Slovo 28.2

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 1.

DOI: 10.14324/111.2057-2212.042

Editorial MARK CRAWFORD Executive Editor, Slovo, 2015-2016 Slovo is a peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary academic journal of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London; managed and edited by postgraduate students, we have been proud to publish the meritorious work of aspiring academics for almost three decades, with the focus of our work spanning the whole of Eurasia.

The many and very varied contributions that we are happy to publish in the present issue of Slovo have each made it one of its most successful in many years. We feature Daria Shembel’s evaluation of Sergei Miroshnichenko’s documentary Born in the USSR, a case study of emergent post-Soviet culture through ‘database cinema’. This cultural history complements Eliot Gelberg-Wilson’s investigation into the compositions through which Eduard Atem’ev has explored Russia’s national identity, and into the films whereby he has done so. In addition, Eline Marie Grøholt assesses the shifting characteristics of Moscow’s role in the Barents Sea Boundary Agreement, whose outcome may have had far-reaching implications for contemporary Russian foreign policy. This issue also includes within it a set of articles relating to both historical and more immediate questions of political culture; this is nicely refracted through Sasha St John Murphy’s reading of Russian nihilism, politically charged as its exploration was in the literature of the 1860s, but also Oscar Wales’ navigation through the various instruments by which nationalism has taken hold of youth in Putin’s Russia. Finally, together with our traditionally diverse assortment of book reviews, the Ukrainian sign-language film Plemya (‘The Flight’, 2014) is also up for appraisal.

Lastly, a word of gratitude is earned. As well as the great pleasure it has been to work with the many academics whose contributions fill this volume of Slovo, without the editorial board this would not have been possible. Managing Editor Nick Miyares, Reviews Editor Oscar Wales, PR Officer Fliss Probert and our general editors have all been vital assets in the editorial processes that have brought the present issue to light; I wish them the best of luck in their future careers, whether editorial, academic or otherwise.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the author’s work noncommercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 2-25.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.043

Eduard Artem’ev and the Sonics of National Identity ELIOT GELBERG-WILSON School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London Eduard Artem’ev is a Soviet and Russian composer who has written many different types of music. He took an early interest in electronic music, writing some of the Soviet Union’s first electronic releases alongside early works in choral composition, symphonies and suites from the late 1950s onwards. He has also written for opera and plays, including a famous 2002 adaptation of Crime and Punishment. He is best known, however, for his compositions for film. Artem’ev came into film on the merits of his electronic work, when the cinema of the 1960s required a new soundscape. Fifty years later, he has written for over a hundred films and is one of Russia’s best-known composers as the screen– recordings of his film compositions can be heard over the tannoys of the Moscow metro, in Russia’s largest supermarkets, and even Sochi 2014’s opening and closing ceremonies.

At the beginning of his career, Artem’ev was a composer who could respond to the needs of a film on the basis of his technical arsenal. By the post-Soviet period, he had become a composer able to create a nuanced cultural conversation within his film music.

Several works about Artem’ev have been published, most notably by Tatiana Egorova, who has written a biography and a comprehensive survey of Soviet film music.

These primarily focus on the technical aspects of his creative process. In this study I will look at the cultural significance of his film compositions – an area that deserves considerable attention, given the impact his music has had on Soviet and Russian culture.

The study of film music itself has taken strides in this direction, as earlier studies of the sound film era focused more on technical demands, while later works, such as Claudia Gorbman’s seminal studies on diegesis and Alfred Schniitke’s theories on cultural referencing, have offered a platform to study the acoustic element of film with the same cultural focus that is given to the visual.

National identity has a specific resonance in music, as well as in film. Music played a prominent role in the development of Rusia’s nineteenth century nationalist movements, while European trends such as Baroque and Classical have certain cultural codings from a Russian perspective. Exposition of national identity in Russian cinema has attracted significant interest. Over the 1970s and 1980s, many films gave ‘expression to the

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

3 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY concerns, fears and hopes of the nationalists.’1 The issue of national identity changes in post-Soviet cinema, seen, for example, in the essays compiled in Birgit Beumers’ Russia on Reels (1999).2 In studies on both periods, the films of three directors figure constantly — Andrei Tarkovsky, Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovskii. Artem’ev has worked on almost all of their films. I will look at films by these three directors, as they are the films most relevant to national identity within Artem’ev’s canon.

I. FILM MUSIC: THEN AND NOW

For the purposes of this study, reference will be made to four trends in Soviet and Russian film music. Two of these would have been more traditional for a composer like Artem’ev: the dramaturgic demands of socialist-realist cinema; and the EizenshteinProkof’ev model of collaboration. The two others were emerging in the period when Artem’ev came into prominence: polystylism, best defined by fellow composer Alfred Schnittke; and electronic music, particularly within the ‘third wave’ of Soviet composers.

The interplay between traditional and contemporary elements runs right through Artem’ev’s repertoire, and is something he has exploited to great effect.

Throughout the 1930s, the academic study of film music developed alongside that of cinema more broadly. Much like cinematography, music was seen to have a clear didactic function, sharing the social goals of political institutions: ‘dialectic-materialist thought and the battle for a socialist world.’3 Music as an expressive means is a notion heavily represented in academic literature of this era. As elaborated upon by Ioffe in his Sinteticheskoe izuchenie iskusstva i zvukovoe kino (1937), music is able to access a viewer’s inner world like no other art form.4 This work also broaches the unification of the arts — an early-Soviet artistic vision that made socialist intellectuals initially predisposed to opera, and had an important influence on film. However, strict artistic hierarchies needed to exist in order to correctly convey the right message. Cheremukhin expanded upon this idea, placing music’s role under the slogan of ‘complete, conclude, colligate.’5 This is typical of 1

John Dunlop, ‘Russian Nationalist Themes in Soviet Film of the 1970s,’ in Anna Lawton (ed.), The Red Screen: Politics, Society, Art in Soviet Cinema (London, New York: Routledge, 1992), 231–246 (p. 231).

2 Birgit Beumers (ed.), Russia on Reels: the Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema (New York: I. B. Taurus, 1999).

3 Ieremiah Ioffe, Muzyka sovetskogo kino: Osnovy muzykal’noi dramaturgii (Leningrad: GMNII, 1938), p. 15.

4 Ieremiah Ioffe, Sinteticheskoe izuchenie iskusstva i zvukovoe kino (Leningrad: GMNII, 1937).

5 Mikhail Cheremukhin, Muzyka zvukogo fil’ma (Moscow: Goskinoizdat, 1939), p. 63.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

4 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY the restrained and didactic audio-visual style developed from the mid-1930s. Music’s role in the dramaturgy of a film is one of visceral emotional agitation, allowing visual and verbal markers to convey information to the viewer in such a state.

The translation of this principle into practice can be seen in the films of Sergei Eizenshtein. Applying his theory of dialectical montage in a multimedia context, Eizenshtein developed audio-visual fugue. This involves thematic interplay between different voices — in this case, different art forms — in compiling a unified artistic expression that impresses upon the viewer. In order to optimally synchronize visual and musical themes, a collaborative relationship between director and composer is necessary.

This is best exemplified by Eizenshtein’s work with Prokofiev, starting with an architectural plan to define rhythmic structure. From this, Prokofiev could design a piece of music over which Eizenshtein would mentally improvise a cinematographic plan, or Eizenshtein could shoot a sequence over which Prokofiev would mentally plan a score.

This ‘audiovisual process was very like the method he used to create the montage for his pre-sound films,’ directly corresponding to the principles underpinning the work of this Soviet icon. 6 This audio-visual model was one embroiled in fusing the arts by way of collaboration.

Within film academia, greater attempts had been made to break down cinematic dramaturgy into component parts. In Korganov and Frolov’s Kino i muzyka (1964), a chapter is dedicated to the principle of Kinopolifoniia. Rooted in Bakhtin’s theory of literary polyphony, rather than the traditionally musical definition, they break down cinematic dramaturgy into four component voices: visual action, verbal action, aural action and montage.7 Polyphonic relationships between components allow music to affect filmic development in specific ways — for example, development of character through development of a musical motif. This facilitates the filmmaker’s — and, indeed, the composer’s — imposition of authorial voice.

Here there arises a referential landscape for composers to draw upon, tying musical voices to specific cultural effects. This polyphony has a broader resonance in the ‘polystylism’ that emerged from the 1950s onwards, as defined by Schnittke. This is the musical tendency to refer to other pieces of music or styles on the basis of assumed listener knowledge, thus creating a distinct effect that goes beyond the two musical Robert Robertson, Eisenstein on the Audiovisual: the Montage of Music, Image and Sound in Cinema (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009), p. 147.

7 Tomas Korganov and Ivan Frolov, Kino i muzyka (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964), p. 78.

6

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

5 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY sources. The two manifestations of polystylism are ‘the principle of quotation and the principle of allusion,’ differentiating between direct referencing of another piece of music and alluding to its stylistic components.8 Here, a voice is not a singular musical one but the artistic voice of another — either a specific composer or a group of people unified by a style.

As discussed by Stеtsiuk and Abakumov, Artem’ev and Schnittke were both part of the ‘third wave’ of composers, whose work reconciled various traditions as they developed electronic music and applied it to film, with a necessity to mediate between ‘serious’ and ‘light’ forms of music.9 The ‘optimal’ balance was the polystylistic goal of such composers. 10 Based on the term coined by American musician Gunter Schuller, the ‘optimal’ target was music affected by contemporary landscape, but not ignoring preexisting moral and aesthetic values. The development of electronic music was intrinsically tied to this process — indeed, many of these composers were protégés of Evgenyi Murzin, innovator of the ANS – the Soviet Union’s first electronic synthesizer.

Although these are merely a few of the many trends in film music, they act as useful markers in mediating between Artem’ev’s historical and contemporary treatment of issues in film music, particularly when considering the complex issue of national identity.

II. NATIONAL IDENTITY IN PHYSICAL FORM In comparison with the specificities of the Eizenshtein-Prokofiev method, Andrei Tarkovsky’s initial communications with Artem’ev broached more conceptual issues. The composer was to be less involved in defining the film’s form and more in developing mood: ‘for him chronometry was not so important as ‘condition’.’ 11 By the 1970s, Artem’ev had done some film work, mainly using equipment and techniques developed under Murzin. His first work for cinema was in 1963 - Mechte navstrechu (Toward Meeting a Dream), a film about an inter-planetary expedition. For this he wrote a soundscape closer to special effects than a traditional score, tenuously placed between the diegetic and non-

Alexander Ivashkin (ed.), A Schnittke Reader (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 87.

Igor Stetsiuk and Maxim Abakumov, ‘Tret’e napravlenie’ i kinomuzyka Eduarda Artem’eva (Kiev: Natsional’naia muzykal’naia akademiia Ukrainy im. P. I. Chaikovskogo, 2005), p. 4.

10 Ibid.

11 Arkady Petrov, ‘Eduard Artem’ev i Andrei Tarkovsky (‘Muzyka v fil’me mne ne nuzhna’),’ Salon audio video, 5, (1996 <http://www.electroshock.ru/edward/interview/petrov3/index.html> [accessed 25th March], (para. 9).

8 9

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

6 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY diegetic, intertwined with songs written by another composer. His sonic contribution was to deepen the aesthetic effect of the futuristic materials on screen, giving them an extra (aural) dimension. For Tarkovsky’s 1971 film Soliaris, the director wanted ‘just atmosphere, just organization of sound and noise,’ but got considerably more.12 What started as a technical exercise, creating a futuristic soundscape for Tarkovsky, turned into a series of multi-faceted musical compositions. Artem’ev brought an audio-visual into cinema that concerned the cultural and the physical.

In Soliaris, culture is an internal condition associated with representing the physical in human memory. This culture is distinctly European. In a scene in the library of the space station orbiting Solaris, the camera peruses Breugel’s Renaissance painting Hunters in the Snow (1565). The snowy landscape, similar to sequences from protagonist Kris’ rural Russian childhood, is accompanied by an unfolding soundscape of rustling forestry, choral singing and the ringing of the Assumption Cathedral’s belfry in Rostov, manipulated by use of the ANS synthesizer. 13 The music draws from the EizenshteinProkofiev model, with fugal interplay between cinematic and musical rhythm. The chiming of the bells does not specifically match montage shifts, but carry a similar pace; an audio-visual theme carried through the media. The natural but distorted soundscape defines the messy transition of the physical into art via human memory. The quintessence of human life — the source of memory in the film — is one both specifically Russian and European. This is reinforced by Artem’ev’s ‘dressing up’ of Bach’s Ich ruf du zir, herr Jesu Christ minutes later, as gravity is lost and the characters float past more examples of European art, with occasional cuts back to Bruegel’s painting and a fire lit in the snow — another reference to Kris’ Russian childhood.14 Artem’ev facilitates the Russo-European representation of human culture in using audio-visual rhythmic fugue, distortion of natural sound and manipulation of pre-existing music.

In terms of temporality, Tarkovsky’s aesthetic style is significantly different to Eizenshteinian montage, which has a notable impact on the audio-visual element. The montage supremacy of the Eizenshtein tradition is replaced with a cinematic rhythm defined by the ‘life of the object visibly recorded in the frame.’ 15 This allows timepressure to be built on the basis of varying lengths of life in filmed objects. While this is Petrov, Muzyka v fil’me mne ne nuzhna, para. 4.

Tatiana Egorova, Soviet Film Music: An Historical Survey (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 78–79.

14 Petrov, Muzyka v fil’me mne ne nuzhna, para. 8.

15 Donato Totaro, ‘Time and the Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky,’ Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 2, 1992, 1, 21–30 (p. 23).

12 13

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

7 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY not absent in films of the Eizenshtein tradition, a fundamental difference lies in montage not being the primary means of creating cinematic rhythm in Tarkovsky’s films.

In Soliaris, this effect is seen in a sequence referred to as ‘City,’ in which exastronaut Berton drives through a network of tunnels and motorways. In this scene, a road soundscape is gradually transformed into a cosmic one. Individual vehicles zoom in and out of frame while the general cinematic object — the urban traffic network — seems immortal and unending. The montage rhythm, initially quite relaxed, gradually intensifies. Rather than emphasize frame changes, the soundscape beneath has a linear trajectory. Once Berton has ended a phone call, the motorway soundscape is gradually supplanted by increasingly intense electronic noise. This is comprised of shocks of sound that would generally be associated with the dials and controls of a spaceship, bearing a similarity, for example, to those heard in Artem’ev’s sound design for Toward Meeting a Dream. Vehicular sounds are increasingly filtered through electronic sound effects, most notably reverb and saturation, giving the soundscape a broad and distorted feel which imitates that of a rocket taking off. The sounds of cars, as they would be heard in reality, fade away. The increased rate of frame change is matched by a move away from the actual sound of physical objects. Although going into the heart of human civilization, the soundscape goes further away from physical reality into a state representative of space travel.

Here, we have a sharp distinction between the external, physical world and the internal, introspective world of Berton. By turning everyday urban life into an overwhelming act of cosmic exploration, the viewer feels Berton’s isolation, stuck in his car as a cosmonaut in a spaceship. Artem’ev achieves this effect by giving audio-visual rhythm a dynamic element, which, in the words of Soviet academic Lissa, helps demonstrate ‘change in the localisation of the source of sound within a shot,’ moving from diegetic objects within shot (cars) to an aural representation of what is in shot. 16 It is important that this scene reaches a peak of chaotic movement within the frame and then cuts back to the dacha, the electronic noise cutting and natural stillness with the new frame. Only at this point is the time-pressure of the sequence really felt — the linear, indivisible soundscape matches the unending labyrinth of road networks, and only when the life of the framed object (the road network) ends can the soundscape do so. This cut sets the physical aspect of humble and rural Russian life against urbanization.

16

Zofia Lissa, Estetika kinomuzyki, (Moscow: Muzyka, 1970), p. 311.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

8 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY Zerkalo (Mirror) of 1975, Tarkovsky’s semi-autobiographical work, contains two particularly important examples of audio-visual interplay. Ignat, the son of protagonist Aleksei, encounters a woman in his father’s apartment who asks him to read Pushkin’s 1836 letter to Chaadaev. This refutes Chaadaev’s impression of Russia’s historical insignificance by pointing to Russia’s simultaneous defence of and isolation from Christian Europe — a perspective more ‘particularist’ (neither East nor West) than ‘universalist’ (both East and West). 17 Orchestral and choral sounds allude to dynamic climaxes, with rumbling timpani and stirring tremolo violins, but fail to reach their suggested peak. Sound wafts in and out of the boy’s reading, starts up as he leaves, reaches an ironic sub-climax as he opens the door to his disorientated grandmother, and only peaks as he returns and the woman is gone — all that is left is the perspiration from her hot cup of tea that had been on the glass table. The music’s long-awaited climax and consequent disappearance happens before the end of the shot, resolving a few seconds before the perspiration fades to nothingness. The score allows imperfect audio-visual synchronization — the narrative tension accompanying the simple Russian boy cannot correlate with his engaging this ghoulish agency of Russia’s solitary history, compounding the solitude and uncertainty expressed in Pushkin’s letter. This scene constitutes Tarkovsky’s formal representation of Russia’s historical particularism.

An episode entitled ‘Sivash’ centres around archive footage of Soviet soldiers wading through Lake Sivash. The soundtrack to this personal-historical blend has been explained in some detail by Artem’ev: ‘as if a biblical exodus…a variation on one chord…what came to be was an odd, malleable and rather mystical sound.’18 The drama and dynamic excess are in tune with the intended ‘biblical exodus’ effect, as is the prayerlike theme of the underlying minor chord, occasionally sprung up by synthesized choir. A loose war drum, pitched to the root note of the chord, arhythmically rumbles in variation with ‘diegetic’ sound (this sound was not recorded simultaneously with the documentary footage, but is supposed to exist within its diegesis). This underlying theme relates to human narrative, imposing humanity on the Soviet soldiers — coming in over the face of the young boy’s love interest, repeating over Soviet soldiers trudging through water and, after a poetic interlude, re-emerging over a colour shot of a boy in a snowy landscape.

This runs against explosions of dissonant orchestral sound, loud cymbal crashes and the Robin Aizlewood, ‘Revisiting Russian Identity in Russian Thought: From Chaadaev to the Early Twentieth Century,’ The Slavonic and East European Review, 78, 2000, 1, 20–43 (p. 29).

18 Petrov, Muzyka v fil’me mne ne nuzhna, para. 15.

17

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

9 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY clatter of disunited horns, with grainy pictures of mass death, the atomic bomb and the threatening rise of Mao’s cultural revolution — another Eastern threat contained by Russia.

Artem’ev’s two layers synchronize with physical associations, fleshing out the interplay between the personal and the historical in the traumas of war: the humble and unwavering spirituality of the Russian people against the chaos and destructiveness of the external. Flickers between different time frames within one montage sequence embody the Deleuzian effect of time-image, an ‘expression of the difficulty of narrating national identity at a time of historical crisis or transformation.’ 19 In discussing Tarkovskian cinematography, Bell deems time-image ‘that which deterritorializes or undermines the identity of truth...not the identity that is itself deterritorialized.’ 20 Music has the same function as time-image in this respect, not an expression of identity but of its constant recalibration. Between spirituality and violence lies the Russian experience. Nationality is on the side of the personal when it comes to Russians — citizen and Soviet military experiences conjoined under one musical theme.

While Mirror veers towards particularism, the main theme in Stalker (1979) is an expression of universalism. Tarkovsky demanded a theme that blended generic Western and Eastern aesthetics: ‘we don’t just need an Eastern instrument playing a Western melody…on the contrary — a mixture of the two cultures’ spirits.’21 The theme’s drone is played on an Indian tambura, its melody on a medieval block-flute and a countermelody on a Dutar, in the style of an Azerbaijani mugam. 22 The melody is a variation on fourteenth-century spiritual Pulcherrima Rosa, traditionally sung with Latin text. The piece’s construction employs fugal interplay between melody and countermelody as thematic markers (here — traditional West and traditional East), and Schnittke’s ‘principle of quotation.’ Artem’ev tied together core Soviet film music traditions as well as East and West as cultural markers in creating Tarkovsky’s universalist theme. This was of crucial importance to the film, Tarkovsky telling him ‘it is of utmost importance to me, so I can proceed to shooting,’ marking a return to the traditional collaborative method.23 Relation to physical form becomes apparent in a scene entitled a ‘journey into the Zone,’ the three protagonists’ railcar journey through industrial wasteland into the David Martin-Jones, Narrative Time in National Contexts (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p. 1.

Jeffrey Bell, ‘Thinking with Cinema: Deleuze and Film Theory’, Film-Philosophy, 1, 1997, 1, 1–6 (p. 4).

21 Petrov, Muzyka v fil’me mne ne nuzhna, para. 30.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., para. 28.

19 20

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

10 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY mysterious Zone. Sound is the main source of cinematic rhythm — the visual element is comprised of barely more than a few shots, generally panning across the men’s faces and the industrial landscape. We initially hear the diegetic sound of the railcar hitting the tracks at regular intervals. As time passes, distortion is added to the impact between car and rails, alongside a delay effect with increasingly heavy feedback. The ‘clean’ sound of the car chugging along is reduced. By the end of the sequence, practically all that is audible is the feedback of the distorted delay signal, creating a ‘detached’ and ‘otherworldly’ effect.24 Diegetic music creates an illusion of space, requiring the viewer to locate the source of sound on screen. 25 Here, much like in the ‘City’ episode of Soliaris, the transformation of diegetic into non-diegetic draws character and viewer away from diegetic reality into an internal space. The journey into the Zone will be a journey into the self. In combination with the East-West theme, this bolsters Stalker’s blended cultural landscape and internal search for identity. The film’s finale, orchestrated by Artem’ev and Tarkovsky, is a collage of sound blending industrial noise with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, set against the miraculous act of telekinesis by Stalker’s daughter. This best illustrates the role of the physical in the sound world — a marker, set against the internal and the cultural (here — industrial sound against Beethoven).

Prominent twentieth-century philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev describes Russians as a ‘people in the highest degree polarised…a conglomeration of contradictions.’ 26 A particular stress is put on the religious notion of utopia in contrast to present-time drudgery, that ‘on the idea of divino-humanity lies the imprint of cosmic and social utopia.’27 Indeed, the music Artem’ev set to Tarkovsky’s films has its utopian religious underpinnings, with his elaboration on Bach’s church cantatas and adaptation of old spirituals. This, in conjunction with the mediation between Russia’s particularism and universalism, describes the audio-visual aspect of Tarkovskian cultural identity: somehow grounded in European high culture and spirituality but somewhat apart and isolated, both past and future, both doomed and glorious in solitude. This contradictory coexistence perhaps explains why Stalker is considered ‘a visual tribute to the survival of the Russian

Ibid., para. 32.

See Claudia Gorbman, ‘Narrative film music,’ Yale French Studies, 60, 1980, 183–203.

26 Nikolai Berdiaev, Russkaia ideia (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1946), p. 5.

27 Ibid., p. 175.

24 25

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

11 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY Idea.’28 Such an achievement would have been impossible without the music of Artem’ev, a composer who was brought in as a technician but proved himself to be much more.

III. NATIONAL IDENTITY IN CULTURAL CHARACTER Artem’ev’s most longstanding artistic relationships have been with brothers Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovskii. Some of Mikhalkov’s earlier films are set in the nineteenth century and laden with a negatively-coded nostalgia. Neokonchennaia p’esa dlia mekhanichoskogo pianino (Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano) of 1977 and Neskol’ko dnei iz zhizni Oblomova (Oblomov) of 1979, based on classic literature, are concerned with ‘the failed ideas of the Russian intelligentsia in the late nineteenth century.’29 The music needed to be ‘nostalgic, and about Russia.’30 Both films contain citation of operatic and classical works — Donizetti’s Nemorino, Bellini’s Casta Diva, Rachmaninov’s Five Vespers and the well-known flute melody from Gluck’s Orpheus.31 Frolova-Walker discusses the nineteenth-century efforts of the highly-educated, often Slavophiles, to capture the essence either of peasant music or Orthodox Church music, and bring it into developing musical cultures. Musical models included ‘single-line chants of Russian and Byzantine tradition’ and protiazhnaia song, seen as the epitome of peasant folk.32 The end result, however, was often far from that which it attempted to imitate. In Mikhalkov’s early films, Artem’ev superimposed generic features of traditional Russian music; as he says, ‘I employed melodic turns similar to Russian folk-song, reduced everything down to a minimum, simplified it down to five notes,’ thus emulating a longstanding elite appropriation of folk music.33 The polystylistic ‘principle of quotation’ creates a referentially high culture soundscape with crude renderings of traditional music.

This underlines the shallowness and detachment of Russia’s nineteenth-century intellectual elite.

In Oblomov, the central theme is an idea carried through time, as seen in Artem’ev’s Nancy Condee, ‘No Glory, No Majesty, or Honour: The Russian Idea and Inverse Value,’ in Russia on Reels, 25–33 (p. 33).

29 David Gillespie, ‘New Versions of Old Classics,’ in Russia on Reels, 114–24 (p. 117).

30 Arkady Petrov, ‘Eduard Artem’ev: Elektronnye fantazii,’ Klub khudozhestvennoi samodeiatel’nosti, 19, 1981 <http://www.electroshock.ru/edward/interview/petrov2/index.html> [accessed 25 March 2016], (para.

28).

31 Tatiana Egorova, Vselennaia Eduarda Artem’eva (Moscow: Vagrius, 2006), p. 92.

32 Maria Frolova-Walker, ‘Music of the Soul?’ in Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis (eds.), National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 116–131 (pp. 123–24).

33 Petrov, Eduard Artem’ev: Elektronnye fantazii, para. 28.

28

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

12 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY working process: ‘[I] acoustically developed, ‘spread’ its [the melody’s] scope, creating a sense of limitless space.’34 Set over pictures of the protagonist’s childhood, we first hear a fiddly melodic passage played on a synthesized baroque-era harpsichord. Melodic turns carry through the soundscape by means of heavy reverb and delay. This is not just a contemporary rendering of antiquated music — the sound production literally stretches the motif through time. This theme is reprised whenever the slovenly modern-day Oblomov thinks back to his childhood — it develops texturally with a female choir texture that eventually reduces to a single female voice over images of his mother. This brings to mind ‘meta-diegetic’ soundscape — ‘supposedly narrated or ‘imagined’ by a character in the film.’35 While not being diegetic as such, a female voice over the images of his mother belongs to Oblomov’s psyche in the same way that visual memory does. This stretches the sonic time-frame alongside the visual. Simultaneously, the melody simplifies and refines down to a recognizable line. The droning choral and string textures at the basis of the theme seem stretched and almost rhythmless — the chord changes are scarcely distinguishable and the texture is unwavering. The musical idea is carried through time from Oblomov’s past to present — a formal incarnation of nostalgia, given a negative flavour by virtue of his present-day sloth.

In Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano, a self-playing mechanical piano is brought to the resplendent manor, a footman pretends to play it, but retreats as it continues to play itself. The pretentious, bourgeois protagonists’ obsession with this contraption continues throughout the film. Among them is one child, detached and uninterested in the adults, with his own mysterious and wondrous soundscape of orchestral and electronic sound. He wanders into natural landscapes, visual cuts bridged by swirling synthesizers, a flute line with a Gluck-like quality, bass guitar emphasizing pedal notes and a growing orchestral texture. On its repeat, this is blended with diegetic rain at a nearby lake, the boy smiling among the lush greenery followed by a cut to the adults dancing around the performerless piano. Like in the films of Tarkovsky, the sonic shift synchronizes with the scene cut, imbuing two opposing atmospheres in neighboring scenes. But this is not a simple opposition of inner and outer worlds — the lakeside scene involves the harmonious coexistence of diegetic and non-diegetic, as well as orchestral and electronic, while the next scene centres around a performerless piano, lacking both internal reflection and external expression. Artem’ev’s soundscape helps express the 34 35

Ibid.

Gorbman, Narrative film music, p. 196.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

13 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY Russian Idea — a pretentious and soulless technological present, but hope for a Utopian blend of contemporary and traditional — Artem’ev’s combination of musical technology and genuine expression.

The most thorough musical exposition of Soviet identity can be heard in Mikhalkov’s Svoi sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoi sredi svoikh (At Home Among Strangers) of 1974.

This story of a Cheka officer’s redemption among his comrades during the Civil War is a setting for heavy musical stylization — in Schnittke’s terms, the ‘principle of allusion,’ including ‘micro-elements of an alien style...[of] another age or tradition (characteristic melodic intonations, harmonic sequences, cadential formulae).’ 36 The film’s opening sequence is set to Pesnia o mechte, adapted from typically socialist realist poetry written by Mikhalkov’s mother. It is composed in the style of contemporary popular music. Driven by bass guitar, drums and electric guitar, the melody follows a descending harmonic sequence with an organ playing a chord on each tone of the scale, overlaid by popular singer Aleksandr Gradskii. The melodic turns and harmonic development of this piece bears an interesting similarity to Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale. While it is hard to say whether this was a specific influence, Artem’ev certainly drew from Western contemporary music, openly admiring Crimson King and Emerson, Lake and Palmer among others. 37 The music accompanies scenes of communist brotherhood, the film’s protagonists-to-be celebrating in a montage sequence just after the Revolution, symbolically destroying an old carriage and reveling in the new era. The pop music over the top gives this ‘new’ an even newer dimension — relating it to the modern day.

Artem’ev infuses contemporary rock and baroque into Morricone-style AmericanWestern music in a chaotic meeting of three plot lines, as gangs of bandits and White officers orchestrate a robbery of a train carrying communist gold. As they loot the train, the chugging railroad-style rhythm of shuffling snares is heard, with organs and bass guitar grooving over a repetitive chord sequence and a trumpet playing a declaratory motif over the top — a contemporary orchestration of American-Western style adventure music. In a sudden cut, we follow the gaze of Brylov — the anti-Bolshevik arch-bandit — to a dream-like scene of Russian aristocratic leisure, accompanied by a baroque composition for harpsichord. This theme reoccurs when Brylov later dies. This fulfills Gorbman’s notion of ‘metadiegesis,’ the musical source not on screen but existing within the dramatic frame — the imagination of the character whose mind we have entered. This refined, 36 37

Ivashkin, A Schnittke Reader, p. 87.

Egorova, Vselennaia Eduarda Artem’eva, p. 66 and Petrov, Eduard Artem’ev: Elektronnye fantazii, para. 16.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

14 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY ordered and antiquated music defines the mind of the anti-Soviet villain and can be said to exist within his psyche. This is our only insight into Brylov’s emotional motive within the film — the restoration of bourgeois leisure, the polar opposite to the epic labours of the communists. Artem’ev blends stylistic associations and the ‘principle of allusion’ to set this music directly against that used for the communists.

The film’s theme is a piece with dramatic dynamic extremes. With a floating trumpet theme, reminiscent of the Western adventure style, a bass guitar playing pedal notes and an arpeggiating guitar, its stylistic soundscape is, again, mixed. It can draw comparison with Soviet-Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Pro et Contra. This piece, an important early example of polystylism, is structurally divided in order to musically interface the thematic ‘pro’ with the ‘contra.’ This is the precise formula used by Artem’ev in the harmonic construction of At Home Among Strangers’ theme — only the theme is established on the ‘contra’ and resolves on the ‘pro.’ The initial melodic phrase starts up over a minor harmonic development with string-based countermelody, which is then transposed up a third over the relative major chord for a response section, at which point the string-based countermelody becomes more elaborate and creates an ornamented, romantic soundscape. The ‘contra’ section of the film’s theme is harmonically almost identical to the second movement of Pärt’s ‘Pro et Contra,’ ‘Largo.’

E. Artem’ev — trumpet theme from At Home Among Strangers

The positive-negative interplay is used often — scenes of stress and worry are accompanied by the theme and, when the music reaches its positive response section, are

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

15 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY intercut with tender memories of brotherhood. Protagonist Shilov ultimately returns with the gold he is alleged to have stolen, redeeming himself, and prompting an adapted arrangement of the theme. Instead of transitioning to the ‘pro’, the minor harmonic sequence is repeated, a string-based fugal countermelody takes the trumpet’s place, and the dynamic is raised to a climax, a drum kit comes in and transforms the interrupted rhythmic soundscape into a flowing 6/8, explosively relieving tension on the comrades’ reuniting. Only at the very end does it move to the major, ending the film on the ‘pro’.

This film is ‘true socialist spirit history ‘as it should have been,’’ the emotional bond between the comrades winning the day. 38 Artem’ev’s music doesn’t just bring out emotional content but, in integrating contemporary music, drags Mikhalkov’s vision of what Soviet identity should be into the modern era.

Konchalovskii’s Siberiade (1979) portrays a village community across several generations, one subject to Soviet ‘exploitation of Siberia’s natural resources for the sake of progress and the benefit of future generations.’39 Hereupon rises a conflict between nature and technology.

The film opens with an exploding oil tower as layers of trebly synthesized noise create a chaotic soundscape. The synthesizers wildly arpeggiate (an electronic effect that causes notes of an arpeggio to be played at random in the key of the engaged note), with a delay effect that causes random feedback on one of the many notes. There is an underlying sense of musical pattern, but it is far too wild and chaotic to identify. A variation on this theme occurs over caesuras between the eight component stories, when newsreel footage is shown in relation to historical developments. This blends with a layer of diegetic noise — trains, guns, people — a musical version of Konchalovskii’s combination of stock and staged film. The wild synthesizers and unpredictable harmonic development show the rapid, uncontrollable tide of history. A layer of synthesized choir becomes more prominent each time the theme is repeated, suggesting the mechanization of man. The footage explicitly links this to Soviet industrial development.

Liudi is a choral piece, comprised of two children's voices. This typical ‘folk melody,’ usually accompanies a particular character’s departure from the village — Konchalovskii matches this with slow-motion footage and a complete cut of diegetic

Birgit Beumers, Nikita Mikhalkov: The Filmmaker’s Companion 1, (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005), p. 28.

Vida Johnson, ‘The Nature—Technology Conflict in Soviet Film: A Comparison of Siberiade and Farewell,’ Studies in Comparative Communism, 21, 1989, 3, 341–347 (p. 347).

38 39

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

16 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY noise, a gaze carried from a particular character watching another leave.40 The folk melody is associated with heritage and the natural landscape that gets left behind. As the film progresses, the fragment continues to occur but has stronger and stronger electronic effects applied to it, which give it an exaggeratedly electronic sound. This carries the narrative effect of technology winning out over nature. Drawing from the Russian Idea, this shows a fundamentally warring duality within Russian identity.

The main theme, referred to as pokhod, is a mediation between the two others. The synthesizer melody ‘is clearly based on a scale akin to folk melodics’ and its secondary texture is a synthesizer playing ordered arpeggios — a reduction of the wild arpeggiation in the caesuras. 41 As the drums come in, they are filtered through heavy reverb and contain a high frequency of tom fills, emulating the sound of industrial labour. This, as the predominant theme of the film, is the container for Russian identity within the Soviet Union — somewhere between the wild push of modernization and humble, natural ancestry.

Mikhalkov’s 1981 film Rodnia (Kinfolk) centres around a middle-aged woman of rural background who visits her daughter in Moscow, encountering the wild cultural and technological aspects of city life. Most important from a musical perspective is the interplay between the traditional and the modern. After a culturally-confused soundscape including Verdi, Boney M’s Sunny, and a score littered with heavy electronics, the film ends with a musical collaboration between Artem’ev and the Pokrovskii folk ensemble.

Beumers juxtaposes this against ‘the artificial classical music of Verdi,’ showing ‘Western music as artificial, and folk tunes for genuine scenes.’42 While she correctly identifies the musical themes as being coded with cultural outlooks, relating to earlier work by Lissа on melodic centres as representations of cultural background, this binary ignores the cultural blend in the finale.43 Under the polyphonic folk vocals there emerges a bass guitar and drum groove most likely to be found in, say, a Boney M song. A distorted electric guitar begins to play a countermelody, blending in as an extra polyphonic layer within the voices.

This is Kinfolk’s take on Soviet identity — a blend of the traditional Russian and the modern, foreign, and technological.

This begs the question of what would happen if the Soviet were taken away and just the Russian left. Of course, this issue came to life ten years after Kinfolk with the Stetsiuk and Abakumov, Tret’e napravlenie, p. 47.

Ibid.

42 Beumers, Nikita Mikhalkov: The Filmmaker’s Companion, p. 76.

43 Lissa, Estetika kinomuzyki, p. 308.

40 41

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

17 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY dissolution of the Soviet Union. Cinema of the 1990s lacked a ‘single dominant ideology,’ with ‘no real agreement as to what ‘Russianness’ consists of.’44 In the films of Mikhalkov we see an attempt to create a new structure of hero. His public speeches highlighted cinema’s didactic and example-setting function, ‘shaping the consciousness of the masses’ and serving as ‘a model, a symbol.’45 It is in this context that a pattern of paternalism emerged within his films, and gave music an interesting role.

The music in Utomlennye solntsem (Burnt by the Sun) of 1994 is almost entirely citational. We first see the hero, Kotov, lying naked with his wife and daughter in a bania.

Their innocence and comfort is underpinned by non-diegetic, lethargic guitar playing harmonic allusions to Stalin-era hit Utomlennoe solntse. This later becomes a lazy orchestral rendition, with Kotov and his young daughter floating on a riverboat. ‘‘Proletarian’ touches are few’ in this film, and the lethargic variations on this popular tango reinforce the leisurely, cultured lifestyle of this Soviet hero.46 Egorova discusses a theme referred to as ‘Portrait of Stalin’ at some length. The greatest exposition of this theme is set over the final scene, as a hot-air balloon bearing Stalin’s portrait emerges from beyond the horizon, and the arch-antagonist Mitia finally lays bear his ideological motives in saluting it. The music’s primary purpose is to infuse a sense of terror into the scene, with brash horns, malevolently metronomic rhythms underpinned by diminished arpeggios, and crashes of dissonant harmony. Most notable, however, are the melodic fragments that occasionally appear over the top of this soundscape — distorted quotations of Shiroka strana moia rodnaia, from the famous Stalinera musical film Tsirk (Circus) of 1936. They emerge over the top of the terror-scape out of melodic and rhythmic context, turning the Stalin-era musical anthem into its ‘deformed and sinister antipode.’ 47 In Circus, this piece appears over mass marches with crowds proudly carrying Stalin’s portrait. Artem’ev’s melodic, rhythmic and genre-based inversion of its principle line effects the piece’s transformation into a piece of cultural information with completely opposite associations. This is the demonic face not just of the man who was once a father to the Russian people, but also of those cultural associations that supported such a condition.

Richard Taylor, ‘Now that the Party’s Over: Soviet Cinema and Its Legacy,’ in Russia on Reels, 34–42 (p.

41).

45 Nikita Mikhalkov, ‘The Function of a National Cinema,’ in Birgit Beumer (ed.), Russia on Reels, 50–56 (p.

50).

46 Denise Youngblood, ‘The Cosmopolitan and the Patriot: the Brothers Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky and Russian Cinema,’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 23, 2003, 1, 27–41 (p. 34).

47 Egorova, Vselennaia Eduarda Artem’eva, p. 138.

44

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

18 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY The music of this film de-codifies conceptions of national identity formed in the Soviet Union — the father and the persecutor, bourgeois and the proletarian, even the native and the foreign — the title song itself is a South American style tango adapted from a Polish piece. Kotov’s paternal model is not one of moral clarity but an archetype of honest ambiguity: ‘[Mikhalkov] understands that those tragic times defy simplistic categorizations.’48 Artem’ev’s referential music, stooped in polystylism, plays a crucial role in this by decoding preconceived cultural associations.

In his first works with Mikhalkov and Konchalovskii, Artem’ev was brought in for his technical expertise, seen in his innovative use of sound technology in their films of the 1970s. By the 1990s, his compositions were an essential component of any film he worked on, and underpinned all cultural dialogue within such films — whether it be about the Russian intelligentsia, Soviet identity or post-Soviet paternalism.

IV. NATIONAL IDENTITY AS SET AGAINST THE FOREIGN In the post-Soviet period, Artem’ev’s use of synthesized electronic sound significantly diminishes. In the films of Mikhalkov and Konchalovksii, he continues to use studio technology and audio effects, but draws back to more traditional styles of instrumentation. This marks his transition from a composer initially used for his specific technical expertise to one able to create specific cultural effects unlike any other, which is particularly interesting in films interfacing the Russian with the foreign.

Mikhalkov’s paternalism goes international in 1998’s Sibirskii tsiriul’nik (The Barber of Siberia), which depicts a love affair between a nineteenth-century Imperial cadet, Andrei, and an American, Jane. ‘Mikhalkov’s idealized vision of the prerevolutionary officer’s honour and dignity,’ offers more as a model to be emulated than Kotov does.49 The film verges on opera, with an almost constant presence of score music, melodramatic narrative excesses and the very title, a play on The Barber of Seville. This is not to mention the role of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, the opera performed and adored by Andrei in the film.

Egorova deems the film’s music a ‘guide,’ acting as a commentary on and

Youngblood, The Cosmopolitan and the Patriot, pp. 36–37.

Susan Larsen, ‘National Identity, Cultural Authority, and the Post-Soviet Blockbuster: Nikita Mikhalkov and Aleksei Balabanov,’ Slavic Review, 62, 2003, 3, 491–511 (p. 502).

48 49

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

19 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY illustration of plot development.50 While she likens this to the Hollywood traditions, it also harks back to the days when opera was considered a model for the audio-visual in Soviet cinema, harnessing music’s expressiveness. 51 In a dueling scene between Andrei and a love rival, wildly swirling violins blend with the clink of swords and dynamic accents closely match montage shifts. This synchronicity, a cinematic effect inherited from opera, creates tension by means of music’s expressiveness — unifying musical tension with character experience, and making the viewer feel Andrei’s honourable struggle.

Jane is unable to grasp Russian culture, setting her apart from Andrei. Under her very American voiceover description of Maslenitsa, a stereotypical balalaika-based piece plays, one layer playing the distinctive tremolo style of chord emphasis and another playing a heavily-accentuated single line melody — another disingenuous extrapolation of narodnaia muzyka. This meta-diegetic music is not a representation of Russia but of Jane’s impression of Russia, suggesting that foreign understanding can never transcend the superficial.

Mozart, the vessel of Russian paternalism, is adored by Andrei and his unknown American son, but is foreign. Andrei jumps off stage while performing Marriage of Figaro and attacks his rival for Jane’s affections. A theme starts up with fugal melodic interplay between a trumpet and string line. This blend of melodic voices is an expression of Andrei and Jane’s tragic interplay. The jump away from Mozart into fugal interplay, two voices striving to unify, shows the frustrated nature of Russian identity — finding some expression in European culture but seeking something more. The expression of Russian identity in Barber of Siberia is one of lauding honour and dignity, but in a mysterious form that is inaccessible to the outside. Artem’ev engages with operatic, citational and dramaturgic musical functions in putting this problem to sound.

Andrei Konchalovskii’s The Inner Circle (1991) depicts father-persecutor Stalin’s Russia. Konchalovksii made this English-language production ‘to explain Russia to the Americans.’ 52 Most analysis addresses its flawed representation of Russian culture, but there is some intent in this that Artem’ev helps construct. Artem’ev worked on several American projects with Konchalovskii — the role of the composer diminished by American films demanding little more than soundtrack. In films such as Homer and Eddie (1989), the non-diegetic soundscape is filled with popular songs of the day. Artem’ev Egorova, Vselennaia Eduarda Artem’eva, p. 140.

Ioffe, Muzyka sovetskogo kino, p. 23.

52 Youngblood, The Cosmopolitan and the Patriot, p. 31.

50 51

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

20 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY skillfully employs the ‘principle of allusion,’ matching soundtrack songs’ stylistic properties, but this Schnittke-style take on American film does not have Soviet-style music’s expressiveness. The score for The Inner Circle is a step back towards the Soviet tradition.

The film oozes insincerity, the actors ‘affecting exaggerated ‘Russian’ accents,’ and the ‘mannequin-like impersonation of the dictator.’ 53 This is reflected in plot development, Beria being the supposed arch-villain but Stalin really being behind everything, as is ultimately exposed. The only cited positive is that the film ‘definitely got the period details right.’ 54 This blend of period accuracy and disingenuity is reflected musically. Il’a Erenburg discusses Stalin’s ‘angry’ reaction to Shostakovich’s opera Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda, with a consequent Pravda publication calling it ‘muddle instead of music.’55 Its departure from traditional Soviet operatic principles lay in ‘open expression of base passions’ and ‘ideological deviation.’ 56 Artem’ev uses Stalinism’s simple operastyle music, subservient to visual dramaturgy as Cheremukhin articulated in the 1930s, setting mood and highlighting the emotional pace of certain scenes, leaving a basis for didactic overtones. The only real theme relates to protagonist Sanshin and his wife, done in a fake muzak style, with reverberating, over-produced acoustic guitar and stirring strings playing easy, consonant harmonies. This helps construct the contrived and disingenuous expression of characters’ internal passions, stemming from the backlash against Ledi Makbet-style audio-visual dramaturgy. The score supports a fake, foreign gaze on Russian identity with select Stalinist period details.

Urga (1991) takes the Russian abroad, portraying the friendship between a Russian in Northern China and a Mongol from a nearby rural area. The film’s first theme is that of isolated Mongol culture, led by swooning, pentatonic flute and secondary string textures with heavy reverb that carry like the screams heard in the love scenes on the steppe.

Variations in accompaniment show cultural interchanges — an electric bass guitar sliding in as the Mongol, Gombo, goes into an industrialised Chinese town. This shows Mongol heritage coming into contact with different historical developments, best shown as the flute melody is transposed onto an electric guitar when the steppe becomes part of a TV world. However, the gaze of ‘the Russian, a seemingly secondary character, is, in fact, the Ibid. p. 31–32.

Ibid.

55 Andrei Konchalovsky, The Inner Circle: An Inside View of Soviet Life Under Stalin (New York: Newmarket Press, 1992), p. 35.

56 Irina Kotkina, ‘Soviet Empire and Operatic Realm: Stalinist Search for the Model Soviet Opera’, Revue des études slaves, 84, 2013, 3/4, 505–518 (pp. 514–5).

53 54

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

21 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY primary concern.’57 The tune is Western in harmonic and formal development, carrying only generic features in a Western construction of the oriental. This creates a reductive formulation of Mongol culture accessible to a Western audience — the Mongol will be a basis for formulation of the Russian’s identity.

The second theme quotes Na sopkakh Manchurii (On the Hills of Manchuria), a song about the Russo-Japanese war. An acoustic guitar constantly plays non-diegetic improvised fragments of its main melody, accompanied by tremolo balalaika, until it is played diegetically when Russian Sergei sings it in a nightclub. At this stage, having heard it vaguely and now in full, the viewer has the same sensation as Sergei — a tune vaguely stored in cultural memory and coming to the fore. This runs alongside Sergei’s struggle to drag his heritage into the present. The Russian and the Mongol are outsiders together; the music conveys their shared struggle to cling on to their heritage. From a Russian perspective, this blends particularist and universalist outlooks. The Russian is neither Chinese nor American, perhaps not even European, seen when ‘Chinese opera music...changes the music to Wagner’s opera Lohengrin,’ as he struggles to stay awake in his truck.58 This diegetic music shows the reality of the Russian’s tenuous cultural position in the film world, while the score music reflects his inner search for his cultural origins.

He holds a cultural identification with another in-betweener, one who is very different to him. While not fully universalist, this cannot be particularist either. The score music is fundamental in opening up this new negotiation of Russia’s global identity, in a film about the Soviet Union’s dying days. It is the epitome of Artem’ev’s style, replete with cultural reference, traditional music and contemporary sound technology.

CONCLUSION Rather than locking himself away in the laboratories of the third wave, creating music that only ‘people who have studied in a conservatory can understand,’ Artem’ev has used technology to broaden film music’s remit, finding an optimal balance between contradictory tendencies of ‘elite’ and ‘mass’ music. 5960 This has permitted the blending of Lars Kristensen, ‘The ‘Far East’ Neighbour in Nikita Mikhalkov’s Urga,’ in Lars Kristensen, Ewa Mazierska and Eva Näripea (eds.), Postcolonial Approaches to Eastern European Cinema: Portraying Neighbours on Screen (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 277–302 (p. 283).

58 Ibid. p. 285.

59 Khrushchev’s assessment of avant-garde music developed in the 1960s; see Egorova, Vselennaia Eduarda Artem’eva, p. 35.

57

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

22 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY diegetic and non-diegetic sound, incorporation of contemporary styles and aural representation of technological progress. It has also allowed him to engage with Utopian and futuristic aspects of Russian/Soviet national identity, including the Russian Idea and Russia’s tenuous relationship with the path set out by West, the so-called ‘path of progress and civilisation for all mankind.’61 He has related to a broad range of styles and modes of cultural expression — the period specifics of baroque, the artistic and social demands of opera, the historical role of folk — and articulated the relationship between their genuine and disingenuous manifestations. He is able to employ both traditional and new musical forms for specific cultural effect. The philosophical diktats of Ioffe, Cheremukhin etc. are just one mode of thinking, as is Schnittke or the ‘third wave’. Film music’s artistic boundaries are both welldefined and simultaneously transcended. Artem’ev’s thorough knowledge and expert application of these forms allows a well-articulated cultural landscape.

This cultural landscape is the searching nature of Russian identity, that ‘Russian national identity lies not in the resolution but in the nature of the discussion.’62 Artem’ev’s versatility has allowed him to expose the many facets of this discussion. His breadth of cultural output in films relating to national identity underscores Russia’s multitude of cultural elements — a basis for the self-examining culture shown, and heard, on screen.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the author’s work noncommercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

Stetsiuk and Abakumov, Tret’e napravlenie, p. 8.

Berdiaev, Russkaia ideia, p. 42.

62 Franklin and Widdis, National Identity in Russian Culture, p. 4.

60 61

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

23 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY REFERENCES

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© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

24 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY Frolova-Walker, Maria, ‘Music of the Soul?’ in Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis (eds.), National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 116–131.

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Larsen, Susan, ‘National Identity, Cultural Authority, and the Post-Soviet Blockbuster: Nikita Mikhalkov and Aleksei Balabanov,’ Slavic Review, 62, 2003, 3, 491–511.

Lissa, Zofia, Estetika kinomuzyki, (Moscow: Muzyka, 1970).

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

25 GELBERG-WILSON – EDUARD ARTEM’EV AND THE SONCS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

Martin-Jones, David, Narrative Time in National Contexts (Edinburgh University Press, 2006).

Mikhalkov, Nikita, ‘The Function of a National Cinema,’ in Birgit Beumers (ed.), Russia on Reels: the Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema (New York: I. B. Taurus, 1999), 50–56.

Petrov, Arkady, ‘Eduard Artem’ev: Elektronnye fantazii,’ Klub khudozhestvennoi samodeiatel’nosti,

19,

1981

<http://www.electroshock.ru/edward/interview/petrov2/index.html>

[accessed

25

March 2016].

Petrov, Arkady, ‘Eduard Artem’ev i Andrei Tarkovsky (‘Muzyka v fil’me mne ne nuzhna’),’

Salon

audio

video,

5,

(1996

<http://www.electroshock.ru/edward/interview/petrov3/index.html> [accessed 25th March].

Robertson, Robert, Eisenstein on the Audiovisual: the Montage of Music, Image and Sound in Cinema (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009).

Stetsiuk, Igor, and Maxim Abakumov, ‘Tret’e napravlenie’ i kinomuzyka Eduarda Artem’eva (Kiev: Natsional’naia muzykal’naia akademiia Ukrainy im. P. I. Chaikovskogo, 2005).

Taylor, Richard, ‘Now that the Party’s Over: Soviet Cinema and Its Legacy,’ in Russia on Reels, 34–42.

Totaro, Donato, ‘Time and the Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky,’ Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 2, 1992, 1, 21–30.

Youngblood, Denise, ‘The Cosmopolitan and the Patriot: the Brothers MikhalkovKonchalovsky and Russian Cinema,’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 23, 2003, 1, 27–41.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 26-47.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.044

From conflictual to cooperative approaches in Russian foreign policy – an examination of the Barents Sea Boundary Agreement ELINE MARIE GRØHOLT School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

INTRODUCTION

Russia and Norway share a border of 196 km in the north, with Kirkenes as the largest city on the Norwegian side and Murmansk on the Russian side. This border, which was established in 1826, is not only a border between two countries, but also the border separating the Schengen Area and NATO on the Norwegian side from Russia on the other, giving it enhanced strategic and symbolic importance.

During the Cold War, relations between Norway and the Soviet Union were strained, and around the time of Détente in the 1970s, the ‘Question of the Barents Sea’ resurfaced as one of the most important unresolved issues between the two countries. The dispute concerned the delimitation of the maritime boundary between the Soviet Union and Norway. The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought about a set of new opportunities for the two countries to increase cooperation and a possibility of settling this long-lasting conflict.

Although the border region has generally been calm, with strong people-to-people connections in the area, there have been occasional signs of increasing tensions between the two countries over the years. The 2005 Electron episode was a case in point: The catching of the Russian trawler ‘Electron’ following its fishing with illegal equipment outside Spitsbergen led to a five-day chase when it set off for Russian waters with two Norwegian inspectors still on board.1 The event sparked a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, and a dispute over the jurisdiction governing Arctic waters. Norway, on the

Clare Bigg, 'Russia: Trawler Escapes Norwegian Coast Guard While Still Carrying Inspectors', Radio Liberty Free Europe <http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1062253.html> [accessed 15 March 2016] (para. 1 of 14).

1

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

27 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT other side, has hosted the annual2 NATO drill ‘Cold Response’ in Northern Norway, with up to 9000 soldiers from 14 countries, much to the dislike of Russian authorities.3 After a prolonged period of Barents Sea negotiations and in the midst of shifting tensions in the north, the boundary dispute was suddenly settled under the Medvedev presidency, which gave rise to the question of timing: Why was the treaty concluded precisely in 2010? Which factors contributed to the rather sudden resolution of the dispute? With shifting Russian-Western relations during the preceding Putin presidency, can the dispute resolution in the Barents Sea be seen as a change in Russian foreign policy towards a more cooperative path under Medvedev?

This paper aims to analyse Norwegian-Russian relations during the presidency of Dmitrii Medvedev from 2008 to 2012, with a particular focus on the main dispute between the two countries the last decades: the Barents Sea with respect to the 2010 Boundary Treaty. This paper is structured as follows. While it is outside the scope of this article to discuss the multitude of organisations, agreements and treaties governing the Euro-Arctic region, a brief survey of the organisations covering the Barents area is presented in a first section. Then a section on developments in Russian foreign policy and the Medvedev presidency follows. The paper sheds light on Russia’s economic and geopolitical interests in the Barents region. Doing so, it argues that the signing of the Treaty can be seen as an example of a change in Russian foreign policy under Medvedev to a more accommodating course with the West. The successful dispute settlement concerning the boundary delimitation was an illustration thereof, through peaceful negotiations based on international laws. As the focus is on the foreign policy of Russia, it will only briefly cover domestic factors in Russia and Norwegian foreign policy as factors contributing to the dispute resolution.

I. THE BARENTS REGION AND THE ARCTIC

The Barents region is an area above the Arctic Circle that encompasses the North-West of Russia and the northernmost regions of the Nordic countries. The Barents Sea, which is sometimes referred to as the Euro-Arctic Sea, lies north of the Norwegian-Russian

Biennial as of 2011.

Thomas Nilsen, 'Large NATO exercise starts in Northern Norway', Barents Observer <http://barentsobserver.com/en/sections/articles/large-nato-exercise-starts-northern-norway> [accessed 16 March 2016] (para. 1 of 9).

2 3

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

28 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT border, with vast marine resources and high estimates of oil and gas deposits. For political reasons that will be discussed in further detail in this paper, the Barents Sea is not included in the Barents Region.

The organisations in the Barents region constitute the formal framework for governance on a regional level and institutionalize the cooperation. The multilateral cooperation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region is coordinated through the Barents EuroArctic Council, which was established in 1993 between Russia and the Nordic states and supported by the International Barents Secretariat.4 The organisation’s aim is to promote cooperation in environmental protection, fishery and resource management in the Barents Region. However, due to the dispute of the Barents Sea delimitation between Russia and Norway, the Barents Sea is not included in this cooperation framework. Russia held the chairmanship of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council from 2007 to 2009, coinciding with the handover from Putin to Medvedev. In addition there is the Arctic Council, focusing on the wider Arctic area and includes all Arctic states plus observers, working especially on environmental and indigenous issues.5 Russia held the chairmanship of the Arctic Council under the Putin presidency from 2004–2006.

II. THE IDEOLOGIES AND CONCEPTS BEHIND MOSCOW’S POLICY

Under the presidency of Boris El’tsin and Vladimir Putin, the making of Russian foreign policy was mainly under the prerogative of the president, in line with Article 86 of the Russian Constitution of 1993.6 Although the constitutional provisions remained the same, Putin’s move to ‘appoint’ Dmitrii Medvedev as a successor to become Head of State caused speculations on who was really driving the policy developments. While formally democratically elected in the Russian presidential election of 2 March 2008, Medvedev is widely believed to have been ruling in tandem with Putin, who obeyed the constitutional limit of a maximum of two terms as president and took a step back to become Prime Minister.7 Nevertheless, Putin was certainly influential as Prime Minister, and probably the

(Barents Euro-Arctic Council n.d.) <http://www.beac.st/en> [Accessed 20 March 2016] (The Arctic Council 2015) http://www.arctic-council.org/index.php/en/about-us/arctic-council [Accessed 15 March 2016] 6 Konstitutsiia Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Article 86, Kremlin, 12 December 2013, <http://constitution.kremlin.ru> [accessed 10 March 2016].

7 Henry E. Hale and Timothy J. Colton, 'Russians and the Putin-Medvedev "Tandemocracy"', Problems of Post-Communism, 57, 2010, 2, pp. 3–20, (p. 3).

4 5

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29 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT most influential one in Russian history, but Medvedev was responsible for the strategic development of foreign policy.8 As Putin had pointed to Medvedev as a presidential candidate, an analysis of the relation between the two of them can inform the discussion on the changing patterns of Russian foreign policy. Both men studied law and came from St. Petersburg, but a major difference in their background is that Medvedev never belonged to the group of so-called siloviki: well-positioned individuals with backgrounds in the intelligence services.9 Before Putin stepped down from the Presidency in 2008, he made significant changes to the foreign policy portfolio of what in Russia is called the ‘Power Ministers’, that is, the Interior Minister, Defence Minister, but also the chief of the intelligence service. This included expanding the scope for the Prime Minister, especially on foreign economic relations, while the security portfolio remained in the domain of the president.10 The so-called ‘tandemocracy’ of Putin and Medvedev has led scholars to debate whether Medvedev had any real impact on the development of Russian foreign policy, or if his term as Head of State merely consisted of a change in rhetoric. On the one hand, Andrew C. Kutchins and Igor A. Zevelev argue that Medvedev did not induce a new Russian foreign policy, but that the change was due to the deteriorating economic situation following the global financial crisis in 2008–2009.11 Peter J. S. Duncan, on the other hand, argues that Medvedev exercized considerable foreign policy autonomy in the period from the reset with Barack Obama in February 2009 to September 2011, at which time it was clear that Putin would run for election as president. 12 Several events under the Medvedev presidency point towards a more westward oriented foreign policy, such as the new START negotiations with the Americans, cooperation on the Iranian nuclear file, and the EU-Russian Partnership for Modernisation.13 Preceding that, Russia’s relationship to the West had deteriorated by the end of Putin’s first term as president, with the Colour Revolutions in the ‘near abroad’ in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in 2003, 2004 and 2005 respectively, which was seen by

Peter J. S. Duncan, 'Batman and Robin? Exploring foreign policy differences between Putin and Medvedev during the Medvedev presidency', Working paper ([n.p]: CEPSI - Centre for European Politics, Security and Integration, 2013), (p. 19).

9 Ronald H. Donaldson, Joseph L. Nogee and Vidya Nadkarni, The Foreign Policy of Russia. Changing systems, enduring interests (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), p. V. 10 Duncan 2013, p. 2.

11 Andrew C. Kutchins and Igor A. Zevelev, 'Russian Foreign Policy: Continuity in Change', The Washington Quarterly, 35, 2012, 1, pp. 147–61, p. 156.

12 Duncan 2013. p. 11.

13 Donaldson et al., 2015, pp. 407–418.

8

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30 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT Russia as Western attempts at regime change in its sphere of influence.14 Arguably one of the lowest points in Russian-Western relations came in 2008 with the war in Georgia, just a few months after Medvedev’s inauguration.15 Building on Medvedev’s perceived ‘softer’ image than that of Putin, one of the new president’s main projects was to implement reforms in order to spur innovation and modernize the Russian economy. In his famous article ‘Go Russia!’ from 2009, he warned of becoming too dependent on rising oil and gas prices, and addressed the way forward towards a knowledge economy, including the development of high-technology industrial sectors.16 The speech’s clear emphasis on economic modernisation also had foreign policy implications; both in the way he discussed the need for capital and technology from the West, but also in the expressed wish of acting and being seen as a respected member of the international community.

Towards the end of the speech, Medvedev declares: ‘We want to establish rules of cooperation and dispute settlement, in which priority is given to modern ideas of equality and fairness’. The emphasis on international law would prove important in the Barents Sea question, which will be discussed later. The Russian population saw Medvedev as a liberal, less confrontational and as more open to the West, which coincided with the wish of the majority of the Russian population at the time to see ‘the West’ as an ally.17 On balance, there was in general a favourable climate for improved Russia-Western relations.

While the president is responsible for foreign policy strategy, the Minister of Foreign Affairs works closely with the president to implement it. Sergei Lavrov was reappointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2008, known as a highly skilled negotiator and seen as a stronger, more assertive holder of the post than his predecessor Ivanov. 18 Having being appointed foreign minister by Putin back in 2004, he represented continuity and stability in foreign policy development. He is a career diplomat, and does not belong to the aforementioned siloviki group, but nevertheless enjoys Putin’s trust. The work of the foreign affairs minister is based on the Foreign Policy Concept, which will be discussed in the next section.

Jeanne L. Wilson, 'The Legacy of the Color Revolutions for Russian Politics and Foreign Policy', Problems of Post-Communism, 57, 2010, 2, pp. 21–36, (p. 21).

15 Donaldson et al., 2015, p. 298.

16 Dmitrii A. Medvedev, 'Rossiia, vpered!', Kremlin, <http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/5413> [accessed 14 March 2016], (para. 10, 33 of 69).

17 Hale et al., 2010, p. 11.

18 Donaldson et al., p. 134.

14

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

31 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT III. THE 2008 RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY CONCEPT

The Russian Foreign Policy Concept (hereafter ‘the Concept’) outlines the main official priorities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is produced on a regular basis. The Concept from 2008 was prepared under the presidency of Putin, and was adopted just after Medvedev became president. For the purpose of this paper, those parts relating to key foreign policy concepts and the Barents region will be highlighted below.

A central theme in Russian foreign policy discourse is the concept of sovereignty, which can be seen as a fundamental part of especially Putin’s wish to reassert Russia’s position and image as a Great Power. 19 The term is often used to understand the challenging Russian-Western relations, but sovereignty has also a very concrete meaning when it comes to settlements of border and boundary disputes, as any negotiation over territory will involve some form of conceding sovereignty over at least parts of the area.

‘Sovereignty’ is mentioned several times in the Concept as essential for ensuring Russian security and territorial integrity, aiming ‘to achieve strong positions of authority in the world community that best meets the interests of the Russian Federation as one of influential centers of the modern world.’ 20 Here, Russia’s view of the world is seen as multipolar, with Russia as one of the main actors on the global stage.

Moreover, the Concept mentions the Barents Region specifically, albeit with no reference

to

the

Barents

Sea

or

any

negotiations

on

the

delimitation:

‘Russia has been developing onward practical interaction with Nordic countries including the implementation within the framework of multi-lateral mechanisms of joint cooperation projects in the Barents/Euro-Arctic region and the Arctic as a whole with account of the interests of indigenous people’.21

The ‘practical interaction’ refers to the relatively extensive people-to-people cooperation in the Northern border region, with visa-free travels, flourishing trade and cultural exchange. This special relationship in the north has a pragmatic and practical nature, relying on individual contact rather than high-level politics. The document’s sole focus on pragmatic cooperation in the region can be seen as an indication of the rather

Charles E. Ziegler, 'Conceptualizing sovereignty in Russian foreign policy: Realist and constructivist perspectives', International Politics, 49, 2012, 4, pp. 400–417, (pp. 406–407).

20 Dmitrii A. Medvedev, 'The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation', 2008, (p. 1).

21 Ibid., p. 5.

19

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

32 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT passive outlook for a resolution of the Barents Sea question, as there are no signs in the Concept that a deal was in the making.

Even though the Concept was prepared before Medvedev came to power, an example of the increased focus on economic development can be seen in the paragraph on national interests, where the relations to Norway is mentioned specifically: The development of mutually advantageous bilateral relationships with Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway and some other West-European states is an important resource for promoting Russia’s national interests in the European and world affairs, as well as contributing to putting the Russian economy on an innovative track of development.

22

Here, as in his ‘Go Russia!’ speech, the use of foreign policy towards Western countries is conceived of as a tool for implementing the economic modernisation plan in an attempt to attract technology and foreign direct investments, in line with Medvedev’s economic programme.

The role of international law in resolving the Barents Sea question will be discussed in greater detail later, but it is worth noting its place in the Concept of 2008.

Under the chapter ‘The primacy of international law’, the need for legalisation of maritime boundaries is mentioned specifically: Work to finalize the international legalization of the (…) boundaries of the maritime zone over which it exercises its sovereign rights and jurisdiction while ensuring the unconditional observance of Russian national interests, primarily those related to security and economy, with a view to build up trust and cooperation with adjoining states.23

While the paragraph above states a wish to conclude the borders and boundaries of the Russian Federation, the mentioning of ‘unconditional observance’ of Russian security and economic interests stands in contrast to the compromises that are necessary in order to conclude boundary treaties under international law. However, it could be in Russia's national interest to resolve the Barents Sea boundary dispute in spite of the need to compromise and concede territory to Norway, as the lack of a settlement hampers the 22 23

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 3.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

33 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT economic potential and might possibly result in increasing security risks in the north. The next section will outline the principal interests of the Russian Federation in the Barents Sea.

IV. RUSSIA’S MAIN NATIONAL INTERESTS IN THE BARENTS SEA

Russia has primarily two main interests in the region, both of which are outlined in the Arctic Strategy of the Russian Federation of 2008: economic interests in the oil and gas sector, fishery and transportation, in addition to political and military interests in the Arctic region related to defence of territories and borders.24 However, in a wider sense, national interests are not limited to material ones; Russia’s interests in the Barents region are also connected to how the cooperative path is viewed by neighbouring countries and the West, great power projection and national identity. This section will mainly focus on the material interests, while the question of changes in the relationship with the West is discussed later.

Russia has strong economic interests in the Barents region, which is denoted by its ‘strategic resource base’ in the Russian Arctic Strategy, as the area is estimated to contain vast energy resources. An estimation of around 80 per cent of Russia’s unexploited oil and gas reserves are in the Arctic region, and the oil and gas fields in the Barents Sea are among the lower hanging fruits in terms of energy exploitation in the area. In a 2008 US Geological Survey it was estimated that the technically recoverable oil equivalent reserves on the continental shelf in the Barents Sea are estimated around 76 billion barrels, in addition to the fields that were already discovered.25 An illustration of the estimated oil and gas deposits can be seen below in Map 1. The size of the dark blue areas illustrates the estimated size of the oil and gas reserves, with the fields already in development and an indication of the disputed area. However, it must be added that there is still high uncertainty regarding the estimates as to the actual deposits in the Barents Sea. Cooperation on oil and gas drilling and exploitation in Arctic waters would bring technology and know-how to Russian companies, which would be in line with

Dmitrii A. Medvedev, 'Osnovy gosudarstvennoi politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii v Arktike na period do 2020 goda i dal'neishuyu perspektivu', in Soviet besopasnosti Rossiiskaia Federatsia <http://www.scrf.gov.ru/documents/98.html> [accessed 10 February 2016], section II. 25 T. R. Klett and D. L. Gautier, 'Assessment of undiscovered petroleum resources of the Barents Sea Shelf: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet', US Geological Survey, 2009, <http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3037/> [accessed 15 March 2016], (p. 1).

24

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34 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT Medvedev’s wish to modernize the economy and create an environment conducive to innovation and growth. Deep water drilling and Arctic exploration are already areas where Norway has long experience and a comparative advantage in, and Russia could be able to capitalize on that if there were any joint exploration projects as a consequence of the boundary agreement.

Furthermore, there are large fish stocks in the area: cod, halibut, capelin and haddock are plentiful in the Barents Sea. In the absence of a permanent boundary agreement there was a need for coordination of fishing quotas and third-party vessels, the Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission was set up to govern fishery and marine resource management since 1976 in a bilateral agreement between Norway and the Soviet Union, and later Russia.26 The aim was to reduce overfishing and manage the fish stocks in one of the largest marine ecosystems in the world.

Map 1: Estimated oil and gas resources in the Barents Sea27

From a security perspective, the Arctic Strategy mentions the high north as a ‘zone for peace and cooperation’. However, the favourable ice conditions in the Barents Sea make the Kola Peninsula an ideal geo-strategic location for one of Russia’s naval fleets, the ‘Northern Fleet’ in Severomorsk. Historically one of the world’s largest in Soviet times; it was placed in the far North because it was possible to navigate to the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and move to Asia and America, not because tensions were Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission, 'The fisheries commission' <http://www.jointfish.com/eng/THE-FISHERIES-COMMISSION> [accessed 15 March 2016].

27 Atle Staalesen, 'Zarubezhneft wants Fedinsky High', Barents Observer <http://barentsobserver.com/en/articles/zarubezhneft-wants-fedinsky-high> [accessed 21 March 2016].

26

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

35 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT higher up North.28 The Arctic region has traditionally been the stage for the development of Russia’s nuclear capabilities, whereas it now serves as the ‘resource power base’.

Though generally a peaceful border region, the presence of strong military capabilities on the Russian side of the border combined with repeated NATO drills on the Norwegian side have been a cause for wider security concerns. Occasionally, Russian strategic bomber flights patrol the Norwegian coast, and the activity reached a post-Cold War high in 2008 with 97 incidents, up from 14 in 2006, followed by an ensuing decline in activity.29 The potentially military threats from Russia in the north must be seen in relation to the developments in defence spending in the last decades. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia’s military capacity quickly deteriorated, and reached a low point in the 1990s. Since 2000, Putin began increasing the spending on the military-industrial complex, as it could be financed by the growing energy prices. While Russia has more pressing security concerns elsewhere along its other borders, it is still upgrading the Northern Fleet with smaller vessels. However, the general trend has been going towards de-securitisation of Russian Arctic policy, and as Kristian Åtland argues, one should not exaggerate the conflicts in the Arctic.30 Both the military and economic interests are expected to be highly affected by the increasing impact of climate change. Higher average temperatures above the Arctic Circle lead to faster ice melting, which at some point in time will open up a transportation route in the High North.31 Potential ice-free ports along the Russian Arctic will open up for a Northeast Passage as a secure transportation route from Europe and the US to Asia. If the route was opened for transportation, it would have both military and economic impact. The establishment of a permanent ice-free Northeast Passage will open up commercial traffic and goods transportation, on a route almost solely controlled by Russia. The opening up of the Northern Passage is likely to spur economic growth in the Russian Arctic.

However, other environmental issues have negative impact on Russian interests in the region. Drilling and exploring in the fragile Barents Sea is controversial, as oil spills in the vulnerable Arctic climate zone would have potentially catastrophically effects on the Kristian Åtland, 'Russia's Armed Forces and the Arctic: All Quiet on the Northern Front?', Contemporary Security Policy, 32, 26 August 2011, 2, pp. 267–85. (p. 268).

29 Christian Le Mière and Jeffrey Mazo, Arctic opening. Insecurity and opportunity, First Edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), p. 86.

30 Åtland, 2011, p. 268.

31 Le Mière and Mazo, 2013, pp. 69–70.

28

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

36 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT wild life and environment. It would be especially disastrous if there was an oil leak close to the ice edge, but this risk will be lower if the Arctic would be permanently ice-free.

V. BACKGROUND AND TIMELINE OF THE TREATY NEGOTIATIONS

On 15 September 2010, the Boundary Agreement was signed in Murmansk between the Ministers of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov and Jonas Gahr Støre in the presence of President Medvedev and the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.32 After having been ratified by the Russian Duma and the Norwegian Parliament, it entered into force as of 7 July 2011. In a joint statement following the signing of the treaty, Støre and Lavrov described the outcome as ‘a line that divides the overall disputed area in two parts of approximately the same size’.33 The treaty settled a long-standing question: How should the boundary be measured? As outlined by Ingvild Kvalsvik, Norway had called for negotiations with the Soviet Union over the so-called ‘Grey Zone’ in the Barents Sea since 1967.34 The official negotiations began from 1974, and an agreement was reached on 11 January 1978 purely on practical arrangements for the governing of marine resources in the area. The Grey Zone Agreement provided a framework for jurisdiction on third-party vessels in the area, subject to renewal on an annual basis. However, the dispute remained unresolved. The agreement was supposed to be temporary, but lasted almost 30 years before the dispute was finally settled and the ‘temporary’ Grey Zone agreement could be terminated.

In tandem with the Soviet-Norwegian Barents Sea negotiations, there were substantial developments in international law that could provide useful tools for resolving the dispute. After a change in the Law of the Sea following the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (hereafter UNCLOS) from 1974–1982, the UN adopted a principle of 200 nautical miles from the mainland as a boundary for the sovereignty of coastal states to the

'Treaty between the Kingdom of Norway and the Russian Federation concerning Maritime Delimitation and Cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean’, 10 September 2010.

33 Jonas G. Støre and Sergey Lavrov, 'Joint Statement on maritime delimitation and cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean', Government of Norway, 27 April 2010, < https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/UD/Vedlegg/Folkerett/030427_english_4.pdf> [accessed 3 March 2016], p. 2.

34 Ingvild Kvalsvik, 'Assessing the delimitation negotiations between Norway and the Soviet Union/Russia', Acta Borelia, 2004, pp. 55–78 (p. 62).

32

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37 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT right to manage marine resources. 35 Moreover, the establishment of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) gives coastal states not only the right to decide how resources should be used, but also the duty to manage them sustainably in line with principles of environmental protection. UNCLOS went into force in 1994, with more than 160 countries ratifying the convention, including Norway and Russia.

Although it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss all the aspects of UNCLOS, there are especially two concepts that are important for an understanding of the dispute in the Barents Sea. As defined in UNCLOS, the median principle is a line that follows the equidistance between the coastlines of two countries. The sector principle follows the meridian line from a coastal point of a country to the North Pole, thereby creating a sector, which is the basis for boundary delimitations in the Arctic.

It was the median principle that Norway had been advocating for in the Barents Sea question, whereas the Soviet Union and later Russia wanted the sector line principle to be applied. The two positions are drawn up in Map 1 as seen below. The Russian proposal for a sector line would not be strictly straight, as it needs to account for Norway’s sovereignty of its EEZ surrounding the Svalbard islands. Whereas both countries had argued for the application of UNCLOS, the Soviet Union put forward a claim to use the provision for ‘special circumstances’ because of its special interests in the region, namely its military bases and a considerable population. 36 This claim was repeatedly refused by Norway. As seen from Map 2, the implication of this difference was that an area of approximately 176,000 km2 would fall on Russian or Norwegian hands.

New bilateral negotiations began again in 2005, and the so-called ‘Varanger Agreement’ was signed in 2007, which was an important stepping-stone for the conclusion of the final delimitation three years later. The Varanger Agreement settled the question of the placement of the delimitation 70 km north of the coastline.

Map 2: Map of the disputed area with the median line, the sectorial line and the grey zone.37

United Nations, 'United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea', United Nations, 10 December 1982, <http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf> [accessed 3 March 2016].

36 Arild Moe, Daniel Fjærtoft and Indra Øverland, 'Space and Timing: Why was the Barents Sea Delimitation Dispute Resolved in 2010?', Polar Geography, 34, 2011, 3, pp. 145–62 (p. 3).

37 Heather Exner-Pirot, 'Norway and Russia Sign Treaty to End Boundary Dispute in Barents Sea', Eye on the Arctic, 16 September 2010, <http://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2010/09/16/norway-and-russia-signtreaty-to-end-boundary-dispute-in-barents-sea/> [accessed 15 March 2016].

35

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38 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT

The agreement does not only establish the sea boundary between Norway and Russia, but it also offers a comprehensive agreement on how to manage fishery resources, hydrocarbon deposits and other aspects of Russian-Norwegian relations in the Barents Sea. An expression of the compromise element of the agreement, Article 5 in the Treaty also includes a so-called ‘Unitisation Agreement’, whereby disputes over oil and gas exploration and field development on the continental shelf shall be resolved in unity, that is, the field shall be developed and exploited in cooperation with the two parties to the treaty.

VI. THE EVOLUTION OF THIS POLICY, AND THE RESULTS

The successful conclusion of the boundary agreement came as a surprise to most experts, with no information leaking from the negotiations and only a few people within the Russian and Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs respectively knowing about it. 38 Furthermore, official reports and scholarly papers written as late as 2007 express pessimistic views on how soon an agreement could be reached, if it could be reached at 38

Moe et al., 2011, p. 151.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

39 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT all. In a report prepared by the Research Services Section of the Norwegian Parliament in 2007, there is no mention of a realistic prospect of reaching a solution, even given the fact that the Varanger Agreement was reached the very same year.39 During the almost 40-year long dispute, both parties emphasized the importance of reaching a strong and sustainable agreement, a preferred approach over pressing for a solution just for the sake of reaching an agreement. Not only did it take many decades of negotiations to come to a conclusion, but also statements from both parties to the conflict indicate that the quality of the deal was more important than a hurried settlement. ‘Both parties will take the time they need to come to a solution’ Norwegian negotiation leader Rolf Einar Fife emphasized.40 Moreover, the Barents Sea is not even mentioned in the Russian Foreign Policy Concept of 2008, published only two years before the deal was signed. So in that case, why was an agreement reached precisely in 2010? For the timing of the dispute resolution, Arild Moe et al. argue that it primarily has to be analysed from the perspective of developments in Russian domestic policies and changing patterns of Russian foreign policy.41 Both countries had more or less advocated the same positions since the dispute arose in the 1970s, so the signing of the agreement should be seen as an expression of increased willingness to reach an equitable solution. The Cold War era was not conducive to a favourable negotiation environment, and in the 1990s, there was no urgent needs to reach a conclusion to the boundary question, as fishery issues were already governed under the Joint Fishery Commission set up in the 1970s.42 As shown above, after two periods of shifting and challenging relations for Western-Russian relations under President Putin, Medvedev wanted Russia to be seen as a constructive partner for the West. From that perspective, the change in position over the Barents Sea question can be seen as a general change in the role of international law in Russian foreign policy. Mankoff argues that Russian foreign policy is built on the fact that ‘large states are (…) free to pursue national interests and [the] rejection of universal

Stortingets Utredningsseksjon, 'Delelinjen i Barentshavet: Planlagt samarbeid versus uforutsett konflikt?', Stortingets Utredningsseksjon, April 2007, <https://www.stortinget.no/Global/pdf/Utredning/Perspektiv07_04.pdf> [accessed 13 February 2016], pp. 1–30.

40 Geir Seljeseth, 'Fremdrift om delelinjen', Nordlys, 5 December 2005, <http://www.nordlys.no/nyheter/fremdrift-om-delelinjen/s/1-79-1856391> [accessed March 21 2016].

41 Moe et al., 2011, pp. 153–154.

42 Kvalsvik, 2004, p. 61.

39

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40 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT principles in favour of respecting states’ sovereignty.’43 However, the role of international law in the Barents Sea question contradicts this view.

On the contrary, the Barents Sea Boundary Agreement offered an opportunity for settling a long-standing dispute with a Western NATO country based on universally recognized international laws. This even meant that Russia was conceding claims to sovereignty of approximately half of the disputed area, which again can be viewed as a way of showing the world that Russia was willing to negotiate and reach equitable resolutions to conflicts based on compromise, in spite of the ‘sovereignty’ concept being a key foreign policy principle that Russia consistently refers to in its public discourse. The method used for determining the boundary might also serve as a reference for future sea delimitation agreements and can be used again in other disputed areas in the Arctic and elsewhere.

Although the border region has historically been stable, there had been tendencies of tensions in the recent past, as noted earlier. By signing a treaty, the two countries had committed themselves to a path of de-escalation and showed a willingness to lower the tensions and avoid future potential conflicts.

Another reason can be found in the energy sector: Without a permanent agreement in the Barents Sea, it would be difficult to explore the oil and gas fields in the area, as a moratorium on drilling and exploration was agreed in the 1980s. The evolution of energy prices and Russia’s dependence on oil and gas exports help explain the necessity of opening new fields. Crude oil prices peaked at around $145 per barrel in 2008 when Medvedev assumed office, and plummeted to $43 per barrel a year later before quickly picking up again to around $80 when the treaty was signed in September 2010. 44 As most of the cheap oil and gas from the Soviet times were already on the verge of being fully exploited, there was a renewed appetite for developing new fields.

The energy aspect was also emphasized by Medvedev in the joint press conference with Stoltenberg after the treaty was signed, although mostly in general terms without specific reference to development and exploration. 45 Before being elected President, Medvedev had himself been Chairperson of the Board of Gazprom, which was one of the

Jeffrey Mankoff, Russian Foreign Policy. The return of great power politics, 2nd Edition, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), p. 15.

44 Trading Economics, 'Crude oil historical data', Trading Economics Commodites, <http://www.tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil> [accessed 16 March 2016].

45 Jens Stoltenberg and Dmitrii A. Medvedev, 'Sovmestnaia press-konferentiia po itogam rossiiskonorvezhkikh peregovorov', Kremlin, 15 September 2010, <http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/8924> [accessed 6 March 2016], (para. 4–5 of 10).

43

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41 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT two companies that had been granted exploration licenses in the Barents Sea, the other company being Rosneft.

Despite these facts, Moe et al. argue that the energy aspect was not a major driver for the change in Russia’s position on the Barents Sea.46 However, given the economic turmoil in 1990s that ended in a subsequent crash and default in 1998, and revenue being so dependent on energy prices, one cannot ignore Russian interests in the oil and gas market. With oil and gas prices sky rocketing in the 2000s and providing much-needed liquidity and revenue for the Russian national budget, it seems likely to have been a significant factor for the timing of the dispute resolution. Politically, the higher revenues enabled Putin to implement necessary policies and repay foreign debt accrued under the 1998 financial crisis, and the Russian population enjoyed a decade of rising living standards. The careful provisions for exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits in the Treaty as found in Article 5 and Annex II further indicate the importance placed on the energy aspect of the deal by both parties.

Nevertheless, the development of the oil and gas industry in the Barents Sea has been slower than expected. The mean lag of thirteen years in the Arctic that it takes from start of exploration to the oil and gas hit the market can be attributable to the high costs of drilling in the Arctic, weak existing infrastructure and delays in licensing due to domestic and international environmental laws. 47 Although not directly affected by the boundary treaty as it is on the Russian side of the Barents Sea, the Shtokman field serves as an example of how costly and difficult it is to develop oil fields above the Arctic Circle.

As one of the largest gas reserves in the world discovered in 1988, it was scheduled to be developed in 2007 by a joint venture owned 51 per cent by the Russian state-owned oil company Gazprom, 25 per cent by French Total and 24 per cent by Norwegian Statoil.

However, the project came to an end in 2012 when soaring costs and falling European demand led Statoil to hand over its shares.48 Additionally, Statoil and Rosneft have drilled exploratory wells in the northern parts of the Barents Sea, but both are under pressure from environmental protection organisations, as the consequences of a potential oil spill are very severe to the fragile eco system.49 Moe et al., 2011, p. 151.

Le Mière and Mazo, 2013, p. 52.

48 Terry Macalister, 'Plug pulled on Russia's flagship Shtokman energy project', Guardian, 29 August 2012 <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/29/shtokman-russia-arctic-gas-shale> [accessed 21 March 2016], (para. 5 of 17).

49 Rick Steiner, 'Norway's offshore drilling puts Arctic Ocean at risk', Greenpeace, <http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/norways-offshore-drilling-puts-arctic-ocean-risk-20140822> [accessed 15 March 2016], (para. 5 of 10).

46 47

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42 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT CONCLUSION

When the Barents Sea Boundary Agreement was settled in 2010, it resolved one of the most difficult challenges in Norwegian-Russian relations, and put an end to the forty-year long dispute over sea delimitation and marine resource management. Medvedev’s time as president of the Russian Federation was limited to one term from 2008 to 2012, when he took up the premiership and Putin returned to the presidency. The handover from Putin to Medvedev constituted not only a change in rhetoric, but also a change in substance.

This paper has argued that the Boundary Agreement serves as a case to illustrate such a shift towards a more cooperative foreign policy.

The Barents Sea Treaty was not only important logistically, but also symbolically, illustrating a more consistently cooperative foreign policy course under president Medvedev. The settlement of the boundary delimitation can be used as an example for other disputed sea areas in the Arctic and elsewhere, demonstrating the significance of the Law of the Sea and peaceful negotiations as a means of settling long-standing disputes.

The inherent symbols of the compromises made by a ‘large’ nation such as Russia towards a ‘small’ country like Norway should also be recognized, although concessions were made on both sides. This is particularly interesting in the analysis of Russian foreign policy, given the traditional emphasis on state sovereignty.

Although there was a strong focus on the economic gains from the development of the oil and gas fields in the Barents Sea at the time of the conclusion of the agreement, there is still little evidence of successful advancements in the energy sector. The expected rush of field developments has not materialized to the extent that was expected at the time. More recently, the plummeting oil prices since December 2014 have probably made many of the already costly Barents Sea projects unprofitable, and sanctions imposed on the Russian economy have further strained the already vulnerable national budget, capping the resources necessary to invest in technology and infrastructure.50 Several factors contributed to the favourable conditions under which the deal was signed. One of them arguably was the increased growth in oil and gas prices and the wish to expand the Russian economy by developing high-technological expertise in the North.

Another was the desire to be seen as a more constructive partner to the West, reverting to International Institute for Strategic Studies, 'Negative outlook for Russian economy as sanctions bite', Strategic Comments , March 2015 <http://www.iiss.org/en/publications/strategic%20comments/sections/2015-1f4d/negative-outlook-forrussian-economy-as-sanctions-bite-4b7c> [accessed 15 March 2016].

50

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43 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT international law, negotiations and compromises. The foreign policy legacy of Medvedev is characterized by a change in rhetoric towards being less confrontational in relations with the West. A stronger emphasis was laid on international law for governing international questions in a multipolar world and a focus on foreign policy as a tool for economic modernisation. The Barents Sea Boundary Agreement provides a good example of this legacy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the author’s work noncommercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

44 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT REFERENCES

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45 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT International Insttute for Strategic Studies, 'Negative outlook for Russian economy as sanctions bite', Strategic Comments, 10 March 2015, <http://www.iiss.org/en/publications/strategic%20comments/sections/20151f4d/negative-outlook-for-russian-economy-as-sanctions-bite-4b7c> [accessed 15 March 2016].

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46 GRØHOLT – FROM CONFLICTUAL TO COOPERATIVE APPROACHES IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY – AN EXAMINATION OF THE BARENTS SEA BOUNDARY AGREEMENT Mankoff, Jeffrey, Russian Foreign Policy. The return of great power politics, 2nd Edition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

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SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 48-68.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.045

The Debate around Nihilism in 1860s Russian Literature SASHA ST JOHN MURPHY School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London The city of St. Petersburg erupted in flames in the spring and summer of 1862. 1 Students of St. Petersburg and Moscow Universities, acting on an upsurge of revolutionary activism, had begun demonstrating their frustrations. Fyodor Dostoevsky blamed Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who at the time was a radical writer. The tale goes that Dostoevsky went to the home of Chernyshevsky to plead to him to stop fuelling the fires. While Chernyshevsky was no arsonist, this story is symptomatic of the 1860s atmosphere. This period was a time of great social and economic upheaval within Russia and nowhere were these issues so passionately argued as in the novels of the country’s leading writers.2 Fourteen years after the 1848 Revolutions spread across Europe, Russia was facing its own internal problems. The work of authors and critics during this period all demonstrate their desire for progress within Russian society, but reflects their uncertainty on how to go about realizing it. This period saw a new generation of literary critics who criticised the process of reform and raised a series of “accursed questions” about Russian life more generally.3 The literary establishment was frantically looking for “intellectual” solutions to “political” problems.

The works of literature I have selected are as follows: Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done? I have not attempted to cover all of Russian literature, or read the extensive criticism available as there is such an abundance. These authors are particularly interesting and noteworthy as much of their writing provides a canon of work with the message of their novels being intertwined through their reactions to each other. Each piece offers an explicit critique of Russian society. They are representative of different aspects of Russian society, and were focusing on different criticisms thereof. Although I address them as individuals, a writer can be viewed as part of a larger section of society and the views and opinions they deliberately, or unwittingly, express tell us much about the opinions of

Catherine Evtuvhov and Richard Stites, A History of Russia since 1800 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004), p.114.

2 Jane Barstow, ‘Dostoevsk’s Notes From Underground Versus Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done?’, College Literature 5 (1978), p. 24.

3 Evtuhov and Stites, A History of Russia, p. 114.

1

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

49 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE society at this time. The authors were representative of sections of society, and they were typical of their classes in certain ways. For example, Turgenev stemmed from a wealthy background and his manners and habits were those of a born aristocrat. 4 Dostoevsky differed in that he belonged to the ‘literary proletariat,’5 and he came from much lowlier origins than was typical for writers of this period. With the exception of Nikolai Gogol, Dostoevsky represented a departure in Russian literature from the land-owning classes.6 By 1848 Chernyshevsky had already entered in his diary that he had become a “partisan of socialists and communities and extreme republicans - a decidedly Montagnard,”7 and among his fellow students he had earned the nickname Saint-Just. Chernyshevsky’s position as a radical in society stemmed mainly from his education and lifestyle. These different backgrounds and upbringings moulded the opinions and ideologies of these writers and interpretations of their works must take this into account. In looking at them from different class perspectives it is interesting to note which parts of society they comment upon, and which parts they feel more comfortable, and better able, to critique.

The significance of literature in Russia was different from that in Western Europe.

Whereas in Europe professional academics shaped professional academics of Europe were in Russia replaced by non-academics who acted as society’s original and influential thinkers.8 Up until the twentieth century, the majority of Russian thinkers were not professors, but literary critics. The term ‘literature’ in Russia has been conceived very broadly, not just to include the novel, poetry, and short stories, but also political and philosophical commentary. Russian novelists were political, social, and cultural critics as well as literary critics. In Russia, more than anywhere else, writers have concerned themselves with the perennial ‘problems of man.’ Literature of this period challenged old beliefs and sought new ones; it came to work for society by working against it. Literature acted as a forum for political discussion as the more obvious government channels remained closed within Russia.9 The role of literature in this period was markedly different from others due to the instability of the time. The reason I have chosen to begin from 1860 was because this was a time of reform within Russia, which led to much discussion over how Russia was and Joe Andrew, Russian Writers and Society In The Second Half Of The Nineteenth Century (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1982), p. 6.

5 Ibid., p. 44.

6 Ibid., p. 47.

7 E. Lampert, Sons against Fathers: Studies in Russian Radicalism and Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) p. 94.

8 James M. Edie, James P. Scalan and Mary-Barbara Zeldin, Russian Philosophy, Volume II (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965), preface.

9 Andrew, Russian writers, p. xiv.

4

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

50 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE should be progressing. The period commonly referred to as the “1860s” in Russia actually began in 1855, after the death of Tsar Nicholas I. 10 Tsar Alexander II enacted a program of overarching reform following Russia’s performance in the 1856 Crimean War. Their crushing defeat ushered in a new era and compelled Russians to conduct a reappraisal of their country.11 They understood that the routing of their troops was not just due to their military problems. These other problems included the backward state of Russia’s industry and communications, and the precarious condition of the country’s finances.

Furthermore, a lack of scientific advancement meant that they were unable to manufacture new rifles to match their adversaries. Much of what was available, in terms of food and weapons, struggled to reach the battlefield as the roads, which connected the empire, amounted to little more than muddy tracks.12 The Crimean War had manifested the issue of reform and removed the taboos on discussing the fragile order and the need for radical change. Geoffrey Hosking explained how “for the first time since the early eighteenth century, radical reform seemed less dangerous than doing nothing.”13 While these issues were highlighted during this period, the real issue which was becoming glaringly obvious, was serfdom. The emancipation of 1861 affected 50 million serfs, approximately 80 per cent of the Russian population.14 The consensus and enthusiasm which filled the immediate period after was short-lived, and the period that followed proved tumultuous and filled with political tension. Along with the emancipation, there was an overhaul of the political, educational, and economic systems.

The introduction of the zemstvo in 1864, an organ of local government, gave greater power to the 34 provinces of European Russia. The university system was also reformed in 1863 and the universities were granted considerable rights of self-regulation. National journals became widespread and increased in circulation amongst most urban middle class households, which generally subscribed to two or three illustrated weeklies.

Censorship was also a key issue of this period. Although censorship had been eased during Alexander’s reforms, the Chief Censorship Committee of the Ministry of the Interior could withdraw any publication if considered it of ‘dangerous orientation’15. The authors were aware of the precarious position they held. Dostoevsky, in a letter to his brother Mikhail Dostoevsky in 1864 complained of the censor when he wrote “the Charles A. Moser, Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860’s (London: Mouton & Co, 1964), p. 13 Evtuhov and Stites, A History of Russia, p. 98.

12 Geoffrey Hosking, Russia, People & Empire (London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1998). p.315.

13 Hosking, Russia, p. 318.

14 Evtuhov and Stites, A History of Russia, p. 105.

15 Hosking, Russia, p. 331.

10 11

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51 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE censors are swine”16, noting that they deleted parts of his work discussing the necessity of faith and Christ. Turgenev, in a letter to K. Sluchevsky, explained how he removed a section of the Fathers and Sons’s character Bazarov due to censorship.17 Chernyshevsky, despite being imprisoned for refusing to moderate his radical journal Sovremennik, was allowed to publish his novel What is to be Done?18 The manuscript for the novel was forwarded on to Sovremennik by the prison censor and published in 1863. With fantastic irony, the novel, which was to be the most revolutionary work of the nineteenth century, was published without difficulty. The publication has aptly been called “the most spectacular example of bureaucratic bungling in the cultural realm during the reign of Alexander II.”19 Moreover, it was this censoring of Chernyshevsky and his imprisonment that drove him to write his novel. Thus, What is to be Done? was a product of Russia’s attempts at censorship and without it, may not have had such an impact. Although censorship is widely seen as damaging literature, it can be argued that it gave these texts their deeper meanings. Censorship also led to the inclusion of Aesopian language into literature of this period in order for writers to communicate radical ideas.20 Chernyshevsky wrote about a method of “drainage”21 which was widely interpreted as an allegory for revolution. This gave the language of some of these works a political agenda. One of the key issues in this investigation surrounds the topics the authors were not writing about and the extent to which they may have been subject to self as well as state censorship.

The position that literature held within society partly stemmed from censorship.

Due to censorship, literature was being used as a forum for social criticisms and political discussion. Literature was being used as a kind of “alternative government,”22 as the Russian government faced no formal opposition. Turgenev was under no illusions about the effect that literature could have on society. Turgenev wrote to M. N. Katkov, a famous publisher, and said how he was to postpone the publication of his novel, Fathers and Sons, because of “the present circumstances.”23 Turgenev was alluding to the serious student demonstrations in Moscow during the autumn of 1861. Turgenev goes on to say, “I am very sorry that it has turned out this way but, particularly with subject matter such as this, one must appear before the reader fully armed.” This exemplifies Turgenev’s Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘Selected Letters‘ in Notes from Underground, (New York: Norton & Company, 1989), p. 96.

17 A. V. Knowles, Turgenev’s Letters (London: The Athlone Press, 1983), p. 105.

18 Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What is to be Done? (London: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 14.

19 Chernyshevsky, What is to be Done? p. 23.

20 Moser, Antinihilism, p. 181.

21 Chernyshevsky, What is to be Done? p.182.

22 Andrew, Russian Writers, p. x.

23 Knowles, A.V., ed Turgenev’s Letters (London: The Athlone Press, 1983), p. 98.

16

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52 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE understanding of the weighty role literature had within society, and in turn, the responsibility of the author.

The authors differed in their opinions on the function of literature. In a letter to Moriz Necheles, a German literary critic, Turgenev wrote “if I had to state the true basis of my writings I might say that “I wrote because it was a real pleasure so to do.””24 Turgenev explained how he based his literature on “one’s own people, human life, the human physiognomy - that is what one takes as one’s raw material. The writer makes of them what he can; he cannot do otherwise.” Here Turgenev is adhering to the Russian Realism movement; however, despite Turgenev’s claim that he based his ideas on real human life, it is virtually impossible for a writer to merely be a mirror held up to society and all writers in some way impose their own ideological views.

The role of literature was seen to be something quite different by Chernyshevsky.

While incarcerated in the Peter-Paul Fortress, Chernyshevsky in a letter wrote how he planned to write a novel and described that task as “a writer’s most serious undertaking.”25 However, Chernyshevsky went on to write “the frivolity of the form must be compensated for by the solidity of the thought.” The contrast here is typical of the radicals’ approach to literature – that literature was only good if it could be described as ‘socially useful.’ Chernyshevsky’s first major work, his Master’s dissertation entitled The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality was published in 1855, and contained a critique of the reigning Hegelian aesthetics.26 Chernyshevsky believed that the problem lies in placing art above reality, and that in man’s striving for beauty within art, one can only create artificial embodiments of true beauty. In order to counter this separation of art from life, Chernyshevsky attempts to apply “Feuerbach’s ideas to the solution of the fundamental problems of aesthetics.”27 Chernyshevsky believed that art was a poor substitute for reality. Upon reading works from the more radical side of the intelligentsia, it is often wrongly thought that their position was profoundly hostile to art, viewing it as worthless and dispensable. This opinion is understandable, especially when looking at the titles of some of these works, such as Pisarev’s The Annihilation of Aesthetics.28 However, this interpretation overlooks how they distinguished the term ‘aesthetics’ from ‘art’. Pisarev and Chernyshevsky attached the term ‘aesthetics’ to art that was frivolous, something that Knowles, Turgenev’s Letters, p. 249.

Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What is to be Done? (London: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 22.

26 James M. Edie, James P. Scalan and Mary-Barbara Zeldin, Russian Philosophy, Volume II (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965), p. 12.

27 Edie, Scanlan and Zeldin, Russian Philosophy, p. 12.

28 Ibid., p. 2.

24 25

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53 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE was a product of “sheer caprice, habituation, or inertia,” something that had no enduring foundation in human life. Chernyshevsky held the belief that a good artist will present or solve a problem within society, and is by no means “a passive mirror of reality, or a neutral purveyor of content.”29 Applying a judgement or an ideal to art gives it a moral dimension, thereby justifying art. This was Chernyshevsky’s “realistic” utilitarian message about aesthetics.

These new thinkers valued work they regarded as socially useful. But this phrase ‘socially useful’ would have different meanings to different people and is a term that is virtually impossible to define. While they are all writing for different reasons, there was one common purpose amongst them all: to shape the Russian identity and contribute to society’s progress.

There are many different approaches to defining the role of the critic. Literary criticism in Russia at this time became the main forum for veiled political discussion. 30 This applies even more so to the critical reaction to a writer’s work, especially in Russia, where after 1830 almost all literary criticism was implicitly or explicitly ideological.31 We cannot fully comprehend the role of literature without careful consideration of how and why certain books were acclaimed or vilified. It is important to look at criticism to see who was reading the texts, and why. This can also help to show whether authors were catering to known demands or whether they were looking to invoke fresh responses from the public. The author and the critic can be seen to disagree on what their role and function was. Turgenev wrote how “critics, in general, do not quite correctly conceive what goes on in an author’s soul, they are convinced that all an author does is “convey his ideas”; they do not wish to believe that to reproduce the truth, the reality of life accurately and powerfully, is the literary man’s highest joy, even if that truth does not correspond to his own sympathies.”32 Pisarev, a prominent critic, explained, however, that he was neither concerned with either the partisan sympathies nor antipathies of the author, nor with the trends which run through the work.

He wrote that “as a critic, he was guided primarily by the principle of truthful reflection of objective reality, “of the phenomena of social life.”33 In Pisarev’s criticism of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment he wrote how “I observe and ponder these events, Ibid., p. 11.

Joe Andrew, Writers And Society During The Rise Of Russian Realism (Hong Kong: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1982), p. 97.

31 Andrew, The Rise of Russian Realism, p. xii 32 Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons (New York: Norton & Company, 1989), p. 171 33 Vladimir Seduro, Dostoevsky in Russian Literary Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), p. 21.

29 30

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54 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE trying to understand how one derives from another, trying to explain to myself to what extent they are caused by the general conditions of life, and in doing this I completely leave aside the personal views of the narrator.” 34 For Pisarev, the value of a piece of work lay in how accurately it could depict reality. Nevertheless, it is also important to acknowledge how the critics were generally writing for journals, as these journals were ideologically based. For example, Pisarev wrote for The Contemporary, which was a leading organ of Russian radicalism. This would undoubtedly have influenced their criticism as the readers of the journals would have been looking for interpretations to match their own views.

THE NIHILISM MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE

One of the key points of contention in Russian society in this period was the growth of the Nihilist movement. As authors began to address this new movement within literature, this created a canon of work, beginning with Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, published in 1862. In his novel, Turgenev depicted nihilist youths and their beliefs. Using Chernyshevsky’s, What is to be Done?, published in 1863, and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, published in 1864, this chapter will analyse the underlying dialogue between the writers on nihilism in Russian society. Turgenev’s novel provoked Chernyshevsky35 who felt he needed to clear the name of the young generation depicted in Turgenev’s novel. Dostoevsky’s novel was, in turn, an angry response to Chernyshevsky’s rosy depiction of the impact of rational thought. The tones of these works and the receptions they received showed how tense this discussion had become. In this heated, combative atmosphere of the 1860s many of Russia’s greatest novels emerged. While Turgenev’s novel produced a retaliation in literature, there was also widespread disdain from literary critics. Turgenev’s novel is intriguing as he claimed it was so widely misinterpreted and it invoked much anger from the young generation of Russians. What is to be Done? is said to have directly influenced the young Russian generation, in particular, a young Vladimir Lenin, who claimed it as his favourite.36

Seduro, Dostoevsky Literary Criticism, p. 22.

Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What is to be done? (London: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 22.

36 Edie, James P. Scanlan and Mary-Barbara Zeldin, Russian Philosophy, Volume II (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965), p.15.

34 35

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55 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE It was Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons that gave the word “nihilist” to Russian literature.37 The word nihilist itself was not new, but it was Turgenev who attached it to these “new men” of the sixties, men such as Chernyshevsky, Pisarev and Nikolai Dobrolyubov, who were the faces of the movement. Russian nihilism was typified by its intellectual and social iconoclasm and its embrace of rational thought. It stemmed from a fascination with the continually unfolding capacities of science within Europe. 38 Theoretical breakthroughs such as Darwin’s theory of evolution challenged the very bases of Russian Orthodox thinking, and these new scientific ideas naturally led to a new way of thinking. Not only was science revered for its solutions to scientific and technological problems, but it was also looked to for its potential effects upon society and in the realm of metaphysics. The movement took their intellectual pabulum from Feuerbach and the German materialists, John Stuart Mill and utilitarian thought, and the French Socialists39.

The nihilists had a new take on aestheticism within Russian art and literature, as addressed earlier. Their opinions were that it was a stronghold for sentimentalism, emotionalism, rationalism, spiritualism and waste of expenditure on “useless frills.” 40 Social unrest in the 1860s was linked to moral and metaphysical discontent,41 and for this reason the nihilists were blamed.

The term ‘nihilist’ itself held both positive and negative connotations in this period. Turgenev, in his Apropos to Fathers and Sons, explained how he did not mean to offend with the term, indicating the stigma the word had acquired during this period.42 He explained how the term ‘nihilist’ was only used by those who sought to stop the movement taking possession of Russian society. Turgenev explained how “it was turned into a weapon of denunciation, of irrevocable condemnation, - almost as a brand of shame.” Although the doctrines espoused by these radicals were the same whether they were called ‘nihilists’ or as they preferred, ‘new men’, the quarrel over what terminology to apply to the new radicals was highly significant.43 In giving a name to this new movement, Turgenev was bringing it new levels of awareness within society. The radicals, such as Chernyshevsky and Pisarev expended much effort in producing articles and fiction

Ibid., p. 3.

Catherine Evtuvhov and Richard Stites, A History of Russia since 1800 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004), p. 115.

39 Edie, Scanlan and Zeldin, Russian Philosophy, p. 5.

40 Ibid., p. 9.

41 Edith Clowes, The Revolution of Moral Consciousness (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1988), p.

31.

42 Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, p. 173 43 Charles A. Moser, Antinihilism in the Russian novel of the 1860‘s ( London: Mouton & Co, 1964), p. 21.

37 38

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56 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE defining the intellectual outlines of the ‘new men’ who embodied the ideals of this radical generation.

While not a prolific movement, Nihilism nonetheless spawned much discussion, both amongst its proponents and critics. Furthermore it can be identified as a forerunner to Marxist-Leninism.44 In describing this movement, Oscar Wilde said “the nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev and completed by Dostoevsky.”45 An alternative interpretation could argue that Russian literature did not invent the nihilist, but in fact attempted to present, and possibly mould, a movement that was already present.

The first Russian novel to depict this movement was Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Turgenev painted the ‘sons’ of the novel, Bazarov and Arkady, as archetypal nihilist youths. The ‘fathers’ of the novel, Nikolai Petrovich and Pavel Petrovich were characteristic of the older “men of the forties,” the Westernisers. The term ‘nihilist’ first arises in a discussion had by Arkady, Nikolai and Pavel, where Arkady is trying to explain their beliefs. “He’s a nihilist” stated Arkady, and Nikolai breaks the term down, “that’s from the Latin, nihil, nothing; the word must mean a man who.... accepts nothing?”46 Pavel interjects “who respects nothing.” Arkady attempts to explain how it is someone who “regards everything from the critical point of view, who does not take any principle on faith...who does not bow down before any authority,” to which Pavel quips “is that not the same thing?” This conversation highlights the differences between the generations of Russians, the older Westernisers, while wanting reform, were not yet ready to quash all beliefs. The general opinion of the radical youth of this period is also portrayed in this dialogue, in that they were too extremist and without a core belief.

Turgenev also depicts Bazarov’s preoccupation with science, an area commonly associated with the nihilism movement. Bazarov explains how “I shall cut the frog open, and see what’s going on in his insides, and then, as you and I are much the same as frogs, only that we walk on legs, I shall know what’s going on inside us, too.”47 Turgenev here was seen to be painting Bazarov as one of the key nihilists, Pisarev. Pisarev compared the

Edie, Scanlan and Zeldin, Russian Philosophy, p. 10.

William Mills Todd, Literature and Society in Imperial Russia (California: Stanford University Press, 1978),. p.

152.

46 Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, p. 17.

47 Ibid., p. 14.

44 45

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57 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE ideal human society to a beehive, just as Bazarov equated people with frogs.48 Bazarov is depicted throughout the novel as being far more interested in science than he is in anything else, especially human interaction. Pavel mocks Bazarov with “here is Sir Nihilist coming to honour us... he has no faith in principles, but he has faith in frogs.”49 Bazarov furthers this preoccupation with science in stating “a good chemist is twenty times as useful as any poet.”50 Along with Bazarov’s reverence of science, is his disregard for art, he stated how “to my mind, Raphael’s not worth a brass farthing.”51 In portraying the nihilist’s relationship between reason and emotions Turgenev shows how reason cannot stand up against our passions; Bazarov’s rejection of emotion was not compatible with our human nature. When Bazarov is shown to fall in love with Odinstova, romantic love takes over from ideology. Here Turgenev appears to be saying that a society based solely upon reason is not feasible. In the novel Turgenev depicts the breakdown of Bazarov as he struggles with his emotions for Odinstova. Turgenev wrote how “the real cause of all this “newness” was the feeling inspired in Bazarov by Odintsov, a feeling which tortured and maddened him.”52 Although Bazarov had a great love for women and for feminine beauty, love in the romantic sense, or as he called it, “gibberish, unpardonable imbecility” he regarded as something like a disease. Bazarov described how “he expressed more strongly than ever his calm contempt for everything romantic; but when he was alone, with indignation he recognized the romantic in himself.”

In perhaps the most damning aspect in the depiction of Bazarov, and in turn the nihilists, is the scene where the main characters are discussing how nihilism will tackle the problems within society. The ‘fathers’ of the novel are accused of contributing nothing, that their “perpetual talk” has led to nothing but “banality and doctrinarism.”53 However, the ‘sons’ solution to curing societies woes is depicted as action through destruction.

Arkady confidently states “we shall destroy, because we are a force.”54 Pavel responds by asking “but destroy without even knowing why?” Here the nihilists are shown to be an almost uncontrollable force, one that could be highly damaging to Russian society through their destructive nature. This further highlights one of the perceived problems within the nihilism movement; they were looking to destroy, without knowing how to rebuild. Pavel states that “in old days, young men had to study; they didn’t want to be Clowes, Moral Consciousness, p. 31.

Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, p. 18.

50 Ibid., p. 19.

51 Ibid., p. 42.

52 Ibid., p. 42.

53 Ibid., p. 40.

54 Ibid., p. 41.

48 49

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58 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE called dunces, so they had to work hard whether they liked it or not. But now, they need only say, ‘Everything in the world is nonsense!’ and the trick’s done. Young men are delighted. And, to be sure, they were simply blockheads before, and now they have suddenly turned nihilists.”55 Turgenev explained that he was not attacking the nihilism movement in his Apropos to the novel, published in 1869, and that he was merely depicting what he saw.

Turgenev said he thought of the novel while sea-bathing in the Isle of Wight in 1860.

“For my part I must confess I never attempted to “create a figure”56 unless I had a living character rather than an idea, to whom appropriate elements were gradually added and mixed in.” Turgenev explained how at the basis of the main character, Bazarov, was the figure of a young provincial doctor who had struck him, and that “this remarkable man embodied in my view that barely nascent still fermenting principle that was later called nihilism.” This idea of realistically depicting what you saw in society around you was a key component of Russian realism. Turgenev went to say how he was disturbed that “I did not even find a hint in any work of our literature of what I seemed to see everywhere.”

He was writing to depict nihilism, as it was becoming prominent and he had not yet seen it depicted in literature. However, this portrayal led to Turgenev being vilified across Russian society. Turgenev discussed this further and wrote how, “when I returned to St. Petersburg, the very day of the notorious fires in the Apraksin Palace, the word “nihilist” had already been taken up by thousands of voices, and the first exclamation that burst from the lips of the first acquaintance I encountered on the Nevsky was “See what your nihilists are doing! They are burning Petersburg!”57 Turgenev, in a letter to M. Hartmann wrote how “things started to go badly for me with my Fathers and Sons. I am now possibly the most unpopular man in the whole of Russia. I have insulted our national pride and that is more unforgivable than anything.”58 In another letter to Ludwig Pietsch, a German critic, he wrote how “the young people in Russia are far too sensitive,”59 which shows Turgenev may not have been prepared for this reaction within society, and believed it was uncalled for. Turgenev wrote how “so much abuse has been poured over my head. A Judas who sold his soul for silver, an idiot, an ass, a poisonous toad, a spittoon are the least I’ve been called.” Turgenev was

Ibid., p. 42.

Ibid., p. 169.

57 Ibid., p. 170.

58 Knowles, A. V.,ed. Turgenev’s Letters (London: The Athlone Press, 1983), p. 147.

59 Knowles, Turgenev’s Letters, p. 161.

55 56

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59 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE accused of offending not just the younger generation within society, but the older generations too.

“A witty lady said to me - “Neither Fathers nor Sons, that is the real title of your book - and you are a nihilist yourself.”60 Whilst reading the novel, it seemed to be clear that Turgenev was not painting the nihilist movement in a positive light. However, Turgenev dedicated the novel to the memory of Belinksy who was an idol of young liberals in the 1830’s and 1840’s, and this dedication implied an allegiance to the highest ideals of progressive thought, which shows that Turgenev could have been conflicted.61 It is both important and interesting to note how widely misinterpreted Turgenev’s works were, and the anger this interpretation caused within contemporary Russian society.

While the novel was an immense success, due to its topicality,62 opinions on the novel varied hugely. He had outraged the radicals, who believed the novel was a calumny on the ‘sons’ and a glorification of the ‘fathers’.63 With the more conservative reactions Turgenev was generally praised for his supposed attack on the nihilists.64 Two interesting reactions to the novel came from the critics Pisarev, a leading critic of the journal The Russian World, from the radical camp, and N. Stakhov, who published a review in the conservative journal of the Dostoevsky brothers, Time. Their interpretations are interesting because they fall outside of what you would expect from their ideological norms.

Pisarev, who famously dismissed most art for its lack of any practical value, insisted that his interest in Turgenev was utilitarian, and that he was trying to show society the right direction. On these grounds, Pisarev, who regarded the writer Alexander Pushkin to be worth less than a pair of boots,65 reasoned that Turgenev’s novel was useful. Pisarev embraced Bazarov as representative of his own generation and praised the novel as a great work of art.66 Pisarev wrote how Turgenev did not understand nihilism as the young generation did, and explained how “if you go up to a mirror, which while reflecting objects also changes their colour a little bit, then you recognise your own physiognomy in spite of the distortions of the time.”67 Pisarev explained that Turgenev has regarded these ideas from his own point of view, that he saw nihilism differently to the younger generation. Pisarev went on to write how “if Bazarovism is a disease, then it Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, p. 172.

Ibid., p. 1 62 Andrew, Russian Writers, p. 31.

63 James Woodward, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1996), p. 5.

64 Andrew, Russian Writers, p. 29.

65 Knowles,Turgenev’s Letters, p. 139.

66 Todd, Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, p. 157.

67 Turgenev, Father and Sons, p. 195.

60 61

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60 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE is a disease of our time, and must be endured to the end, no matter what palliatives and amputations are employed. Treat Bazarovism however you please - that is your business; but you will not be able to put a stop to it; it is just the same as cholera.”68 “Bazarovism” here is a reference to the new young radicals within society and Pisarev is saying that he did not think they could be dissuaded.

Pisarev described how many of the readers were up in arms against Turgenev because he did not sympathise with Bazarov and did not conceal his blunders from the reader.69 The radical readers would rather Bazarov had been presented as an irreproachable man, thereby proving the superiority of realism to all other schools of thought. However, Pisarev’s states that “realism is indeed a fine thing; but let us not, in the name of this very realism, idealise either ourselves or this movement. We coldly and soberly regard all that surrounds us, let us regard ourselves just as coldly and soberly…we are far from perfect.” Pisarev wrote that Turgenev did not fully sympathise with anyone or anything in his novel. He wrote that the “the meaning of novel emerged as follows: today’s young people become carried away and go to extremes; but this very tendency to get carried away points to fresh strength and incorruptible intellect; this strength and intellect will lead these young people onto the right road.”70 Pisarev acknowledges that Turgenev did not invent the Russian nihilist, and that as an artist be must have observed them. Pisarev wrote how Fathers and Sons was a successful novel that stirred the mind and forced the reader, especially the radical reader, to reflect in the hope of improving themself.

In Strakhov’s interpretation, the Slavophile view of the intellectual as an alienated figure framed his response to the novel.71 Strakhov viewed Bazarov primarily as a tragic figure, a radical whose ideals are in conflict with his most basic needs. While Bazarov, as an intellectual, stands above the other characters, they stand above him in terms of human life, “the life which breathes through them.” Bazarov is victim to nihilism, forcing him to suppress his feelings and dismiss them as romanticism. Strakhov explained how despite all of Bazarov’s views, he “cannot be a cold abstract man”72 as his heart demanded fullness and feeling. Turgenev, Strakhov explained, depicted life under the deadening influence of theory. Strakhov wrote that “in short Turgenev stands for the eternal principles of human life…all his attention is concentrated on the general forces of life. He has shown us how Ibid., p. 200.

Ibid., p. 206.

70 Ibid., p. 217.

71 Woodward, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, p. 9.

72 Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, p. 225.

68 69

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61 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE these forces are embodied in Bazarov, in that same Bazarov who denies them.”73 Strakhov believed that Bazarov was a casualty of this movement, one that was denying young Russians their basic human elements.

Comparison of these two criticisms shows clear differences in beliefs regarding the nihilist movement. While Pisarev was hoping the nihilism movement could reflect and grow with the criticism, Strakhov was explaining that as nihilism involved a suppression of our natural instincts, it could never work within Russian society. However, they hold some interesting similarities in that Turgenev accepted both Pisarev’s and Strakhov’s criticism. Turgenev thanked Strakhov for the ‘kind words’ his journal had published, and wrote that Pisarev had ‘almost completely grasped everything I wanted to say with Bazarov.”74 While both of these critics managed to twist the message of the novel to fit their own ideologies, despite coming from different ideological backgrounds they both show a desire for Russian society to change; whether that be to embrace the new radical movement, as Pisarev envisions, or for society to reject these new ideals as they were not practical as Strakhov explains.

One of the key responses to Turgenev’s novel can be seen within another piece of literature. Chernyshevsky was so outraged by the depiction of Bazarov, ergo the nihilist movement, that he wrote the novel What is to be Done?75 It was intended as a direct response to Turgenev from a member of the younger generation he had depicted in Bazarov. Chernyshevsky was not looking to portray a more positive character through a counter-depiction of Bazarov, but instead he designed the characters in the novel as models for reproduction in real life. The novel was to be a positive program for the behaviour of the young nihilists. Chernyshevsky wrote how “all the prominent traits by which they [the new men in the novel] are marked are traits, not of individuals, but of a type.”76 Chernyshevsky believed Bazarov’s nihilism was merely destructive, he aimed only to clear the ground and lacked a program of reform, for this reason he was an unflattering portrait of the “new men.”77 In What is to be Done? Chernyshevsky portrays this rationally ordered society in a sewing workshop, created by the main character, Vera. In this sewing workshop Vera uses these new ideals in a constructive and successful way. In this respect, Chernyshevsky takes nihilism one step further than Bazarov who merely looks to destroy the old order, without proposing a solution. Chernyshevsky also considered Bazarov to Ibid., p. 229.

Woodward, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, p. 10.

75 Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism (California: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 15.

76 Paperno, Chernyshevsky, p. 15 77 Chernyshevsky, What is to be done?, p. 26.

73 74

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62 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE be a dastardly caricature of Dobrolyubov, a fellow radical and a close friend to Chernyshevsky.

One of the ways Chernyshevsky looked to dispute Turgenev’s depiction of nihilism was with the reconciliation of “rational egoism” with romantic love.

Chernyshevsky tried to transform Bazarov’s messy romantic feelings into a “rational” love, which did not contain the self-destructive urge Bazarov displayed.78 The love between Vera and Lopukhov, then Vera and Kirsanov is not depicted as destructive, but practical, fulfilling and largely happy. The main theme running through Chernyshevsky’s novel is that of a rationally ordered society. A society built upon rational thought, where the interests of individuals coinciding with the common good, creating a society of “decent people.”

When addressing the issue of science in his novel, Chernyshevsky referred to Crystal Palace, an innovative building of glass and steel erected in Hyde Park, London in 1851. For Chernyshevsky this building symbolised the transformation of society through science and technology.79 Chernyshevsky extensively described the aluminium of this new building, detailing “how elegant it all is! Aluminium and more aluminium.” Aluminium was used by Chernyshevsky to praise these new scientific advancements, a principal proponent of the nihilism movement he advocated. The Crystal Palace would also, in Chernyshevy’s ideal, become home to many people, “men and women everywhere, old people and young, together with children”, all working together.80 Here Chernyshevsky is portraying Fourier’s influence with his idea of a self-sufficient commune, which he felt was a crucial aspect of a rationally ordered society.

Chernyshevsky also discussed medical students in his literature, Bazarov had also been a medical student, and it was a characteristic career of young nihilists.

Chernyshevsky wrote how “it’s a curious thing: in the last ten years or so a number of our best medical students have decided upon graduation not to practice medicine.”81 He wrote how at the first opportunity they drop medicine and “take up one of its auxiliary sciences - physiology, chemistry.” Chernyshevsky explains how this was due to the underdeveloped state of medicine in Russia. Medical students, rather than treating patients, believed it was more important to prepare for the future so that doctors could possess the skill to administer treatment. He wrote how they “they reject wealth, even

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 370.

80 Ibid., p. 371.

81 Ibid., p. 92.

78 79

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63 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE prosperity” to sit in hospitals making scientific observations. Chernyshevsky draws attention to the work they do dissecting frogs,82 as if to apply reason and logic behind Bazarov’s obsession with studying frogs.

Chernyshevsky wrote how, if as readers, you considered his main characters, Vera Pavlovna, Kirsanov and Lopukhov to be heroes, and people of a higher nature, “perhaps even idealised figures”83 then you would be mistaken. Chernyshevsky explained that “it’s not they that stand too high, but you who stand too low.” If as a reader of Chernyshevsky’s novel these characters appeared to be “soaring above the clouds” then that was only because “you’re sitting in some godforsaken underworld.” It was a novel aimed at ‘fixing’ the ills within society, aiming to educate those who were not yet within the nihilism movement. Chernyshevsky wrote that it was necessary for him to write the novel as the “good, strong, honest, capable people” have only just started to appear among us, and that if they were to be his only readers, there would be no need to write.84 Chernyshevsky knew literature could reach more people and in writing his novel wanted to inspire a generation, and especially those alienated by the figure of Bazarov.

Completing this ‘dialogue between writers’ was Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground in 1864. This was Dostoevsky’s first attack in literature on ethical rationalist, utilitarian and utopian socialist thought and this novel acted as a mouthpiece for Dostoevsky’s orthodox opinions.85 The novel was a direct assault on Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done? and contains a sharp parody of the ideas expressed in the novel.

Chernyshevsky’s heroes are guided by this new morality in which self-interest is identical to the common good, and this produces a society of decent citizens. Dostoevsky ridicules Chernyshevsky’s rationalistic philosophy of happiness and well-being, and shows his portrait of the “new men” and his utopian dreams as an absurd simplification of human nature. The main character of Dostoevsky’s novel is the ‘Underground Man,’ a man who is depicted as having fallen victim to these rational ideas which have brought him misery.

In a commentary to the text, written by Dostoevsky, he explains that in writing these ‘notes’ “people like the author of these notes not only may, but must exist in our society”86 and that “he’s a representative of the current generation.” The opening line to

Ibid., p. 92.

Ibid., p. 313.

84 Ibid., p. 49.

85 Robert L. Jackson, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man in Russian Literature (The Netherlands: Mouton & Co, 1958), p. 24.

86 Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (New York: Norton & Company, 1989), p. 3.

82 83

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

64 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE the novel states “I am a sick man”87 and this is indicative of Dostoevsky’s opinions of these new ideas within society. Dostoevsky saw rational thought as a kind of disease within society, one which was spreading amongst the younger generation.

The overriding theme from Dostoevsky’s work is that man is irrational. The ‘underground man’ asserts that reason alone can neither comprehend nor fulfil society, and that it alone would destroy the human spirit.88 Dostoevsky wrote that “reason is a fine thing, gentlemen, there’s no doubt about it, but it’s only reason, and it satisfies only man’s rational faculty, whereas desire is a manifestation of all life, which includes both reason, as well as all of life’s itches and scratches.”89 He further wrote how “man has always been somewhat afraid of this two times two makes four”90 and that “two times four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.” Dostoevsky was explaining how rational thought would lead to the downfall of society. Dostoevsky wrote that as soon as man finds rational thought, “there’ll be nothing left to search for.” This contrasts with Chernyshevsky’s model of rational thought and a rationally ordered society that will produce a strong, happy society. Dostoevsky is accusing Chernyshevsky of oversimplifying human nature, and alludes to how dangerous this could be. In Dostoevsky’s opinion, human nature overrides science. Dostoevsky described how Cleopatra used to stick gold pins into the breasts of slave girls, and take pleasure in their screams, and although man has now learnt to see more clearly than in barbaric times, “he’s still far from having learned how to act in accordance with the dictates of reason and science.”91 Dostoevsky mocks Chernyshevsky’s Fourierist, utopian vision of the future, making reference to the rational masterpiece that was the Crystal Palace. Dostoevsky described how after the Crystal Palace had been built, this rational, communal, scientifically calculated society would lead to terrible boredom, “there won’t be anything left to do, once everything has been calculated according to tables.... why, even gold pins get stuck into other people out of boredom.”92 This is furthered with an attack on Chernyshevsky’s idea of “decent people.” Dostoevsky wrote “tell me who was the first to announce, first to proclaim that man does nasty things simply because he doesn’t know his own true interest; and that if he were to be enlightened ... he would stop doing nasty Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, p. 3.

Jackson, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, p. 41.

89 Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, p. 20.

90 Ibid., p. 24.

91 Ibid., p. 17.

92 Ibid., p. 18.

87 88

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65 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE things at once and would immediately become good and noble, because being in so enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would realise that his own advantage really did lie in the good.”93 Dostoevsky was attacking the heroes of Chernyshevsky’s novel who expound a theory of rational egoism.94 The Underground man is not described sticking pins into people, but his hysterical outbursts and irrational ramblings are examples of his attempts to escape the boredom and frustrations that his rationally ordered lifestyle has brought.95

CONCLUSION

This investigation has shown the extent to which literature and criticism was politically charged in this period. Ideology was clearly present within both literature and literary criticism, despite claims to the contrary. Pisarev, despite his claims to view a text without ideology, in his criticism demonstrated his preference for the Nihilist movement to which he belonged. The fact that Turgenev’s novel sparked such a furore shows how tense society was during this period. The controversy caused shows the extent to which Russia was in need of reform through the degree of division in the national response. Turgenev explained how “one critic even brought forth the fact that I made Bazarov lose at cards to Father Alexey. “He just doesn’t know how to wound and humiliate enough! He doesn’t even know how to play cards!” There is absolutely no doubt that if I had made Bazarov win, the same critic would triumphantly exclaim: “Isn’t it clear? The author wants to suggest that Bazarov is a cheat!”96 With Oscar Wilde’s assumption that the nihilism was a literary product “invented

by Turgenev and completed by Dostoevsky,” I would have to disagree. Turgenev was depicting the movement as he saw it in Russian society, portraying a movement already taking hold of the younger Russian generation. Dostoevsky, however, in presenting his take on the nihilism movement, was not forming a movement, but reacting to one.

Alexander Herzen, a contemporary Russian author and critic, however wrote that “young Russians were almost all out of What is to be done? after 1862, with the addition of a few of Bazarov’s traits.”97 This was a far more accurate take on what how the nihilism movement Ibid., p. 15.

Jackson, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, p. 42.

95 Ibid., p. 45.

96 Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, p. 171 footnotes.

97 Paperno, Chernyshevsky, p. x.

93 94

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66 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE intertwined with Russian literature. Chernyshevsky hoped his novel would help mould the nihilists. As Chernyshevsky would have hoped, the nihilists did not look to his novel in terms of its aesthetic value, but as a program for social action. What is to be Done? only proved to the young radicals that Alexander II’s reforms had not gone far enough, and that Chernyshevsky’s utopian, rational society could be achieved through revolution.98 As a movement, Nihilism barely outlasted the sixties. By the end of the decade the major figures were either dead or had been banished. However, it was through this movement that the secularization and radicalization of the Russian intelligentsia took place.

99

With this a major step had been taken towards the development of the Russian

Marxists, the nihilists were the forerunners of Marxism-Leninism in Russia.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license lets it to be freely shared and adapted in any medium and format and for any purpose, including commercially.

To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

98 99

Chernyshevsky, What is to be done? p. 32.

Edie, Scanlan and Zeldin, Russian Philosophy. p. 9.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

67 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE References Primary Sources Chernyshevsky, Nikolai, What is to be Done? (London: Cornell University Press, 1989) Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Notes from Underground (New York: Norton & Company, 1989) Turgenev, Ivan, Fathers and Sons (New York: Norton & Company, 1989) Knowles, A. V.,ed, Turgenev’s Letters (London: The Athlone Press, 1983) Secondary Sources Andrew, Joe, Writers And Society During The Rise Of Russian Realism (Hong Kong: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1980) Andrew, Joe, Russian Writers And Society In The Second Half Of The Nineteenth Century (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1982) Clowes, Edith, The Revolution of Moral Consciousness (DeKalb III: Northern Illinois University Press, 1988) Edie, James M., Scanlan, James P. and Zeldin, Mary-Barbara, Russian Philosophy, Volume II (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965) Evtuhov, Catherine and Stites, Richard, A History of Russia since 1800 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004) Hosking, Geoffrey, Russia, People & Empire (London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1998) Jackson, Robert, L., Dostoevsky’s Underground Man in Russian Literature (The Netherlands: Mouton & Co, 1958)

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

68 ST JOHN MURPHY – THE DEBATE AROUND NIHILISM IN 1860S RUSSIAN LITERATURE Barstow, Jane, ‘Dostoevsk’s Notes From Underground Versus Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done?’, College Literature 5 (1978) Lampert, E. Sons against Fathers: Studies in Russian Radicalism and Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) Moser, Charles A,. Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860’s (London: Mouton & Co, 1964) Paperno, Irina, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism (California: Stanford University Press, 1988) Seduro, Vladimir, ed, Dostoevsky in Russian Literary Criticism 1846 - 1956 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957) Todd, William Mills, Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800-1914 (California: Stanford University Press, 1978) Woodward, James, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1996)

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 69-84.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.046

Born in the USSR: Children vs. Ideology and the Impact of Database Cinema DARIA SHEMBEL San Diego State University

INTRODUCTION

In 2012, state-controlled television channel Russia 1 chose prime time on September 1, when schools celebrate Knowledge Day, to premiere the fourth installment of Born in the USSR. The documentary series launched in the Soviet Union in 1989 and was based on the same premise as Michael Apted’s acclaimed UK-based project Up Series that tracked the lives of 14 British children at seven-year intervals starting from 1964. Since 1989, when Born in the USSR introduced a group of 20 seven-year old children from different parts of the Soviet Union, the series, directed by the leading Russian documentarian Sergei Miroshnichenko, has released four episodes.

Given that the first two segments of Born in the USSR aired only on cable channels late at night and without promotion, the fact that the fourth installment was granted such auspicious airtime is rather conspicuous. Why the sudden change of heart?

In the first two installments, we observe those portrayed advance into adolescence and young adulthood during chaotic and painful social and economic changes in a country on the brink of disaster. Severe ethnic rioting, stores routinely lacking milk, bread, and meat, political turmoil, a sharp rise in poverty, and rampant drug and alcohol abuse were not an ideal showcase of the country’s chosen path. And the participants in the project are not shown rising above their circumstances. In the third and fourth installments, many of those portrayed in Born in the USSR have been displaced from their homelands, and some have even lost citizenship in any country. They haven’t become exemplars of the current regime, either.

As they look back at their childhood in the USSR as a time of hope, purity, and dreams, their longing resonates with the new state ideology, in which some Soviet values resurface and revive. With the restoration of the Soviet anthem and emblems, discussions of restoring Soviet-era names for streets and landmarks (including Stalingrad), strong anti-American

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70 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA propaganda, and the re-absorption of Crimea, it is as if the Russian ruling elite wants to recreate the country of its childhood.

The Up Series was exported around the world, but nowhere else did its launch coincide with the unprecedented scale of social, political, demographic and economic change that resulted from the sudden demise of the world’s largest multinational empire.

The study will investigate how children and then adolescents made sense and reflected on the challenges that their new nations were facing in the post-Soviet era. It explores how tensions and ambivalences, felt by subjects of Russia and its dominions during rapid socio-political change, are crystalised and rendered through the child’s perspective. I will also examine how a ‘database’1 logic embedded in the structure of the series affects its narrative and makes it resistant to the country’s rapidly changing history as well as interpretations in different ideological contexts.

Born in the USSR functions as a database on multiple levels: it represents a historical archive of personal data collection, assumes totality of coverage (to report on an entire life and cover the map of the USSR); every element of it works for a larger picture; there is a basic algorithm that generates a larger whole, and it unites all kinds of data, while each element of it is attributed equal significance. I argue that the database structure of the film makes it resistant to the country’s attempts to frame it within the rhetoric of the rebuilding of Soviet Russia. Thus, the last section of this article will focus on the series’ database structure to support this claim.

The Born in the USSR project began in 1988 when, following the success of the Up Series in the UK, the BBC decided to franchise the concept to other countries. The producers of the program chose to begin with the world’s superpowers, exporting the idea first to the US and USSR in 1989, and then to Japan, South Africa, and Germany in 1992.

Although Michael Apted considered a broad array of leading documentarians in

1 Lev Manovich was the first to relate database to cinema when discussing how the principles involved in computer software and hardware interfere with the cultural logic of new media objects’ production. The most important computer technology infiltrating the realm of aesthetics, according to Manovich, involves the database, which emerged as an application for computer data access and organization and has since been elevated to the status of a new cultural form in its own right. According to him, ‘many new media objects do not tell stories, they don’t have any beginning, they don’t have any development; instead they are collections of individual items, where every item has the same significance as any other’; Lev Manovich, ‘Database as Symbolic Form,’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 5.2 (1999): 80-99.

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71 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA today’s Russia and Ukraine, including Vitaly Mansky and Alexander Rodniansky, he chose Sergei Miroshnichenko, a graduate of VGIK, and by then a winner of international film festival awards. Miroshnichenko notes a critical factor in the decision was that he had two young daughters at the time (who now work on the project with him).

Today, Miroshnichenko is part of the official establishment, a member of the Council for Culture and Arts under President Putin, a winner of the State Prize of Russia, and the Secretary of the Union of Cinematographers. On March 11, 2014, he signed the Ministry of Culture petition endorsing the annexation of Crimea – an act that echoes Soviet methods when prominent cultural figures had to support the ‘party line.’ Miroshnichenko’s status of a leading state filmmaker certainly cannot hinder the re-discovery and popularization of Born in the USSR within the current ideological climate.

While the main premise of the British series was to reveal the influence of social class on personal success, the ostensible goal of Born in the USSR was to survey regions of the country’s vast landmass, from Europe to Central Asia and to Siberia. Participants were selected from four of the Soviet Republics: Russia, Georgia, Kirghizia (now Kyrgyzstan), and Lithuania. Miroshnichenko’s second priority was to document the lives of children with diverse social backgrounds and material settings. Among those selected were children from the families of factory workers living in hostels, those from Soviet intelligentsia elite and party nomenclatura, children from small villages, and a boy from an orphanage in Siberia.

The very fact of exporting the model of the British series to a country with a dramatically different socio-political order opens up a vast range of concerns linking the concepts of childhood, nationalism and transnationalism: does the series draw on the themes that stem from national politics or is it more concerned with perennial topics, universal for all children and re-visited in every episode: love, hopes for the future, motherland, money, family, education? How do national politics affect children in terms of forming their worldview, morality, sense of identity and belonging?

I. BORN IN THE USSR: ‘HAPPY SOVIET CHILDHOOD’

One of the tenets of contemporary childhood studies is that the understanding of children and childhood cannot be disentangled from the context of time, place, society and © School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

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72 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA culture.2 While exporting the Up Series format confirms that many childhood experiences are universal, there were, of course, peculiarities of growing up in the USSR. The state’s efforts to raise model Soviet citizens included comprehensive regulation of children’s education and organized leisure activities.3 The educational system was famous for its lock-step homogeneity; on any given day, schoolchildren in nearly nine million square miles of the empire were expected to be reading the same page of the same textbook. The first episode of Born in the USSR captures a life-changing moment in young lives as the children experience their first grade school day. Kindergarten was a relatively undemanding experience, and many of them lament the rigidity of the first grade.

Political indoctrination, with emphasis on venerating leaders past and present and the claim that Soviet children lived in the best country in the world, started as early as kindergarten and continued through school years. The Octobrists, Pioneers, and Komsomol youth organizations were the main conduits of Soviet ideological teaching. The series provides insight into the seven-year-olds’ varying degrees of understanding of the ideological indoctrination as they try to make sense of their roles as Young Octobrists and discuss the importance of Lenin as the founder of the Bolshevik revolution.

Question: Who was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin?

Answer: Lenin saved Lithuania.

Answer: He doesn’t walk, he lies. You walk through the Mausoleum and there is Lenin. He is in a jacket and trousers and shoes, in some sort of tennis-shoes.

Answer: He got top marks at school so his portrait is in the star.

Question What is the October Revolution?

- Now they call it a coup.

- Well, who won in that coup?

- Nobody told me that. Not even my mother has told me who won.

Question: What do you know about the Revolution?

- They fired a shot from the Aurora Ship at the Winter Palace.

- What happened next?

Allison James and Alan Prout, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood (Psychology Press, 1997).

3 Rebecca Knight, ‘Representations of Soviet Childhood in Post-Soviet Texts by Liudmila Ulitskaia and Nina Gabrielian.’ The Modern Language Review (2009), 790-808.

2

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73 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA - Revolution.

- And then?

- Peace.

Question: What does the Octobrist star mean?

- It means I’m a helper of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

- What with?

- Well, a helper of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Long pause - But how can you help him?

- Long pause. Nobody told us.

Although some of these answers evoke American ‘reality’ programs featuring kids, such as Funniest Home Videos, occasionally one of the seven-year-old Soviets offers precocious insight into the role of children in the system. Anton is a grandson of a journalist who edited the Party newspaper Pravda and wrote speeches for Brezhnev. He lives in the famous House on the Embankment, an apartment complex built for the Soviet elite, with Nikita Khrushchev and the aircraft designer Artem Mikoyan among its former residents. Responding to the question ‘Who are the Octobrists?’ Anton demonstrates a surprising awareness of children’s place in the party hierarchy: ‘The Octobrists are those in the first group of small people. It’s like having a party of their own.’

When the series was about to launch in 1989, the country entered an era of great ideological confusion and disorientation. The myth of Soviet childhood began to erode alongside regulation of the education system with the advent of glasnost. Reports of poor conditions in schools and other child welfare institutions due to under-funding and understaffing gradually destroyed the romantic notion of children being ‘the only privileged class.’

As well, children were no longer bedazzled by rhetoric about their countries’ radiant future.

It had become clear that Gorbachev’s attempt to implement a fresh approach to politics and economics through perestroika had gravely failed and hopes for ‘socialism with a human face’ had vanished, but the Soviet educational institutions were not ready to adapt, and the cornerstones of the old Soviet moral upbringing were still very much in place. While history exams in high schools and universities across the country were cancelled and the Russian literary journal Novy Mir published Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Archipelago Gulag, the state education system continued to preach virtues espoused by Lenin, and in Born in the © School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

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74 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA USSR the children learn the hymn of the Young Leninists. How did children experience and understand the contradicting cultural politics that informed their daily lives in the epoch of perestroika?

A country girl from Baikal region, Rita, recites the postulates of the Octobrists by heart – rote memorization was an important method in the Soviet education system.

Zhanna and Lenia, twins from a Jewish family emigrating from Sverdlovsk to Israel with their family, answer the question ‘Who is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin?’ They respond in unison: ‘Lenin is the leader of the entire world.’ Upon realizing they were leaving the country forever, they had asked their parents to take them to visit Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square. At the same time, Lado, a boy from the Georgian party elite reports ‘I never wanted to find out about Lenin, and all those presidents, deputies, and the like; they are of no concern to me. I’m just not interested.’ The authority of Soviet leadership had been undermined with the exposure of Stalin’s crimes under glasnost, and by 1989 Gorbachev’s popularity had plummeted to historical lows.

Faced with a choice between what they hear in school and at home, some choose to emulate their parents’ grievances against perestroika. The most forceful criticism of Gorbachev’s attempts to re-structure the old system comes from Asia, a vivacious girl who loves to dance and lives in a big apartment in downtown Leningrad with her mother and grandparents. ‘I don’t love this country. I can’t help it. I simply can’t live here. Everyone screams, “Perestroika! Perestroika!” What’s the point of it? Goodness! Politics, they call it! They could at least give us something to eat!’ Asia seems to transmit the pessimism of several generations of Soviets who instinctively knew that any change to the system was useless.

Anton is the only child who in 1989 still speaks of perestroika in terms of its dedication to the socialist ideals. ‘Through perestroika, we help the Revolution and maintain equality,’ he says.

This seven-year-old's reserved manner and mature revelations are striking. To a provocation from Miroshnichenko — ‘Do you think this is how we are catching up with capitalist countries… through empty shelves?’ — Anton calmly responds ‘This is how, perhaps, we are gaining strength.’

The last Soviet generation was born in a country which declared itself to be an international state based on ethnic equality. However, despite 70 years of propaganda, the

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75 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA people of the USSR did not fully believe themselves to be citizens of one great multiethnic country.4 In the late 1980s, as many ethnic groups across the country demanded rights to selfdetermination, ethnic rioting broke out in the southern and central Asian republics of the Soviet Union alongside mass protests in the Baltic republics. While the first installment of Born in the USSR was in production, the Soviet Union experienced the 1989 Tbilisi massacre (the killing of 16 civilians during anti-Soviet protests), the Sumgait pogrom in Azerbaijan (during which Armenians were attacked and killed in their apartments and on the streets), severe ethnic clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Kirigizia, and the rise of the Popular Front movements in the Baltic. Some of the children selected for the project found themselves at the epicenters of these conflicts.

Pavlik lives in a refugee camp in Red Square with his family. ‘I used to live in Baku. I was born there. When they brought the troops in, when they brought the tanks in, they smashed up our flat. There was no furniture left, nothing. They even broke the windows. We lay the whole time in the bathroom. We were afraid to come out. They’ve also blown up the hospital.’ Pavlik refers to the events of ‘Black January’ in Azerbaijan. On January 19, 1990, 26,000 Soviet troops entered Baku, crushing the Azerbaijani Popular Front that sought independence from the Soviet Union following the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Around the same time, massive anti-Armenian pogroms took place in Azerbaijan, resulting in the emigration of much of the Armenian population. After his appearance in the first installment, the series producers were unable to find Pavlik again.

A Russian girl Nastia and a Kyrgyz boy Almaz live in the capital of Kirghizia, Frunze (now Bishkek). At the age of seven, they already know what martial law is.

- Miroshnichenko: What’s going on in the city?

- Nastia: Uprising. They are in revolt.

- Miroshnichenko: Who? - Nastia: Kirgizians - Miroshnichenko: What’s martial law?

- Nastia: It means you can’t go out at 10… no, at 12… onto the streets

4

Dimitri K. Simes, After the Collapse: Russia Seeks its Place as a Great Power (Simon and Schuster, 1999).

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76 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA - Miroshnichenko: Or else?

- Nastia: They will kill you.

Here is how Almaz renders the conflict between Kirgizians and Uzbeks: ‘It is so that Kirghizians and Uzbeks fight. That’s why we have martial law. It’s because young guys go to the cinema at night. Kirghizians and Uzbeks go. They could knife each other.’

Although ethnic tensions affected children living in Russia to a lesser degree (one Russian girl states indifferently, ‘Let them go if they want to’), it became a major issue for 25 million of Russian ‘settlers’ living outside the borders of the Russian Republic. The children living in the Caucasus and Central Asia seemed to have a lot to say regarding emergent ethnic boundaries that a ‘single Soviet people’ experienced already before the dissolution of the USSR. We are shown Lado stating with confidence that he’d never marry a Russian; Alena, a Russian girl from Georgia claiming that she wouldn’t want to live in Georgia, and Nastia from Kyrgyzstan saying that she doesn’t have friends among Kyrgyzs because she is scared of them.

II. THE 1990S AND BEYOND

The next time the project entered the children’s lives, when they were 14, the country in which they were born no longer existed. Following the sudden demise of the communist system, the post-Soviet republics encountered challenges establishing private enterprise and developing new forms of political and social life, 5 and dealt with inter-ethnic and interrepublic tensions. Russia was in a state of acute economic depression. The early and middle 1990s were especially tough for Russians, when the savings they had amassed during the Soviet period disappeared overnight. The country’s attempts at transformation through price liberalization led to prolonged economic decline. More than 30% of the population reported being unable to afford normal nutrition, 80% of families could not afford household

David D. Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad. Vol. 22. (Cambridge Univ Press, 1998).

5

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77 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA appliances and inexpensive furniture, and two-thirds could not pay for cheap footwear and clothing.6 Many relied on the home production of goods and services.

In its second installment, the series re-introduces us to Dima, a boy from the Moscow suburbs whose family now has a rooster and two hens in their small apartment. Meanwhile, Almaz in Kyrgyzstan sells newspapers, lemonade, and gum on the hot and dusty roads of Bishkek to help his mother raise his younger brothers and sisters. Identical twins Stas and Denis come from a suburban district of Leningrad. At seven, they seemed happy and carefree, enjoying the comfort and security of their family. When they were 14, their father died of a heart attack. In the second installment, they appear with tears in their eyes and explain they were unable to afford to bury their father near home and had to buy a plot hundreds of kilometers away. As well, before their father died, he had not received his factory salary for months, while their mother’s pension was miserly despite her working steadily for the same employer for many years.

It was as if the children found themselves victims in the horror stories of capitalism their elders told them while they were Octobrists in the Soviet Union. But the situation had become even grimmer for those in the non-Russian countries of the Soviet empire. Alongside the economic turmoil of decolonization, they dealt with severe ethnic conflicts and civil wars.

A pampered child playing with expensive imported toys at seven, Lado looks very different at 14. Beginning in 1988, Georgia experienced many violent ethnic conflicts and two civil wars caused by minority separatist movements in Abkhasia and South Ossetia. Five years of ethnic clashes resulted in the deaths of hundreds of citizens, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees, and prolonged financial and social crises. Lado talks about intermittent gas and electricity supply in the city of Tbilisi and how people resort to pulling up hardwood flooring to feed bonfires in their apartments. Alena, who at seven declared that she wouldn’t live in Georgia, still lives in Georgia, but has opportunities to travel to Turkey to visit her stepfather. Her comparison of these two countries certainly does not reflect well on her home country: ‘Everything is cheaper there than in Georgia. There is no electricity, no gas, no water in many districts of Georgia, while Turkey has everything.’

Fortunately for the children from Lithuania, Katia and Algis, the transition to independence and democracy went more smoothly. Algis, the son of a lawyer who fought for

6

Viktor A. Artemov, ‘The Village in the 1990s’, Sociological research 42.6 (2003), 27-43.

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78 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA the independence of Lithuania in the late 1980s, does not have to learn Russian any more.

This does not concern Katia, since her family is Russian and they speak Russian at home. At seven, Katia struck everybody with her brilliant taxonomy of religions and a strikingly mature discussion of moral values. This is how Katia evaluates the fall of the USSR at 14: ‘In my opinion, it is not capitalism or socialism. I don’t know what it is. It is a transitional stage from the socialism we never had to the capitalism that might not come.’

When we see these children for the first time in the 1980s, they appear to be part of a settled social system, albeit one we now know to have been crumbling. They are amazingly lyrical. Nastia from Kirghizia says that her most cherished dream is that ‘everyone live in peace, all things grow and become beautiful, and there are lots of beautiful white hens.’ They are free of materialistic values. When asked what they would do with their money if they became rich, the answers include ‘I would give it all to the poor” and “I wouldn’t take it; I don’t want to be rich.’ When Algis is asked whether there is anything better than money, his answer is ‘Yes, a fern flower.’

In the 1990s, these children were not only affected by ethnic clashes, economic turmoil, and corruption and plundering, but were also caught up in a constant search for new moral and social frameworks as Russia and the other post-Soviet republics pursued new identities. Participants experienced a rapid series of value changes: the revival of religion, the reinvigoration of sobornost, obsession with Old Slavic mythology, the emergence of radical nationalism. One of these changes was the transition from communism to a capitalist democratic regime, which engendered a euphoric hope which for many turned out to be false.

The most recent two installments of Born in the USSR are difficult to watch; they show the end of a dream. Almaz from Kyrgyzstan, who at seven wanted to be a documentary filmmaker, now works at a provincial market as a gastarbeiter. Wunderkind Katia at 28 is still working toward her BA while employed at a call center. Nastia and Alena completely abandoned any professional ambition and became stay-at-home mothers. Dima, who at seven wanted to be a cosmonaut, works as a driver at Moscow subway. Stas is a poorly-paid waiter who also works as a part-time security guard. Denis is unemployed after working in the navy for seven years.

Anton and Lado seem to be the most successful of all project participants. Lado lives in Luxembourg and works as a financial analyst at Ernst & Young, while Anton is editor-inchief of the Russian edition of Men’s Health. The success of these two prompts one to © School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

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79 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA consider the validity of applying the concepts of class difference and class mobility to the Soviet Union. Is it a coincidence that the only heirs to the Soviet elite also happen to be the most well-off?

The rest are confused and lost in the new capitalist world. Some of them come to terms with failure, admitting that they would live their lives differently if they could turn back time. However, as the montage cuts back and forth between lyrical children living in the USSR and young adults unable to embrace the new economic reality of the free market society, it looks as if the new state ideology happily embraces their failures. And the more these young adults lament lost Soviet values, the more it suits the country’s new ideological discourse.

Hardly capable of defining the ‘Soviet Union’ at the age of 14, at 28 Almaz says ‘We are like orphans. Of course, the countries have separated, got lost maybe, and twenty years of my active life have disappeared. I think things were better before in the USSR. Everything worked. Factories, plants, people lived equally. If I could choose, I’d rather live in the country I lived in before I was seven.’ Stas complains about the disappearance of morality among the young generation as well their indifference to authority. Lenia, who emigrated to Israel in 1990 and now lives in Argentina, goes as far as concealing his Israeli citizenship and unearthing his USSR birth certificate.

One of the most ideologically convenient justifications for the ‘happy Soviet childhood’ myth is the story of Andrei, a boy living in a Siberian orphanage. Through tears, this bright, mature seven-year-old tells us he hears the voice of his mother, who died when he was two, in his dreams. After the first installment aired internationally, the orphanage received thousands of letters from foreign families willing to adopt Andrei, and in the second installment we are told he lives in the United States with his new family. However, during the course of the interview, we see him crying, and it turns out Andrei has been rejected by his first American mother, who wanted to send him back to Russia. Fortunately for Andrei, he has been adopted by another family, which turns out to be very loving and supportive, but Andrei’s negative experience with his first adoptive family resonates with a massive Kremlin anti-American propaganda campaign that told Russians that the majority of U.S. parents

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80 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA adopting Russian children are sadists, pedophiles, and child abusers.7 The campaign led to an adoption law banning Americans from adopting Russian children, effective January, 2014.

While children represent the future, childhood also evokes an idyllic past in the minds of many adults, who associate childhood with stability and rootedness. It places them in a temporally distant place of peaceful innocence.8 It is not by accident that advertising of the Russian brands that originated in the Soviet Union always feature children.9 As the Russian people and the ruling elite become increasingly dissatisfied with capitalism, the myth of ‘happy childhood’ acquires a status that it never attained during the Soviet years, when it was considered to be part of communist propaganda.

Newfound interest in the series is thus driven by the resonance between the life stories of some participants and state ideology, which sees in these stories a repudiation of capitalism and even justification for anti-American propaganda.

III. BORN IN THE USSR AS DATABASE NARRATIVE

Responding to Miroshnichenko’s question about the country’s political situation, seven-yearold Anton famously predicts a coup: Miroshnichenko: What’s going on in our country right now?

Anton: I think that some people think it’s better one way and others think it’s better another way. There is a struggle going on. Each side wants its own way. Both lots.

Miroshnichenko: What will come of that?

Anton: Don’t know… some sort of coup.

Taken in isolation, this remark is merely precocious, but when we hear his voice over footage of the actual coup of August 1991, a correspondence between life and history reveals itself. We experience a similar effect hearing a seven-year-old boy dream of becoming a Michael Bohm, ‘Why Russia is No.1 in Anti-Americansim,’ The Moscow Times, Jan 24, 2014, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/why-russia-is-no-1-in-anti-americanism/493260.html [last accessed: June 21, 2014].

8 Kristen E. Cheney, Pillars of the Nation: Child Citizens and Ugandan National Development, (University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 10.

9 Linor Goralik cited in Knight, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood.

7

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81 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA cosmonaut as we see him, at 28, driving a subway train; and when a seven-year-old girl who wishes to become a doctor, at 21, ‘sees no point in education because everybody can buy a diploma.’

The series is of demonstrably outstanding artistic quality. Its second installment, Born in the USSR:14, won an International Emmy Award for best documentary in 1999. At the same time, it remains one of the most frank and merciless diagnoses of contemporary Russian society.

Some other Russian documentaries have adopted a longitudinal approach (e.g. Test for Adults. dir. Igor Shadkhan [Kontrol’naia dlia vzroslyx] (1977-1992); Russia The Beginning [Rossia.

Rozhdenie], dir. Vitaly Mansky (2000-…)). One is Juris Podnieks’ influential Is it Easy to be Young? (1986, Latvia, USSR) which follows the lives of several young people who attend a concert of the banned rock group Perkons in Latvia in 1986. Even though it is a compelling portrait of the lives of Soviet youth during perestroika, it was too characteristic of its time. In the sequels (1988’s Is it Easy to be? and 2010’s Is it Easy?), the producers found it necessary to add new participants to keep the project fresh. Meanwhile, Born in the USSR has survived unprecedented political change, transcended its director’s shift towards state ideology, and overcome severe budget challenges to become one of the most significant cinematic events in Russia since perestroika.

What makes Born in the USSR stand out among other longitudinal studies of the postSoviet states?

In the beginning of the project we hear seemingly meaningless statements, while interviews seem to be neither provocative nor particularly insightful. The model for all franchised projects is the same: the children are asked the usual set of questions about their country, families, religion, love, education and hopes for the future as they grow up.

However, the project’s impact turns out to be deeper than one might expect from such trivial beginnings. It develops into a commanding perspective of a nation’s history unfolding by means of personal stories.

I argue that the project resembles a database in that its narrative structure is modular and encourages constant juxtaposition of the material and temporal travels back and forth, while each part of the series remains incomplete if kept separate. Born in the USSR presents a historical archive of personal data collected over the period of 20 years. It aims at a totality of coverage: to represent an entire life and to cover the entire map of the USSR. The series’ © School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

81

82 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA conception corresponds to post-modern archival fever, which aims at the totality of preservation as if everything could eventually have some historical significance, and also reflects on the current tendencies of constructing the national narratives not through traditional institutions of family, church, school and state, but rather through individual memories.10 It is notable that in recent sociological studies childhood is increasingly seen as a social and political space, while childhood memories play a significant role in national history representations.11 Like a computer database, the essence of database cinema is the links between its elements. Born in the USSR is not a random collection of events, people, and places; there is an algorithm to its presentation; the film is arranged into separate sections of family, education, religion, money, etc. The task of the filmmaker is to choose a structure and a method and let them play out, while the viewer is expected to actively construct a meaning rather than passively observe, keeping track of scenes and events and juxtaposing them herself. Given the role of the viewer in the meaning production process, database cinema in thus a realm beyond authorial control. And this is what makes Born in the USSR such a unique and clear-eyed document of the post-Soviet transformation: the database structure exists independently of its author. And even though it is possible to detect the state’s presence — in the voice of its leading filmmaker Miroshnichenko — in the last installment of the series, its content remains unbiased.

The structure of database cinema is open-ended and prone to unexpected turns in the narrative. When the Up project was franchised to the USSR, the producers intended only to document the lives of children from different regions of the world’s largest country; they had no idea participants in the project would witness one of the most colossal transformations of the twentieth century.

The method of the film is meta-cinematic; it continually quotes itself, while its subjects comment on their past statements and experiences and even edit them. A 21-year-old Nastia, who at seven wished for peace in the world and for hens to be beautiful and white, remarks that Americans deserved the September 11 attacks because ‘they interfere in

Olivier Asselin, ‘Chapter Six Database Cinema and the Museification of National Histories Olivier Asselin, University of Montreal,’ Zoom In, Zoom Out: Crossing Borders in Contemporary European Cinema (2007), p. 150.

11 Robert Coles, The Political Life of Children, (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000).

10

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83 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA everybody else’s business.’ At 28, she takes those words back and apologizes ‘before those whom she offended.’

In the database narrative of Born in the USSR, there is no dominant authorial voice, no artistic acuteness, and no shocking material; it presents a series of interviews, brief sequences about the subjects, and short segments of historical material. Similar to how a computer database works, it is not the elements themselves that are important, in fact, they could be easily reduced to 0-1 variables. What is important is the scale and the nature of their connections. When we look at Born in the USSR series from this perspective and from the grandeur of its scale, we see that every single utterance acquires a historical significance and shows how valuable every detail from the life of every participant is; the value that their lives could never acquire in traditional media, where they could be easily indistinguishable from 0-1 variables.

The database approach employed by the series corresponds to methods emerging in contemporary science in which large and complex processes such as changes in cultural paradigms, social evolution, and behavioral patterns of groups are processed via algorithms which work not with selected samples but with all available data.

Other longitudinal documentaries have attempted to choose articulate participants who were also symbols of their epoch (Is it Easy to be Young, 1986), and although those projects were successful at the time of their release they now seem dated. By contrast, those depicted in Born in the USSR are not celebrities but ‘little people’ who are usually of limited interest to traditional media. In its attempt to render the dataflow of the epoch by documenting the dramatic arcs of individual lives, the project proves that the true insight is revealed not through exceptions but through the sum of interactions. The project is not only an affirmation of humanism but also a unique document of the epoch: life after the collapse of the Soviet empire, with rapidly changing historical, ideological, and cultural currents. Most importantly, it resists the current regime’s attempts to frame it within the rhetoric of rebuilding of Soviet Russia. Despite the series director having joined the state establishment, the database structure of the series leaves us a chance to interpret the transformation ourselves, without political interference of the current regime.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license lets it to be freely shared and adapted in any medium and format and for any purpose, including commercially. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

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84 SHEMBEL – BORN IN THE USSR: CHILDREN VS. IDEOLOGY AND THE IMPACT OF DATABASE CINEMA REFERENCES

Artemov, Viktor A., ‘The Village in the 1990s’, Sociological Research 42.6 (2003): 27-43.

Asselin, Olivier, ‘Chapter Six Database Cinema and the Museification of National Histories Olivier Asselin, University of Montreal’, Zoom In, Zoom Out: Crossing Borders in Contemporary European Cinema (2007): 128-154.

Cheney, Kristen E. Pillars of the Nation: Child Citizens and Ugandan National Development, University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Coles, Robert, The Political Life of Children, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.

Goralik, Linor, ‘Rosargoeksporta Syrka: Simvolika i Simvoly Sovetskoi Epokhi v Segodniashnem Rossiskom Brendinge’, Teoria mody. 3 (2007).

James, Allison, and Alan Prout, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, Psychology Press, 1997.

Knight, Rebecca, ‘Representations of Soviet Childhood in Post-Soviet Texts by Liudmila Ulitskaia and Nina Gabrielian,’ The Modern Language Review (2009): 790-808.

Laitin, David D., Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad, vol.

22, Cambridge Univ Press, 1998.

Manovich, Lev, ‘Database as Symbolic Form’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 5.2 (1999): 80-99.

The Language of New Media, MIT press, 2001.

Simes, Dimitri K., After the Collapse: Russia Seeks its Place as a Great Power, Simon and Schuster, 1999.

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

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SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 85-105

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.047

Russian National Security Strategy: Regime Security and Elite’s Struggle for ‘Great Power’ Status PAVEL SHCHELIN University of Glasgow

INTRODUCTION

The most common premise concerning Russian foreign policy post-cold war is the assumption that its primary focus has been the restoration of the country’s influence in international affairs (Kanet, 2007; Trenin, 2011; Tsygankov, 2005, Stent, 2014). Following a realist approach, it is possible to claim that the quest for a ‘great power’ with global interests and the ability to protect them has been the cornerstone of Russian Foreign policy for centuries (Tsygankov, 2012). Decisions made by the Russian leadership across last two years at the time of writing, including undeclared war in Ukraine and declared war in Syria, seem to fit perfectly into that narrative since the country was trying desperately in that period to defend its borders from threats of terrorism and hostile military alliances (i.e NATO). Moreover, a realist perspective encompasses the matters of prestige that are traditionally in the domain of a constructivist paradigm of international relations. If the Russian leadership considers status as a means of soft power to promote its agenda in the international arena, then it is natural that foreign policy decision-makers seek to gain this valuable resource at all costs. It is possible to argue about the continuity of choices and to claim that the current Russian leadership— being as restrained by a ‘contradiction between overcoming economic backwardness and defending porous frontiers’ (Rieber, 2007, 225) as Tsarist and Soviet rulers had been in their foreign policy— has chosen the hard line in their foreign policy. However, a realist approach can be considered as an oversimplification for the investigation of Russian foreign policy under the Putin regime.

The paper argues that a foreign policy driven exclusively by domestic needs has been conducted over a period of 16 years. In order to defend this hypothesis, this article suggests a close examination of the latest National Security strategy adopted on the 31st of December 2015 in the context of trends of internal development within the country.

This article is structured in the following way. The first section will present an analysis of the updated security strategy doctrine, including the differences from the

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

86 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS previous edition. The analysis points to a discrepancy between the doctrine’s mostly defensive nature oriented towards the regime’s domestic security, and claims of great power status against the background of decisive, if not aggressive, foreign policy and the country’s deteriorating economic development. The second section is divided into subsections, which will cover the relationship between status theory in international relations and the incentives of the Russian elite to pursue ‘great power’ status. The final section proposes a possible explanation of the paradox discussed during the discourse analysis of the strategy doctrine. This article concludes by providing a coherent argument on the incentives of modern Russian foreign policy, which cannot be assessed either by a purely realist or purely constructivist approach.

I. THE PARADOXES OF NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY DOCTRINE

The National Security strategy doctrine is one of several documents that defines Russian foreign policy by putting it in the broader context of security, both external and internal.

On 31st December 2015, the fourth redaction of this document was issued. Whereas the previous doctrine appeared in 2009 after the Russian – Georgian war and was designed to remain in force until 2020, the recent strategy was issued against the background of the war in Eastern Ukraine and a deepening crisis in the relationship between Russia and the West.

The very fact that a strategy intended to last 11 years was nevertheless revised is what leads to the conclusion that some fundamental adjustments were introduced.

The new strategy doctrine only partially maintains the security narratives present in the previous version. By the doctrine’s definition, national security embraces the ‘protection of an individual, society and state from both foreign and domestic threats’ (art. 6)1. It is exactly the same definition from 2009. However, first major differences appear shortly thereafter. Following the previous document, the strategy proposes a broad understanding of security. In particular, it includes ‘primarily the state, social, informational, ecological, economic, transport, energy security, and security of the individual’ (art.6). In contrast to the short definition, such a framing of national security puts the well-being of the state as the top priority, with consideration for individual security falling last on the list. Unlike in the 2009 version, where there was no such contradiction since the promotion of the All citations from the 2015 Strategy are taken from its official publication on “Rossiyskaya Gaseta” webpage and are accompanied with () brackets.

Accessed (26.01.2016): http://www.rg.ru/2015/12/31/nac-bezopasnost-site-dok.html 1

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87 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS constitutional rights of an individual was placed first upon the list of objectives {art. 6}.2 At the same time, in both strategies there is a completely unquantifiable element of ‘spiritual’ security. In 2009, it was stated that ‘Russian traditional ideals, spirituality and proper attitude towards historical memory [are reviving]’ {art. 1}, and the 2015 document proclaims this thesis as well (art. 11).

In contrast to the previous strategy, the 2015 redaction is much more moderate in evaluating the successes of the country in all areas except foreign policy. In 2009, its authors claimed nothing less than that the country ‘has managed to overcome the consequences of the systemic political and socio-economic crisis of the late XXth century’ {art. 1}. In 2015, as the main accomplishment of the county’s development, it is suggested that the country has demonstrated its ability to ‘defend sovereignty, independence, state and territorial integrity and compatriots’ rights abroad’ (art. 8). What is more, in comparison to 2009, the current strategy is oriented towards the ideas of stability and regime protection rather than development. In its first articles, the 2009 strategy set the goal of transforming the nation into ‘one of the leading powers judging by the level of technological progress, the quality of life of the population, and influence on global processes’ {art. 1}, and to becoming ‘one of the leaders in world economy through effective participation in the global division of labour, [and] increasing the global competitiveness of the national economy’ {9}. In the 2015 strategy doctrine, there is no clear image of any future goals. Instead it is focused from the very beginning solely on the stability and protection of the country in a dangerous external environment.

The need to protect the country’s stability arises mainly from the threat posed by the global West, according to the new document. The new strategy doctrine appears much more explicit in this area when compared with the previous edition. Formerly, despite existing arguments such as debates about the US anti-missile program and NATOenlargement, there was a goal to ‘build equal and strategic partnership with the USA on the basis of joint interests’ {18}. In the 2015 strategy doctrine, articles 12, 15, 16, 17 and 18 (disregarding any talk about economic, social or any other kind of internal development) provide an image of the hostile international environment the Russian state has to operate in. There is a long list of threats of conflict in modern international relations, according to which the main opponent to the Russian Federation is NATO and the USA. First and

All citations from the 2009 Strategy are taken from its official publication on “Rossiyskaya Gaseta” webpage and are accompanied with {} brackets Accessed (26.01.2016) http://www.rg.ru/2009/05/19/strategia-dok.html 2

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88 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS foremost, Russia is threatened by ‘the support of the US and EU of the anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Ukraine, which led to a deep schism of Ukrainian society and the onset of an armed conflict…framed Russia as an enemy among the Ukrainian people [and]…transformed Ukraine into a long-term breeding ground of instability in Europe and directly on Russian borders’ (art.17). It is particularly emphasized that ‘the practice of toppling down legitimate political regimes, provoking instability within a state’ (art.18) is becoming more and more widespread. Accordingly, the question of information security becomes of the utmost importance in view of the fact that communication technologies are used ‘by some countries’ in order to ‘achieve the geopolitical goals resorting to manipulation with public opinion and history falsification’ (art.21).

In the context of being surrounded by various threats, the following long-term strategic interests are formulated in article 30: ‘strengthening of defense capabilities, promotion of the constitutional order, independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation; strengthening of political and social stability, development of democratic institutions, and improvement of communication between state and civil society; promotion of stable demographic development of the country; promotion of social stability, promotion of better living-standards and health-care; development of traditional spiritual-moral values; increasing the competitiveness of national economy’, and finally the ‘maintenance of the status of a great power’ (art.30).

The first peculiar feature of this list is the fact that, except for the last proposition, all other strategic interests directly related to foreign policy are presumed to be vectored towards internal development and regime stability. What is more, such focus on internal development is framed, not in the discourse of global competition or globalization as it was formulated in 2009, but in the context of a necessity to defend the regime against threats.

These threats are defined as mostly external, although hints and links towards internal destabilizing forces are present in the text as well. In an analysis of the strategy, links towards foreign interference in Russian internal affairs can be found across the entire document. It is stated that there are efforts aimed at the ‘destabilization of the internal political and social situation in the country, including instigating “color revolutions” and the destruction of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values’ (art. 43). What is more ‘measures are taken for the prevention and suppression of intelligence and other destructive operations of special services and organizations of foreign states that are harmful to national interests; acts of terrorism, manifestations of religious radicalism, nationalism, separatism and … to protect citizens and society from the destructive informational influence of extremist and

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89 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS terrorist organizations, foreign intelligence services, and propaganda’ (art. 47). Here it should be noted that previously separated discourses of terrorism and foreign propaganda are merged and valued as an equal threat. Moreover, a threat is posed by ‘the erosion of traditional Russian spiritual-moral values and the weakening of the unity of the multinational people of the Russian Federation by external expansion of culture and information (including the distribution of low-quality pop-culture products)’ (art. 79) and consequently the state should ‘protect the cultural sovereignty … and society from foreign ideological expansion’ (art. 82).

The rejection of any kind of revolution against an authoritarian government has been the cornerstone of Russian arguments with Western partners for a decade. In fact, ‘the consequences of Color Revolutions were regarded by the Russian elite as the result of the United States’ and the EU’s foreign policies’ (Gretskiy et al., 2014, 382). In February 2011, Russian president Dmitrii Medvedev explained the Arab revolutions as having been ‘instigated by outside forces’ and warned the Russian government: ‘Let's face the truth.

They have been preparing such a scenario for us, and now they will try even harder to implement it’ (Freedman, 2011). Finally, in 2014, in a meeting with his advisory Security Council, Vladimir Putin stated explicitly: ‘We see what tragic consequences the wave of socalled color revolutions led to… for us this is a lesson and a warning. We should do everything necessary so that nothing similar ever happens in Russia’ (Putin. 2014)3. What is more, the narrative of ‘national–traitors’ can be considered as the continuation of the discourse of ‘the agents of the foreign influence’, which was enforced in the country after the first wave of mass protest in Russia in the aftermath of fraudulent parliamentary elections in 2011. Against the background of a singular law regarding foreign agents, which was introduced on the 20th July 2012 4 and made it nearly impossible for any NGO connected with politics to work in the country, the narrative of ‘national-traitors’ was introduced in a presidential speech to the Federal Assembly two years after the Crimea Annexation. In the new national strategy, this discourse has become a dominant one.

The second characteristic issue of the new security priorities is the fact that, not only has the number of long-term goals formally stated in the strategy increased, but so has their ambiguity. The previous version of the security strategy doctrine described only three closely interrelated long-term goals: ‘the development of democracy and civil society and increasing the competitiveness of the national economy; promotion of the constitutional Reuters. Darya Korsunskays «Putin says Russia must prevent 'color revolution'» http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-putin-security-idUSKCN0J41J620141120 4 Federal Law of the Russian Federation from 20th July 2012. N 121-ФЗ 3

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90 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS order, independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation; [and] transformation of the country into a global power, whose actions are aimed towards the maintenance of strategic stability and partner relationships in the context of a multipolar world’ {art. 21}. All of these goals support each other and constitute a coherent argument.

In the 2015 strategy, however, there are six objectives which contain many contradictions with one another. For example, it remains unclear how the ‘promotion of political stability’, ‘strengthening of national agreement’, and ‘development of democratic institutions’ (which ultimately embeds an element of uncertainty and instability due to the intrinsic unpredictability of election results), correlate with each other. In view of the previous articles on economic issues – according to which economic development is conceptualized in terms of the ability of the country to resist external attempts to influence its domestic and foreign policies with the help of sanctions (art. 9, 24) – ‘why’ and ‘how’ the ‘improvement of competitiveness of the national economy’ should be achieved remains vague. Finally, the concept of the ‘development of traditional spiritual-moral values’ is vague as well. It is briefly defined in article 78 as ‘the priority of spiritual values over material ones, the protection of human life, rights and liberties, family, creational labor, responsibility before the country, moral and collective values, humanism, mercy, justice, mutual assistance, historical unity of the people of the Russian Federation and historical continuity.’

However, even that definition, located 48 articles after the formulation of the long-term goals, leaves dozens of possible contradictory interpretations, including, for example, antihomosexual rhetoric and return to sharia law. Moreover, returning to the previous point, the range of actions from foreign powers that actually pose a threat for national security is never precisely defined. Consequently, one can put everything in the framework of ‘other destructive actions,’ including any alleged connections with a public protest, should one appear.

Following the long-term strategic resolutions, nine priorities of Russian security are subsequently listed. Considering their order as an indication of importance, as determined by the authors of the strategy, it is possible to support the main argument of the centrality of ‘regime security’ in the strategy. The first two priorities are ‘national defense, [and] state and public security’ (art. 31) with the promotion of high living standards, economic growth science, culture, ecology and strategic stability being of lesser importance. What is more, in the following sections that provide a more detailed explanation of these priorities, there are only 5 articles on ‘improving the living standards of the Russian population,’ compared with 17 concerning defense and the security of the government. This alone adequately signifies

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91 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS the difference in importance attached to the different priorities. It is worth noting that no reference to democracy or civil society is found in this list, whereas there are references to them in the previous section on long-term national interests. Once again, there is a break of logic and an inconsistency between the various parts of the document, which makes it initially difficult to determine the true priorities intended by the authors of the document.

The only proposition which is depicted clearly and is present in all parts of the document, even those concerned with the development of human capital or economy, is that of regime security. For example, in the section on economic development, the following characteristics are used to describe the priorities of the government: ‘the strengthening of the currency system and ensuring its sovereignty,’ ‘the implementation of a rational import substitution and reduction of dependency on foreign technologies,’ and ‘the establishment of strategic reserves of raw mineral resources’ (art. 62). Whereas the section on ‘improving living standards’ contains an argument on improving ‘the development of information infrastructure and the availability of information on various aspects of socio-political, economic, and spiritual life’ (art. 53).

Consequently, that which helps to develop an understanding of the ambiguity and contradictive character of the strategy and its set of long-term goals is the narrative of regime security in the international environment of a ‘besieged fortress’, according to which the population should unite around the government in order to prevent foreign forces from ruining the country. Such a statement is not new for a discourse on Russian foreign policy.

For example, Stalin’s conception of ‘building socialism in one country’ can be considered a predecessor of such a concept. Moreover, a general focus of an authoritarian regime on internal security is not a new phenomenon in international relations. Previously in 2010, Stephen Blank stated, ‘The Russian experience and overall security policy conforms to the pattern discernible in Asian and Third World countries where security is primarily internal security’ (Blank, 2010, 181). Furthermore, some researchers consider this phenomenon to even be beneficial for particular countries since, ‘without the security of the regime, the security of the state is likely to fall into utter despair if not disappear altogether’ (Ayoob, 2002, 46). However, all one could expect from a regime that is oriented towards internal security would be the establishment of peaceful foreign policy without any major attempts to challenge the existing structure of international relations. The annexation of Crimea, interference in the Syrian conflict, and an aggressive anti-West rhetoric, seem to contradict the idea of the supremacy of internal issues over external ones for a regime where ‘the proliferation of multiple military forces, intelligence and police forces … often enjoying

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92 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS more resources than do their regular armies, and their governments’ recourse to rentseeking, authoritarian and clientelistic policies’ (Blank, 2010, 181).

At the same time, the doctrine itself contains a possible explanation for the discrepancy between the defensive nature of Russian security strategy and its aggressive foreign policy. Amidst all long-term proposals, there is one which describes the relationship between Russia and the rest of the world, although it has been formulated in a vague manner: the ‘maintenance of the status of a great power’. In 2009, the objective was to become one of the leading world powers, whereas in 2015, only the ‘status’ of such is necessary. Consequently, Russian foreign policy is not aimed towards a purpose that can be assessed or measured, such as the position of the country as one of the leading world economies or the goal to overcome the GDP per capita level of Portugal. On the contrary, it is oriented towards what is essentially only a vague idea of ‘status’. This orientation is what leads to a discussion about the role of a country’s status and image in international relations in regards to regime security, as well as the peculiarities of foreign and domestic policy framing in the current Russian Federation.

II. STATUS THEORY AND MODERN RUSSIA

Following the basic constructivist argument of Alexander Wendt (1999), the social world can be perceived as chiefly ‘made of and driven by ideas.’ Status has always been considered an important element of great power and there is a vast corpus of literature on this question (Onea 2014; Paul et al., 2014; Steele, 2008; Wolf, 2011; Wood, 2013). A good summary of the knowledge on status in international relations can be found in Volgy, Corbetta, Grant, and Baird’s article ‘Major Powers and the Quest for Status in International Politics.’

According to Volgy et al., an acquisition of high status recognition among other countries matters in three different ways. Firstly, a country with such status can expect to be visible in major international conflicts and issues. Secondly, high status leads to a deeper involvement in international agendas. And finally, such status is an important resource for holding office (Volgy et al., 2011, p.10). In the same article, Volgy et al. proposed that Russia constitutes a unique category, being a country that believes itself to be a great power without all the capacities of one. What is special about Russia is that, in contrast to other overachieving status-inconsistent countries that are afraid of losing this status and tend not to

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93 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS take high-risk action (Volgy et al., 2011, p.11-12), Russia clearly conducts highly confrontational foreign policy.

It is universally acknowledged in academic literature that in order to become a great power, a state needs something to support such a claim: a combination of military and economic resources, as well as co-optive and coercive powers combined with attractiveness and recognition by other Great powers (Levy, 1981; Neumann, 2008; Nye, 1990).

According to these criteria, modern Russia has limited reasons to call itself a great power.

Russia’s military capacities are limited with the exception of its nuclear arsenal.

Otherwise, Russian armed forces are outdated for modern warfare and are able only to win in an open conflict against a weak opponent, such as Georgia in 2008. Furthermore, the Russian economic structure is as unbalanced and dependent on natural oil and gas prices as it used to be in the 1990s. Even in the mid-2000s when the country had opportunities to develop, ‘Russia remain[ed] overly dependent on the export of raw materials, primarily oil and gas. The change in Russia’s political system [had] aggravated the lag between research and development in the technology sector, while a brain drain [had] further reduced the pool of talent necessary for innovation’ (Rieber, 2007, 259). Despite decades of high-oil prices, the Russian population in 2015 is still extremely poor, with 79% having money only for basic food and clothes and 9% suffering a shortage of food.5 What is worse, the Russian economy is desperately underdeveloped even in the sphere of natural resource extraction. For example, Russian oil and gas companies have completely overlooked the strategic challenge of shale oil and gas industries for Russian economy (Ocelik et Osicka, 2014), demonstrating a principal unwillingness to modernize.

Instead of any technological developments or a search for new markets or a better supply, the Russian elite, in particular Gazprom chief Alexei Miller (Gazprom, 2011)6, claimed that ‘As for shale gas—it is an international PR campaign, well planned by mass media. There are plenty of those campaigns —global warming, biofuel, I can give other examples.’

Finally, Russian soft power is limited mostly to the spoils of trade wars or the direct financing of certain politicians. This includes far-right parties in European Union countries or attempts to bribe those such as Victor Yanukovich with $15 billion of credit in order to make him reject any economic association with the EU. In fact, there have been no major VCIOM. Press – release № 3010 (December, 27, 2015) Accessed 10th March, 2016 from http://wciom.ru/index.php?id=236&uid=115531 6 Gazprom, 2011d. Press Conference Following the Topical European Energy Issues Roundtable 5

Discussion. Accesed 26 January 2016 from: 〈http://www. gazprom.com/f/posts/80/905737/krugly-stolstenogramma-eng-2011-02-21. pdf〉.

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94 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS diplomatic achievements in recent Russian foreign policy – in 2014, at the UN, only 11 countries out of 193 supported Russia in its case against Ukraine over the annexation of Crimea. Generally, according to the study of the Pew Research Center after Crimea’s annexation, ‘across the 44 countries surveyed, a median percentage of 43% have unfavorable opinions of Russia, compared with 34% who are positive. Negative ratings of Russia have increased significantly since 2013 in 20 of the 36 countries surveyed in both years, decreased in six and stayed relatively similar in the remaining 10’ (Pew Research Center, 2015, 3)7.

Consequently, judging by the facts presented above, it is possible to agree with the idea that the ‘Russian Federation is an overachiever, enjoying a Great power status without having the capabilities of a Great power’ (Freire, 2011, p. 74). And according to the provisions of the national security strategy, such a status constitutes great value for the Russian leadership. The current regime seeks to maintain this status without making any real efforts in terms of the long-term development of the country, which leads to the question of what status as a ‘Great Power’ means for the current Russian leadership.

It is presumed in the literature surrounding this question, that ‘Russia seeks to be respected as a great power because of deep seated beliefs about its own identity and its place in the world’ (Ambrosio, 2005, p. viii). Some scholars appealingly propose that under the Putin regime, status concerns have become more important than questions regarding security or the economy on Russia’s foreign policy agenda (Heller, 2013). Prominent scholars have developed an argument that the lack of status and respect is the crucial problem in Russia-West relations, and it is due to the lack of such recognition that crises of trust constantly emerge (Monaghan, 2008; Sakwa, 2008; Stent, 2014; Tsygankov, 2012). For instance, Vincent Pouliot suggests that ‘if NATO wants Russia to play by the rules of the security-from-the-inside-out game, it should provide it with enough cultural-symbolic resources to have a minimally successful hand in the game’ (Pouliot, 2010, p. 239). Another example of such an approach is the position of Jeffrey Mankoff (Mankoff, 2007, p. 133), according to whom, ‘a Russia that is sure of itself and its standing in the world is likely to make a more stable, predictable partner for the West’. It is hard to disagree with such an approach, given that respect and recognition are purely in the realm of symbolic politics and do not require any material interests to be spent. However, such a position omits the very reasons as to why Vladimir Putin’s elite group places so much emphasis on the Pew Research Centre. Russia’s Global Image Negative amid Crisis in Ukraine (July, 9, 2014) Accessed 10th March, 2016 from http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/09/russias-global-image-negativeamid-crisis-in-ukraine/ 7

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95 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS question of status and what they really want from it. In order to answer this question, one cannot rely solely on the framework of foreign policy and has to look at the tracks of Russian internal political development.

The Russian Federation of today is by no means a democratic country. It is an electoral authoritarian regime. What is more, the position of the current ruling elite is the result of a long history of intra-elite struggle with all intra-elite conflicts being resolved as a zero-sum game during the first 12 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Gelman, 2015). As a result, by the mid-2000s, the governing group which had dealt with all its rivals had no incentives to limit the maximization of its powers since, ‘given the lack of constraints, [it was] able to achieve [its] goals in “pure” forms without major concessions’ (Gelman, 2015, 10). Consequently, since modern Russia is an authoritarian regime with elites having full control of it, it is crucial for foreign policy analysis to take into account the preferences of this group that rules Russia.

Answering the question of what the elite’s beliefs are is not an easy task since it is principally impossible to understand what another person thinks in the entire complexity of his mind. However, judging from the information available, one can assume certain points. Concerning the portrait of the elites that won in this uncompromised rivalry, one may refer to Giorgi Yavlinski’s (Yavlinski, 2015, 249) description: ‘despite the attempts to bring ideology, appealing to the most primitive instincts, into their politics, this group [the ruling elite] in fact denies any societal values that go beyond individual well-being.’ The latter is a crucial point: every single moment of staying in power leads to the personal enrichment of the small group of Russian elite beneficiaries. Corruption in general can be conceptualized as a cornerstone of the modern Russian political system (Shlapentokh, 2013). However, the elite group in such a regime can never feel totally secure. Taking that into account, the apparent paradox of contradiction between Russia’s foreign policy, the defensive nature of its National Security doctrine, and its ‘great power status’ concern can be answered.

III. REGIME SECURITY IN THREAT

Returning to the content of the national security strategy, it must be noted that the doctrine’s main narrative is the protection of internal security, which is threatened by external dangers with the help of the so-called ‘fifth column’. The central pillars of this

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96 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS narrative are the notion of ‘political stability’ (art.30), the conceptualization of information as the means of toppling down the government (art. 21), and the necessity to ‘strengthen the internal unity of Russian society’ (art. 26).

Such a narrative illustrates that the Russian ruling class is well aware of the role that popular movements, in the aftermath of unfair elections, played in the process of toppling down an authoritarian government in countries such as Serbia and Ukraine (Bunce and Wolchik, 2011; Beissinger, 2007) with at least moral support from the Western democracies.

What is more, the fears of the Russian elite do have rational backing. As Adam Przeworski (Przeworski, 1991, 58) noted: ‘Authoritarian balance is underpinned by lies, fear and economic well-being.’ Sergey Guriev and Daniel Treysman have shown that in modern authoritarian regimes, the level of repression correlates with economic growth (Guriev, Treisman, 2015a; Guriev, Treisman, 2015b). However, one of the strategic disadvantages currently embedded in Russian authoritarianism is the inability to promote any kind of longterm economic development. After 2012, as Vladimir Gel’man(Gel’man, 2015, 118) points out ‘lies and fear, which had previously supported authoritarian equilibrium in Russia alongside economic growth, no longer served as efficient tools for maintaining the political status-quo.’ Both of these factors — the dependence on highly volatile natural resource exports and the decades-long deterioration of other sectors of industries and agriculture — were evident as early as 4 years ago. The point regarding predicted economic grievances should be stressed, as well as noting that the current crisis of the Russian economy is not a direct consequence of aggression against Ukraine and imposed western sanctions (Dreger, 2015), but rather of the structural problems of an extreme dependence on oil and gas prices and the fact that industrial diversification is not highly developed (Eller, et.al, 2016).

Such an economic model has made the Russian elite vulnerable in the face of public protests. The biggest one in modern Russian history erupted after the fraudulent parliamentary elections of 2011 and was finally suppressed with the help of brute force on May 6th, 2012. Despite that fact, the legitimacy of the ruling elite was not strong enough: even public polls, which are generally not the best method for measuring legitimacy, showed only moderate support for the government in 2012-2013. In August 2012, the approval ratings of Vladimir Putin were only 48% compared with 60% in May. His ratings were higher even during the time of ‘monetization of exemptions’ in 2005 – 55% respectively8.

The position of the government could have been shaken in the case of deeper economic Vedomosti. Putin’s rating is on its bottom (April, 17, 2012) Accessed 10th March, 2016 from http://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2012/08/17/rejting_putina_na_minimume 8

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97 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS crisis and a collision of political and socio-economic protest, which can be conceptualized as the primary threat to regime security. There was a sudden demand for a new source of legitimacy, and the maintenance of a ‘Great Power Image’ can be considered an answer that the elite have found for this question.

Traditionally, governments use the image of a superpower as a useful tool of promoting support in domestic policy (Merriman, 2004). Russia is certainly not an exception in that regard. In modern Russian history, an example of successful status acquisition was during the second Chechen war when, according to Hanna Smith (Smith, 2014, 361), ‘national unity had given a boost to Russian self-confidence and Russian great power identity had found its place in Russian domestic discourse.’ However, by the end of 2013, a decisive and aggressive foreign policy had turned into the only means available for the regime to defend the ‘great power image of the country’ against the background of economic decline and a collapse of state-structures, thereby providing citizens with the means of survival. Since the Russian elite seriously considers the possibility of external support for domestic protests, the genuine motives of the EU and the USA in their policies towards Russia are not that important. However, the incentive of the current Russian elite to remain in power at all costs is crucial for understanding modern Russian foreign policy in general, and the recent National Security strategy doctrine in particular.

IV. GREAT POWER STATUS AND REGIME SECURITY

The paradox of the Russian government conducting costly foreign policies of confrontation with the West and the operation in Syria, while simultaneously claiming ‘status concern’ as the long–term goal of the National Security Strategy Doctrine — against the background of the government’s primary concern of regime security — can be explained in the following way: the ‘status of a great power’ can be considered the core means of keeping the domestic audience under control, mobilizing support for the current Russian regime, and overcoming the internal threats to “political stability” (i.e. regime security).

A further argument is the fact that, after the drop in oil prices and structural inefficiency of the Russian economic model, the development of a ‘great power status’ remained the only recourse left to the Russian government to gain the symbolic value necessary to promote such a status in the eyes of the population at home. And in fact, the Russian leadership has managed to achieve a lot with such a policy. The rise of patriotism

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98 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS in Russia following Crimea’s annexation provided the regime with the uncharacteristic support it needed in the context of forthcoming deepening economic grievances. Following the current argument, the emphasis of the ‘image’ in article 18 of the Strategy Doctrine becomes the most important position for the current Russian leadership, which also explains why the document never clearly defines how such a ‘status’ should look. It is possible, in line with the main argument of this article, to argue that the more undefined and unclear the notion of ‘status’ is, the more useful it is for the objective purposes of manipulation of domestic public opinion.

Moreover, it is possible to propose an answer to the question: ‘why does Russia use such strong language as presenting Western nations at one time as “brothers” and “friends,” while at other times castigating them for “betraying” the established principles and agreements?’ (Tsygankov, 2014, 347). Both aspects are purely instrumental and serve the sole purpose of achieving tactical goals. As a result, it does not make sense to try to understand modern Russian foreign policy just by looking into the words that Russian politicians put forth. Narratives can be reversed in a matter of weeks by propaganda means in order to justify the exact actions of the Russian leadership. The most recent story of turning Turkey from a strategic partner into the ‘traitorous enemy’ after the downing of a Russian fighter jet over Syria may serve as an illustration to this idea. Though this opens the way for another debate concerning the predictability of Russian foreign policy in particular, and of authoritarian regimes in general.

Finally, it is possible to answer why, regardless of having a national security strategy oriented mostly towards the problems of domestic security, the current Russian leadership has been in recent years conducting a foreign policy oriented towards constant involvement in international crises. The Russian government has to perform the role of a great power in international relations in order to keep such a status in the eyes of its domestic audience.

According to polls conducted in March 2015, 47% of respondents preferred that the country be a great power ‘respected and afraid of,’ for the sake of the country’s economic well-being9. In January 2016, against the background of a deepening economic crisis, 36% of the population considered Russia to be a great power in the world, compared with 27% in 201510. The fact is that, from the perspective of at least 30% of the Russian population, Levada Center. Press-release “Positions of the Russian Federation on International Arena” (March, 23.

2015) Accessed 10th March, 2016 from http://www.levada.ru/old/23-03-2015/pozitsii-rossii-namezhdunarodnoi-arene 10 Levada Center. Publication “Nearly half of Russians think that the West sees Russia as a concurrent” (February, 4, 2016) 9

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99 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS Russia being considered an enemy by most developed countries does not weaken their pride for the motherland but instead strengthens it. Even admitting that the country is economically weak compared with the West, people are proud that at least in terms of foreign policy capacities, Russia seems to be on equal footing. And this is the value that turns into a markedly high approval rating of the Russian government. Consequently, by means of aggressive foreign policy, the Russian elite are trying to preserve the image of Russia being great power in order to guarantee the safety of the regime.

CONCLUSION

The analysis of the 2015 national security strategy doctrine, in the context of the complex structure of Russian domestic policy, allows a number of conclusions to be drawn. To begin with, there is only one objective purpose that the Russian leadership is genuinely committed to — in particular the prevention of a regime change, which is being achieved by keeping control over all political processes within the country. But in order to meet this goal, decision-makers must resort to aggressive foreign policy and a demonstration of military might in local conflicts. This is the comprehensive argument regarding Putin’s foreign policy. Neither the thesis of Hannes Adomeit (Adomeit, 1995, p. 65) that, ‘[a] Russia that is obsessed with its lost great power identity possesses many irrational, unpredictable, contradictory traits in its foreign policy’, nor the suggestion of Richard Sakwa that the ‘Russian problem’ is not about a security dilemma, but rather a question of the status and respect from the West that it expects (Sakwa, 2008), covers the whole story. The Russian ruling elite does behave rationally, if the ultimate goal of this rationality is the preservation of the regime’s status and security. Since status, particularly international status, is the only means left to the authority against the background of economic failures and collapse of political institutions to keep control over power on the home front. At the same time, and due to the very nature of status as an issue created to a large extent by media and symbols, one can expect high flexibility of Russian foreign policy combined with low commitment to particular purposes. The crucial question for Russian authority becomes how to interpret its every action as a ‘status’ achievement.

Accessed 10th March, 2016 from http://www.levada.ru/2016/02/04/pochti-polovina-grazhdan-schitayutchto-zapad-vidit-v-rossii-konkurenta/

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100 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS An analysis of the Russian national security doctrine leads to several important questions of the proper unit for analysis of modern Russian foreign policy. What is clear is that the traditional categories of “national interest” and “state security” are not applicable in the case of Russia. Usually (according to a realist approach), the discrepancy between national and ruling elite interests is impossible to separate, although in modern Russia the only interest that does matter is the maximization of power in the hands of a particular group. Consequently, the only aspect of analysis a researcher has to consider in regards to Russia is that concerning ‘regime security’.

Finally, the findings of this article illustrate, in the case of the Russian security doctrine, the role that status concerns can perform in an authoritarian regime in times of systemic crisis. It can be conceptualized both as a guarantee against ‘foreign support’ for domestic protests, and as an ultimate means of gaining popular support for the government. Status is the recourse necessary to consolidate citizens and prevent domestic unrest. Such a reading can explain the evident paradox, since the Russian ruling elite want to enjoy great power status without any investment into the country’s long-term development both politically and economically.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This license permits others to share it freely in any medium or format, including commercially. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/.

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104 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS Ocelík, Petr, and Jan Osička. 2014. “The Framing of Unconventional Natural Gas Resources in the Foreign Energy Policy Discourse of the Russian Federation.” Energy Policy 72 (September): 97–109.

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105 SHCHELIN – RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: REGIME SECURITY AND ELITE’S STRUGGLE FOR ‘GREAT POWER’ STATUS Trenin, Dmitriĭ. 2011. Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story. Washington, D.C: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 106-130.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.048

Skinheads and Nashi: What are the reasons for the rise of nationalism amongst Russian youth in the post-Soviet period?

OSCAR WALES School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

INTRODUCTION

This article will examine the rise of nationalism amongst young Russians in post-Soviet Russian society. The aim is to analyse the causes of this development amongst two particular groups of young Russians, namely the Russian skinhead movement and the political youth movement Nashi. As well as looking into the causes of the rise of nationalism amongst these particular groups, this article will also look at the impact these groups have had in the further spread of nationalism throughout Russian society.

It will be argued that the skinhead movement first emerged as a symptom of wider changes throughout Russian society following the collapse of communism, being part of a general rise in nationalistic and xenophobic attitudes amongst the wider population; meanwhile, Nashi actively co-opted nationalists and attempted to use nationalism as a tool for its own devices. Acknowledging the general rise in far-right attitudes, Nashi attempted to control them, but in fact predominantly resulted in their spread. In addition, the close ties of Nashi to Putin’s government could not help but dictate the actions of the group, meaning that it was pressured into following the government’s equally ambiguous approach towards Russian nationalism. Finally, the two groups shall be compared, and it will be argued that in recent years the skinhead movement has become increasingly political, and that although it was initially composed of groups of dissatisfied Russian teenagers, it has become a political force in its own right, further disseminating far-right nationalism amongst wider Russian society. In this respect, it will be argued that it is the lack of action on the part of the government which is to a great extent responsible for allowing this upsurge in far-right political activity, which has also lead to some cooperation between skinheads and Nashi.

There has been a large increase in nationalistic and xenophobic attitudes amongst Russian youth, and Russians in general, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition,

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107 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? under Putin nationalism has become a conspicuous political and social force. As Marlène Laurelle writes, ‘Russian society [...] has been saturated with the slogan “Russia for the Russians...”’1 This is well exemplified by the vicious race riots that broke out on Manezh Square in Moscow on December 11 2010. Following the murder of a Spartak Moscow Football Club fan by a group of assailants allegedly from the Caucasus, several days of riots broke out with much of the violence directed against Moscow’s immigrant population, resulting in the deaths of two men and the hospitalisation of more than 20 others.2 As Will Englund reported at the time: Street melees here over the past few days, sparked by the killing of a soccer fan and fueled by nationalists’ hatred of immigrants from the Caucasus, have caught the police and other authorities unprepared for an upsurge of rage that appears to reflect a larger sense of anger in Russian society.3 This is just one example of many racially-motivated violent events which have taken place in Russia in recent years, and given this underlying sense of anger, it is important to understand why there has been an increase in far-right nationalism amongst young Russians.

It is according to their beliefs and values that the direction Russia takes in the future will ultimately be dictated. Given the popularity of nationalism in Russia at the time of writing, this sort of far-right ideology could have a large impact on the future of this deeply multiethnic and multicultural country.

Both the Russian skinhead movement and Nashi have received large amounts of national and international media attention, providing a wealth of primary sources online regarding both groups. In addition, I have drawn on a range of journal articles and books.

A key inspiration for this article has been the work of Hilary Pilkington, Elena Omel’chenko and Al’bina Garifzianova, who have written much on youth in Russian society from the late 1980s onwards. It is hoped that this dissertation can contribute to the ongoing discussion on the issue of nationalism amongst young people in contemporary Russian society by providing a side-by-side analysis and comparison of both the skinhead movement and Marlène Laruelle, In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) p.39.

2 Miriam Elder, ‘Two Dead as far-right football fans riot in Moscow’, The Guardian, 13 December 2010, <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/13/two-dead-football-racist-riot-moscow> [accessed 29 March 2015] (paras. 1-3 of 15).

3 Will Englund, ‘Riots in Russia rooted in nationalism, hatred of immigrants’, Washington Post, 14 December 2010, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/13/AR2010121305794.html> [accessed 29 March 2015] (para. 1 of 16).

1

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108 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? Nashi. While the relationship between these groups has been discussed in existing academic works, to the best of my knowledge there is no scholarly work as yet comparing and contrasting them.

It is also important to define what is meant by the term ‘nationalism’, as used here.

Nationalism itself is defined by Lloyd A. Fallers as ‘an ideological commitment to the pursuit of unity, independence, and interests of a people who conceive themselves as forming a community.’4 It is that part of a certain ‘culture which is actively and explicitly concerned with the establishment and defense of patterns of value and belief.’ 5 In the Russian case, nationalism ‘spans a large social spectrum stretching from the racist violence of skinheads and the population’s massive but vague xenophobia, to the elite’s affirmation of cultural and material satisfaction and the middle classes’ beliefs in a better future.’ 6 It would appear, then, that nationalism does not mean the same thing to all people. However, for the purposes of this dissertation the main focus will be on the sort of nationalism that lies at the more extreme end of this spectrum.

I. THE RISE OF THE SKINHEADS

The Russian skinhead phenomenon started as a small subcultural movement in the early 1990s, consisting mostly of teenagers mimicking the style and actions of their western counterparts.7 This was symptomatic of a more general trend which encompassed many different youth movements and subcultures following the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the walls of the USSR collapsed, residents of the Russian Federation found themselves more exposed than they had ever been to different Western styles and trends which the Soviet state had, throughout its entire existence, either attempted to control strictly or to ban outright. During the 1990s and 2000s the number of skinheads grew greatly, leading to its current state as a particularly popular far-right subcultural movement.

Lloyd A. Fallers, ‘Ideology and Culture in Uganda Nationalism’, American Anthropologist, 63.4 (1961) <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1961.63.4.02a00010/abstract> [accessed 30 March 2015] (p.677).

5 Ibid., pp. 677-678.

6 Laruelle, p.13.

7 Hilary Pilkington, ‘Introduction: Rethinking skinhead lives’, in Russia’s Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives, ed. by Hilary Pilkington, Elena Omel’chenko and Al’bina Garifzianova, (London and NY: Routledge, 2010) pp. 1-22 (p.5).

4

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109 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? According to an estimate from the Russian Interior Ministry press service, by 2007 the number of skinheads in Russia numbered over 100,000.8 From 2008 onwards Russia experienced a decline in racially motivated street violence as a result of increased government efforts to suppress extremist right-wing groups, particularly in the Moscow region. 9 Despite this decrease, more recently there has been a noticeable resurgence in skinhead activity, and experts on Russian nationalism at the SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis have predicted that there could be a possible increase in skinhead activity in the coming years as Russian extremist nationalists return from fighting in the recent conflict in Ukraine.10 This follows an increase in racially motivated violence noticed in 2013, seen as a result of an anti-migrant policy put in place by the authorities which rallied against ‘ethnic crime’, receiving a large amount of media attention and public support.11 By the end of 2013 ‘the decline in street racist violence, which lasted from 2009 to 2012, evidently came to an end.’12 Given the size of the Russian skinhead movement and its impact upon Russian society, it is important to consider the role of nationalism in the beliefs and actions of those who ascribe themselves to it.

Overt nationalism seems to come part and parcel with skinhead ideology, but it is important to deconstruct this preconception and ascertain to what extent nationalism drives and motivates the actions of these individuals, and what the foundations and reasons are for these beliefs. As well as having an overtly nationalistic agenda, their ideology encompasses more than just patriotic feelings towards the Russian nation. Russian skinheads have famously committed a large number of violent crimes against foreigners in Russia, claiming to be protecting the Russian nation by attacking immigrants, foreign students and Russian citizens who are not ethnically Russian. In addition, skinheads have been known to attack members of different subcultures, such as punks and hip-hop fans, and increasingly in recent years there has been an upsurge in attacks against LGBT Russians

Ibid., p.9.

Galina Kozhevnikova, ‘Under the Sign of Political Terror. Radical Nationalism and Efforts to Counteract It in 2009’, The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, (2010) <http://www.sovacenter.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2010/03/d18151/> [accessed 17 February 2015] (para. 2 of 172).

10 Natalia Yudina, ‘Beware the Rise of the Russian Ultra-Right’, The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, (2014) <http://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2014/09/d30212/> [accessed 17 February 2015] (para. 20 of 20).

11 Natalia Yudina and Vera Alperovich, ‘The Ultra-Right Shrugged: Xenophobia and Radical Nationalism in Russia, and Efforts to Counteract Them in 2013’, The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, (2014) <http://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2014/03/d29236/> [accessed 19 February 2015] (paras.4-6 of 223).

12 Ibid., para. 2.

8 9

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110 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? committed by skinheads and neo-nazis. 13 Whilst skinheads direct much of their violent action against foreigners, they also simply target those they consider unusual – perhaps a contemporary manifestation of groups from the late Soviet period such as the liubery.

Members of the liubery came from the town of Liubertsy, located 20 kilometres south-east of Moscow, whose culture can be characterised as valuing physical strength and strongly opposing western subcultures, such as punks and hippies. 14 They would often travel to Moscow ‘in order to beat up those of their contemporaries who did not meet their approval.’15 Like that of skinheads, their fashion style was characteristically working class. 16 Here we find obvious similarities between the liubery and skinheads, being overtly macho, distinctively working class and having a distaste for different western styles and subcultures.

These are all attributes which constitute part of the skinhead identity whilst not being intrinsically nationalistic. As Alexander Tarasov notes, many of the first skinheads in Russia were not necessarily racist or nationalistic, but rather following a trend.17 It is undeniable, though, that nationalism and xenophobic attitudes play a strong role in skinhead ideology. In their study of one small group of skinheads in a northern Russian city, Omel’chenko and Garifzianova found that the xenophobic attitudes of many of those within this particular group had been influenced by a ‘general xenophobic background.’ 18 This background was particularly important, and as Omel’chenko and Garifzianova note: for many of the young people choosing a skinhead subcultural identity, their xenophobic attitudes have been shaped by authoritarian adults - parents who frequently spoke negatively about ‘non-Russians’ - or by friends who had come in to the movement earlier.19

Nikolai P. Kovalev, ‘Jury Trials for Violent Hate Crimes in Russia: Is Russian Justice Only For Ethnic Russians?’ (2011), Criminology, Paper 4 <http://scholars.wlu.ca/brantford_cc/4> [accessed 19 February 2015] pp.669-736 (p.670).

14 Hilary Pilkington, Russia’s Youth and its Culture: A Nation’s Constructors and its Constructed, (London: Routledge, 1994) p.142.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., p.225.

17 Alexander Tarasov, ‘Porozhdenie Reform: Britogolvie, oni zhe Skinhedy’, Svobodnaya Mysl- XXI, 4-5 (2000) Para. 30-31.

18 Elena Omel’chenko and Al’bina Garifzianova, ‘Skinheads as Defenders of Russia? Power versus Friendship in Xenophobic Youth Subcultures’, in Subcultures and New Religious Movements in Russia and EastCentral Europe, ed. by George McKay et al. (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009) p.54.

19 Ibid.

13

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111 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? The social, political and economic turmoil of the 1990s left many young Russians with far less support than they had enjoyed in the Soviet period. Tarasov suggests that as many young Russians became frustrated with the lack of opportunities which had previously been offered by institutions such as the Komsomol or the Young Pioneer Palaces, they searched for a scapegoat against which to vent their frustrations, and unable to touch this new generation of privileged Russians with their private security and bodyguards, they turned to foreigners as an easy target.20 As well as being strongly influenced by the attitudes of their friends and family, a broader top-down political influence can be clearly observed impacting on the beliefs and values of skinheads. The 1990s were filled with turmoil and violence; a massive rise in crime and corruption was a distinctive characteristic of the Yeltsin years. This violence even reached the highest levels of the state, evidence of which was the bloody storming of the White House in October 1993 which saw Yeltsin pitted against the Russian parliament in a struggle for power. An unanticipated result of this conflict was that by using force to defuse the situation, Yeltsin had endorsed violence as a way of getting things done, showing that ‘violence is conclusive proof in any discussion’.21 Further endorsing the use of force and also increasing tensions between ethnic Russians and non-Russians, particularly Muslims from the southern regions of the Federation, the First Chechen War strongly influenced the nationalistic and racist attitudes of many Russians. The war and the xenophobic campaigns which accompanied it in Moscow greatly contributed to a rise in everyday racism in Russia.22 In Moscow the police began enforcing a kind of ethnic cleansing within the city; by routinely checking the documents, registration and residence permits of ‘suspicious’ looking people (in this instance meaning anyone who appeared like they may be from the Caucasus), the Moscow police were able to deport many immigrants and residents of southern Russia from the city, naming Moscow a territory of ‘special rule’.23 Omel’chenko and Garifzianova point to the Russian state as having a direct impact on the actions and beliefs of Russian skinheads, arguing that:

Tarasov, para. 57.

Alexander Salagaev et al., ‘From Local to Global: The Transformation of Delinquent and Radical Communities in the Tatarstan Republic of Russia’ in Subcultures and New Religious Movements in Russia and EastCentral Europe, ed. by George McKay et al. (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009) p.23.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

20 21

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112 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? The strengthening of national patriotic attitudes as politicians search for a new national idea, calls for the revival of the former power of Russia and the construction of a centralised system of power also cannot but encourage the development of xenophobic attitudes especially among socially deprived young people.24 They also add that within the low-trust environment which is prevalent in contemporary Russia, by having only one ultimate source of trust and authority, manifested in the president, ‘the potential sources of threat are immediately multiplied.’ 25 Despite the ambivalence of many skinheads towards politics and the government’s apparent crackdown on skinhead activity since 2008, there is evidence to suggest that the relationship between the state and skinhead activity is not as black and white as it may first appear.

Between 2010 and 2011, members of the extremist group, the Nationalist Socialist Organisation (NSO), were put on trial for 27 counts of murder, in which many of the victims were foreigners. During this trial it was discovered that the leader of the group, Maksim Bazilev, had 200 million roubles in his bank account, and other members of the group testified that they had been receiving 2500 roubles a month.26 During the trial Bazilev was found dead, having slit his wrists in his cell at the secure headquarters of the Interior Ministry.27 Both of these facts roused suspicion that people with considerable money and power were somehow pulling the strings behind this organisation and were afraid of being caught.28 As Charles Clover acknowledges, it is highly unlikely that the true source of the money and the possible murderer of Bazilev will be discovered, but ‘the NSO has emerged not only as a terror group with a significant propaganda function, but most importantly, one with numerous and not altogether transparent relations with Russia’s political and lawenforcement establishment.’29 Clover has not been the only journalist to accuse the Russian state of cooperating with skinheads. In the run up to the 2008 presidential elections, Mark Ames and Alexander Zaitchik raised the question of whether ‘the rise in skinhead violence is a strictly organic

Omel’chenko and Garifzianova, p.54.

Ibid. pp.54-55.

26 Charles Clover, ‘The Skinhead Terrorists’, The Financial Times, 3 December 2010, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/21553438-fcda-11df-ae2d-00144feab49a.html#axzz3SffToQge> [accessed 24 February 2015] (para. 9 of 50).

27 Ibid., para.11.

28 Ibid., paras. 12-14.

29 Ibid., para. 16.

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113 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? phenomenon or whether it is being manipulated or even encouraged from above.’30 On the other hand, the article also points to the government’s apparent attempts to deal with the problem of racially motivated violence, such as its passing of Article 232 which criminalises the incitement of ‘ethnic, racial or religious hatred’, highlighting the complexity of the issue, and stating that ‘the Kremlin has thus been working not simply to manipulate ultranationalism but also to control it, though its motivations are not always clear.’31 It is clear, then, that while nationalism became one of the keystones of the skinhead movement, the roots of this ideology are complicated and multifaceted. These attitudes are often passed down to individuals by parents and close acquaintances who have ultranationalistic or xenophobic views, a symptom of everyday racism in Russia. There is also reason to suspect that the state has played some role in spreading these views, even possibly highjacking ultranationalism and influencing the skinhead movement for its own purposes. It is also clear that the difficult social and economic situation that resulted from the troubles of the 1990s provided fuel for the fire, creating an environment of social friction, low trust and increasing racial intolerance, particularly Islamophobia following the First Chechen War. As Tarasov puts it, the rise of the Russian skinhead is a product of social rather than national change.32 The racist and nationalistic attitudes of skinheads seem to be symptomatic of a wider trend happening within Russian society as racial intolerance and nationalism increase their presence and influence. The state’s relationship with this kind of nationalism remains one of the most difficult aspects of this phenomenon to understand, and will be addressed further in the final chapter. In the following chapter the political youth movement Nashi shall be discussed, looking at the roots of nationalism within the organisation and the impact it has had on spreading it to a broader section of Russia’s youth.

II. NASHI, 2005-2012

Within the political youth movement Nashi (ours) it has been possible to observe a form of state-endorsed nationalism. Whereas the Russian skinhead movement may often have Mark Ames and Alexander Zaitchik, ‘Skinhead Violence Rising in Russia’, The Nation, 29 August 2007, <http://www.thenation.com/article/skinhead-violence-rising-russia> [accessed 25 February 2015] (para. 7 of 18).

31 Ibid., para. 16.

32 Tarasov, para. 57.

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114 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? appeared to be indifferent towards politics, groups such as Nashi ‘constitute a real political force, which can be used by political parties and individual politicians to achieve their goals.’33 Nashi was first founded in 2005 with backing from the Kremlin to ‘comprise a new political force,’ and its initial goals were ‘(1) to promote Russia’s global leadership in the 21st century, (2) to prepare a ‘revolution of cadres’ in Russia, (3) to educate a new generation of state officials, and (4) to oppose the threat of an ‘orange-revolution’ in Russia’ as well as large amounts of anti-fascist campaigning.34 The group presented a considerable social and political force, having more than 300,000 members at the peak of its popularity between 2007 and 2008.35 The group formally closed in 2012, though various sources at the time reported that the future of the group was uncertain.36 Some subsidiaries of the organisation, including the group StopHam (stop a lout), remain active at the time of writing.37 Given the immense popularity it held, it is important to analyse the root causes of the rise of nationalism within the group, and also asses to what extent Nashi contributed to the general rise of nationalistic and xenophobic attitudes in modern Russia up until 2012.

In many of its brochures and in its manifesto, Nashi took a strong stance against radical nationalism; for example, it has attacked Dmitry Rogozin, formerly the head of now defunct radical nationalist party Rodina (Motherland).38 Their manifesto stated that: Cultural diversity is Russia’s greatest asset in the modern world. Religious and ethnic cooperation empowers our country to develop further... Our generation’s task is to prevent the spread of fascist ideas, aggressive nationalism, religious intolerance and separatism that threatens the unity and territorial integrity of Russia.39

Oleg Belov, ‘Nashi versus Nazi: anti-fascist activity as a means of mass youth mobilisation in contemporary Russia’, trans. by Dmitry Borodin, Anthropology of East Europe Review, 26.2 (2008) <http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/424/499> [accessed 28 March 2015] (p.48).

34 Ibid.

35 Maya Atwal, ‘Evaluating Nashi’s Sustainability: Autonomy, Agency and Activism’, Europe-Asia Studies, 61.5 (2009) <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09668130902904878> [accessed 28 March 2015] (p.743).

36 Olga Kuzmenkova and Ekaterina Vinokurova, ‘Nashikh zakryvayut’, Gazeta.ru, 6 April 2012, <http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2012/04/06_a_4151693.shtml> [accessed 19 April 2015] (paras. 1-2 of 22).

37 Evgeny Shipilov, ‘Nakhamili na ugolovnoye delo’, Gazeta.ru, 3 May 2012, <http://www.gazeta.ru/auto/2012/05/03_a_4571421.shtml> [accessed on 21 April 2015] (para. 1 of 14).

38 Belov, p.50.

39 Nashi, as cited by Maya Atwal and Edwin Bacon, ‘The youth movement Nashi: contentious politics, civil society and party politics’, East European Politics, 28.3 (2012) <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21599165.2012.691424> [accessed on March 2015] (p.261).

33

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115 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? This belief is reflected in some of their actions, for example in 2009 ‘around 30,000 young Russians came together in Moscow for Nashi’s “Russian March” in defiance of right-wing and extreme nationalist organisations marching under the same banner elsewhere in Moscow.’40 Nationalist figures were often labelled as fascists by the group, though as Oleg Belov notes from his interactions with members of Nashi, many of them were unable to distinguish between radical nationalism and fascism. 41 Despite this anti-fascist and antinationalist rhetoric, ‘its critics have compared it to radical far-right groups and at times referred to is as a fascist group itself.’42 This is due to the fact that ‘Nashi’s apparent efforts to quell radicalism and extremism sit uneasily alongside attempts to deliberately play on nationalistic sentiment in order to attract and inspire young Russians to its cause.’43 In 2007 Nashi worked together with United Russia’s youth wing, Molodaya Gvardia (Young Gard), to combat dissenters’ marches. They used the slogan ‘“Russian for the Russians”, which, although representing the movements’ desire to keep out foreign influence on Russian politics and to associate the opposition marches with Western sponsorship, is also a slogan employed by far-right groups.’44 This is an example of how, in some instances, Nashi seems to encourage far-right nationalism rather than quell it. Maya Atwal and Edwin Bacon suggest a convincing explanation for Nashi’s flirtation with nationalism; due to the fact that nationalistic and xenophobic attitudes have been on the rise in Russia throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Kremlin has been faced with the danger of extreme nationalism growing outside of its control, and as a result Nashi was tasked with co-opting these young nationalists in order to have some degree of control or influence over them.45 The strong line which Nashi took against foreign influence upon Russian matters impacted on the rise of nationalism amongst young Russians. In 2006 the British ambassador to Moscow, Anthony Brenton, attended a conference of Russian opposition parties, but following the event was consistently harassed by members of Nashi.46 They stalked Brenton for months, calling for him to apologise for the meeting.47 Disapproval of foreign influence was characteristic of Nashi’s ideology and identity, and as Atwal notes, for

Atwal and Bacon, p.261.

Belov, p.50.

42 Atwal and Bacon, p.261.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., p.262.

45 Ibid.

46 Arkady Ostrovskyin, ‘Youth group hounds UK Moscow ambassador’, Financial Times, Decemer 8 2006, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/15054982-8661-11db-86d5-0000779e2340.html#axzz3VfrSgTBN> [accessed 28 March 2015] (para. 6 of 19).

47 Ibid., (para. 4).

40 41

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116 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? those who approved of the group it simply represented ‘a defensive strategy adopted in response to external threats to the beleaguered Russian nation.’48 The ultimate enemy of Nashi was ‘the loosely identified external threat of a Western-sponsored “liberal-fascist alliance” which is against a strong, autonomous Russia.’49 Indeed, in Nashi’s manifesto it was written that: Only by spreading our ideological influence over the younger generation can we prevent young people from being drawn into extremist organisations of a fascist and liberal tendency [...] The war on fascism is part of the fight for Russia’s integrity and sovereignty.50 Here we see all of Nashi’s traditional enemies mixed together, and whilst promoting interethnic tolerance, at the same time it actively denounces foreign influence.51 The fight against extremism and foreign influence is equated with guarding Russia’s own integrity and sovereignty, and such rhetoric describing Russia as the victim of external enemies can only help feed nationalistic attitudes and foster negative attitudes towards foreigners, fitting in with Nashi’s apparent ‘nationalist-patriotic agenda.’52 Demonstrating that Russia is a victim of oppressive external powers is a powerful device that has been used at various points throughout Russian history to help create national solidarity, and on which nationalism can be built, ‘by instilling the sense of unity through emphasizing common suffering of the Russian nation.’53 Nashi enjoyed great support from United Russia and Putin’s government. As a result, the group received considerable Western media attention, and many writers saw Nashi as a tool of the regime. For example, Steven Lee Myers at the New York Times commented on the group saying that their purpose ‘is the ideological cultivation- some say

Atwal, p.746.

Ibid.

50 Nashi, as cited by Atwal and Bacon, p.261.

51 Atwal and Bacon, p.261.

52 Julie Hemment, ‘Soviet-Style Neoliberalism? Nashi, Youth Voluntarism, and the Reconstructing of Social Welfare in Russia’, Problems of Post-Communism, 56.6 (2009) <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2753/PPC1075-8216560604> [accessed 29 March 2015] (p.38).

53 Murod Isamilov and Nozima Ganieva, ‘In Search for the Russian National Identity: Do History Textbooks Hold the Answer?’, Journal of Alternative Perspectives in Social Sciences, 5.2 (2013) <http://www.japss.org/upload/5.%20Ismalov.pdf> [accessed 1 April 2015] p.373.

48 49

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117 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? indoctrination - of today’s youth, the first generation to come of age in post-Soviet Russia.’54 The role of the government in driving the beliefs and actions of Nashi cannot be ignored, the group had been so closely tied to Putin’s regime that it has been likened by observers to Putin’s own form of the Hitler Youth.55 Given Putin’s own relationship with nationalism, which is at times as hard to understand as Nashi’s, it is easier to explain some of the group’s actions. Since the earliest days of his presidency, particularly during his 2007-2008 election campaign, Putin has argued ‘that the precondition of Russia’s recovery was that Russians take pride in their nation.’56 Such rhetoric has a clear nationalistic sentiment, yet throughout his presidency Putin has decried nationalism, whilst instead promoting patriotism.

Nationalism is defined as ‘systematically extremist, while any moderate expression of national sentiment made under the label of patriotism is considered not only respectable, but also necessary.’57 Putin and United Russia’s control over the patriotic label is what gives them the ability to name any opposition as either ‘traitors to the nation’ or ‘nationalist extremists.’58 When noting that the Kremlin itself has been using nationalistic rhetoric, whilst at the same time denouncing nationalism as ‘extremism’, it is possible to observe close similarities to Nashi’s own conflicted approach to nationalism. Many of Nashi’s activities were social projects, with a particular focus on supporting and caring for military veterans.59 As Julie Hemment notes, ‘many of its campaigns have a strong nationalist-patriotic element, and many involve honoring Soviet history, specifically the Great Patriotic War.’ 60 In addition, those who attended Nashi camps could go to lectures ‘given by nationalist scholars and publicists.’61 This certainly seems to be a form of ‘ideological cultivation’, as suggested

by Myers. 62 Nationalistic, or patriotic ideology was manifested in their actions, be that harassing ambassadors or focussing their attention on war veterans who are valued for having defended the motherland. These factors can partially account for the rise in

Steven Lee Myers, ‘Youth Groups Created by Kremlin Serve Putin’s Cause’, The New York Times, July 8 2007 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/world/europe/08moscow.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&> [accessed 29 March 2015] (para. 11 of 35).

55 Reuben F. Johnson, ‘The Putin Jugend’, The Weekly Standard, July 31 2007, <http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/938alwas.asp?page=2> [accessed 29 March 2015] (p.2).

56 Laruelle, p.142.

57 Laruelle, p.144.

58 Ibid., p.145.

59 Hemment, p.46.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Myers, para. 11.

54

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118 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? nationalism amongst Russian youth, as many of the actions that members of Nashi took part in seem to have had some sort of nationalistic-patriotic ideology underpinning them, passed down from United Russia.

In conclusion, Nashi formally stood strongly against far right nationalism whilst acknowledging Russia’s cultural diversity as one of its greatest strengths. Yet despite this, the group promoted a nationalist-patriotic ideology, using it as an instrument for attracting young people to sign up. As Atwal and Bacon note, ‘Nashi taps into and cultivates nationalism, despite the danger that it acknowledges chauvinism among youth to present to Russia.’63 It seems that Nashi turned to nationalism due to the changing attitudes in Russian society as nationalistic and xenophobic attitudes became more prevalent. Though it could be argued that the group was simply another manifestation of the changes in attitudes of Russians in post-Soviet society, the manner in which Nashi interacted and used far-right nationalism directly contributed to the rise of nationalism amongst young Russians. Due to their proximity, the role of the state in determining the actions of Nashi also cannot be ignored given the government’s own complicated relationship with Russian nationalism.

What can be concluded is that Nashi certainly had an impact on the spread of Russian nationalism amongst Russian youth; it did this by spreading negative views towards foreigners and foreign influence amongst its members, and also by organising special activities for its members with the purpose of ideological indoctrination. One of the clearest examples of its role in the rise of far-right nationalism amongst young Russians is the cooperation which the group had with skinheads, a topic which will be addressed in the following chapter as I compare the two groups and look at the changing role of the skinhead movement.

III. COMPARISONS

The previous two chapters have dealt with the skinhead movement and Nashi separately, analysing each of their relationships to nationalism independently of one another. In this chapter the skinhead movement and Nashi shall be compared and contrasted, looking at dissimilarities and similarities between the ideologies and actions of the two groups. In this respect collaboration between Nashi and the skinhead movement will be addressed, exemplifying the contribution of both groups to the rise of nationalism amongst young 63

Atwal and Bacon, p.261.

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119 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? Russians whilst demonstrating the closeness of the two groups. Following on from this, it will be shown that in recent years the skinhead movement has come to play an increasingly political role in Russian society, similar to that of Nashi. It will be argued that the skinhead movement has become an active contributor to the rise of far-right nationalism amongst Russian youth, rather than being simply symptomatic of a wider societal trend as it once was. With respect to this trend, it will also be mentioned that the Russian government paved the way for this shift within the Russian skinhead movement.

On the face of things, the skinhead movement and Nashi seem to greatly differ in their ideological approach to Russian nationalism. Skinheads are typically more distinctly far-right wing; in a study of a group of skinheads in the town of Vorkuta in the Komi Republic, for example, Pilkington found that the skinhead ideology was based upon racist and or neo-fascist views, if not both, which were underpinned by the ideologies of white supremacism, neo-Nazism and ‘a central palingenetic myth that lies at the core of fascism.’64 Nashi’s own brand of nationalism seems far less extreme, given the fact that the group formally opposed far-right nationalism and extremism of any kind. Nonetheless, Nashi was content to use nationalism as a tool for recruiting more young people to its ranks, something which ‘sits uneasily’ next to its attempts to allegedly temper extremism. 65 Ultimately, however, it appears that Nashi clearly had an impact on the rise of nationalism amongst Russia’s youth, possessing the motive of controlling and co-opting nationalists into its ranks as a result of the upsurge in popularity of nationalism throughout Russian society. On the other hand, the skinhead movement, for much of its existence, seems to have been more symptomatic of a general trend underway throughout Russian society – an extreme example of the rise of nationalism and xenophobia in Russia, but not necessarily a group that has been actively spreading its message in the same way as Nashi.

However, despite their apparent differences, at one of Nashi’s early conferences Vasily Yakemenko, the founder of Nashi, encouraged the recruitment of skinheads into the group on the grounds of them being fellow Russian patriots.66 In 2006, Gazeta.ru reported that prominent members of Nashi had been at the head of different football clubs’ supporters’ groups with connections to skinheads and football hooligans, such as Nashi Hilary Pilkington, ‘“Skinhead is a movement of action”: Ideology and political engagement’, in Russia’s Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives, ed. by Hilary Pilkington, Elena Omel’chenko and Al’bina Garifzianova, (London and NY: Routledge, 2010) pp. 99-120 (p.99).

65 Atwal and Bacon, p.261.

66 Charles Clover, ‘Managed nationalism’ turns nasty for Putin, The Financial Times, 23 December 2010, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/046a3e30-0ec9-11e0-9ec3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3VfrSgTBN> [accessed 28 March 2015] (paras. 25-26 of 44).

64

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120 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? organiser Aleksei Mitryushin, who had been in charge of CSKA Moscow fan club Gallant Steeds.67 Skinheads have also been actively brought into the group to work as its security force.68 In addition, there have been claims from various associations for the defence of human rights which have stated that Nashi has participated in ‘training skinheads for attacks in Tsaritsyno’.69 Such activities, of course, seem to contravene Nashi’s mission statement which takes a strong position against far-right nationalism, but by working together with such groups it can be argued that Nashi cannot help but endorse far-right nationalism, and as a result, create room for those with more extreme views to influence the politics and ideology of Nashi, particularly in the case of those who held considerable influence over the group, such as Mitryushin.

Despite the origins of the skinhead movement being formed around young Russians who were responding negatively to an increasingly difficult living situations, Peter Worger argues that: In recent years, the Russian skinhead movement, once consisting only of groups of marginalized youth acting out adolescent aggression, has grown to become part of a right-wing populist movement in the country and has imbued mainstream political discourse with an increasingly racist and xenophobic tinge.70 The growing influence of skinhead groups cannot be ignored, as even though they might lack the organisational structure of Nashi, their impact on society is increasingly large. It is important to note that as the skinheads’ attitudes towards foreigners do not necessarily differ from those of many ordinary Russian citizens, the movement is representative of a considerable portion of the general public in Russia. What can be observed is that, similarly to how Nashi vied for further support, ‘the undercurrent of nationalism and xenophobia in both state and skinhead ideology, misunderstood and underestimated for so long, has become an issue that both state and alternative political parties use to capture the attention of a xenophobic Russian populace.’71 As demonstrated, skinheads often worked together Ilya Barabanov, ‘“Gladiatorii” vzyali “Nashih” v koltso’, Gazeta.ru, 26 July 2006, <http://www.gazeta.ru/2006/07/26/oa_209511.shtml> [accessed 28 March 2015] (para. 7 of 13).

68 Robert Hovarth, Putin’s Preventative Counter-Revolution, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013) pp. 102-103.

69 Laruelle, p.68.

70 Peter Worger, ‘A mad crowd: Skinhead youth and the rise of nationalism in post-communist Russia’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 45 (2012) <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967067X1200061X> [accessed 30 March 2015] (p.276).

71 Ibid.

67

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121 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? with Nashi, using the main resource at their disposal, violence, which ‘is the central method by which skinheads express themselves and their beliefs.’ 72 Worger asserts that as the skinhead movement became more political it began directing this violence not only towards immigrants, but also against other groups which stood against its ideology.73 The group seems to have acquired a more political motivation behind many of its actions, as demonstrated through its cooperation with Nashi. In addition, the use of some elements of far-right skinhead ideology by the state has served to further politicise the issues of nationalism and xenophobia. As such, the skinhead ideology has begun to have a more direct impact on the rise and spread of nationalism amongst a broader spectrum of young Russians through Nashi’s cooperation with the group and the government’s use of elements of this far-right ideology.

The Russian government has played a central role in the increased politicisation of the skinhead movement. Mihai Varga suggests that the government has contributed to the rise in far-right nationalism in three distinct ways. The first of these is the failure on the part of the Russian government to enforce the law against far-right violence; Varga notes that despite the high level of arrests made against far-right extremists, including skinheads, ‘authorities often give perpetrators conditional sentences only, and they prosecute and convict only a few perpetrators in Moscow and St Petersburg where more than half of the country’s far-right attacks are committed.’ 74 He also notes that often the authorities sympathise with the actions of the perpetrators.75 The second cause which Varga identifies is the failure on the part of the authorities to punish instigators of hate crimes, particularly when they are formal organisations.76 The third and final cause is the collaboration between government organisations and skinheads, and in this respect he highlights Nashi as a particularly good example, saying that ‘activities of organisations created by the government that allow dialogue with right-wing extremists, show that in principle the government does not consider right-wing violence a problem.’77 All of these factors contribute to what nears endorsement of far-right actions, though as Varga notes:

Ibid.

Ibid.

74 Mihai Varga, How Political Opportunities Strengthen the Far Right: Understanding the Rise in Far-Right Militancy in Russia’, Europe-Asia Studies, 60.4 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09668130801999854> [accessed 30 March 2015] p.572.

75 Ibid., p.573.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

72 73

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122 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? The state and the party of power in Russia probably did not intend to directly support far-right organisations in their actions. Instead, what created state-induced opportunities of far-right actions was the ideological closeness of the party in power to the positions of the far right; the difference is that the government prefers other methods of fighting “illegal immigration” and follows direct objectives.78 Despite this, what can be observed is that the government has allowed for the skinhead movement to take on an more political role, increasing its similarities to political youth movements such as Nashi. By allowing Nashi to work together with skinheads for the realisation of common goals, similarities between the two groups could only grow. Though Varga suggests that the Russian government may not have intended to directly support farright groups in such a manner, there was evidence to suggest otherwise. For example, Vasily Yakemenko, founder of Nashi and who encouraged the recruitment of skinheads into the organisation, was made the head of the Federal Youth Agency in 2007, indicative of his proximity to the Russian government.79 Worger also argues that due to the activities of disinterested and corrupt government officials who have not cracked down on the skinhead movement, ‘the two groups often overlap and as the skinhead movement blurs into mainstream culture so too may the ultra-right into mainstream politics.’80 On the subject of the the increasingly close relationship between the Russian government and skinheads, it is noted by Clover that: Gangs of skinheads and football fans have in recent years become the nucleus for a Kremlin-backed political movement designed to control the streets and prevent a confrontation with democratic political forces in the wake of the “Rose” and “Orange” revolutions in George and Ukraine- which saw democratic movements sweep entrenched regimes from power almost effortlessly.81 Such a description of the skinhead movement is very similar to ones previously given for Nashi, which was often described by Western observers as a group used by the Kremlin to

Ibid., p.575.

Ekaterina Vinokurova, ‘Yakemenko menyayet pirozhki na Seliger’, Gazeta.ru, 15 May 2013, <http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2013/05/15_a_5323293.shtml> [accessed on 25 April 2015] (para. 13 of 21).

80 Worger, p.276.

81 Clover, para. 21.

78 79

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123 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? counteract ‘street politics’ which became increasingly common in the 2000s as opposition groups went out onto the streets ‘to engage in contentious activity.’ 82 This further demonstrates how the role of the skinhead movement has become increasingly similar to that of Nashi, and it seems that the Russian government is directly supporting this shift.

This overlap between the skinhead movement and the Russian government can also offer a possible explanation to the curious case of Maxim Bazilev, the former head of the NSO, mentioned in the first chapter. The possibility of such direct cooperation between the Russian government and organisations as extreme as the NSO is a worrying possibility, but some of the actions of the Russian government, seemingly supporting and allowing space for these groups to develop, have given some credence to this theory.

In conclusion, it seems that in recent years the role of the skinhead movement has become increasingly similar to that of Nashi. It now represents a palpable political force which is actively contributing to the spread of nationalism amongst Russia’s youth.

Cooperation between the skinhead movement and Nashi is one particular example of the changing role of the skinhead movement, not only providing muscle for Nashi, but people with direct connections to the skinhead movement have gained high positions in Nashi’s organisational structure. Varga demonstrates that the lenience on the part of the government has also allowed the skinhead movement to become more influential. As well as this, the Russian government itself has used far-right rhetoric to appeal to an increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic Russian population, demonstrating the spread of the skinhead ideology into Russian politics. As the skinhead movement has recently played an increasingly similar role to that of Nashi, for example by taking part in ‘street politics’ for the benefit of the Kremlin, the potential influence of the group over Russia’s youth has only extended.

CONCLUSION

The Russian skinhead movement began as various groups of teenagers reacting to the difficulties of living in post-Soviet society. The rise of nationalism amongst these young people was, to a great extent, prompted by the attitudes of those around them, a result of the everyday racism which is so common in contemporary Russia. Despite this, it is important to note that since its beginnings the skinhead movement has not been solely 82

Atwal and Bacon, p.257.

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124 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? nationalistic. In their strongly negative views on homosexuals and different western subcultures, it is possible to observe a distaste for anything that is perceived as unusual or different. Despite this, nationalism and xenophobia are central to the skinhead movement and, in many ways, the skinhead movement is representative of a larger phenomenon, an extreme manifestation of the nationwide rise in far-right attitudes in the post-Soviet period.

Viewed in this way, it seems that skinheads were a symptom of a broader phenomenon rather than a cause of it. The ultimate causes of the general rise in nationalistic and xenophobic views were ones that affected Russian society as a whole, such as the economic crisis in the 1990s and the wave of propaganda which accompanied the Chechen Wars.

Nashi, however, played a much more direct role in the rise of nationalism amongst Russian youth. Despite its formal position, which stands strongly against far-right nationalism or extremism of any kind, Nashi has evolved into a distinctly nationalistic organisation. The group appealed to the ever increasing nationalistic portion of Russia’s youth, attempting to control and manage it. Consequentially, it seems that Nashi has only served to disseminate nationalism further amongst young Russians rather than to quell it.

Although it could be argued that the increased use of nationalism by Nashi is also simply symptomatic of wider trends underway throughout Russian society, the way in which Nashi has directly and consciously interacted with nationalism suggests that the group has very actively contributed to the overall rise of far-right attitudes amongst young Russians.

Despite the apparent differences between the skinheads and Nashi, more recently the skinhead movement has become conspicuously political. Through cooperation with this far-right movement, Nashi and Putin’s government could not help but endorse extreme nationalism and allow for such an ideology to impact their own organisations. The actions of the Russian government have served to allow the skinhead movement to further its cause; as a result of not cracking down on the movement, its influence has only grown.

There is also evidence to suggest that connections exist between the Russian skinhead movement and individuals who wield considerable power and influence, as demonstrated through the case of the mysterious death of Maksim Bazilev. What can be concluded is that through its increasingly political role, the skinhead movement has come to more closely reflect Nashi as an active contributor to the rise of nationalism amongst young Russians.

To conclude, both the Russian skinhead movement and Nashi have greatly contributed to the rise of Russian nationalism. Following the upsurge in nationalistic and xenophobic attitudes amongst the Russian population, both the skinhead movement and Nashi embraced nationalism as distinct parts of their political agendas by actively spreading

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125 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? the ideology amongst Russia’s youth, particularly in the Putin period. The Russian government has also played a substantial role in the rise of nationalism; given the cooperation between skinheads and Nashi, it appears that the Russian government has not only allowed, but encouraged, both groups to further spread nationalism amongst Russia’s younger generations. The rise of far-right nationalism amongst this section of the Russian population will ultimately present challenges for the future of the multiethnic and multicultural Russian nation. For future academics it will become increasingly important to observe the impact these generations have on those younger them, and the direction that the Russian nation takes in the long run as members of today’s youth begin to take positions of power and influence in Russian society.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license lets it to be freely shared and adapted in any medium and format and for any purpose, including commercially.

To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Kozhevnikova, Galina, ‘Under the Sign of Political Terror. Radical Nationalism and Efforts to Counteract It in 2009’, The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, (2010) <http://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2010/03/d18151/> [accessed 17 February 2015].

Kuzmenkova, Olga and Ekaterina Vinokurova, ‘Nashikh zakryvayut’, Gazeta.ru, 6 April 2012, <http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2012/04/06_a_4151693.shtml> [accessed 19 April 2015].

Myers, Steven Lee, ‘Youth Groups Created by Kremlin Serve Putin’s Cause’, The New York Times, July 8 2007, <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/world/europe/08moscow.html?pagewanted=all &_r=2&> [accessed 29 March 2015].

Ostrovskyin, Arkady, ‘Youth group hounds UK Moscow ambassador’, Financial Times, Decemer 8 2006, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/15054982-8661-11db-86d50000779e2340.html#axzz3VfrSgTBN> [accessed 28 March 2015].

Shipilov, Evgeny, ‘Nakhamili na ugolovnoye delo’, Gazeta.ru, 3 May 2012, <http://www.gazeta.ru/auto/2012/05/03_a_4571421.shtml> [accessed on 21 April 2015].

Vinokurova, Ekaterina, ‘Yakemenko menyayet pirozhki na Seliger’, Gazeta.ru, 15 May 2013, <http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2013/05/15_a_5323293.shtml> [accessed on 25 April 2015].

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

130 WALES – SKINHEADS AND NASHI: WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONGST RUSSIAN YOUTH IN THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD? Yudina, Natalia, ‘Beware the Rise of the Russian Ultra-Right’, The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, (2014) <http://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/reportsanalyses/2014/09/d30212/> [accessed 17 February 2015].

Yudina, Natalia and Vera Alperovich, ‘The Ultra-Right Shrugged: Xenophobia and Radical Nationalism in Russia, and Efforts to Counteract Them in 2013’, The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, (2014) <http://www.sovacenter.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2014/03/d29236/> [accessed 19 February 2015].

© School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 131-133.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.049

Plemya/ 'The Tribe' (2014) Drama, 126 min.

Directed by MYROSLAV SLABOSHPYTSKIY. Written by MYROSLAV SLABOSHPYTSKIY. Cast: Hryhoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy.

Ukraine, Netherlands: Harmata Film Production.

Language: Ukrainian Sign Language.

Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy's debut film, The Tribe (Plemya), has received a great deal of attention since it first swept Cannes in 2014, generally earning praise from critics, notwithstanding at least one audience member rendered unconscious following a real-time abortion scene. In the Los Angeles Review of Books Annie Julia Wyman went so far as to declare that the formal language of the film, specifically its masterful camerawork and gutsy auditory minimalism, is 'so powerful and complex as to re-emphasize the place of art — in this case, filmic art — alongside violence and politics as a third means of processing and shaping collective life'.1 While others have criticized its bleakness, charging it with chic nihilism or cynical exploitation,2 these readings too often elide a central dimension of the film’s narratological and formal structure—namely, its national context.

The Tribe, as its name suggests, might be read as a dark statement concerning humanity’s most brutish instincts, but above all it is a political allegory. One might go so far as to call the film Brechtian, both in its political situatedness as well as its highly stylized presentation. Insofar as it draws attention to itself as a realistic construction of a particular post-Soviet situation, a motif that surfaces early on as the students undergo a lesson with the EU flag and map of Europe on full display while pastel blues and golds (Ukraine’s national colors) make repeated appearances throughout, it emphasizes the artificiality of the situations on screen and, by extension, in the world.

What has been done can be undone; things could have been prevented, if only.... In this sense, The Tribe, counter-intuitively, might be called an optimistic film or, at least, given the Euromaidan protests that followed on its heels, an uncannily prescient one. © School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

132 REVIEWS: FILMS Set in a boarding school for the deaf, The Tribe follows the experiences of incoming student Sergey as he navigates the violent hierarchy of his new home, becomes an accomplice to the school’s corrupt dealings, and runs into trouble after he lets his feelings for classmate (and sex worker) Anya interfere with the operations. Generally eschewing sound, diegetic or otherwise, the film features no spoken dialogue. Conversations, arguments, and contractual arrangements are all signed, and yet among the formal accomplishments of Slaboshpytskiy is the at times genuinely striking accessibility of the story’s progression to audiences watching the alternately erotic and brutal art-film the world over. Scenes, like a typical long-shot sequence early on in which the students celebrate the usually boisterous back-to-school holiday Knowledge Day in eerie silence, are framed elegantly and symmetrically, reminding viewers of the performative nature of the interactions being depicted. The effect is jarring. The silence, the slow turns around corners, and the foreboding, lingering quality of the camera’s gaze, all conspire to produce both profound immersion and the minimal psychological distance necessary to process the artistic, artificially crafted nature of the unsettling experience.

Ultimately, The Tribe suggests that humans can only endure so many crooked deals and humiliations before something gives way. In a prophetic turn of events, a corrupt woodshop teacher inadvertently instructs his students how to build the hammer that finally does him in, only now the instrument is less a symbol of a bygone global proletarian movement than of an atavistic, even reflexive revolt devoid of the bright promises of communist utopianism or liberal multiculturalism.

While the dark allegory predicts the collapse of backwards, violent bureaucracies and reminds that, like art, they too are human inventions, it withholds projecting what might take their place. But if there is a hopeful gesture in The Tribe, it is its utter refusal to tell viewers what to think; absent of the usual tools of frequent close-ups and rapid cuts, it instead transforms audiences from passive consumers of images into active agents who, in the midst of visual uncertainty, must look, think, and

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133 REVIEWS: FILMS

struggle to make sense of it all for themselves.

BRANDON KEMP Sewanee: The University of the South

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license lets it to be freely shared and adapted in any medium and format and for any purpose, including commercially. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

NOTES 1. Wyman, Annie Julia, ''The Tribeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and the Language of Cinema', Los Angeles Review of Books, 10 December 2015, <https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/the-tribe-and-thelanguage-of-cinema> [accessed March 19, 2016].

2. Tafoya, Scout, 'Review: The Tribe', Roger Ebert, June 10 2015, <http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-tribe-2015> [accessed 19 March 2016]. Š School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 134-136.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.050

The Risk of Freedom: Ethics, Phenomenology, and Politics in Jan Patočka

By FRANCESCO TAVA. Translated by Jane Ledlie. p. 208. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. 2015. £24.95. Paperback. ISBN: 9781783483785.

In his book The Risk of Freedom, originally published in Italian as Il Rischio Della Libertà (Mimesis Edizioni, 2014), Tava recognizes that, although Patočka’s conception of freedom represents a necessary condition for human beings’ meaningful existence, freedom is inevitably engaged with risk, danger and contingency. Following Tava’s reading of Patočka’s text examining Sophocles’ play Antigone, the understanding of freedom that Patočka’s proposes leads to a ‘new type of ethical action; no longer based on the safety of principles, on the division between good and bad, but on their continuous and conscious shaking, shifting itself against the current, in the opposite direction towards a depth, which is beyond any balance’ (p. 26).

While, in the first chapter, Tava portrays Patočka’s diagnosis of the crisis (the historical social and political background of Patočka’s supercivilisation — a concept that explicitly refers to the communist regime of Czechoslovakia), the second chapter offers an in-depth phenomenological insight into the problem of the world as a lifeworld. Tava utilizes two different perspectives to examine the world and portray the conditions of Patočka’s time — a background from which he evolves his understanding of freedom.

Tava’s diagnosis of Patočka’s era’s political situation helps him to discern the two main aspects from which this particular concept of freedom emerges. Tava recognizes that Patočka’s idea of freedom is related, firstly, to the problem of negativity and, secondly, to the problem of the lifeworld, defined by Patočka as ‘Weltgeheimnis: the secret of the world’ (p. 34).

Unlike in Husserl’s phenomenology, this does not eliminate the dark, obscure, mysterious region of our existence. These concepts (negativity and the lifeworld as Weltgeheimnis) serve as a springboard for the concept of freedom and become ineradicable, yet, in terms of technical civilisation, they become a combated dimension of the organisation of life.

However, a question arises: how in these conditions of negativity and the lifeworld (to

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which the nocturnal element is central) does the category of freedom emerge, and how is Patočka’s obscure and gloomy phenomenology of freedom related positively to the political realm?

Patočka’s idea of freedom, as Tava argues, needs to be perceived as a counterweight to the Heideggerian idea of Gestell — ‘the enframing which presents all things according to one’s own intrinsic technical programme’ (p. 43). Tava correctly argues that freedom evolves as a counterweight to our everyday existence. Freedom appears when one is able to break from the realm of the everydayness, which, in principle, calls for life, which, as Patočka argues in his Heretical Essays, ‘leans out into the night, into struggle and death’ (HE, p.131).

Tava emphasizes that the action leading from human beings’ enslavement by Gestell to freedom is the act of sacrifice: ‘a movement which is anchored in becoming historical, lived through suffering and without the certainty of success, without recognition, without the hope of achieving anything positive’ (p. 44).

Tava further questions how the ‘philosophical message [of sacrifice] can take on a political force with an uncalculated capacity’ (p. 45): ‘[A] person’s most effective weapon lies in […] her ethical resistance, the inadequacies of the system, starting with willingness to sacrifice, intended as an extreme attempt at re-establishing a discrepancy or difference between […] the means and the ends of our actions’ (p. 45). Tava highlights Patočka’s idea that the act of sacrifice, despite initially being a philosophical message, takes on a political force as an act of bravery that cannot be accomplished without personal involvement (p.

46).

In this context, Tava examines the materialisation of the concept of sacrifice in the realpolitik, which once took the form of the dissident movement of Charta 77 in Czechoslovakia, whose task was to ‘destabilize, a corrosion of confidence’ (p. 143) of the political system that, in principle, could be brought forward only by ‘a spiritual person who

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is prepared for sacrifice’ (p. 143), while the objective of this action was to ‘reawaken a new sensitivity’ (p. 143) within the political realm.

Although Tava’s book undoubtedly represents the most succinct and lucid explanation of the problematic concept of freedom in Patočka’s phenomenology, and portrays the consequences of his philosophy and ethics in the form of the politics of dissidence, the book does not explicitly discuss the relevance of Patočka’s idea of freedom to the contemporary social and political enquiries beyond the political practice of Czech dissidence. The answer to this question is left open to further interpretations.

MICHAELA BELEJKANIČOVÁ School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the author’s work non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 137-139.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.051

The Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918–1920: The Diplomacy of Chaos

By IAN C. D. MOFFAT. Basingstoke: Houndsmills, Palgrave Macmillan. 2015. £63.00.

Hardback. ISBN: 9781137435712.

If there is one facet of the tumultuous events agitated by the Russian Revolution that Ian C. D. Moffat is keen to underscore it is the sheer pandemonium unleashed by that great insurrection. Like its French forebear’s impact on the nineteenth century, the Russian Revolution leapt from its Eurasian cradle, shaping the twentieth century until its final decade. Moffat’s study deals with this transformative quality, exploring the Revolution’s disorientation of established international diplomacy and the beginnings of a new order in foreign affairs. He sheds light on a hitherto neglected and pivotal moment in recent history, intricately charting the Allied Powers of the First World War’s designs on revolutionary Russia.

The book is organized in a sequence of chronologically ordered chapters, opening with a brief overview of the February Revolution and the months leading up to the Allied incursions into Russia. Moffat informs us that the Intervention can be divided into three distinctive episodes: the first being the Allies’ efforts to preserve Russian commitment to the war against the German Empire; after the October Revolution, an attempt to forestall the Brest-Litovsk Treaty; and lastly, a resolution to support the White campaign in eviscerating Bolshevism. As a framework, this triadic approach lends itself favourably to Moffat’s objective and enables the author to relay the unfurling events as they played out.

Further clarity is provided by an effort to sub-divide the chapters, concentrating on specific theatres of the Allies’ campaign: in Siberia, the Caucasus and North Russia.

Although delivered in a clear manner, Moffat’s narrative becomes stultifying in parts. He relegates much of his analysis to the concluding chapter, with most of the book having a prosaic detachment from the high drama of its historical focus. Greater assessment of the events rather than a successive reeling off of their occurrence would significantly enhance the reader’s experience. However, the plethora of information

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138 REVIEWS: BOOKS contained within this book is a testament to Moffat’s impressive abilities as a researcher.

His fastidious retelling of this chaotic and dizzying period singles him out as a master of precision and elucidation.

As a Canadian naval veteran and self-described independent scholar, Moffat devotes much of his book to Canada’s involvement in the Russian Civil War. Here he sheds fascinating insight into the erstwhile Dominion’s efforts to prove itself as a competent, bona fide nation emerging from Britain’s shadow. The timeframe of Moffat’s investigation coincides with the British Dominions’ growing sense of blood sacrifice and national mythmaking in the aftermath of the Great War. In fact, the book’s essential aim is to highlight the discordant national interests of all the players involved. As an exercise in realpolitik, Moffat meticulously reveals the Allied Intervention to have been a fiasco from start to finish. From the United States and Japan’s mutual suspicion of the other’s intentions in Siberia, to France’s myopic tenacity in ensuring repayment of its loans from Russia, the ordeal set the scene for future diplomacy and came to define the world we live in today.

Moffat also stresses the importance of historical personages during the affair, maintaining that their actions influenced the course of events. Crucially, by placing so much weight on this factor he undermines his simultaneous effort to emphasize the chaotic nature of the period. The volatility of the Russian Civil War and the failure of the Allies’ objectives surely indicates the vulnerability of individuals to circumstances rather than their ability to control them absolutely. Nevertheless, Moffat presents the motivations of the likes of Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and Terauchi Masatake for the reader’s consideration. As a result, he imbues a human dynamic to the complexity, which enables the reader to better understand what was driving each nation’s ambitions. Of particular interest was his exploration of Wilson’s bungling of US commitment to the intervention. The President was at once naively enthused by the

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

139 REVIEWS: BOOKS Russian Revolution’s perceived synergy with the ideals of the American Republic but also tempered by that same republic’s concern with its status as a budding superpower.

Conversely, Moffat portrays Winston Churchill’s vehement anti-Bolshevism as a vital aspect behind the intervention’s longevity while also ensuring its disastrous retreat.

The Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918–1920: The Diplomacy of Chaos is an exhaustive and scholarly contribution to the field. Stylistically, its content is formed of a thorough empirical narrative with little accompanying evaluation. Still, Moffat has produced a work that adeptly condenses the myriad of frenetic elements which make this period of history at once so startling and unavoidable. Its publication is especially timely in light of recent developments in international diplomacy and is essential reading for anyone seeking knowledge on the history of relations between Russia and the West.

DANNY BIRD School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This license permits others to share it freely in any medium or format, including commercially. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/.

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 140-143.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.052

Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia.

By REBEKAH KlEIN-PEJŠOVÁ. Pp. 216. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2015. £26.99. Hardback. ISBN: 9780253015549.

The mushrooming of nation states in the wake of the Great War radically transformed the map of Central and Eastern Europe. Some ethnic groups, like Czechs and Slovaks in the newly formed Czechoslovakia, became the new dominant nationality; others, like the Jews in the territory of Slovakia, had to reorient from Budapest to Prague. What, then, did Prague use as a touchstone of the political loyalty of Slovak Jews? Rebekah Klein-Pejšová examined the Jewish reorientation in their declaration of nationality in three censuses: the 1919 census in Slovakia, and the 1921 and 1930 Czechoslovak state-wide censuses. She argues that Czechoslovakia used the option of Jewish nationality on the census to ‘foster relocation of individual Jewish loyalties’ from Hungary to the Czechoslovak state (p. 21). Magyarized Jews might continue their linguistic and cultural affiliation with the Hungarian nation, but politically they were encouraged to declare Jewish or Czechoslovak nationality to counter Hungarian minority influence in Slovakia.

Much of Klein-Pejšová’s monograph focusses on the statistical obsessions of various parties, especially those of the Czechoslovak administration and Hungarian minorities.

Prague relied on the superior numerical strength of the Czechoslovak nation to legitimize its dominance over the state. Hungarian minorities counted on passing the 20% bar to secure the right to use the Hungarian language in a certain local district for educational, © School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

141 REVIEWS: BOOKS cultural, and administrative purposes. Thus the Jewish minority, and how to count Jewish nationality, became a contentious subject. The Jews in Czechoslovakia lacked a separate Jewish language, therefore complicating the seemingly natural connection between language and nationality. The legacy of Magyrisation under the Kingdom of Hungary left many Slovak Jews speaking the Hungarian language as their mother tongue. Moreover, Czechoslovak demographers deemed determining nationality by language of daily use (Austrian census tradition) or by mother tongue (Hungarian census tradition) rather manipulative. They argued that such results had underestimated the numerical strength of Czechs and Slovaks due to their German and Hungarian linguistic assimilation. Jews happened to prove the need to detach nationality from language in censuses. The 1919 census in Slovakia, therefore, asked individuals to declare nationality according to ‘internal conviction’, much like religious affiliation. The much-debated 1920 census methodology, though reconciling the two traditions of direct declaration or linguistic determinism to count nationality, still allowed exception for Jews and for those assimilated into another linguistic group. Throughout the inter-war years, Slovak Jews increasingly opted for Jewish or Czechoslovak nationalities instead of the Hungarian one, seeing them as the safest option to prove their loyalty to the Czechoslovak state, and to steer away from ethnic strifes.

Klein-Pejšová successfully contextualizes domestic and regional challenges to Jewish integration in Slovakia. Not only were the small Slovak Jewish community internally divided

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

142 REVIEWS: BOOKS by assimilationist and Zionist politics, their Czechoslovak statist affiliation also brought them into conflict with Hungarian minority and Slovak nationalists. The former blamed the Jews for losing the rights to Hungarian language usage in some local districts, while the latter accused them of assisting majority oppression of the minority as in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Slovak Jews also trod a fine line when engaging in transnational cooperation with Jews in Budapest to commemorate fallen Hungarian Jewish soldiers in the Great War for fear it would play into Hungary’s irredentist ambition.

Unfortunately, Klein-Pejšová’s mastery over interpreting dry statistics is compromized by occasional mistakes and slightly confusing manner of narration. Antonín Bohác wrote ‘Nationality and the New Czechoslovak Census’ to defend the 1930 census, not the 1931 one (p. 120). The achronological recount of Hugo Roth’s resignation as the leader of the Union of Slovak Jews in 1934 and its consequences—presenting two opinion pieces that came to Roth’s defence before revealing the reason of his resignation in a newspaper piece written by Roth himself more than a week before the two responses—could have the opposite effect of bringing to light this historical obscurity. However, Klein-Pejšová proves extremely helpful when providing tables for the 1921 census to skilfully present the overwhelming demographical numbers. This reader would be grateful if she had done the same for the 1930 census, rather than depending on verbal elucidation for statistical comparisons.

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

143 REVIEWS: BOOKS Stylistic flaws notwithstanding, readers will find that this book offers a fresh perspective on the crucial role the tiny Slovak Jewish community played in the inter-war Czechoslovak politics of demographyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;regarding census methodological debates, minority campaigns for nationality declaration, and the very definition and understanding of nationality in Czechoslovakia.

PARIS PIN-YU CHEN School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license lets it to be freely shared and adapted in any medium and format and for any purpose, including commercially.

To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Š School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 144-146.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.053

The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe.

By KRISTEN GHODSEE. Pp. 256. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 2015. £15.99. Paperback. ISBN: 9780822358350.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and more specifically since the onset of the global economic crisis in 2008, western governments and corporations have been eager to remind the public of the evils of communism (p. 198). With her most recent book— The Left Side of History—Kristen Ghodsee challenges this prevailing yet one-dimensional view by exposing the stories of two communist partisans who fought behind the lines of Naziallied Bulgaria. First, the ambiguous story of Frank Thompson, brother of renowned historian E. P. Thompson, then fourteen-year-old Elena Lagadinova, the youngest female member of the anti-fascist resistance. The main significance of this book lay with Ghodsee’s alternative definition of communism, one that is not predicated on Stalinism and the purges, but rather an ideal and social belief.

In the first half of this book, Ghodsee tells the story of how a young Frank Thompson, a student at Oxford University at the time, became sympathetic with communist ideology whilst pursuing his romantic interest with Iris Murdoch. Elena, on the other hand, first flirted with communism as her father and three brothers were Bulgarian partisans. After a few years of secretly providing material and moral support to them, Elena joined the movement and later became known as ‘the amazon’. In the second half of the book, Ghodsee interviews various “red grandmothers”, including Elena and other prominent women in Bulgaria and the GDR in order to ultimately show the ways in which they prospered from communism and the dire impact of market capitalism that they all experienced.

This book benefits from Ghodsee’s creativity and raconteurism. It reads less like a traditional history book and more like a captivating piece of fiction. Ghodsee’s seamless and engaging writing allows the reader to become so invested in each of the people she

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

145 REVIEWS: BOOKS writes about to the extent that one is moved when any one of them experience misfortune or success. Moreover, this book is a credit to Ghodseeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s career as a social and gender historian as it sheds an important light on the role of women in the communist Eastern Bloc.

Ghodsee has highlighted many positive aspects of Communism in Bulgaria, which, as Ghodsee felt, have been hidden in an avalanche of anti-Communist demonisation. Whereas historians like E. H. Carr have stressed that little good came from Communism considering its cost in human suffering and the massive loss of life, Ghodsee rather highlights many positives. This includes the equality of opportunity for men and women, the guarantee of full employment and the stability and predictability of daily routines (p. 192). Ghodsee exposes the personal and optimistic nature of Communism, which is too readily overlooked.

As enlightening as this study is, it concedes some setbacks. Ghodsee often writes in significant detail about her personal actions, for example the precise way in which she ate watermelon and feta cheese when interviewing Elena in 2012. Whilst it adds personality to the text, it becomes a cumbersome part of the text, adding nothing to her argument. Additionally, Ghodseeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s depiction of the political arena in the 1930s is too simplistic. The subjects of this book were not only anti-fascist but also staunchly Communist and, as Ghodsee explored no other political orientations, anti-fascism and Communism become synonymous in this book. This ignores the complex middle ground between the far right and the far left and, perhaps more importantly, overlooks those who opposed Nazism but did not align themselves with Communism.

Finally, Ghodsee writes about Thompson and Elena hagiographically and, whilst Ghodsee does not make it explicit, her admiration lies with their idealism and enthusiasm for a fairer world, not necessarily with their Communism. However, as this aspiration was deeply connected with their Communist tendencies and because this distinction is not

Š School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

146 REVIEWS: BOOKS made clear, this text risks being read idealistically and could be dangerous to the impressionable. This book fails to appreciate the utopic nature of Communism and the fact that much of what was promised in the Communist ideology could never be implemented in reality. Rather, Ghodsee ought to make it clearer in her argument that these partisans were admirable because of their determination, irrespective of their political, economic and social beliefs.

Ultimately, this book is well written and easily accessible and therefore students and scholars of Communism, Bulgaria, gender and cultural history would welcome it in their respective fields. Nevertheless, because of its overly heroic and simplistic tone, Ghodsee’s book really ought to be read alongside other, well-established texts.

MATTHEW MARTIN School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the author’s work noncommercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 147-149.

DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.054

The Flight

By GAITO GAZDANOV. Translated by Bryan Karetnyk. pp. 224. London: Pushkin Press, 2016. £12.00. Paperback. ISBN: 9781782271628.

Following the collapse of Communism, Gaito Gazdanov's works, which were never published during the Soviet period, were finally made available in Russia. The novels were celebrated by critics as psychological masterpieces. However, so far only two of his novels have been translated into English. Recently, Pushkin Press published his second novel, The Flight, written before his most famous works, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf and Buddha’s Return. In many respects, the recurring themes of Gazdanov's oeuvre are featured in The Flight.

Motifs that meditate on life, death and memory are characteristic of Gazdanov's modernist novels.

It is no coincidence that the novel is entitled The Flight. Gazdanov depicts a panorama of dislocated Russian émigrés in interwar Paris and their romantic relationships, often finding themselves ‘in blurry surreal situations’ (p.17). Thereby, the title does not only refer to the circumstances in which most of the characters fled from Bolshevik Russia, but also to their relationships and the reality of their lives. The tale is arranged around Sergey Sergeyevich, a wealthy and reasonable man. He is the only character who does not fall for romance and who handles his affair with his wife’s sister Liza in a business-like manner.

Although Sergey Sergeyevich lived through the war and flight, he remains an intangible character. In contrast to rational Sergey, his wife Olga regularly falls madly in love with various lovers and disappears with them for periods of time. Finally, they have a son, Seryozha, for whom Liza is one of the few constants in his life.

Whereas Sergeyevich represent the centre, most of the surrounding characters symbolize the periphery of interwar Paris: Lola, an aging actress; Slevtov, a hopeless and permanently broke romantic; and sentimental writers – all driven by the illusion of love and youth. However, the characters' fates are drawn together as they are almost all dependent

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

148 REVIEWS: BOOKS on both Sergeyevich's money and approval. Furthermore, as the title indicates, the novel is a tale of transition, featuring the patterns of a coming-of-age story. The tale is mostly set during Seryozha's final summer before entering adulthood, during which he loses his innocence by having an affair with his aunt Liza, the mistress of his father. In autumn, when the characters leave their summer residences, a fatal catastrophe ensues.

Interestingly, Seryozha is the only truly young person in the novel, although almost all the characters are obsessed with the idea of youth, the motif and illusion of which are a constant throughout the novel. The characters' lives are based around their memories and imaginations. Furthermore, the boundaries between reality and imagination are blurred. For instance, the aging actress Lola ponders over her life while writing her memories, and for the first time makes sense of her existence. This can also be read as a literary examination of the concepts of reality and imagination.

Regarding the role of time in the narrative, it is striking that the period covered remains vague. Although the novel begins with Seryozha's first childhood memories, the story mainly focuses on a period of time during Seryozha's later youth. Thereby, it seems that the novel handles time fluidlyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as if in a fairy tale, time stands still. This coincides with the fairy tale-like amount of money Sergeyevich possesses.

As a final remark, there are minor weaknesses in the narration. The novel fails to achieve the literary lofty heights of his later works. For instance, in some passages the story floats by, lost in its dramatic plot twists. Hence, the novel sometimes lacks the psychological introspection of Evening with Claire.

Overall, The Flight tells the tale of imagined lives. The greatest merit of the novel is the intimate observation of the characters, not least thanks to Bryan Karetnyk who skilfully translates Gazdanov's translucent style into English. Moreover, the novel plays with romantic motifs and the genre itself by blending romantic tragedy with satire. Gazdanov is an

Š School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2016.

149 REVIEWS: BOOKS observant narrator, all too human, but between the lines there is always his well-known Russian melancholic irony: ‘Life is over. Goodnight’ (p. 86).

MARIE SCHWARZ School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

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