Russian Modernisation—A New Paradigm

By the time of the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991 it had become increasingly accepted that the modernisation of society effected by Soviet communism had reached its inherent limits and, in particular, that the increased complexity of an industrialised society had exhausted the capacities for change of the centrally managed ‘planned’ economy and the rule of a single party claiming superior scientific knowledge of the management of society. The flexibility of a market economy and the possibility of choice between potential rulers seemed to offer a more appropriate institutional basis for the increased complexity of contemporary society and the relations between societies to be found in an increasingly globalised world.

It was widely assumed by Western observers therefore, that the superiority of the Western liberal capitalist model, based on a market economy and liberal representative democracy, had been confirmed. Although Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms were promoted as a programme for the modernisation of the communist system, and in the debates of the late 1980s in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe some dissidents and reform communists had entertained the idea of a new ‘third way’ that would be neither Soviet-style ‘communism’ nor liberal capitalism, the predominant view by the early 1990s was that the increasingly obvious problems faced by the Soviet system could only be resolved by the adoption of a market economy and a parliamentary democracy. As summarised by Pursiainen, ‘the liberal capitalist model was superior when the new modernisation phase started to dominate global economic developments … due to the fact that, at least domestically, it allowed bottom-up initiatives to flourish’ (Pursiainen 2012 pp. 2–3).

Moreover, in academic writing in the late 1980s and the 1990s it came to be generally assumed that the economic reforms under Gorbachev were taking the Soviet Union, and then post-Soviet Russia, along a path of transition to Western-style liberal capitalism. For example, Western interpretations of the perestroika reforms of the 1980s saw them as creating the conditions in which an evolutionary transition to capitalism would be possible. The significance of perestroika lay in its liberating elements of a suppressed market-oriented ‘second economy’ and allowing them a legal existence. Once allowed to exist in the open, the second economy would become the private sector and its logic would become obvious to more and more interests in Russian society, resulting in further reforms to transform the state-owned command economy in to a privately owned economy operating on market lines. At the same time perestroika enabled the development of a new middle class, made up of educated professional and skilled worker sections of society, which was ‘consumption oriented, respectful of property, and opposed to administrative restrictions’ (Rywkin 1989, p. 66). Similarly Jones and Moskoff (1991) saw the new cooperatives enabled by perestroika as the means of legalising the ‘second economy’ and thus establishing ‘private enterprise’ in the Soviet economy. The ‘cooperative stage of the economic transition’ laid the foundations for ‘the second stage in this development’ which ‘came in the autumn of 1990 with the announcement of broad and far-reaching freedoms for private enterprise’. In this transition process the cooperative reform was ‘highly functional’ because ‘a cadre of entrepreneurs was given the opportunity to test the waters and to learn by doing’ (Jones & Moskoff 1991, pp. xii–xvi, 133).¹

In post-Soviet Russia during the 1990s under Yel’tsin, economic policy shifted fully to the idea of achieving a transition to a capitalist economy. The ideas of the World Bank and the Washington Consensus became dominant as Western policy advisors such as Jeffrey Sachs gained influence and Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar introduced reforms to promote privatisation of state assets and the reduction of state subsidies to the population. By 1996 Yel’tsin felt able to declare that Russia had ‘made a strategic choice in directing its development: civil society, rule of law and the market economy’.² As noted by Mäkinen, Smith and Forsberg in this collection, within this discourse under Yel’tsin there was some discussion more specifically of modernisation, but mostly as a synonym for reforms, especially in the economy and technology. Then under Putin a more political dimension was then added to discussions of modernisation to include the state and the legal and healthcare systems. Under Medvedev the idea was promoted of a more comprehensive programme of modernisation based on democratic values, while Putin has favoured a more selective and conservative interpretation.

In response to these changes within Russia since the 1990s however, academic opinions have shifted again, so that the predominant view now is that Russia is not following a transition to liberal capitalism but is following its own different path of transformation. According to Lane (2014, p. 291), ‘in terms of political economy Putin moved Russia away from a chaotic economic formation in the direction of a state-led form of corporatist economy … [while] politically the country moved in the direction of competitive authoritarianism’. In this context modernisation is understood as involving a combination of economic, political and technological changes, ‘building a high-tech, great power Russia relying on lessons and technology borrowed from the West, and political modernisation based on Russia’s own national political culture’ (Pursiainen 2012, p. 5).

The character of Russia’s post-Soviet modernisation has therefore been complex and subject to a series of changing interpretations both among Russian political leaders and observers and analysts of Russia. This has created serious problems for an understanding of Russia and the changes it is currently undergoing. And although there has been some excellent research on different aspects of Russian society, economy, politics and culture, there is a concern that such work does not come together to form a satisfactory understanding of Russia ‘in the round’, in all its aspects. With this in mind a new Finnish Centre of Excellence was established in 2012, based at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki, bringing together specialist scholars on Russia from a wide range of academic disciplines, and aiming at the creation of a new paradigm in studying Russian modernisation. The ‘Choices of Russian Modernisation’ Centre of Excellence aims to meet a number of urgent practical and theoretical needs in academic communities worldwide. This collection of essays, published initially as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies, introduces some of the first examples of the output of the Centre’s research. It is hoped that each study in its own way will contribute to the construction of the new paradigm.

Russian modernisation revisited

In building a new paradigm there is both a practical need to better understand Russian modernisation, and a theoretical need to gain a better explanation of modernisation itself on a more abstract level.

The practical need to explain Russian modernisation

Fulfilling the practical need to explain Russian modernisation is a crucial task with regard to contemporary Russia, its development needs and the related global implications. The call for Russian modernisation has often been connected to a speech by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in his 2009 state of the nation address (Medvedev 2009), although similar expressions were already in President Putin’s speeches before. However, especially during Medvedev’s presidency, the slogan of modernisation became widespread. In fact it is an evident and dominant topic even in the contemporary situation where the public rhetoric is more concentrated on foreign policy challenges and the outside world tends to see a slowing down of the reform effort. In his presidential address in December 2014 Vladimir Putin emphasised that economic growth, technological modernisation, innovation and international competitiveness are among Russia’s top priorities. Only such elements, Putin argued, would guarantee the country’s influence on the world stage and its resilience as a nation (Putin 2014).

The topic remains relevant because after the collapse of the Soviet Union the Russian Federation has had to re-build its state identity and the associated political, social and economic systems, and the country must also define itself as a nation, a state and a society, vis-à-vis global development on one hand and the Soviet and Imperial Russian legacy on the other. Since the early 2000s, in an effort to consolidate power, Russia’s rulers have rallied behind a unifying conservative-liberal ideology that has partly replaced and partly built on Soviet and traditional models. A conservative turn and a modernisation effort at the same time seems to be a typical Russian paradox. Global social imaginaries and normative ideas concerning personal liberties, social-economic welfare, political freedoms and the rule of law are all key elements for any twenty-first century state as part of the evolving multi-level global order. These are global modernisation challenges that Russia must deal with.

The theoretical need to gain a better understanding and explanation of modernisation on a more abstract level

Eastern Europe’s transition has revitalised the need to further develop this conceptualisation (Alexander et al. 2006). The Russian case is an ideal one with which to dig deeper into the evolving nature of modernisation, given that it captures aspects of Westernising modernisation, Soviet modernisation, some anti-modern or traditional tendencies in the form of pan-Slavism and Eurasianism, and new variants of modernisation espoused by the so-called BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which are emerging global powers that, at least partly, defy any previous models. A number of choices must be made with regard to Russian modernisation. Roughly speaking, the key choices are between modernisation based on the Western democratic model, be it that of Europe or the United States or something else; modernisation based on the Eastern model, whether that is Russia’s own way, the Chinese way or something else (or authoritarian modernisation); or a refusal to modernise and a preference to look for and retain old traditions.

Previous research has not sufficiently considered all these dimensions of Russian modernisation, their mutual interrelationships and more generic theoretical possibilities. Despite some interesting theorisations concerning the various paths and forms of modernity (Arnason 1993; Eisenstadt 2000; Sachsenmaier et al. 2002; Schmidt 2006), and a near-consensual understanding that modern development can no longer be encapsulated in the traditional ‘West and the rest’ formula (Therborn 1995), Russian modernity has remained an enigma that social scientists have approached from various perspectives with somewhat atomistic results (Srubar 1991; Kotkin 1995; Ledeneva 2001, 2013; Lane 2006; Kivinen & Nikula 2006; Malle 2013; Gaddy & Ickes 2013; Beissinger & Kotkin 2014; Dutkiewicz & Sakwa 2015). Despite many significant empirical results and methodological epiphanies major consensus on conceptual points of departure does not seem to exist. In this edited collection Mihail Maslovskiy introduces the latest phases in the discussion on multiple modernities. How to bring agency and institutional formation within this debate seems to be a key challenge if we want to make this theorising heuristically interesting for empirical research.

The most widespread approach in Russia—the so-called tsivilizatsionnyj podkhod—sees Russia as a unique civilisation (Pastukhov 2006; Nureev 2009). Proponents of this approach have returned to traditional discussions and have revitalised the idea of Russia as a Eurasian civilisation (Dugin 1997, 1999; Danilevskii 2003; Abdikerova 2009) and this approach seems to have political influence even in the political interpretation of the Eurasian Union (Dutkiewicz & Sakwa 2015). In our view, this approach is problematic when evaluated from the point of view of empirically oriented social theory. Eurasians argue that Russia is destined to follow the path defined by its history, which is based on the Asiatic mode of production, authoritarian etacratism and collectivist cultural values. Defining Russian identity as unique seems to lead towards a totalising form of the path dependency argument. Russia is seen as different at all levels of society: in Russian values, forms of ownership, legal and political institutions and people’s attitudes, just to name a few areas. Like civilisation theories in general, Eurasian theory is problematic because it tends to be abstract and totalising in an essentialist vein. In the end of the day it implies arbitrary reductionism and the irrelevance of rigorous empirical research.

In the context of major Western theories, totalising approaches are also widespread. One influential theoretical tradition is based on the concept of the ‘patrimonial model’ (Pipes 1997; Rosefielde 2007). This perspective sees Russia as determined to stay on its path of state-dependent authoritarianism. In contrast, the ‘transition’ discourse emphasises the future (Heusala 2005; Kivinen & Nikula 2006; Larjavaara 2007), albeit in a finalistic manner. The transition paradigm sees Russia proceeding on a linear developmental path that is defined by the systemic features of the market economy: democracy, liberal administration and the rule of law. Both discourses see developments in Russia as being determined by inevitable structural and cultural constraints. Empirical studies, however, have shown that development is more hybrid in nature, connecting global and local influences in both formal and informal rules of the game (Burawoy & Verdery 1999; Berdahl et al. 2000; Ledeneva 2001, 2013; Mandel & Humphrey 2002; Johnson 2010; Khmelnitskaya 2015).

Talcott Parsons and modernisation theory

Perhaps the most influential body of writing in Western social theory attempting to develop a theory of social change at a more abstract level has been that of Talcott Parsons. In social theory Talcott Parson’s great synthesis is grounded on the concept of system. He identifies the basic functions of all systems (adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latency). He also defines money and power as the generalised media flowing within the system. Making a distinction between social system, personality system and cultural system Parsons defines the role of values in their relationship. Values are internalised within the personality system and institutionalised in the social system. Based on his theory of voluntaristic human action he argues that realms of social life have gradually separated from each other according to social functions. Economy, politics, religion and arts all emerged as separate spheres of human action. This separation can be read as a history of progress although the era of modernity emerges from very incomplete beginnings in a series of historical breaks known as scientific, industrial and democratic revolutions. Parsons sees the differentiation of functions and their separate institutionalisation as both enhancing human freedom and as increasing the range of human action. In this sense Parsons’ theory provides a sociological version of the Enlightenment understanding of modernity combining freedom and reason, autonomy and mastery as well as subjectivity and rationality (Wagner 2008, pp. 8–9). In Parsons’ view, modern society came to fruition only in the USA of the post-World War II era, although modernisation processes were moving in that direction for a long time. The Parsonsian modernisation theory suggested as well that these kinds of modernisation processes are continuously going on in other parts of the world.

Parsons sees modernisation as institutional differentiation and value generalisation. Comparing Western and Soviet forms of modernisation he sees the problems of the latter in three points: in the Soviet system the function of goal attainment is emphasised too much which means that political institutions are playing too large and economic institutions too little a role; this also implies that because of the lack of market economy power is playing too large a role as a generalised medium, and money is not significant enough; and on this basis Soviet modernisation can be characterised as infrastructural modernisation (urbanisation, industrialisation and increasing literacy) and not as institutional modernisation where the social institutions would have been properly differentiated (Parsons 1967, 1970, 1978).

In the 1950s and 1960s a slightly simplified version of Parsons’ modernisation theory was constructed to provide a historical explanation for the rise of the Western form of modernity and promoting market economy and democracy in other parts of the world. Wolfgang Knöbl (2001) has condensed the assumptions of modernisation theory in five points: firstly, modernisation is a global process which began with the industrial revolution in Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, but which now increasingly affects all societies and is irreversible; secondly, historical development can be seen as a modernisation process proceeding from so-called ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ societies, a sharp antithesis being assumed between modernity and tradition; thirdly, in traditional societies and countries of the Third World, personalistic attitudes, values and role structures dominate which, closely following Parsons’ pattern variables, can be summed up through terms such as ascription, particularism and functional diffuseness, and which are to be interpreted as hindrances to economic and political development; fourthly, in contrast, modern societies of the European and North American cultural area are defined in terms of achievement-related and universalistic values and functionally specific role patterns; and fifthly, the social changes leading to modernity will occur in a relatively uniform and linear fashion in the various countries.

Even if Parsons himself never really suggested this kind of linear modernisation, his theory comprises several strong assumptions of balance and value integration. Every sociologist knows how more than 50 years ago C. Wright Mills (1959) was criticising Parsons calling his approach ‘grand theory’, and showing how difficult it is to actualise Parsons’ concepts for any historical explanations. Parsons’ synthesis does not seem to require empirical mediations. Mills was as well one of the first to point out the self-congratulating aspect of the Western form of modernisation in Parsons’ theory. Numerous times Parsons has been rightly accused of providing an overly harmonious picture of Western society denying the existence of contradictions, oppression or exclusion linked with its institutions. For our argument it is also significant that Parsons pays little attention to how values are institutionalised. Nor does he really theorise unintended results of action. Parsons sees the cultural sphere in a straightforward way as values neglecting all theories of cultural binarities and pays no attention to connections between discourses and power (Kivinen 2002). Thus, in Parsons’ theory too, despite its seeming greater degree of flexibility and recognition of a wide range of processes of change, there are also totalising tendencies that stand in the way of a satisfactory understanding of the complexities of modernisation in a specific society such as that of Russia.

The main theoretical lesson from this review of theories, therefore, is that agency and choice have to be taken into account in the core theoretical points of departure. Structural constraints do matter but we should not start with the assumption that the actors cannot do anything about them. Giddens’ theory of structuration (to be discussed below) is based exactly on the observation that the actors not only reproduce the structures but also produce and change them.

Key concepts for a new paradigm

The aim of this collection of essays is to open up a new paradigm in post-Cold War Russian studies. Positioning Russian society within a history of modernity means linking up with classical sociology, as well as with contemporary debates of epochal interpretation, about post-modernity or a new modernity. In the case of the Soviet Union we have to face also further concepts of pseudo-modernity, eliminating modernity or even anti-modernity.

But how to use these grand classificatory concepts in empirical research? How to theorise modernisation in a way that can also explain the ongoing contemporary modernisation effort in Russia? Do we have some self-evident concepts to start with? What kinds of explanations are we looking for? What is the significance of empirical results for the theory? To what extent is theorising about coming up with creativity, speculation and imagination? Can we rely on existing paradigms or should we aim at creating new concepts, coming up with ideas about solving problems in a hypothetical and heuristic way? At what level will our concepts and statements be falsifiable?

Russian studies in general does not have a high profile in epistemological or methodological reflectivity. In this collection we try to show how Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory, as a conceptualisation of the constitution of society, can be the hard core of the new multidisciplinary paradigm (or research programme in Lakatos’ sense) in Russian studies. This hard core is abstract enough to avoid too strong functionalist assumptions of the classical modernisation theory and open enough to empirical research to avoid totalising explanations of Russia that previous too structurally based paradigms are suggesting. We argue that Giddens’ theory cannot be empirically tested but it opens a ‘protective belt’ consisting of specified concepts of structure and agency within several disciplines, leading to a series of propositions that can be empirically tested and periodically adjusted.

Within classical (functionalist) modernisation theory traditional and modern societies were counterposed using some of the Parsons’ key model variables. Instead of this kind of counterposing the new approach that we are suggesting aims at specifying the Russian way towards and through modernity in terms of institutional development by conceptually informed empirical structuration analysis. Consequently we argue for an approach without all-encompassing and totalising concepts of the Russian way of modernisation before empirical analysis. Instead, we suggest that a key is the generic theoretical approach in Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory. This approach is strong because it can be used for generating concrete research settings concerning the various challenges in the institutional development of Russia without too strong functionalist commitments concerning institutions. In this introductory essay we seek to specify this common starting point and introduce the ‘Finnish school in Russian studies’ in general terms.

The constitution of society as structuration

We argue that Russian modernisation should be studied as a complex structuration process in which both agency and structure make a difference. While systemic constraints do matter, they do not directly define the direction that will be chosen in modernisation issues. Looking more closely to Giddens’ concepts in analysing social relations we have to acknowledge both a syntagmatic dimension, the patterning of social relations in time–space involving the reproduction of situated practices, and a paradigmatic dimension, involving a virtual order of ‘modes of structuring’ recursively implicated in such reproduction. Structure thus refers to structuring properties allowing the ‘binding’ of time–space in social systems. Structure in this sense is always both constraining and enabling. The social systems comprise the situated activities of human agents, reproduced across time and space. Social systems as reproduced social practices exhibit structural properties. The most deeply embedded structural properties implicated in the reproduction of societal totalities are structural principles: ‘Those practices which have the greatest time–space extension within such totalities can be referred to as institutions’ (Giddens 1984, p. 17). More concretely defined structures comprise both rules and resources. Resources are media through which power is exercised.

Crucial to the idea of structuration is Giddens’ theorem of the duality of structure. The constitution of agents and structures are not two independently existing phenomena but the structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organise. However, human history is created by intentional activities but is not an intended project: the human knowledgeability is always bounded: ‘The flow of action continually produces consequences which are unintended by actors, and these unintended consequences also may form unacknowledged conditions of action in a feedback fashion’ (Giddens 1984, p. 27).

People act the way they do because they are located in a particular place in the structure of resources and constraints. Within the structures we have first of all a boundary of a social system and a regulation of its membership and a situs pattern comprising an institutional endowment, an informal but patterned access to resources and a set of chances, of risks and opportunities, over time. But people act as well based on their belonging to a particular culture, which comprises a sense of identity, a kind of cognitive competence as well as a pattern of evaluations consisting of a set of values and norms (Therborn 1995, pp. 7–15).

Several arguments can be suggested to support the view that Giddens’ theory should be the hard core of the new multidisciplinary research programme (or paradigm) in Russian studies.

First, Giddens’ theory is a synthetic social theory bringing together culture and power. However, his theory is not committed to any alleged master process of differentiation. Parsons’ evolutionary reflections as well as fundamental premises of the modernisation theories of Niklas Luhmann (1997) or Johann P. Arnason (1993) insist on the topic to functional differentiation as a key process of modernity. For Giddens the relationship between institutional complexes or subsystems is not given at the abstract level of general theory. The setting of boundaries between institutional complexes is a matter of actors and the internal logic of institutions is always to a large extent an empirical issue depending on actors’ understandings and intended and unintended results of their actions. Rather than postulating pre-given theoretical answers Giddens’ theory generates insight for concrete research settings.

Secondly, Giddens does not refer to fixed structures but points to the fact that structures come into existence and fade away in dynamic processes of structuration. In these processes actors are continuously changing the structures. Even Russian modernisation should not be seen as some kind of evolution and development without the actors and agency. Furthermore, in this process people are also observing themselves, modifying their intentions and executing their actions differently. This brings to the research focus even the prospect of learning and changing understanding of interests and intentions. If we want to study the institutions we cannot see them straightforwardly as the institutionalisation of pre-given values. Rather we should thematise them as a multifaceted tension field of various intended and unintended structuration processes.

Thirdly, for Giddens people’s power resources really make a difference. People are not (not even in Russia) cultural or economic dopes driven by an endogenous systemic mechanism. Rather they are knowledgeable actors who use their specific power resources in various and constantly changing ways. Because of contradictory interests, intended and unintended results of action, history at the level of nation states and institutions will always have new beginnings—and then some periods of reproduction and continuous development based on established structural principles. This means that the functionality of the system has a rather limited timescale and is an empirical issue. In Russian modernisation general assumptions of functionality or differentiation seem almost completely lacking in any heuristic theoretical value. It is far easier to accept as a methodological starting point Giddens’ more modest ‘episodic’ conception of history.

In order to develop our research setting more concretely we have to proceed from the abstract to the concrete by ‘operationalising’ the various aspects of structuration in each of five challenges. This can be done by creating middle range theoretical concepts and by advancing by means of specified hypotheses. While structuration theory as such is not falsifiable in these more concrete sets of theoretical propositions we should aim at creating falsifiable propositions concerning the concrete historical explanations of structuration processes.

In each of the clusters that make up the research programme of the Finnish School of Excellence our analysis should identify Russian development or modernisation effort in terms of the following: resources; structural constraints; agency in terms of identity, cognitive resources and organisational capacities; agency in terms of frames and schematas, cultural codes, values and norms; the reproduction basis of institutions, intended and unintended results; and the role of informal networks and patterns.

In this way, departing from structuration theory we take distance from reduction into abstract categories (for example differentiation and integration in the functionalist tradition and the work of Arnason) as well as from the totalising efforts to subsume arbitrarily all kinds of phenomena to all-encompassing civilisational concepts.

Five macro-level modernisation challenges

In order to grasp the internal Russian political and cultural constellations of modernisation and their position vis-à-vis the larger global community, the Finnish Centre of Excellence, which is represented in the essays of this collection, proposes a multi-level, interdisciplinary approach, which enables close dialogue and interaction between studies on different themes and periods. Our intention is that this new approach will eventually result in a new paradigm in Russian studies. The ‘Finnish school’ represents an interdisciplinary and multi-positional research programme based on shared research problems regarding a joint set of methodological and theoretical approaches. It combines in-depth empirical analysis of Russia with theoretical ambition that extends beyond the Russian context.

The Centre of Excellence advances a Finnish approach that emphasises choice and agency, intended and unintended results and the social constitution of culture. In this regard, in order to grasp the emphasis on choice and agency and to account for both intended and unintended consequences, the Centre of Excellence has developed a concept of five ‘Russian challenges’ as a heuristic way of defining the problem. Russia is not a coherent or omnipotent actor. Rather it is a complex institutional tension field formed by various structuration processes in which various actors make the process happen based on their own often contradictory interests and intentions. The five major challenges Russia faces are: diversification of the economy; development of the political system, whether on the basis of a model of democracy or authoritarian governance; a choice of the model for the welfare regime; the basic orientation in foreign policy, whether conflict or integration; and the construction of a post-communist form of rationality and cultural identity.

The results of the Centre of Excellence are expected to challenge traditional and contemporary views on Russian modernisation. At the same time, the programmatic intention seeks to ‘bring Russia back to Russian studies’ (Cohen 1999), and to the core of social theory as such. The Centre of Excellence maintains that Russia should not be seen only as an empirical case; we view it as a challenge for our understanding of basic social processes of modernisation in general.

On the basis of the structuration theory we have arrived at a research setting presented in Figure 1. The essays in this edited collection represent some aspects of a more comprehensive research programme based on five clusters.

Figure 1. Aspects of Russian Modernisation.

The first challenge: diversification of the economy. Russia’s modernisation prospects will be based on its economy regardless of the approach adopted. Therein the key challenge is economic diversification. While Russia must reap full benefits from its energy resources to generate the necessary finances, it also must lessen its excessive energy dependency in the domestic economy and foreign trade. Our approach to diversification refers not only to the diversification of industry but also to the social and organisational forms of public and private units involved in economic activities. Over the last six years, a new research programme has been developed in Finland on the structuration of Russian energy policy (Aalto 2012; Aalto et al. 2014), the policy frames guiding it and the role of energy in economic modernisation in general. In his essay Pami Aalto analyses Russia’s choices for modernising its energy sector as revealed in the case of Arctic offshore oil. He integrates discussion on various structural dimensions with an analysis of the varying interests of several significant actors. He argues that the simultaneous realisation of the Russian energy companies’ profit interests, the fiscal interests of the government and sustainability and social development interests depends on the proper diagnosis of four structural dimensions: the resource geographical, financial, institutional and ecological. However the energy resources as such are not the main problem of Russian modernisation contrary to what part of the diversification debate suggests. Rather the problem is the frames Russian actors use to weigh the policy environment through which the resource wealth can be actualised. This seems to support one of the basic hypotheses of the Centre of Excellence: if, following Giddens, structure is understood as comprising both the resources and rules of the game, Russia’s problems, on a general level, are less to do with resources and more to do with agency and the rules of the game.

This collection also contains two essays on this thematic area focusing on the structuration of modernisation problems during Soviet times. Katalin Miklossy and Sari Autio-Sarasmo have previously shown that even under socialism, economic development was not possible endogenously but presupposed interaction with the Western world and ‘neo-endogenous’ competition within the socialist bloc. In her essay Sari Autio-Sarasmo shows how scientific-technical cooperation with the West had both intended and unintended effects within the Soviet system, finally jeopardising some of its basic structural principles. In a similar vein Katalin Miklossy presents a dynamic process in which the structural principle of competition was adopted by the Soviet bloc both in economy and in culture.

The second challenge: a hybrid political regime. The development of Russian institutions remains at the core of the modernisation process. All the sub-projects in this thematic area are connected to the question of what the Russian state is like today and what will determine its institutional development in the future. Although all sub-projects are organisationally independent, they are linked to each other through the connecting concepts of agency, rules of the game and cultural self-understanding. The cluster team produces a comprehensive picture of Russian institutional development and the study of agency, and therefore includes political and legal systems, public administration, companies, social networks and the media. In this volume Vladimir Gel’man and Andrei Starodubtsev examine the results of several Russian policy reforms in the 2000s. Again we can see the relevance of agency and structuration in their analysis. There is no ‘structural causation’ from electoral authoritarianism to individual reform projects. They conceptualise the tax and budget reform as a success story where intended results were achieved and the conditions for the reproduction of the system in 2000 were established. However, many structural constraints of the authoritarian modernisation project and the lack of strong democratic agencies are causing failures in several reform efforts. The authors argue that this failing can even jeopardise the incentive for the elite of the whole project of authoritarian modernisation.

Jussi Lassila’s analysis of the Russian elite and the opposition shows some of the key processes of discursive constitution of the actors in the political scene. The opposition seems to operate within the same populist discourse as the elite. Lassila calls this Russia’s ideational paradox. He argues that Putin’s personal vigour has been a successful substitute for the weak institutional system but Russia’s post-Soviet development has created a highly productive soil for the emergence of a popular rupture. Whether the populist opposition is able to substitute electoral authoritarianism with new structural principles that would be more competitive and democratic, remains a problem awaiting any resolution.

The third challenge: the welfare regime. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, socialist welfare structures have experienced rapid, large-scale changes and constant reformulation. Modernisation and institutional reforms have not necessarily proceeded as expected and Russian welfare institutions remain rather weak and of low quality. This cluster examines welfare on the one hand as structures and processes, and on the other hand as cultural meanings and agency. At the national level in Russia, welfare will be assessed through federal policies and relevant indexes. At the meso and micro levels, we deal with different (state and non-state) welfare providers, agents within them and various vulnerable groups; class structures; as well as the professionalisation of work within welfare institutions. At the same time welfare is also approached through problems concerning bodily, sexual and gender issues. International and domestic migration and demographic development and their links with the development of welfare regimes are also taken into account. Thus, in addition to the macro-level foundations that provide the basic structure for the other levels, considerable emphasis is put on agency, including gendered tendencies. Empirically, the most critical task is to map out the choices and alternatives to the current post-socialist welfare regime, which is usually conceptualised as a hybrid of liberalism and ‘new statism’.

In this issue Meri Kulmala and Anna Tarasenko present a study of one of the many actors in welfare policy, that is Russian veterans’ organisations which they see as brokers between the state and society. As a matter of fact, the Russian elderly is one of the very rare societal groups that openly protested against the liberalisation efforts of the Putin era in the 2000s. In their empirical analysis Kulmala and Tarasenko conclude that the interests of the veterans are heard and brokered in several ways, ranging from case-by-case problem solving to legislative initiatives, even at the national level. Veterans’ organisations also seem to have multifaceted relationships with the Russian authorities: organisational connections with United Russia party exist at the same time as a never-ending conflict of interest concerning social rights and individualisation of risks. However, at least at the local and regional level the interest representation seems to be real although it has a non-Western clientelistic logic of action.

The fourth challenge: foreign policy. The intertwined nature of domestic politics and international relations means that the quest for modernisation also affects Russian foreign policy. Russia’s foreign policy has been based on the aspiration to establish and strengthen its position as a great power. However, there are several ways to define the term ‘great power’. If Russia wishes to modernise according to the Western model, it must be recognised as a fully-fledged liberal democratic country that is embedded in key international liberal organisations. If Russia chooses the Eastern-style of modernisation, it will use its economic power, especially in energy politics, to control key areas close to its borders and make its voice heard as a great power. The greatness of a traditional great power would be based on military power and direct territorial control. The modernisation theme includes three levels of great power identity in Russian policy making.

In their essay Sirke Mäkinen, Hanna Smith and Tuomas Forsberg analyse the interaction process of Russian foreign policy with the other key actors in the international arena. On the one hand Russia is not an omnipotent actor, nor should its foreign policy be seen as complete implementation of intentions. On the other hand Russia’s modernisation cannot be understood without taking into account Russia’s relations with other countries. Analysing the question of a visa-free regime between the EU and Russia the authors show how the wishes and obstacles of Russian modernisation are relevant in this particular issue. Coming back to the relevance of structuration theory we can raise fundamental questions in this respect. For example, should the Ukrainian crisis be seen as an unanticipated and unintended effect of interaction between Russia and the West? The resources of foreign policy are changing and multifaceted and the action frames of great powers are not completely regulated by international law.

Markku Kivinen has previously used the concept of frame in order to highlight that in international relations we are dealing with forms of interaction rather than approaches of individual states (Kivinen 2009a). The frame is not mere ideology since it comprises real actions and practices as well as expectations about the other players. The three frames which exist in international relations at the same time are the following: the continuation of the Cold War; the sphere of interest struggle between multipolar great powers; and consensual international interaction based on integration and common interest in avoiding the risks. For example, nuclear deterrence should be analysed as belonging to the first frame as a basic structural principle defining also the limits in the sphere of interest game. Because the West does not want to start a nuclear confrontation, the Russian sphere of interest, never explicitly recognised within international law, has been implicitly taken into account both in Georgia and in Ukraine.

The fifth challenge: rationality and culture. The projects within the ‘Rationality and Culture’ cluster place Russia’s modernisation in a historical framework, which is investigated through its major cultural entanglements. These include the discourse on rationality, imperial legacies, language and identity, mechanisms of self-understanding, and the collision between Orthodox Christianity and Islam. All of these subject areas are critical to Russia’s future and expertise on them is crucial for an analysis of the alternatives for Russia’s modernisation. Cultural practices and institutions are a vital part of the modernisation process. The historical process of Russia’s modernisation is rooted in the Enlightenment period and intense empire building and it draws attention to questions of secularisation and religion, nation and empire.

Secularisation used to be one of the key processes that social sciences connected to modernisation. Recently, as Kaarina Aitamurto argues in her essay, a paradigmatic assumption has turned towards desecularisation. This discussion has led to a more nuanced conceptualisation of both secularisation and desecularisation. In Russia top-down desecularisation has replaced scientific atheism. The Russian Orthodox Church has returned to the Cesaropapist tradition of cooperation with the state. More saints have been canonised during the Putin regime than in the previous thousand years (Kahla 2007). However a more detailed analysis of Russian religiosity shows that everyday life remains still rather detached from the disciplinary power of the church. There seems to be many agencies also within the religious communities. Kaarina Aitamurto shows that the sharp division into ‘approved’ official religiosity and occasionally heavily sanctioned ‘unofficial’ activity is especially evident in the case of Islam.

An interdisciplinary approach

Although interdisciplinarity is not a new idea, there has been a growing emphasis on this approach both in the philosophy of science and in science policy documents. Scientific work is traditionally organised in disciplines. A commitment to a discipline seems to ensure that theories, concepts and methods are used according to the rules of the game within a particular field of science. However, during the last 20 years this has been challenged and interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity have become objects of intensive enquiry for scholars, funding agencies and even governments. Interdisciplinarity is often linked with more general transformation in the relations between science and society. Immanuel Wallerstein’s Gulbenkian Commission’s report in the United States (Wallerstein 1996), the German Science Council report 2000 and HM Treasury report (2006) all suggested that interdisciplinarity should lie at the heart of new accountability of science which could ensure more responsiveness to the needs of society.

Following William H. Newell’s argument we would suggest that study of Russian modernisation is multifaceted and coherent and thus it should be interdisciplinary. On this basis a new paradigm for studying Russian societal development can be further specified. Systems in general are made up of components that interact. This interaction can be direct through mutual causation or indirect through feedback loops. Those feedback loops can be positive (enhancing the behaviour) or negative (dampening or reducing the behaviour). Because of this overall pattern of behaviour that interaction affects, the system as a whole is more than the sum of its parts. Each subsystem and even a plane in a subsystem can have its own emergent properties.

Newell and Meek (2000) and Newell (2001) distinguish three kinds of systems: simple, complicated and complex. A simple system may have multiple levels of components and connections arranged in a hierarchy, but the relationships between those components are predominantly linear. A proper example would be a road map. A complicated system loosely links together simple systems using a linear relationship. A telling example would be a road atlas that links together state maps into a national system. A complex system links together combinations of components, simple systems and even complicated systems using predominantly nonlinear connections. Newell gives an example:

Think of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) overlay of maps for the same urban area, including not only one of the streets and neighbourhoods taken from road atlas, but also maps of water and sewer districts, fire districts, school districts, police precincts, rapid transit, regional planning administration, political wards, ethnic enclaves, the county, watersheds, soil profiles, water quality indicators, and many others. The typical large American city has several hundred administrative units, each charged with the responsibility for one of those maps. Each map represents a sub-system which can be usefully studied in its own terms from a single perspective. But those sub-systems are connected by an intricate series of often-overlooked relationships that can be subtle, intermittent in their operation, and occasionally produce responses that are disproportionally large or small—in short by a network of nonlinear relationships. The decisions of the school board about the location of a new school can have unanticipated effects on the ethnic distribution of neighbourhoods and thus on voting patterns of wards or traffic patterns, which in turn affect highway maintenance; the resulting political shifts and changing decisions about new highway construction can have unanticipated consequences for watersheds and water quality; and so on. (Newell 2001, pp. 8–9)

The phenomena modelled by most complex systems are multifaceted. Seen from one angle, they appear different than they do from another angle, because the viewers see facets (represented as subsystems) where different components and relationships dominate. Like the phenomena modelled (represented typically as a set of equations or a diagram) by all systems, their overall pattern of behaviour is self-organising, thus different from the sum of its parts and not fully predictable from them. Because the various facets are connected by nonlinear relationships, the overall pattern of behaviour of the phenomenon (and thus the system) is not only self-organising but also complex. As such the pattern is only quasi-stable, partly predictable and dynamic (Newell 2001, p. 2). And it must be taken into account that social systems should be regarded as widely variable in terms of the degree of system-ness they display. Because of the unintended results of human action, social systems rarely have the sort of internal unity which may be found in physical and biological systems (Giddens 1984, p. 377).

If we want to analyse the patterns in this kind of a complex system, Newell argues, an effective method for modelling such a phenomenon must offer insight into its separate facets as well as into the self-organising, complex pattern produced by their overall interaction. The individual facets can be studied within traditional disciplines whereas interdisciplinary study is a logical candidate for developing specific, whole, complex systems to study such phenomena. Consequently, an interdisciplinary approach draws insights from relevant disciplines and integrates those views into a more comprehensive understanding. Our understanding is that Giddens’ theory of structuration allows the thematisation of research focus in terms of various agencies and structures, but this sociological theory does not give specific concepts for economic, political and cultural analysis. We do not have master discipline in the sense of Parsons’ functionalist sociology. The relationship between various facets of society is not theoretically given. It is an empirical issue.

Integration and synthesis

Klein (1990) and Klein and Newell (1997) have abstracted steps in the interdisciplinary process from messy issues of teamwork. As a starting position an interdisciplinary team must aim at understanding the ethos of the other disciplines. This implies a research culture which folds interpersonal issues of interdisciplinary teams into conceptual issues of interdisciplinary epistemology.

Before characterising the specificities of our own synthesis let us once again return to Parsons. When he develops his voluntary theory of social action his main intention is to draw a demarcation line between economic action and other forms of voluntaristic social action (Joutsenoja 1996, 2011). While doing this he defines the particular discipline of sociology in a new way. In this sense Parsons’ theoretical construct contradicts the imperialism of economics (Mäki 2009) which could be characterised as a pathological form of interdisciplinary approach. The interdisciplinary approach should allow neither methodological reductionism nor totalising forms of synthesis. Parsons’ own functionalist theory however, tends towards a form of sociological imperialism.

In order to make a valid new interdisciplinary integration we have to approach Russian society on the basis of four broad theoretical and methodological frameworks. The first level is the phenomenological description of the basic institutional matrix of Russian society and state (Kivinen 2000; Kivinen & Nikula 2006). The intention here is to provide a multidisciplinary overview of the formation of Russia and its state institutions. In addition to conventional political institutions, studies in our programme also analyse social structure, gender, technological development and the spatial formation of Russian development. Providing a background to the individual institutions are investigations into the distinctive ethos of Russian society.

Secondly, the contemporary transition is hermeneutically placed in the context of Russian tradition and intellectual self-reflection (Kivinen 2009b). Our approach to Russian intellectual history should be interactive, in a dialogical sense. Russia’s history of ideas and traditions of social science have to be taken into account, while state-of-the-art Western humanities and social sciences contribute to the dialogue.

The third level is the theory of social structuration. The processes of the construction and erosion of the Russian state and nation are analysed as the institutionalisation of intended and unintended results of particular hegemonic projects, frames of action and reform programmes. The relationship between political ideologies and actual social processes in Russian studies has been over-simplified, as if the social institutions were a mere implementation of ideas. Serious examination of unintended results in social and historical analysis opens up new perspectives for understanding both Soviet history and contemporary Russian transformations (Giddens 1984; Kivinen 2006, 2009a, 2009b 2013).

Finally, the project seeks a range of critical approaches to Russian society (Kivinen 2009a, 2009b). Russia has always been a source of various forms of social critique and even utopia (Stites 1989). In the contemporary situation, we should look for the actual alternatives of social development and the forms of critical social discourse that might be relevant for Russia’s future. However, we should make this conceptual development open to a new form of critical analysis. Peter Wagner has shown the fundamental problems in traditional critical approaches to the capitalist form of modernity. First of all it tends to deploy its concepts in such a way that they are stretched to cover too large a variety of societal institutions, comprising practically all the history of the north-western quarter of the world since the Enlightenment. Wagner argues that we have to take the justifications for certain historico-institutional arrangements seriously. We should open the critical analysis of the experiences of changes in the ways of dealing with the various problématiques of modernity. These problématiques—the political, epistemic and economic ones—exist in all societies, but we need a historico-institutional analysis of the modern solutions to them. These are based on the modern idea of autonomy but the particular justifications of particular institutional settings cannot be conceptually concluded from this. Wagner’s argument is methodologically significant because it shows that we need to have empirically available justifications for changing configurations of modernity.

In sum, it seems to be the case that the standard left wing critique of capitalism does not itself live up to the requirements of modernity. Rather than fully accepting the commitment to autonomy and, as a consequence, the plurality of outcomes of the exercise of autonomy, it reasons the issue away by establishing a conceptual hierarchy between the different problématiques of modernity as well as between the realms in which those problématiques are dealt with. This move amounts ultimately to nothing but a rejection of these problématiques—which are seen as problematic only under capitalist conditions, but finding self-evident solutions once capitalism is overcome (Wagner 2008, p. 109).

One of the key methodological challenges for our analysis of Russian modernisation is to specify the critical approach that would be based on concrete analysis of contemporary institutional conditions. Instead of foundations provided by a strong philosophy of history, or committing ourselves to a very strong social ontology, we need concepts which can show empirical strength in a given situation. Social theorising should move from a left-wing Hegelian form of critique, departing from the view that reason can see objectively possible social conditions that do not yet exist (Marcuse 1941), towards more modest Weberian forms of critical theory emphasising the unintended results of action in particular historical conditions of justification.

For the creation of a new synthesis regarding Russian modernisation we can at this point suggest four basic hypotheses.

First, all modernising societies have to face the antinomies of modernisation that the Bolsheviks wanted to solve by eliminating the traditional elements of society. Western modernisation is based on the coexistence of modern and traditional, but modernisation as such is not linear and not without contradictions and antinomies (Kivinen 2011).

Second, contemporary Russian modernisation is based on coexistence and plurality in the Western sense, but is lacking a clear functional differentiation of the society’s institutional spheres. In order to analyse the interaction between economy and politics, welfare and the political system, culture and foreign policy, we need historical ideal types and new explanatory models. These cannot be found in the Western modernisation paradigm that presupposes functional differentiation. This vein of research has not been explored so far, and the horizontal cooperation between the clusters in the Centre of Excellence programme opens new research perspectives in this respect.

Third, modernisation in Russia is not a one way street. Rather the past strikes back in two ways: firstly, as a restoration of the old pre-revolutionary Russia which can be seen in the growing role of the Orthodox religion and imperial traditions, sometimes even monarchism; and secondly, as a continuity in the unintended results of the Bolshevik project of demonisation and, at times, taboos in politics, such as the role of the secret police, nomenklatura privatisation, and the sustainability of pre-modern forms of networks in ordinary life.

Fourth, hybrid structures are created both on the macro and micro levels of society. This does not concern solely the political system but law, administration and welfare structures as well.

These hypotheses underline the need for exploring the interaction between the micro and macro levels of society. The Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies proposes a multi-level, interdisciplinary approach, which enables close dialogue and interaction between studies on different themes and periods. By doing this we aim at redefining the research agenda on Russian modernisation.

Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki

University of Glasgow

Notes

¹ An alternative conclusion however, was that perestroika was an ultimately unsuccessful reform programme aimed at correcting the over-centralisation, corruption, and lack of responsiveness of the Soviet system, but a programme that actually led to a deeper crisis of the system that led to an increasing radicalisation of economic policy as different factions of the elite adopted more radical policy ideas, under the heading first of perestroika or restructuring, and later of privatisation and, in post-Soviet Russia, shock therapy. Rather than any smooth evolutionary process being discernible, there was a continuing struggle between groups with different interests and different emerging property rights, both to preserve any advantages they enjoyed in the old Soviet system and to gain any advantages open to them from the changes the reforms were introducing. Finally, rather than elites or policy makers providing any clear programmes to engineer a transition from one form of economic regulation to another, the main impression was of political leaders muddling through, changing their minds, replacing one failed policy option by another, and as was seen in the case of privatisation, choosing policy options out of political expediency rather than as a result of any systematic analysis (see Cox 1996; see also Kivinen 2011).

² Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 14 June 1996, p. 7.