Performing ethnic relations in Russia's North Caucasus: regional spectacles in Stavropol’ krai

Abstract

Using materials gathered during fieldwork carried out in Russia in 2008 and 2009, this paper examines the ‘Day of Stavropol’ krai 2009’ celebration and links it to debates on ethnic relations, identity and nationalism in post-Soviet Russia. It is argued that celebrations, festivals, parades and other ‘spectacles’ are significant, yet often overlooked, influences on ethnic relations. Although authorities at national and regional scale play a prominent role in governing ethnic relations, it is often the case that they revert to Soviet-era practices – such as the ‘folklorization’ of ethnic groups – and produce a narrative that proclaims the ‘eternal harmony’ of ethnic relations. Given widespread ethnic tensions that exist in Russia, such a representation of ethnic relations is far from the reality lived by people in everyday life. Thus, this paper explores how citizens' understandings of ethnic relations relates to that portrayed by state authorities.

Keywords:

• ethnic relations
• identity
• spectacles
• parades
• Russia
• North Caucasus

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was funded by a ‘Central and East European Language Based Area Studies’ (CEELBAS) Doctoral Studentship from the ESRC (2007–10), and the paper was submitted while the author held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (Ref ES/J00216X/1). The paper was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Washington, D.C. in April 2010, and was subsequently presented at a Tabula Rasa Human Geography Seminar at the University of Birmingham in March 2011. It has been much improved by comments from both audiences, as well as from Judith Pallot and Richard Powell. Thanks are due to Ailsa Allen for drawing both maps, and to Oleg Golubchikov for correcting my Russian transliteration. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. I use the word ‘spectacle’ here in a general sense to describe events in the landscape that combine various aspects of celebrations, festivals and parades. I am aware that others use the word with more specificity (see, for example, Daniels and Cosgrove 1993).

2. Comaroff and Comaroff (2009) note that a similar process of the ‘folklorization’ of ethnicity has taken place over recent decades for the purposes of capital accumulation, reflecting the changing relationship between culture and the market. In the context of neoliberalism, ethnicity has been transformed into a commodity.

3. For example, post-Soviet Victory Day parades in Red Square, Moscow, replicate the gigantic scale and overt symbolism that characterized Soviet-era parades.

4. For example, in 2005 Vladimir Putin reinstituted Day of National Unity (Den’ narodnogo edinstva) holiday on 4 November in order to replace Day of Accord and Reconciliation (Den’ soglasiya i primireniya) on 7 November, which officially commemorated the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917.

5. The other members of the NCFD are the republics of: Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and North Ossetia-Alania. Adygea, the seventh ethnic republic in the North Caucasus, is an enclave within Krasnodar krai and is a member of the Southern Federal District.

6. In their work on ‘Europeanization’ processes on the European ‘periphery’, Jones and Subotic (2011, 542) argue that nation-states with ‘uncertain or transitional identities … use performative symbols, such as carnivals, festivals or cultural events to express their fantasies about power and equality within the international system’.