Civilizational Nationalism

Abstract

“Civilizational nationalism,” the view that Russia follows a special path that predisposes it to authoritarian government, affects both the country's prospects for full-fledged democracy and the way in which academic and political circles discuss those prospects.

This article is the republished version of:

Civilizational Nationalism

Notes

English translation © 2012, 2015 from the Russian text © 2010 Kennan Institute, Tri kvadrata, and the authors. “Tsivilizatsionnyi natsionalizm: rossiiskaia versiia ‘osobogo puti,’” in Ideologiia “osobogo puti” v Rossii i Germanii: istoki, soderzhanie, posledstviia, ed. E.A. Pain (Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2010), pp. 171–210.Aleksandr Markovich Verkhovskii is director of the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Emil Abramovich Pain, Doctor of Political Science, is a professor at the State University—Higher School of Economics, and head of research at the Moscow office of the Kennan Institute.Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield. Translation reprinted from Russian Politics and Law, vol. 50, no. 5. doi: 10.2753/RUP1061-1940500503

G.G. Diligenskii, “ ‘Konets istorii’ ili smena tsivilizatsii?” in Tsivilizatsii (Moscow, 1993), no. 2, p. 44.

^2. E.A. Pain, Mezhdu imperii i natsiei (Moscow: Novoe izdatel'stvo, 2004), p. 97.

^3. A.L. Andreev, “ ‘My’ i ‘oni’: k kharakteristike vneshnepoliticheskikh september–october 2012 orientatsii rossiiskogo obshchestva,” in Rossiia v usloviiakh transformatsii, ed. S.S. Sulakshin (Moscow, 2002), no. 21, p. 60.

^4. A.D. Sakharov et al., Inogo ne dano. Perestroika: glasnost’, demokratiia, sotsializm (Moscow: Progress, 1988).

^5. The article “The End of History?” was published in 1989 in the journal The National Interest, and sparked simultaneous discussions in several Russian journals in 1990–91. The full text of this author's book was translated only in 2004: F. Fukuiama, Konets istorii i poslednii chelovek (Moscow: ACT, 2004) [translation of Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992)—Ed.].

^6. M. Khodorkovskii, “Krizis liberalizma v Rossii,” Vedomosti, no. 52 (1092), 29 March 2004.

^7. T. Mann, “Rassuzhdeniia apolitichnogo,” trans. from German by E. Eliseeva, Vestnik Evropy, 2008, no. 24.

^8. R. Paips, Rossiia pri starom rezhime (Moscow: Zakharov, 2004) [translation of Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974)—Ed.].

^9. “Russkim nuzhen pravitel’” (Richard Pipes interviewed by Piotr Zychowicz), Rzeczpospolita, 7 November 2007.

^10. Vladislav Surkov, “Russkaia politicheskaia kul'tura. Vzgliad iz utopii,” speech given to the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 8 June 2007.

^11. Vladislav Surkov, “Suverenitet—eto politicheskii sinonim konkurentosposobnosti,” transcript, pts. 1–2, Moscow, February 2006.

^12. M. Iur'ev, “Krepost’ Rossiia,” in Krepost’ Rossiia: proshchanie s liberalizmom. Sbornik statei (Moscow: Iauza and Eksmo, 2005), p. 59.

^13. Iu. Afanas'ev, “My—ne raby? Istoricheskii beg na meste: ‘osobyi put’’ Rossii,” Novaia gazeta, 5 December 2008.

^14. See, e.g., Dmitrii Volodikhin, “Nam nuzhna samoderzhavnaia monarkhiia, neskol'ko smiagchennaia riadom predstavitel'nykh uchrezhdenii,” in Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo: vchera, segodnia, zavtra, ed. I.M. Kliamkin (Moscow: Novoe izdatel'stvo, 2007).

^15. See, e.g., M. Iur'ev, “Estestvennym dlia russkikh variantom gosudarstvennogo ustroistvo iavliaetsia smes’ ideokratii i imperskogo paternalizma,” in Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo.

^16. See, e.g., A.B. Kobiakov and V.V. Aver'ianov, eds., “Russkaia doktrina” (Sergievskii proekt) (Moscow: Iauza, 2007).

^17. A. Verkhovskii, “Ideinaia evoliutsiia russkogo natsionalizma: 1990-e i 2000-e gody,” in Verkhi i nizy russkogo natsionalizma, ed. Verkhovskii (Moscow: Tsentr “Sova,” 2007), p.10.

^18. In nineteenth-century Russian legal literature, a “black hundred” [chernaia sotnia] was the name given to a population that paid taxes collectively and was divided into military-administrative units called “hundreds.” This term was used for self-identification by extremely reactionary, antirevolutionary, and anti-Semitic organizations that arose in Russia during the first antimonarchist revolution of 1905–7. The Black Hundreds included such organizations as the Union of the Russian People, the Union of the Archangel Michael, the United Nobility, the Russian Monarchist Party, and the Society for Active Struggle Against the Revolution. The Black Hundreds participated in large-scale pogroms against Jewish settlements; they also assassinated political opponents. The term “Black Hundreds” entered into widespread use in Russian in reference to ultraright politicians and anti-Semites. A substantial section of contemporary Russian nationalism, if it does not trace its roots directly to the Black Hundreds of the early twentieth century, does not deny its ideological proximity to this movement.

^19. For a more detailed account of this movement, see A. Verkhovskii, Politicheskoe pravoslavie: russkie pravoslavnye natsionalisty i fundamentalisty, 1995–2001 gg. (Moscow: Tsentr “Sova,” 2003).

^20. M. Lariuel’ [Marlène Laruelle], “Aleksandr Dugin, ideologicheskii posrednik,” in Tsena nenavisti. Natsionalizm v Rossii i protivodeistvie rasistskim prestupleniiam (Moscow: Tsentr “Sova,” 2005), pp. 226–53.

^21. Eurasianism was a philosophical-political movement active among Russian émigrés in the 1920s and the 1930s. N.S. Trubetskoi, P.N. Savitskii, G.V. Florovskii, and P.P. Suvchinskii laid out its fundamental principles in a collection of articles published in Sofia in 1921 under the title Exodus to the East [Iskhod k Vostoku]. The authors identified Russia as a special cultural-historical type—“Eurasia.” They stressed its ties to the Asiatic-Turkic world and counterposed it to Europe—that is,

^22. For a more detailed account, see G. Kozhevnikova et al., Radikal'nyi russkii the West. natsionalizm: struktury, idei, litsa (Moscow: Tsentr “Sova,” 2009), pp. 248–53, 270–80.

^23. See, e.g., A. Dugin, “Predislovie. Alen de Benua i ‘Evropeiskaia ideologiia’,” in Protiv liberalizma: k chetvertoi politicheskoi teorii, ed. Alain de Benoist (St. Petersburg: Amfora, 2009), pp. 5–9.

^24. The most complete history of the RNU is V. Likhachev and V. Pribylovskii, Russkoe Natsional'noe Edinstvo, 1990–2000, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2005).

^25. Verkhovskii, “Ideinaia evoliutsiia,” pp. 13–14.

^26. In mid-February 2005, the party's leader, Dmitry Rogozin, declared at a meeting of regional activists that it would oppose not only the government but also the president. This declaration followed a collective hunger strike by members of the Rodina faction [in the Duma] as a protest against the “monetization of social benefits” being carried out by the Russian government. In March 2005, while campaigning for the Moscow city duma, Rogozin sought to change Rodina's image as a “Kremlin project” and the “president's special-purpose commando force” [spetsnaz]. At a press conference on 22 March, he announced that the party should engage directly in organizing protest actions and “become the voice of the protest voter.” Rogozin said that in this respect Rodina should become an ally of the CPRF and named United Russia as the party's main adversary. Under the political conditions prevailing in Russia, such declarations by a party leader were equivalent to the political suicide of the party concerned. That very summer, the Rodina Party in the Duma split into several independent factions, and subsequently the party lost its chance to participate in election campaigns at any level. It is noteworthy that Rodina was barred from those elections in response to a petition filed by the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), which accused Rodina of xenophobic propaganda. A similar and no less well-grounded petition against the LDPR filed by Rodina was turned down.

^27. K. Krylov, 17 otvetov. Naibolee rasprostranennye voprosy k russkim natsionalistam i otvety na nikh (no place or publisher, 2009).

^28. Kobiakov and Aver'ianov, “Russkaia doktrina,” p. 864.

^29. G. Zvereva, “Russkie smysly dlia novoi Rossii? Opyt prodvizheniia ‘Russkoi doktriny,’ ” in Verkhi i nizy.

^30. Ibid., p. 128.

^31. R. Abdulatipov, “Kavkazskaia tsivilizatsiia: samobytnost’ i tselostnost’,” Nauchnaia mysl’ Kavkaza, 1995, no. 1, pp. 55–58.

^32. D. Iskhakov, Problemy stanovleniia i transformatsii tatarskoi natsii (Kazan: Master Lein, 1997), pp. 178–83, 186; R. Khakim, Metamorfozy dukha (k voprosu o tiurko-tatarskoi tsivilizatsii) (Kazan: Idel-Press, 2005).

^33. A.Sh. Bakiev, “Adygskaia tsivilizatsiia” (abstract of candidate's diss., Nalchik, 1998); G.I. Tafaev, Bolgaro-chuvashskaia tsivilizatsiia: proshloe, nastoiashchee, budushchee (Cheboksary: Chuvashskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2000); F.S. Tumusov, “Tsivilizatsiia Sakha: mesto v mirovom soobshchestve,” Tiurkskii mir, 1998, no. 1, pp. 12–14.

^34. On Panarin as a theoretician of civilizational nationalism, see M. Lariuel’, “Aleksandr Panarin i ‘tsivilizatsionnyi natsionalizm’ v Rossii,” in Russkii natsionalizm: ideologiia i nastroenie, ed. A. Verkhovskii (Moscow: Tsentr “Sova,” 2006), pp. 165–82.

^35. A.S. Panarin, “Ot formatsionnogo monologa k tsivilizovannomu dialogu,” Kommunist, 1991, no. 9, p. 23; A.S. Panarin, “Vozvrashchenie v tsivilizatsiiu ili ‘formatsionnoe odinochestvo,’ ” Filosofskie nauki, 1991, no. 8, pp. 3–16.

^36. A.S. Panarin, “Pravoslavnaia tsivilizatsiia v global'nom mire,” Moskva, 2001, no. 3, pp. 128–40; Panarin, Pravoslavnaia tsivilizatsiia v global'nom mire (Moscow, 2002).

^37. A. Losev, Istoriia antichnoi estetiki. Itogi tysiacheletnego razvitiia (Moscow, 2000).

^38. S.G. Kirdina, “Institutsional'naia struktura sovremennoi Rossii: evoliutsionnaia modernizatsiia,” Voprosy ekonomiki, 2004, no. 10, pp. 89–98; S.G. Kirdina, Institutsional'nye matritsy i razvitie Rossii (Novosibirsk, 2001).

^39. V. Shnirel'man, “Vremia tsivilizatsii: tsivilizatsionnyi podkhod kak natsional'naia ideia,” in Rossiiskaia modernizatsiia: razmyshliaia o samobytnosti, ed. E. Pain and O. Volkogonova (Moscow, 2008), p. 211.

^40. A. Belov, “Imperskii marsh russkogo budushchego,” Internet-izdanie APN, 13 November 2006 (www.apn.ru/publications/article10883.htm—all Web site addresses accessed 10 August 2012—Ed.]).

^41. See, e.g., the polemical notes of P. Sviatenkov, “Imperiia i ee impertsy,” Internet-izdanie APN, 23 June 2006 (www.apn.ru/publications/article9903.htm).

^42. Iur'ev, “Estestvennym dlia russkikh,” p. 169.

^43. A. Sevast'ianov, Vremia byt’ russkim. Tret'ia sila. Russkii natsionalizm na avanstsene istorii (Moscow: EKSMO, 2004).

^44. D. Volodikhin, “Diskussiia v Fonde ‘Liberal'naia missiia’” (www.liberal.ru/articles/cat/1271).

^1. G.G. Diligenskii, “ ‘Konets istorii’ ili smena tsivilizatsii?” in Tsivilizatsii (Moscow, 1993), no. 2, p. 44.

^45. A.S. Panarin, “Paradoksy evropeizma v sovremennoi Rossii,” Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 1997, no. 3.

^46. V.S. Nikitin, “O prezidentskikh kachestvakh G.A. Ziuganova: On soedinil v sebe dve ipostasi—kommunista i patriota-gosudarstvennika, srazhaiushchegosia za spasenie Rossii,” official site of the CPRF, 7 January 2008 (http://kprf.ru/vibory2008.chronicle/54161.html [page not found—Ed.]).

^47. For a more detailed account of various aspects of the theory of “Orthodox nationalism,” see A. Verkhovskii, “Tserkovnyi proekt rossiiskoi identichnosti,” in Sovremennye interpretatsii russkogo natsionalizma, ed. M. Lariuel’ (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2007), pp. 171–88.

^48. “Poslanie Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii Vladimira Vladimirovicha Putina Federal'nomu sobraniiu RF” (16 May 2003), Rossiiskaia gazeta, 17 May 2003.

^49. V. Shnirel'man, “‘Nesovmestimost’ kul'tur’: ot nauchnykh kontseptsii i shkol'nogo obrazovaniia do real'noi politiki,” in Russkii natsionalizm: ideologiia i nastroenie, pp. 183–222.

^50. O. Karpenko, “ ‘Suverennaia demokratiia’ dlia vnutrennego i naruzhnogo primeneniia,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas, 2007, no. 1.

^51. “Dlia protsvetaniia vsekh nado uchityvat’ interesy kazhdogo. Interv'iu per vogo vitse-prem'era pravitel'stva Rossii Dmitriia Medvedeva glavnomu redaktoru zhurnala “Ekspert” Valeriiu Fadeevu,” Ekspert, 24 July 2006 (www.expert.ru/printissues/expert/2006/28/interview_medvedev).

^52. G. Kozhevnikova, “Ul'trapravye tendentsii v prokremlevskikh molodezhnykh dvizheniiakh,” in Russkii natsionalizm mezhdu vlast'iu i oppozitsiei, ed. V. Pribylovskii (Moscow: Tsentr “Panorama,” 2010), pp. 4–17.

^53. See the detailed statistics in the appendixes to the last annual report of the (Moscow: Tsentr “Sova,” 2010), pp. 127–41.

^54. M. Iur'ev, Tret'ia imperiia. Rossiia, kotoraia dolzhna byt’ (St. Petersburg and Moscow: Limbus-Press, Izdatel'stvo K. Tublina, 2007).