Traces Russian nationalism since the collapse of communism

...Yet it would be a mistake to overlook the role that nationalism plays in the Kremlin's strategy of building popular sup­port for its geopolitical aims . In fact, there has been a noticeable attempt by the government to make modern Russia the focus of patriotic sentiment in the national consciousness . One small example of this is the introduction of a new holiday, the Day of People's Unity, first cel­ebrated in 2005, to replace the official com­memoration of the Bolshevik Revolution . Meant as a celebration of the expulsion of Pol­ish-Lithuanian forces from Moscow in 1612, its patriotic message of homeland resiliency against foreign antagonists has allowed far right-wing organizations to appropriate it for their own cause...

...For Russia, Iran is a valu­able counterforce to American interests in the Middle East...

...The National Bolsheviks-for whom Dugin was the chief ideologue before break­ing with Limonov in 1998-have acquired a reputation as a group of extremist hooligans, adopting a Nazi tricolor flag but replacing the swastika with a sickle and hammer and featurDISSENT IWinter 2009.23 ing Limonov's own taste for radicalism on both ends of the political spectrum . Not surprisingly, the government has attempted to outlaw the party in the last few years...

...T HE FORMS of nationalism in Russia are not limited to a single, state-endorsed ideological movement...

...Kasparov fired back that the URF was Putinist as well...

...The political climate is increas­ingly anti-American, the world increasingly polarized, in Putin's representation of it, into an irreconcilable opposition between Russia's national interests and those of the West . Sus­picious popular sentiment is focused on American expansion into Ukraine and Geor­gia under the guise of NATO...

...During the first year of cel­ebration, some thousand members of these groups rallied in Moscow, chanting "Russia for Russians...

...DISSENT I Winter 2009 . l9 T HE QUESTION OF Russian national iden­tity is far from new...

...The word designates a sort of bogeyman, a coalition of secret con­spiratorial forces striving to undermine the country for their own benefit...

...In­stances like this show that although there may not be an outright link between racial violence and the Russian state, there is an ideological convergence based on a crude nationalism that has created an environment conducive to xe­nophobia...

...However, in 1998, Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, a nationalist sympathizer himself and a Putin ally today, for­bade a planned RNU gathering, as part of a larger federal anti-RNU campaign...

...Under mounting pressure, the government has stepped up its efforts to prosecute hate crimes and prevent any further activity by far right groups . But these measures by themselves will not be enough to suppress xenophobia and chauvinism in which the government is itself complicit...

...The following year Luzhkov banned such demon­strations, showing that the government's top priority regarding nationalist sentiment is to cultivate it through its own official means but not to condone radical groups that could po­tentially challenge its rule . Even the fledgling liberal opposition to these developments has not avoided contami­nation by one or another form of nationalist politics...

...Russia's military presence in what is known as Transnistria, an unrecognized breakaway re­public in Moldova, is little known but emblem­atic of Kremlin policy...

...Its 120,000 members have staged demonstrations against British and Estonian diplomats, pro­tested against the adoption of Russian children byAmericans, and clashed with demonstrators from other parties-all under the pretense of combating fascist forces . Nashi's allegiance lies with the Kremlin, and its mission always falls in line with the political needs of the govern­ing elite...

...The group's influence began to wane after that, and two years later it split into a number of smaller fac­tions, which are still active today...

...According to Time, the Russian government recently pur­chased a 51 percent stake in Naftna Industrija Srbija (NIS), Serbia's national oil company, fur­ther expanding its dominance over the East European energy supply...

...Elsewhere, the Moscow-Tehran axis spoken of by Dugin is solidifying, with Russia acting to delay UN imposition of sanctions on Iran, to which it has been selling weapons and nuclear technology...

...In 2004, however, the army halted its withdrawal...

...Nationalist ideology in Russia has a con­stantly shifting purpose, determined by the political ends toward which it is applied . There is no single, large-scale nationalist movement uniting the Kremlin elites and the far right neo-Nazi parties ; ideologically they are too dis­parate ever to be completely reconciled . Even a populist demagogue like Zhirinovsky, known for his xenophobic attitude toward minorities, was an eager supporter of Russia's policy of handing out passports to Abkhazians, because he saw this as an opportunity to expand Russia's influence...

...The rise to power of the Kremlin elite colloquially known as the siloviki (approximately "the forceful")-com­posed of former Soviet military and intelligence operatives with ties to Yeltsin and Putin-has led to a new era of statist conservatism in Rus­sian politics, emphasizing stability over demo­cratic proceduralism...

...This means that Russia under Medvedev wí11 continue to be a key player in the world economy, despite the anti-Western rhetoric of its government and the political ten­sions that result from it...

...There is undoubtedly a "realist" element in the Kremlin's current policies that wí11 displease the autarkic neo-Eurasíanists . The prospects of Western capital, especially with Russian en­ergy companies reaping massive profits from sales to Europe, are too enticing for the Krem­lin elite...

...To the Barricade...

...The Georgian crisis remains the clearest ex­ample of Russia's new involvement within the former Soviet sphere . The short August war over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has brought relations between Russia and the West to a post-cold war low...

...missiles on its territory, the reaction from Mos­cow was fierce and threatening . Now Ukraine finds itself in a tug-of-war between the West and Russia on the issues of NATO member­ship and possession of the Crimea . The un­easy coalition government of pro-Western 22 . DISSENT I Winter 2009 president Viktor Yushchenko and pro-Russian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko collapsed in September, almost four years after the Orange Revolution that first swept Yushchenko into office...

...While the nation's cultural and literary life bloomed during the nineteenth century, the intelligent­sia was unable to agree on the extent to which Russia was part of the West, eventually ceding to the crash-course westernization of the Bol­sheviks . During the Soviet period and under the guise of Marxist internationalism, Russia asserted its cultural dominance over its neigh­bors . However, the perestroika years of Mikhail Gorbachev allowed for the revival of ethnic identity politics among the people of the re­publics, resulting in an upsurge of nationalism that contributed to the fragmentation of the Soviet Union...

...They derive from diverse and sometimes obscure intellectual sources . One such source is Aleksandr Dugin, a philosopher and public intellectual whose work ranges from historical reflection to myth and occultism...

...Like other former Soviet states under Russian pressure, Belarus faces an important question: wí11 it be able to enter such an alli­ance without effectively giving up its sover­eignty to its huge neighbor...

...Other right-wing organizations that ap­peared in the nineties were even more threat­ening...

...Petersburg alone, with 140 fatalities...

...The inflow of foreign investment capital contributed to growing prosperity in large cities like Moscow and St . Petersburg...

...There is certainly some overlap between the ideology of the far right and the general feelings of some members of the government elite about the meaning of Russian patriotism . And if Dugin's gradual ascension from the radi­cal fringes to the center stage of national poli­tics is any indication, a further shift toward a radical nationalism by the government is not out of the question...

...That's how it's always been ." The increasing corporatism of the Russian state, where government officials, bureaucrats, and business officials together form the insider elite, has made policies that are good for profit centrally important...

...This tiny sliver of land bordering Ukraine and cut off from Moldova by the Dniester River declared its indepen­dence in 1992 after a short war...

...The government youth movement Nashi (Ours), founded in 2005 in the wake of Ukraine's "Orange Revo­lution," which has gained attention in the West for being something of a Putin personality cult, claims to be an anti-fascist movement...

...The coalition was prohibited from registering in time for the December 2007 presidential election, but its efforts highlighted the fragmented nature of democratic opposi­tion in Russia's stifling political atmosphere...

...reflecting this growth, for the last three years Moscow has been ranked as the world's most expensive city...

...In 2007, chess master GarryKasparov the face of liberal opposition to Putinism in the Western media, entered into an alliance with the fascist writer and countercultural icon Eduard Limonov and his National Bolshevik Party...

...the total number of billionaires in the country is eighty-seven, second only to the United States...

...Under Yeltsin in the 1990s a wave of xeno­phobia began that remains today, particularly with regard to the ethnic groups from the Caucasus and Central Asia . The influx of these people into Russia, either as refugees or labor­ers looking for work, was met with hostility by many Russians...

...Small but well-organ­ized neo-Nazi skinhead gangs stage random at­tacks on unsuspecting civilians-mostly people of darker complexion...

...The result is a growing parallelism between nationalism at home and the renewed effort to build regional and international influence...

...The siloviki promote an economic nationalism where the state controls the distribution of natural resources in the name of the Russian people-countering the privatization of the nineties . The state takeover of numerous oil and gas industries has come with a dose of xenophobic rhetoric . For ex­ample, one agent of the FSB (the institutional heir to the KGB) was quoted as categorizing the Russian oligarchs in two groups-the good, ethnically Russian ones and the foreign ele­ments: "All Jews are traitors, oriented toward the West...

...However, this economic growth has slowed since the summer because of the global decline in oil prices, as well as the war with Georgia, which made foreign investors wary and caused a capital outflow of thirty billion dollars within just a month of the end of the conflict . Despite these sobering prospects, recent times have been a far cry from the tumultuous years under Boris Yeltsin, and the result is wide­spread support for Putin, Medvedev, and their United Russia party...

...Citing Kosovo's independence, the Kremlin has denounced the West for its hypocrisy in recognizing a breakaway region only when it is politically useful . A LL THIS BRINGS us back to Russian na­tionalism...

...Its members have also held rallies against neo-Nazi groups' persecution of minori­ties, showing that Nashi is a nationalist, not a racist, organization . What is troubling is that in today's Russia the line separating the two has become unclear...

...Although there is comparatively little ethnic tension among the population-composed in almost equal propor­tions of Moldavians, Ukrainians, and Rus­sians-the region is potentially volatile due to alleged human rights violations, organized crime, and arms trafficking...

...The long-term effects remain to be seen, but South Osetia and Abkhazia are on the way to becoming Russia's new satellite states...

...Indeed, police often tacitly support anti-immigrant discrimi­nation...

...The looming presence of nationalism in Russia's public discourse has gone hand in hand with the Kremlin's stance toward the former So­viet republics, Western Europe, and the United States...

...ORE THAN EVER before, nationalism isMa political tool that makes for an in­ creasingly volatile Russian society...

...Paradoxically, one of the ways that Putin's government has attempted to redefine national identity at home is by invoking Russia's struggle against fascism...

...Kasparov's choice to align himself with Limonov and the NBP reduces the already marginal chances for a liberal or social demo­cratic movement untainted by questionable alliances . Unfortunately, it seems that ques­tionable alliances are necessary for any oppo­sition to United Russia...

...R ussIA HAS claimed that NATO's 1999 war in the Balkans and Western recog­nition of Kosovo's independence from Serbia provide moral precedents for its own involvement in the Caucasus...

...Indeed, one of the purposes of creating Naski was to crack down on the NBP and counter its activist presence...

...24 . DISSENT 7 Winter 2009...

...Anticipating the key internal struggle over the next two cen­turies, Rousseau remarked in the Social Con­tract that Peter the Great went wrong because "he wanted to make Germans and Englishmen, when he should have made Russians...

...Russia's swift invasion, which not only secured the disputed regions but also led to a partial occupation of Georgian territory, has shown the West that the country wí11 take dras­tic measures to reclaim its traditional sphere of influence...

...The Specter of Russian Natíonalísm Rafael Khachaturían WHEN HE was named acting president of Russia on December 31, 1999, Vladimír Putin inherited a country still reeling from the Soviet Union's breakup : economic woes caused by the rapid privatization of state assets and the August 1998 financial crisis, ethnic unrest and war in Chechnya, and Russia's demotion from super­power status . Over the next seven years, the Putin government introduced a series of na­tional reforms aimed at making Russia once again a major player on the world stage...

...there must be an undemocratic order so that lead­ers preserve the right of decision-making ; Rus­sia must seek to expand itself into a new Soviet space, not only in eastern Europe and central Asia but also in China ; and an alliance must be formed with Germany, Japan, and Iran, to act as the Eurasian counterbalance to the At­lantic powers, mainly the United States and United Kingdom . Despite his intellectual af­finities with far right thought, Dugin does not propagate an explicitly ethno-nationalist or pan-Slavist position...

...Its members adopted a modified swastika and other Nazi symbols, while simultaneously portraying themselves as marching in the footsteps of the Black Hundreds, the pre-1917 monarchist and Orthodox reactionaries . The ethno-racial na­tionalist ideology of the RNU appealed to mostly unemployed and working-class urban youth who had experienced the social disinte­gration of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years . Formed in 1990, the group grew rapidly in size, and although membership estimates ranged from 15,000 to 50,000 according to different sources, it is known that it infiltrated high ranks in certain government agencies, most notably the Ministry of Internal Affairs . The RNU also found official support in re­gional administrations, particularly in the Stavropol and Krasnodar territories of south­ern Russia, where substantial numbers of eth­nic immigrants from the Caucasus lived . RNU members "patrolled" public parks and harassed demonstrators, gradually becoming an arm of the regional governments...

...Violence against minorities and foreigners has risen in recent years...

...He may be a more pragmatic face to the West, but the political machine behind him is firmly in place, with Putin as prime minister, pushing for a more aggressive Russian foreign policy and beating the nationalist drum . RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN is a graduate student at the New School for Social Research and a former intern at Dissent...

...He is a regular guest on the country's most popular political shows . More important, Dugin is known to be an especially close ad­viser to Vladislav Surkov, a top Kremlin insider currently serving as the deputy chief of staff and the government's chief ideologue . Dugm's 1997 book Osnovy Geopolitiki (Foundations of Geopolitics), with its promotion of a neo-Eurasianist doctrine, has generated an ongo­ing debate about Russia's role in global politics . Influenced by the work of the German geostrategist Karl Haushofer and the Russian historian Lev Gumilev, Dugin has revived the idea that Russia is a unique geographical en­tity culturally affiliated more with Asia than Europe, which therefore must seek its own path . World politics is a recurring confronta­tion between the commercial materialism of the maritime West and the organic spiritual­ism of the Eurasian heartland, of which Rus­sia is the center...

...Although much has been written about his consolidation of power, silencing the oppo­sition, and curbing the free media, it can't be denied that he retains a high degree of popu­larity among young and old...

...A candidate like Medvedev, almost completely unknown and never having held elective office before, could never have won the presidential election with­out Putin's backing . With Russia's reemergence and Putin's popularity, there are more than enough fac­tors to worry any democratic observer...

...According to Forbes, it is also the world's billionaire capital, with seventy­four...

...Dmitry Medvedev's election as the new president means that his term will be a continuation of the policies set in place by his predecessor and mentor, who stays on as prime minister and seems literally prime-"first in rank, authority, or significance," as the Oxford English Dictio­nary says . Putin's time in office has left its mark...

...Some observers have ar­gued that this means Putinism is ideologically empty and that the government remains fun­damentally realistic and pragmatic when bal­ancing between Western integration and nationalist posturing...

...The Russian Army currently maintains 1,200 troops there, which were initially part of a temporary peacekeep­ing force...

...While the government officially condemns these acts, victims complain that too often the police re­sponse has been nonexistent...

...ar­guing for Russian military involvement in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia to pro­tect Abkhazians who were granted Russian citi­zenship-a tactic that the Georgians saw as a step toward annexation . Even then, for Zhirínovsky the interests of the "Russian people" are the driving force of the country's policies...

...Eurasian geopolitics must DISSENT I Winter 2009 .21 serve the interests of the states involved...

...The SOVA Center, a Russian nongovernmental organization that tracks radical right-wing organizations, re­ported that from 2004 to 2007 there were 1,049 racially motivated attacks in Moscow and St...

...An outspoken admirer of the Italian traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola, he has also on more than one occasion sympa­thized with the left (Strasserite) branch of Na­tional Socialism . Virtually unknown during the nineties, Dugin's ideas now reach a wide audi­ence...

...Russian fascists are un­likely to accept such a policy : for them a true Russia means one purified of all foreign ele­ments...

...The war has brought new instabilities, yet it demonstrates Russian opposition to what Medvedev calls a unipolar world that is itself "unstable and fraught with conflict...

...In the eyes of many Rus­sians, Putin represents a stabilizing force, ready and able to advance the national interest after the country was eclipsed by the West for too long...

...Russia's relations with another Slavic nation, Belarus, have in recent years oscillated between distrust and coopera­tion, but last year the controversial Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, named Putin prime minister of the Belarus-Russia Al­liance...

...An extreme example is the disbanded Russian National Unity, which was the closest group that post-Soviet Russia has seen to a true fascist paramilitary group...

...It was during that time of socio­political crisis that Russians once again began to seriously think about their own national self­hood...

...Authorities have used the "fas­cist" accusation as a rallying cry against any opposition, whether it comes from actual neo-Nazi groups or democratic reformist parties such as Yabloko (Apple...

...Instead, neo-Eurasianism is a doctrine based on a nationalist patriotism and the necessity for the state's survival in today's global alignment . But empire and ex­pansionism are at work here, as Dugin argues for a campaign of coercion and political ma­neuvering (although not necessarily military force) to extend Russia's influence across the two continents while simultaneously blocking Western encroachment...

...Racially motivated attacks by skinheads are often recorded as minor incidents of hooli­ganism rather than serious offenses . People of foreign appearance are also consistently tar­ 20 . DISSENT I Winter 2009 geted for passport and registration checks . In the fall of 2006, when tensions between Rus­sia and Georgia were rising, the Russian gov­ernment cracked down on Georgians living in the country, deporting hundreds of people and urging Moscow schools to produce lists of stu­dents with Georgian names for local police...

...There are other instances of Russia's re­newed involvement in nearby regions . When, in the wake of the Georgian War, the Polish government reluctantly agreed to host U.S...

...United in their mutual dislike of Putin, Kasparov and Limonov joined with a small number of other parties to create the Other Russia coalition . The liberal anti-Putin parties, Yabloko and Soyuz Pravykh Sil (Union of Right Forces)-with no representation in the state Duma-refused to cooperate because of their concern over the inclusion of such radical ele­ments...

...Since 2005, Dugin has criticized Putin for not taking a firm enough stance against the United States . As Russia has become an in­creasingly important economic force, the Kremlin's foreign policy has split into a prag­matic desire for Western integration and a rhe­torical anti-Western nationalism . This is not a contradiction but the product of the economic liberalization of the post-Soviet era (which has brought great material gain) and the simulta­neous ideological backlash against the per­ceived loss of national prestige...

...As of now, Kremlin policy has been to op­pose neo-Nazi violence-in order both to save face on the international scene and to main­tain state authority over public life . But the state's overt nationalism is indirectly spurring radical activity at home, something that it has been reluctant to acknowledge . Nashi's ideol­ogy taps into the hostility that many young Russians already feel toward America and Eu­rope, reaffirming it with a dose of Manichaean patriotism . Nashi not only provides an emo­tional outlet for the young but also gives them the opportunity to ascend the government lad­der by making important connections-much as the Komsomol did during the Soviet era . While this year the government has announced plans to scale hack and reorganizeNaspi, it re­mains an active organization that reveals the state's new focus on promoting nationalism and Russian identity...

...Despite this divergence, both groups have actively perpetuated an aura of hostility and mistrust, which has only been intensified by the government's rhetoric . Nationalism is a dangerous political tool, and the Kremlin's resentment over its loss of empire and the en­croachments of the West into its traditional sphere of influence makes for a dangerously virulent politics . Although Medvedev was not counted as a member of the silovik group prior to his elec­tion and was thought by some to be a more moderate and "liberal" figure, his allegiance clearly lies with the Putinist Kremlin...

...Even more troubling is the chance that the line between the more "benign" na­tionalism of the Kremlin and the violent ultra­nationalism of the fascist groups wí11 begin to blur...

...Nevertheless, it is clear that Russia looks to solidify its presence in both Europe and Asia, maybe not to a full-fledged Eurasianism but to a more assertive foreign policy...

...Un­til recently, the economy had grown steadily for ten years, largely because of Russia's oil and natural gas reserves, which make up around 60 percent of its export earnings . Gazprom, the energy monopoly once chaired by Medvedev, supplies a quarter of Europe's natural gas...

...For example, the notorious Vladimír Zhirínovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, spent much of the past decade calling for state patriotism and Russian territorial expansion in Asia . It is true that Zhirínovsky values statist over ethnic na­tionalism and accepts the multí-ethnicity of the Russian nation . This past spring, in a sign of things to come, he appeared on the popular debate show K Barieru...

...and "Russia against occupiers...

...Georgia's hope for NATO membership height­ened Russian fears of Western encirclement, and after years of mounting tensions and Geor­gian-Ossetian skirmishes, the conflict rapidly escalated...

...Aside from the steady accumulation of power-the Kremlin authorities call it "sovereign democ­racy"-there is a revival of populist national­ism at home that coincides with Russia's increasingly hard-line foreign policies...

...His fascination with traditionalism and mysticism leads him to trace this opposition to a pre-historical and elemen­tal origin, but Dugin's prescriptions for Russia remain concrete...