft never really caught on. Both Russian and Ukrainian judicial procedures could be cruel and unfair, their outcomes predetermined, and the use of torture merciless. Yet in neither of these East Slavic regions did accusations snowball the way they did in the major panics in the Germanic lands, which at times claimed hundreds of lives.
Even when Peter the Great belatedly imported the Western idea of demonic sorcery and entrenched it into law in the early eighteenth century, Satanic pacts figured little in Russian witch trials. Given Vladimir Putin’s admiration for Peter, the first Russian Emperor, he might be pleased to learn that he is continuing his vaunted predecessor’s legacy by embracing Satanism as a central religious concept. Paradoxically, however, Putin has turned his back on Peter’s Westernization project.
Given that the American extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists of QAnon advocate “Fighting Satanism,” we perhaps should not be surprised about authoritarian Russian officials’ embrace of this toxic rhetoric. Except in the Russian case the language of violence is used to justify horrific brutality against Ukrainian soldiers and civilians as well as the destruction of communities, cities, and cultural monuments and artifacts, including Orthodox churches.
It is too early to predict how this civilizational imagery will all play out. Nevertheless, with their apocalyptic rhetoric Russian officials and warmongers have painted themselves into a corner where total victory on their side can be the only acceptable outcome.
The Cornell University Press Podcast an inTerview wiTh Vera Michlin-Shapir, author of Fluid Russia
hosTed by JohnaThan hall
The following is a transcript of an episode of 1869, the Cornell University Press podcast. It has been transcribed using AI software. Any typos, errors, or inconsistencies may be the result of the transcription or the natural pattern of the human voice. If you wish to listen to the original, search 1869 podcast through whichever podcast service you prefer.
Welcome to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast. I’m Jonathan Hall. This episode we speak with Vera Michlin-Shapir, author of Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era. Vera is a Visiting Research Fellow at The King’s Centre for Strategic Communications, King’s College London. We spoke to Vera about why the Western conventional wisdom about Russia is fundamentally incomplete, why Russia can be considered “patient zero” when it comes to the populist wave of anti globalization and the rise of neoauthoritarian regimes, and why Putin’s regime is a political system actually depends very much on Russia being part of the global world. Hello, Vera, welcome to the podcast.
Hello, Jonathan.
It’s pleasure to have you on the podcast and we want to congratulate you and your new book, Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era. love the quote that you have in the beginning of the book by Zygmunt Bauman, which says, “We live in a globalizing world. That means that all of us consciously or not depend o n each other.” Now, there’s a conventional wisdom about Russia’s national identity right now. And in your case, you think the conventional wisdom needs to be updated. Tell us what the conventional wisdom, how that inspired you to write this book?
Yes, so indeed, actually, Zygmunt Bauman was one of the inspirations he’s writing was one of the inspirations for writing this book. And I was served researching this topic, Russia national identity for quite a while and, and the reason that I was researching it for so long is that there is a very rich debate, both academic and public, in Russia and in the western Russia national identity. And there is a kind of common understanding that it is in crisis. Russians themselves speak about their national identity as an identity that is in crisis. And then there are two groups of thoughts of thought of this. So one group is saying basically, Russian national identities in crisis because this there is a historical continuity to that. So since the Romanovs since the Russian Empire, this identity was always crisis ridden. And it’s because of Russia’s geography and Russia’s history. And Russia’s and the Tsar, and then the Soviets. And it was always sort of America, the American situation for Russian identity. And so now we see the continuation of that in the form of this post Soviet national identity crisis. And then there is the other group that is saying, well, actually, there’s something quite novel here. And this is the collapse of the Soviet
JonaThan JonaThan vera veravera
Union. And the collapse of Soviet Union sort of prompted this big identity crisis that is linked to, well, what is often described as kind of the Weimar, it’s a certain Weimar, German syndrome, yes, so “Weimar” Russia, so lost in the Cold War, they lost the Cold War, humiliation, loss of territory, population, resources. And so this is the kind of this is what sets the grabbed the field for discussion, Russian identity, national identity. And for me, specifically, when I was reading, when I was reading literature on current identity formation, and challenges to identity formations, formation in the global world, I felt like there was a disconnect between this debate between the debates that were going on in the West, and the debates that were going on in Russia, and Russia, for me, it was very obviously part of this global world, but kind of there was a disconnect in terms of the literature of the of the discussion. And it was also strange for me that there was constant talk about Russian identity crisis. But for me, identity is always a question mark. Identity always needs to be defined. So why is it so strange that the Russians, the Russians also need to define their identity? It’s a process. And so the literature this, this theoretical literature by Sigmund Bauman and Anthony Giddens very much inspired me to sort of try and write the Russian, the Russian path and the Russian question mark around its identity into this global story. And to bridge this, this gap in the literature.
So Excellent. Well, your book very definitely ties Russia’s authoritarian politics to the shortcomings of globalization and neoliberal economics. Within this new understanding, you describe Russia as patient zero, of the anti-globalist populist wave and the rise of neoauthoritarian regimes. Tell us more about this.
Yes. So this is a very kind of important point to make here, which is that I am constantly in the introduction. And when I speak about the book, I say that there is actually nothing that abnormal about Russian current identity search and the feeling that it is that there is some kind of crisis. But the fact that it’s not abnormal doesn’t make it fine. Yes, doesn’t make what happens in Russia and Russian politics, what happens with the current regime and Russia, it doesn’t kind of whitewash the problems that are there. Actually, in fact, what I’m saying is that I’m refocusing the problem. So the problem is not necessarily with what happens within the walls of the Kremlin, or what happens in Russian politics. But the problem is, is broader. And the problem is the disruptions that are created by kind of this uneven globalization. And specifically, well, specifically, in our kind of transition between classical modernity where the state was more involved in people’s lives. And late modernity, when the state withdraws and allows neoliberal economics to sort of manage society, but it doesn’t really manage society, it leaves a lot of insecurity. And this insecurity basically, kind of creates almost intrinsically creates this calls for more confirmer hand and inserts the ground really for new authoritarian regimes. So in Russia, actually, what we saw is that, and this is a really, I think, a fascinating example of this, because everything happened so fast,
JonaThanin the 90s, Russia open almost kind of it wasn’t in a day, but it was such a such a baptism by fire, sort of how Russia open to the global world with with radical new liberal economic reforms, and society was just forfeits, transforming so rapidly, but also the pushback came very, very quickly. Yes. So this, this kind of pushback of, of going off well, for Russia is going back with this gravitation towards authoritarianism. And it happened also very, very fast.
Yes, it certainly did certainly did a kind of a whiplash effect. So you’re the book is titled, you’ve called it Fluid Russia and fluidity - one of the things when I think of fluidity, I think of time, and you have a fascinating example of Putin attempting to unify the Russian calendar by promoting two types of holidays, military and religious. Tell us about this initiative. And how successful was it in unifying the country?
Yes. So when putting comes to power, he actually he see, I mean, he’s almost as described in the book, it’s almost kind of a natural. And this is what people who lived in Russia in the late 1990s described, it was kind of a natural flow of events, yes, all this insecurity. And suddenly, there was a person who saying, well, trust me, I can fix this, you know, just just let me fix this for you. And so he’s kind of rice flour is is is I mean, not smooth, but you know, relatively like he is the right man in the right in the right time, in the right place. And one of the things that he finds is that is that this insecurity around the identities often is often connected to time, into the construction of time. And when I write about time, I write about historical time, national time, personal time, these are all things that are kind of bounded, or that are interconnected in the analysis. And it’s very, very crucial. So actually, the book, it looks at different spheres of policy, it looks at immigration, and citizenship and media discourse. But I finished the book with with with analysis of the national calendar, and they’re both in the 1990s, but specifically under putting a lot of interesting things are happening because he really shapes and molds the national calendar to help people sort of fixate their identity to help people feel more secure. And the reason that the footing kind of takes military and religious issues and forms the national calendar around them is that actually because they’re quite popular, and there is quite a lot of reciprocity in Putin’s regime, what kind of popular trend as was described in the book by Samuel Green and Graeme Robertson, Putin Versus People. So he takes these two themes, and he tries kind of almost a Durkheimian kind of like Emile Durkheim described what High Holidays work. So Emile Durkheim’s understanding of holidays is that every day we go on our daily business and then during holidays, we all perform the same routines we all unifying, we all kind of bind ourselves together as a collective—holidays are very important first for asserting collective identity. And And with Putin, I mean, he really he saw that in the 1990s, the, the calendar was kind of unraveling. And he was gathering it around things that are already popular. And one excellent example are celebrations of Victory Day in Russia ninth of May, which became kind of it was very
JonaThan verapopular in the 1990s, actually, but they became very sort of a big national holiday for Putin, it’s kind of a new sanctity in Russia. And for many people, this becomes kind of an example for how how put in was able to, you know, to, to refer refer kind of reformulate and use strong, assertive Russian national identity. But when you look and how I described it in the book, and Fluid Russia, when you look at the kind of traditions that developed around this Putin’s Victory Day, let’s go and put in Victory Day, they’re very much in line with with global trends, they’re very individualized or personalized. And people who follow the new traditions, the new rituals of victory days are for instance, there is the immortal regiment, which is people are marching with photos of their relatives who perished and who died in the in the war, or veterans who perished who died since then. And this is an extremely kind of late modern, personalized, global way to celebrate the holiday. It’s my holiday, it’s my family, it’s my history, and yet we’re together. So in that way, it’s it is it is very successful. Yes, he is very successful. And I mean, he’s actually taking over this, this ritual, but but he doesn’t really changed. He doesn’t really reform, reformulate the society, the society remains very integrated into into global trends.
Yeah, I can see see why he will pick on the calendar, as you said, it’s such a shared experience by everyone. And when it comes to fluidity, I also think of Putin, he’s a Judo expert. He’s really good at taking things that come towards them, and then using them in the best way that benefits him. And so using that analogy, you know, the media reports kind of coming full circle to what we were talking about the beginning, the media reports in the West, they have Putin, as you know, this aggressive leader, isolationist leader, and what I think is fascinating about your book, the conclusions in your book, that we actually have to understand that Putin is trying to have Russia be part of the global world, that that Putin’s regime is built on integration with global financial markets, and that its aggression from the western point of view, is actually in Putin’s own mind, that he’s striving for international recognition, rather than being isolationist. Tell us more about that.
Yeah, so definitely, I mean, what I’m trying to impart it to encourage the readers in the conclusions of the book is to is to stop seeing this kind of well, actually, is to stop seeing put in as an outside player that there is some kind of global order, and he tries to undermine globalization, he tries to be at the forefront of a populist wave to undermine sort of the post cold war global order or the post Second World War, global order, or there are so many, there are so many formulations to it. But actually, what I tried to encourage a readers to see is how he is intrinsic to this order. Yes. I mean, he was born out of the insufficiencies of globalization. He never fully took Russia outside this context, because I mean, his regime is built on being part of it. Yes, he’s deriving it. Yes. He’s mocking, he’s mocking the international kind of Western liberal order. But he, he has to have it. This is I mean, this, he can’t, he can’t sort of exist without it. And you mentioned the financial markets, this is an extremely import-
JonaThan vera JonaThanant thing, the offshorization of the Russian economy. And, and I mean, when you look now with the escalation in Ukraine, it’s so curious for me that the recent escalation now, it’s so curious for me that all the Western analysts, the indie, they speak in the Stone of here, put in this aggressive leader who tries, you know, push does more and more the West and kind of more and more isolationist in his own world. And actually, all the Russian analysts, all the Russian commentators, whether they’re liberal or conservative, whether I’m put inside or opposition, they all say, well, actually what he wants is he wants to get recognition that he is an international leader that he, you know, he wants this phone call with Joe Biden who wants to meet with him he wants to get he wants to get this permission. And I think that this kind of, I think this kind of should challenge also to think, not only not to think of just putting as a leader that he’s not an outside force that attacks globalization from the, from the outside, but rather also to think of kind of there is the national and there’s the global. And these are two poles. Yes. And there is like kind of swing between them, that you have Putin on the one hand, and you have Biden, who is more like liberal globalist leaders, but actually the maybe to the electric, so it’s not one or the other. It’s a struggle. It’s an electric within, within the kind of globalization in which in which we currently live.
Yes, yes. We’re so grateful that you’ve written this book that you’ve spent years of research, creating it, because it does, you know, the, the conclusion is counterintuitive, particularly, you know, seeing the Western media reports, you think, particularly with this Ukrainian situation, that, you know, an invasion is eminent and, you know, we’re on the cusp of, you know, a new hot, cold war, or maybe even a real war. So, there’s a lot of saber rattling, and your book kind of gives us the much larger picture that can only enhance understanding. So we really appreciate that.
Thank you. Yeah, no, I mean, the fact that I mean, again, this is and I said it in the beginning, but I’m going to repeat it is that this doesn’t whitewash Putin - this doesn’t say that what he does is all right. And the book is actually very critical of a lot of things that any I think reasonable freedom, you know, a loving person would would be critical of and and you know, the aggression in Ukraine happened. And annexation of Crimea happened. The incursion in eastern Ukraine happened, all these things, you know, the, I mean, use of chemical weapons on British I am based in London on each territory. So all these things happened. It’s just that we we need to understand their context. Yes. So all these crimes happened, and maybe he will invade Ukraine? Yes, maybe he will. But the context is that he is not he’s doing it because he has to almost because if he doesn’t, then he’s like an athema. He’s out, you know, he becomes a nobody.
JonaThanBecause he, he was born out of this, in my opinion, he was born out of this dialectic he was born out of the struggle. And if it doesn’t continue,
vera verayes, it’s it’s sort of, and I’m sure that he, he is he is a galleon in his understanding because he was, he was raised in the Soviet Union. So this is an understanding of history of history as a dialectic as a struggle, and he has to fulfill this place. And if it doesn’t fulfill this place, he believes that that’s it, he will, he will perish, he will disappear, he will become nobody.
JonaThan
Someone else will replace him to continue that struggle.
Yes. So he has to, he almost has to take this role. And when you listen to how he speaks about Russia, and Russia’s mission and his mission, I believe him he thinks that, you know, he, he has a certain mission. And if he doesn’t fulfill it in history, then he has no place in history.
JonaThan
Yeah, so this is this is what I was going at, as far as this is I was wanting to tap into that this other perspective that that we can understand because we’re blinded by our own ideologies and our own viewpoints to be able to bridge that gap. And obviously, neither side in the conflict is an angel, even though they think they might be or they’re on the side of the good. And the other side, you know, this is a classic war, whoever, whoever wins gets to write the history. Yeah. But to be able to see that other perspective. I think it’s fascinating, and we need more of this type of analysis. So thank you for writing this book Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era. It was such a great pleasure speaking with you.
Great, excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for this.
That was Vera Michlin-Shapir, author of Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era
1. What’s your favorite anecdote from your research for this book?
I suppose my favorite anecdote is the bringing back to memory the dinner my wife and I shared with Mr. and Mrs. Kennan during the year I spent as a Visiting Member of the Institute for Advanced Study. It is not just Mr. Kennan’s dignity and graciousness that I recall, but something more: he never showed the least condescension while at the same time never pretending that he was not George Kennan. That is, he knew how to handle fame.
behavior toward a major nuclear power.
3. How do you wish you could change the field?
As a historian, I should like to see those who write about contemporary international affairs demonstrate a greater historical consciousness. To write, for example, about the war in Ukraine with seemingly little knowledge of that land’s history—its historic ties to Russia, legacy of pogroms, and terrible suffering under Stalin’s rule—makes any serious understanding of the present conflict all but impossible.
2. What do you wish you had known when you started writing your book that you know now?
When I began to write the book, I wish I could have known what has happened internationally since I finished it. With respect to the conduct of foreign affairs, almost everything Kennan warned against has come to pass. He thought it dangerous folly for NATO to continue to push ever closer to Russia’s borders— particularly by threatening to draw Ukraine into the military alliance. To admit Finland and Sweden, he would have thought madness. These are provocations that no Russian government, of any kind, can tolerate. In general, he would have been chagrined by the US’s increasingly reckless and irresponsible
As a hstorian, I should like to see those who write about contemporary international affairs demonstrate a greater historical consciousness.
Histories of Southeast Asian countries after 1945 have often revolved around one singular, larger-than-life figure. Leaders such as Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Sukarno and Suharto in Indonesia, or Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam have received outsized attention, crowding out scholarly attention to other significant political figures. Cambodian history also has these dominant, mercurial characters in, first, Norodom Sihanouk, and, subsequently, Lon Nol and Pol Pot. These figures were all significant in the histories of their respective countries; their importance and compelling stories rightly attract scholarly attention. But they did not act in a political vacuum. They came to power in struggles against and alliances with other politicians. Other political leaders challenged them throughout their rule, even if they had little immediate effect in some cases. The political history of Southeast Asian nations should not be seen through the lens of singular political leaders, no matter how compelling they each are. This book offers a corrective to that approach for Cambodia by exploring the political life of one important but understudied political figure, and, in particular, how his political choices shaped and reflected Cambodia’s relationship with the United States.
Our story here will focus on So’n Ngoc Thành. As a bête noir to Sihanouk for decades, Thành’s story helps provide a richer history of Cambodia, rather than treating the nation as simply an extension of its monarchal ruler. Thành’s importance ebbed and flowed; sometimes his voice was dominant in Cambodian politics. Other times it was muted. Without attention to his consistent presence, motivations, decisions, and supporters, however, it is not possible to fully understand Cambodia’s march toward independence and its subsequent neutralist-leaning path during the Cold War. Similarly, as the United States struggled to act and react to Sihanouk-centered developments in Cambodia, it also weighed alternative options to Cambodian leadership. Throughout the region, the United States cultivated a range of potential allies, such as the so-called third force in Vietnam or anticommunist elements in Indonesia. During the Cold War, US officials hoped to support political leaders in Southeast Asia who would align themselves with the West and provide an alternative to what they perceived as noncompliant politicians and groups. Thành played a complicated but important role in this American effort not only in Cambodia but also in relation to the broader effects of the war in Vietnam. This book decenters the Cold War and the United States to explore the ways that an apparently peripheral figure in a small nation both navigated in the Cold War geopolitical structures and promoted the politics he thought best for his nation and himself.
To the outside world, Cambodia is well-known for the fabulous wonders of Angkor Wat and the five hundred other Hindu and Buddhist structures built from the ninth to the fourteenth century. In modern times, while Angkor became a major tourist attraction, the country drew attention during the war in neighboring Vietnam, where it was subject to an infamous, intense bombing campaign and was ultimately drawn into the war in 1970, when the longtime ruler, Sihanouk, was overthrown. Five years later, the notorious Khmer Rouge took over the country, and Cambodia became known for its “killing fields,” as the Khmer Rouge slayed as many as a quarter of the country’s seven million inhabitants. The Khmer Rouge period has been among the most scrutinized eras in studies of modern Southeast Asian history.1
But, although often ignored, modern Cambodia existed before the Vietnam War, and before the Khmer Rouge. It was a colony of France, a part of French Indochina. And, like Vietnam and Laos, it struggled to gain its independence. The young king, Sihanouk, who ultimately persuaded the French to leave and later caused the Americans much heartburn, has also deservedly received considerable popular and scholarly
attention.2 At times, however, other nationalist leaders were as important as Sihanouk himself. Foremost among them was Sơn Ngo · c Thành, about whom little has been written. My hope in this book is to bring attention to Thành’s importance as a nationalist leader who influenced both the internal political development and the regional and international pressures that impacted Cambodia from the 1930s to the 1970s.
In addition to Thành’s significance in developments within Cambodia, he became an important, if covert, ally of the United States in its anticommunist efforts in the region. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Thành and his group, the Khmer Serei (Free Khmer), had connections to both the American Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in South Vietnam. The Khmer Serei exacerbated tensions between Cambodia and its Thai and South Vietnamese neighbors. Thành was involved with the coup to unseat Sihanouk in 1970, which the Nixon administration, at the very least, applauded. He returned to the new Khmer Republic government later that year, where he remained until his retirement to South Vietnam in 1972.
This book will address the following issues : How did Thành influence the creation of an independent Cambodian state? How did he influence Cambodia’s relationships with both its neighbors and the superpowers during the Cold War? What was his precise relationship with United States and its intelligence agencies? What was his role in overthrowing Sihanouk in 1970? What was his role in Cambodia after Sihanouk’s ouster, leading up to the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975? Thành’s addition as a key figure in these developments complicates our view of the Cambodian trajectory from colonialization to the Khmer Rouge, especially who our key actors are. The gravitational pull of Sihanouk, who traditionally dominates histories of Cambodia of this period, often does not allow for a more nuanced, rich, textured view. My attempts here are not to ignore Sihanouk’s outsized role, but, rather, to broaden our understanding of developments in modern Cambodian history.
Previous accounts of Thành’s role in Cambodian history have been mostly limited and cursory. He is, at best, mentioned in passing, and, at worst, ignored all together.3 Given Thành’s importance in the rise of Cambodian nationalism, the fight for independence from France, the brief period of Japanese dominance, and Cambodia’s postwar relationship with the United States, Thailand, and Vietnam, this lack of attention is conspicuous. Additionally, Thành’s role in the ouster of Sihanouk and his subsequent service in the dysfunctional Khmer
Republic bolsters his importance in recent Cambodian history. This book will thus challenge and revise the existing accounts by demonstrating the centrality of Thành in these developments. By focusing on Thành’s role, we can better understand how he influenced both the internal political development and the regional and international pressures that impacted Cambodia throughout this period.
Though many different factions of resistance to France sprouted up throughout the country even before World War II, Thành was an unquestioned leader of Khmer resistance to France at the dawn of the war. From the perspective of the United States, he was a rumored communist sympathizer and a troublemaker. From the perspective of many in Cambodia, he was that nation’s first independent ruler. The period of 1945 to 1975 saw dramatic changes both inside of Cambodia and in the United States’s responses to political developments. These transformations can be directly connected to Thành’s various political incarnations, where he morphed from agitator to leader to dissident. During that period, he went from being Cambodia’s prime minister to political outcast, while Sihanouk transformed himself from a royal figurehead to a political authoritarian. The United States gradually moved from an advisory and supporting role for France, as the last remnants of its colonial empire disintegrated, to the main geopolitical player in Southeast Asia as it attempted to thwart the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. By that time, Thành had turned from an American adversary to an American ally. For the United States, a country it might have preferred to ignore became impossible to overlook. In this respect, the case of Cambodia is similar to that of Indonesia. While the latter was geographically bigger and a larger trading partner, it too attempted a neutralist path during the Cold War under Sukarno that, by the mid-1960s, was deemed no longer tenable by American officials.
Because he was very much a man of mystery during his life, locating source material on Thành is a problematic undertaking. There are periods in which little information is available on Thành’s specific whereabouts or motivations. His own voice is similarly absent from much of the available sources of this era. Tying his story together is a task akin to a complicated jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. But there is enough to allow meaningful conclusions about his influence and importance. Most of the existing source material, including those sources found in Cambodia, are in the French language. While there are Khmer sources incorporated into the narrative, this research relies on French- and English-language sources for much of its historical information. Many
other potential sources were lost during the tragic civil war between 1970 and 1975, and many more were intentionally destroyed during the subsequent brutal Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979. While far from ideal, this does not obstruct the overall analysis of Thành’s significance to both modern Cambodian history and to US relations with Cambodia during the Cold War.
Chapter 1 briefly discusses the history of nationalist resistance to occupying French forces in Cambodia. These instances were sporadic and generally insignificant in reaching the broader collective thought of Cambodians to spur them on to nationalistic confrontation. It was not until Thành came of age during the interwar years in France that he developed his earliest political motivations that would carry him on to great highs and lows for the remainder of his life. By the late 1930s, Thành began to affect the national conscious through the political newspaper Nagaravatta. During World War II, the conquering Japanese sheltered Thành after a number of his followers were arrested during a protest he organized. He was hidden in Japan for two years, after which he returned to Cambodia to enter the government and was soon appointed prime minister.
Following Japan’s defeat in the war, France regained control of its territory, and Thành was sacked. His influence, however, was instrumental in creating the political base to begin to challenge French hegemony.
Chapter 2 focuses on the period in which Thành was imprisoned in France. During that time, Norodom Sihanouk began to press France for political concessions and autonomy. This move was largely due to the influence of Thành’s followers, the Democrats. Thành returned to a hero’s welcome in late 1951, but he soon joined the anti-French dissidents, the Khmer Issaraks, in the maquis. Despite his absence from the capital, Thành was still a highly influential political figure who pressed Sihanouk to take a hard-line stance with France that, ultimately, resulted in Cambodian independence.
Chapter 3 follows Sihanouk’s push to marginalize his political opponents and Thành loyalists in Phnom Penh. Thành saw his support dwindle as he lived in self-imposed exile on the Thai border. By the end of the 1950s, he had founded the Khmer Serei to begin armed dissent against Sihanouk’s regime. The governments in Thailand and South Vietnam assisted him, which brought him closer to the Americans, who had grown weary of Sihanouk’s grandstanding and neutralist Cold War foreign policy.
As the 1960s began, a rapprochement of sorts seemed possible between the United States and Cambodia. However, as will be discussed
in chapter 4, severe tensions between Cambodia and its Thai and South Vietnamese neighbors remained. Thành was a major factor in these developments. Sihanouk began to feel boxed in not only by his so-called Free World neighbors but by the United States as well. He in turn shifted toward an accommodating position with China, further exacerbating his tensions with the Americans.
By the late 1960s, as the war in Vietnam heated up, Thành and the Khmer Serei cemented their ties with certain segments of the American intelligence apparatus and worked closely with the US Special Forces. Chapter 5 discusses the events that led up to the Lon Nol and Sirik Matak–led coup that unseated Sihanouk in 1970. Although much of the picture during this period remains foggy, it is clear is that the Khmer Serei was a highly respected and utilized force under the direction of American Special Forces in the Vietnam War. Thành was crucial to recruiting the Khmer Serei, both in aid of the Americans and to battle Sihanouk’s forces. Thành was also a key figure—along with American officials—in this coup. This chapter examines the exact nature of these relationships in depth.
Chapter 6 follows the floundering Khmer Republic government in the aftermath of Sihanouk’s ouster. During this time, Thành reentered the government and hoped to play a large role in creating and maintaining the new republic. But, despite his role in the coup that led to the formation of the Khmer Republic, the new rulers of Cambodia mostly sidelined him. Thành would continue to recruit Khmer Krom (ethnic Cambodians who lived in Vietnam) into the Cambodian army, while Lon Nol attempted to placate him by appointing him as an advisor to the government. Due to his continued popularity among some segments of society, Thành would later briefly find himself appointed as prime minister. Politically marginalized by Lon Nol, he had little influence by this point and was finally ushered away to retirement in South Vietnam.
To many historians, Thành was a peripheral player during these years. While often relegated to the margins simply in terms of proximity to the capital, Thành was, instead, fundamental to the dramatic changes that Cambodia faced in the fight for independence and during the Cold War. Thành was essential in the dissemination of nationalist thought, the brief gain and loss of independence during World War II, the battle that ultimately resulted in a free Cambodia, and the establishment of ties with the Americans that kept Sihanouk on edge until his downfall in 1970. Although naïve and power-hungry, this overlooked person was one of the most important figures in modern Cambodian history.
1. What’s your favorite anecdote from your research for this book?
I was conducting research for this book in Moscow in summer 2018, as the city was brimming with excitement in preparation for Russia’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup. Every evening I would emerge from the quiet contemplation of days spent in the Moscow State Library to encounter exuberant young crowds, growing in size and volume as the opening date of the tournament approached. I pored over texts during the day and then observed my young “subjects” intermingling with guests from all over the world, overflowing with energy and vibrancy. It is painful to recall the optimism of those days now, as the
the older generation’s support of Putin. Since I completed the book, of course, Navalny was poisoned and imprisoned, his organization declared a foreign agent and effectively shut down, and his supporters persecuted even more fervently. Between the completion of the book and its publication, Russia invaded Ukraine. Much of the hope stimulated by the participation of young people in political protests in 2017 and 2018 has been dashed. I end the story on an ambiguous, open-ended note, and the recent events in Russia provide a poignant coda to my book.
3. How do you wish you could change the field?
war in Ukraine has cut off the possibility of Russia’s youth experiencing such joyous and dynamic exchange with foreigners for many years to come.
2. What do you wish you had known when you started writing your book, that you know now?
One of the challenges of this book—and of researching contemporary culture in general—is that the story you tell is constantly evolving and unfolding. I tried to strike the right balance between capturing the flow of current events while also establishing a scholarly framework for interpreting those events. I frame the book with a discussion of young supporters of the opposition activist Aleksei Navalny. These brave young people endure various forms of harassment as they boldly canvas the Russian countryside, trying to dislodge
I think that research on cultural representations of childhood and youth deserves to be more central and more fully integrated into the field as a whole. There are so many important research questions that simply cannot be answered without considering Soviet and Russian cultural production for and about children and youth! I also think that scholars of adolescence and youth in European culture have mainly ignored the former Soviet Union, leaving those important countries out of the story. I hope that this book will help accomplish both of those goals: first, demonstrating the importance of research on childhood and youth for scholars of Russia and Eurasia; and, second, prompting scholars of childhood and youth from other disciplines to recognize the significance of the former Soviet Union for the field as a whole.
One of the challenges of researching contemporary culture is that the story you tell is constantly evolving.
It was not until 2013 that the attention of the media turned to Dagestan in the wake of the Tsarnaev brothers’ bombing of the Boston Marathon. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar planted two homemade bombs near the finish line of the race, killing three people and injuring hundreds. The brothers had lived in Makhachkala before emigrating to the United States. In 2012, Tamerlan returned to Dagestan, where he was said to have met with and befriended local Muslims. What world would the twenty-five-yearold Tamerlan have encountered in 2012? What world were the five thousand Dagestanis who left for ISIS (among them policemen and civil servants) leaving behind? And what world were their widows and children coming back to?
Despite its recent stabilization, Dagestan remains the most unstable republic in the Russian Federation, plagued by violence and ubiquitous corruption. Calls for the creation of an Islamic state merge here with nostalgia for the days of Stalin’s iron-fisted rule. Mecca prayer mats and calendars hang alongside pictures of Putin. People are not sure whom to fear more: terrorists or antiterrorists? The Islamic State or the Russian state? How are we to make sense of these allegedly contradictory or even irrational notions through which the inhabitants of the North Caucasus attempt to imbue meaning into their reality?
The personal observations of two of my Dagestani interlocutors encapsulate these apparent contradictions.
“I would like to be a patriot of my country, but they won’t let me,” Kurban, a fifty-year old former primary school teacher from the Dagestani lowlands, told me. As he spoke, he caressed his long red beard, which resembled that worn by the Prophet Muhammad. In June 2018, Kurban’s two sons were dragged into a car in front of the house they were building. Kurban immediately went to the police station—not to report a kidnapping but to reclaim them.
“I had just married them off,” he continued. “But I accept this situation with inner tranquility. The FSB [Federal Security Bureau] officers will not live forever. And they will answer to the Almighty,” he added with more self-assurance and excused himself to perform his midday prayers.
Hizri, a Dagestani policeman in his thirties who shared a compartment with me on the train from Moscow to Makhachkala back in 2013, presented a different view. We were speaking over a glass of “real” Dagestani brandy that he had poured from a Fanta bottle, acquired from a friend who had swiped it from the distillery in Derbent. “Terrorists or FSB,” he said, “there is no real difference between them.” Hizri went on to recall stories where “the two” had cooperated to further destabilize the situation in the republic.
In order to understand what is actually disguised under “terrorism” and “counterterrorism” in the North Caucasus, I stayed away from official statements issued by security officials and politicians. I wanted to get a glimpse into
the real everyday lives of such people as Kurban and Hizri, alleged terrorists and policemen, jinn exorcists, and fortune-tellers.
My attempts to describe the social reality of Dagestan gradually turned into examinations of the local experiences of the Russian state. How did the inhabitants of Dagestan experience state violence? What solutions did they see to the current situation in their republic? Should ostensibly radical expressions of support for sharia be interpreted in terms of resistance?
Attempts by Dagestani Muslims to regulate social life with rules such as fines for drinking, smoking, and not wearing the hijab have often been labeled as “imposing sharia” or as dangerous “attempts to create an Islamic state.” Although such restrictions are often used as yet another way to control the lives of women, we should be wary of overemphasizing the strictness of sharia or its threat to secular order. A closer look at the Dagestani social reality reveals that what is often hidden behind the “imposition of sharia” is a world made up of people who, just like their secular friends, are concerned about the future of their corrupt and conflicted republic and who in their pursuit of a better social order turned, sometimes concurrently, to a number of models: social justice in the time of the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Shamil’s nineteenthcentury strug gle for independence, the egalitarian and internationalist ideals of the USSR, and the strong states ruled by Stalin and Putin.
This book is an attempt to convey how Dagestani Muslims experienced both the “impositions of sharia” and the “fight against terrorism” between 2007 and 2019. The local dimensions of these phenomena provoke critical reflections on the essentialization and the Western centrism of these concepts and perspectives. By putting them in context, we can understand the very different ways in which they are experienced and invoked.
The social and political changes taking place in the Caucasus are often explained by examining the discourses of key political actors or content generated by people associated with the militant underground. At one end of the spectrum of discussion are debates attended by regional experts (analysts, politicians, and political scientists), held under such titles as “What Should Be Done about the North Caucasus?” and “Prospective Strategies for the North Caucasus”; at the opposite end are internet forums frequented by supporters of armed insurrection. Between the two is a broad range of alternative discourses, ideas, and visions. Similarly, the actions of the state, the violence of the security apparatus, and the violence of militants seeking to establish an Islamic state all bookend a vast space containing the everyday experience of the conflict. In contrast to the world of politicians and Kremlin advisers, this “alternative,” “in between” world that demands change is one whose inhabitants directly experience chaos and cultural decay. These are the people who,
just a few years ago, awaited change or expected it to come from the state, hoping that their lives would improve or that “Soviet-style order” would be reinstated. The experiences, narratives, and actions of these individuals form the space that I explore here.
This book is based on the experiences and narratives I gathered from conversations I had with Muslims in the Republic of Dagestan in the years 2007–2015 and on additional observations of life in Dagestan between 2004–2006 and 2016–2019, which I considered relevant to understanding the reality of the republic and the sociopolitical context of the issues discussed.
The years 2013–2014 marked a time when many Dagestani Muslims abandoned their hopes for a better or more just republic, opting instead to emigrate and build a future in the Islamic State. Among them were several of my interviewees. Hardly any of them returned. My description of the world of Dagestani Muslims, their problems, and their visions and hopes for the future offers a partial answer to the question of why they left and why some of them chose a highly uncertain future in the Islamic State over an intractable and unstable present in Dagestan.
Dagestan has a population of over three million people, with more than six hundred thousand living in the capital of Makhachkala, which was founded in 1844 as Port Petrovsk but was renamed in Soviet times after the communist hero Makhach Gadzhiyev. Among the main ethnic groups inhabiting the republic are Avars, Kumyks, Dargins, Tabasarans, Lezgins, Laks, Rutul, Mountain Jews, and Tats, as well as a dwindling Russian minority, which makes up 3 percent of the population.
The city center of Makhachkala, where my fieldwork began in 2004, resembles the ones found in many other Russian cities. It has a pedestrian boulevard running down the middle of Lenin Street (which now bears the name of the Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov) where babushki, or elderly women, sell sunflower seeds and nuts, and groups of young men loiter on stoops and benches. There is the obligatory Lenin Square, encircled by government buildings, the recently modernized Russia cinema, and a park commemorating the victims of the Great Patriotic War, with an “eternal flame” that went out in the 1990s and was only rekindled in 2005, when the park was renovated to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, or the Great Patriotic War.
From 2004 to 2006, these places were my main points of reference in the city, centrally located landmarks linked by a network of perpendicular streets bearing the names typically found in the post-Soviet world: Kirov, Komsomolskaya, 26 Baku Commissars. Despite the mass renaming campaigns of the 1990s, the old nomenclature endured in the memory of the city’s inhabitants and on the sheets of cardboard tucked behind the windshields of marshrutkas, or minibuses, announcing their destinations. Only the famous Bolshevik Mikhail Kalinin gave up his street to Imam Shamil, the religious and political leader of the Caucasian Muslims in their strug gle for liberation from imperial Russia in the nineteenth century.
In the same meshwork of streets, mosques were an impor tant presence: large and small, old ones with plastered walls and newer mosques built from Dagestani sandstone dotted with shells, fitted with white UPVC windows, and surrounded by soaring fences. Most of my interlocutors—at the time, local intellectuals—had never been to a mosque in their lives, much less attended regular prayers. Between 2004 and 2006, despite the prominent religious features and symbols visible in the public space, I saw the city as a “secular Makhachkala.” Islam played no role in the lives of urban intellectual circles: neither the ones fascinated with Europe and ideas of liberal democracy nor the ones whose members recalled the Soviet era with a sense of nostalgia.
“Religious Makhachkala,” in which I immersed myself in 2007, occupied the same familiar spaces. Yet, these were defined by a different set of landmarks: mosques, madrassas, halal grocery stores and restaurants, and shops with Islamic books, clothing, and cosmetics. Some of these locations were not immediately visible to passers-by. To find out where hijama (medicinal bloodletting) was practiced, who performed exorcisms or treated patients using herbal remedies, and which imams offered matchmaking ser vices or encouraged men to take more than one wife, I had to inquire among “those in the know.” Government offices, city squares, and public buildings were of secondary relevance here. They were neither “pilgrimage” destinations nor places of employment: the majority of my more devout interviewees eschewed government jobs, preferring to run their own businesses: stores, car washes, restaurants, and bakeries. My new interlocutors and friends—the newly forming religious elite and their followers in the middle and lower classes—would recognize the landmarks from the secular realm but preferred to meet at the Djuma or Tsumada mosque after midday prayers, or have a lunch at Maydat, a well-known halal restaurant.
In the latter years of the 2000s, religious Makhachkala began to increasingly encroach on the public space of the city. Signs were put up urging locals to place their faith in Allah and to pursue greater jihad or personal improvement. Billboards displaying images of scantily clad women were defaced and the word haram (forbidden) scrawled on them. Marshrutka drivers posted stickers reading “Free fare for girls in hijab.” A growing number of women wore the hijab; new Islamic stores opened, including shops that catered exclusively to women and were explicitly off-limits to men.
“Secular Makhachkala” shrunk with every passing year. Some people emigrated; some, in par ticular the younger ones, immersed themselves in “religious Makhachkala,” limiting ties with their former colleagues. Others stayed more or less loyal to their ideals. Former opponents—“democrats” and those who kept framed pictures of Stalin on their living-room walls—sat together in undercover clubs that still served liquor and jointly observed, with growing terror, the recent Islamization of the city and the mass migration from the mountains. They might have disagreed about the past, but they unanimously agreed on the present: “This isn’t our Makhachkala anymore.”
As much as I immersed myself in the rapidly expanding “religious Makhachkala,” I never fully abandoned the secular one, often wavering between the two: attending get-togethers in the undercover clubs on one day and sitting in on jinn exorcisms the next.
This division between “religious” and “secular” Makhachkala and Dagestan is intended to serve as a metaphorical illustration of the shift in my per-
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