Civilizations as Ontological Security?

Abstract

The study addresses the phenomenon of civilizational discourses in Russia from the perspective of ontological security theories. It argues that the discourse on “Russian civilization” or the “Russian world” is a form of establishment identity-building practices that marries a culturalist vision of Russia to narratives of traumas or ruptures in its biographical narrative. Thus, the holistic notion of a civilization is an attempt to construct unity across ideological, spatial, and societal cleavages associated with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and earlier critical points in Russian history. The article further argues that much of the discourse on the “Russian world” produces a notably “securitized” or “closed” identity that resists change and inhibits Russia’s adaptation to its postimperial circumstances.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the participants of the World International Studies Committee’s Early Career Researchers workshops in Prague (September 10–12, 2018) where this paper was discussed; in particular, Liberty Chee, who served as discussant, Gunther Hellman, Karen Smith, and, above all Stefano Guzzini, whose comment helped me reshape the analytical focus. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose comments have been truly helpful. They pointed out things I was unable to see and allowed me to take the argument to an entirely new level.

Notes

1. By implication, the notion of existential anxiety that accompanies change and novelty, is not always “something to be assiduously avoided, but may actually be welcomed” as providing chances for a more authentic (in the Heideggerian sense) life (Browning and Joenniemi 2017, 32).

2. I would like to thank Stefano Guzzini for suggesting this interpretation.

3. In adopting this taxonomy, I am following Jutta Weldes (Weldes 2006).

4. Thus, the 2008 Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation states that “global competition, for the first time in modern history, takes on a civilizational dimension, which implies competition between different ‘value landmarks’ [tsennostnye orientiry] and models of development within the limits of universal principles of democracy and market economy.”

5. As Laruelle sums it up, “civilizationism refers to the affirmation of cultural differentialism, ethno-differentialism, or cultural racism. These various terms describe a single idea—namely, that every nationality has unique specificities (cultural, ethnic, racial) that cannot be preserved without some form of segregation” (Laruelle 2010, 26).

6. Notably the World Russian People’s Council, which the Patriarch addressed, was officially dedicated to “Russia as a Civilization-Country.”

7. Starting from 2007 the concept was institutionalized in the Russian World Foundation as part of Russia’s public diplomacy and soft-power efforts and was actively promoted by members of the Russian establishment. Its heyday came with the so-called Russian spring in 2014 when the concept was used by Putin to justify the annexation of Crimea as well as by those who were creating a geopolitical image of Novorossiya (the self-proclaimed separatist “republics” in eastern Ukraine).

8. Thus, the notion of the Russian world can also include those who had to emigrate in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent civil war in Russia, adding another trauma, even if a less sensitive one.

9. In 2008 Kara-Murza’s book Manipuliatsiia soznaniem [Mind Manipulation] (2000) was placed by the Kommersant newspaper among the twenty most sold books in political essayism in Russia.

Additional information

Funding

The Swiss Foundation “Avec et pour Autres” funded the World International Studies Committee’s International Workshops for Early Career Researchers, including the workshop hosted by the Faculty of International Relations of the University of Economics in Prague where this paper was discussed.