Market meets nationalism: making entrepreneurial state subjects in post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

This paper argues that nationalism and neoliberalism should not be considered as conflicting ideologies, but can enter into a productive association. This association creates an entrepreneurial nationalism that people can actively embrace as self-governing subjects in pursuit of a good life and successful career, rather than as subjects governed through state-mandated projects from above. The paper illustrates this argument with material from nine months of fieldwork at a Russian elite university. While students at that university strive to develop their potential and increase their market value to be successful in the competition for the best jobs, they also emphasize that developing themselves is not antithetical to serving Russia and being true to one's country. On the contrary, advancing Russia and advancing one's own career are articulated as two sides of the same coin. At the same time, the Russian nationalist project is reframed in entrepreneurial terms: making the Russian nation strong is about developing its potential and raising its competitiveness in the global marketplace.

Keywords:

• nationalism
• patriotism
• education
• neoliberalism
• subjectivation
• Russia

Notes

It is important to note that I write of nationalism and neoliberalism as ideologies here, not as policies or economic models (as is the case for much of the literature on economic nationalism, for example).

In this article, I am not engaging with the growing literature on so-called ultra-nationalism or radical nationalism, called natsionalizm in Russia, that focuses on extremist movements and parties (Allensworth 104–22; Beichelt 505–26; Umland 30–39). Rather my focus is on state nationalism, also understood as patriotizm in Russia. While this brand of nationalism arguably takes less violent, racist and xenophobic forms, it is nonetheless an important phenomenon for legitimising state actions. Precisely because it often appears inconspicuous, it becomes naturalized as a powerful national ideology (see Billig 37–59). I use “nationalism” therefore for the conceptual academic term and “patriotism” for the concrete manifestation of state nationalism in Russia. See also Laruelle (In the Name of the Nation 7) who rejects the nationalism/patriotism binary: “This arbitrary division, positing two distinct phenomena with defined borders, is in fact an instrument in the hands of the Kremlin, which attributes to itself the ‘good’ so-called patriotic nationalism and condemns the ‘bad’ or extremist nationalism of its opponents. In fact the patriotism advocated by the presidential administration is a specific version of Russia's traditional state nationalism … it seeks to emphasize the historical and cultural markers that, directly or indirectly, work above all to define Russia as a state.”

The importance of nationalism for understanding the constitution of society in Russia is not least evidenced by three recent book-length treatments of the subject (Laruelle, In the Name of the Nation; Laruelle, Russian Nationalism; Oushakine).

Conversely, neoliberalism could also be seen as undermining nationalism and creating the condition for its failure. Ferguson (2003), for example, charts the story of the online magazine Chrysalis in Zambia, which was launched by a group of young, educated Zambians to craft a new nationalism. The magazine, however, ceased to exist after a few issues, as the new economic realities of global market integration started to undermine the movement for a national renewal. According to Ferguson, the idea of creating a nation seemed out of date in Zambia, where success was increasingly determined in terms of exploiting global market opportunities.

While sharing the general concern about the need to understand nationalism from the subjects' point of view, this study does not subscribe to the distinction between elites and ordinary people in Fox and Miller-Idriss (536–76), which has been criticized by Anthony Smith (“Everyday Nationhood” 563–73). My research context contains elements of both elite and non-elite forms of nationalism: on the one hand everyday nationhood is reflected in students' mundane lives, but on the other hand those students represent a rather privileged group that is not ‘ordinary’ in a number of respects.