The New Russian Nationalism Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–15 Edited by PAl KolstO AND Helge BlakkisruD The New Russian Nationalism THE NEW RUSSIAN NATIONALISM Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–15 2 Edited by Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: www. edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud, 2016 © the chapters, their several authors, 2016 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 1042 7 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 1043 4 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 1044 1 (epub) The right of Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). v Contents List of Figures vii List of Tables x Acknowledgements xi Notes on Contributors xii Introduction: Russian nationalism is back – but precisely what does that mean? 1 Pål Kolstø 1. The ethnification of Russian nationalism 18 Pål Kolstø 2. The imperial syndrome and its influence on Russian nationalism 46 Emil Pain 3. Radical nationalists from the start of Medvedev’s presidency to the war in Donbas: True till death? 75 Alexander Verkhovsky 4. Russian ethnic nationalism and religion today 104 Anastasia Mitrofanova 5. Everyday nationalism in Russia in European context: Moscow residents’ perceptions of ethnic minority migrants and migration 132 Natalya Kosmarskaya and Igor Savin the new russian nationalism vi 6. Backing the USSR 2.0: Russia’s ethnic minorities and expansionist ethnic Russian nationalism 160 Mikhail A. Alexseev 7. Rallying ’round the leader more than the flag: Changes in Russian nationalist public opinion 2013–14 192 Mikhail A. Alexseev and Henry E. Hale 8. How nationalism and machine politics mix in Russia 221 Henry E. Hale 9. Blurring the boundary between civic and ethnic: The Kremlin’s new approach to national identity under Putin’s third term 249 Helge Blakkisrud 10. Russia as an anti- liberal European civilisation 275 Marlene Laruelle 11. Ethnicity and nationhood on Russian state-aligned television: Contextualising geopolitical crisis 298 Stephen Hutchings and Vera Tolz 12. The place of economics in Russian national identity debates 336 Peter Rutland Bibliography 362 Index 407 vii Figures Figure 1.1: A typology of Russian nationalisms 23 Figure 6.1: Search frequency on Google for the term ‘Crimean Tatars’ in the Russian language in Tatarstan and the cities of Moscow and St Petersburg (January 2013–June 2014) 164 Figure 6.2: Preferences for Russian territorial identity, ingroup pride, political preferences and economic valuations among ethnic Russian and non-Russian respondents in the 2013 NEORUSS surveys 175 Figure 6.3: Russia territorial identity preferences in the 2013 NEORUSS surveys among ethnic Russian and non-Russian respondents 177 Figure 6.4: Dominant preferences for Russia’s state identity across ethnic groups in the 2013 NEORUSS survey 185 Figure 6.5: Prospective group status in four Russia state identity scenarios 186 Figure 7.1: Agreement that the current Ukrainian leadership is . . . 196 Figure 7.2: ‘If presidential elections were held today, for whom would you vote?’ 199 Figure 7.3: ‘Do you believe the ethnic diversity of the population strengthens or weakens the new russian nationalism viii Russia?’ – based on nationwide survey samples from 2005, 2013, and 2014 205 Figure 7.4: Share of respondents who strongly opposed their family members marrying migrants belonging to ethnic groups other than their own 208 Figure 7.5: Factors singled out by the respondents as most uniting/dividing the peoples of Russia and Ukraine 211 Figure 7.6: Preferences for the territorial boundaries of the Russian Federation 214 Figure 8.1: Per cent responses to ‘What should be the borders of Russia?’ 242 Figure 11.1: Frequency and intensity of ethnicity- related news as a percentage of the overall news content 306 Figure 11.2: Frequency of ethnicity-related news inside and outside the Russian Federation, Vremia and Vesti 307 Figure 11.3: Intensity of ethnicity-related news inside and outside the Russian Federation, Vremia and Vesti 308 Figure 11.4: Salience of ethnicity-related news, Vremia and Vesti 309 Figure 11.5: Intensity of each category as a percentage of all ethnicity-related news, Vremia 311 Figure 11.6: Intensity of each category as a percentage of all ethnicity-related news, Vesti 311 Figure 11.7: Frequency of Russian Orthodox Church- coded stories over the total recording period, Vremia and Vesti 314 Figure 11.8: Intensity of Russian Orthodox Church- coded stories over the total recording period, Vremia and Vesti 315 Figure 11.9: Frequency of migration-coded stories inside and outside the Russian Federation over the total recording period, Vremia 321 figures ix Figure 11.10: Frequency of migration-coded stories inside and outside the Russian Federation over the total recording period, Vesti 322 x Tables Table 6.1: Comparison of means test between ethnic Russian and non-Russian respondents in 2013 NEORUSS surveys on select outcome variables 173 Table 6.2: Responsiveness to Putin’s message that ethnic diversity strengthens Russia in a split- sample experiment, 2013 NEORUSS surveys in the Russian Federation and the cities of Moscow, Vladivostok and Krasnodar 181 Table 7.1: ‘What is Novorossiia?’ 198 xi Acknowledgements This book has been made possible through a research project on ‘Nation-building, nationalism and the new “other” in today’s Russia’ (NEORUSS) 1 funded by the Research Council of Norway, under the NORRUSS programme, project number 220599. Additional funding has been provided by the Freedom of Expression Foundation (Fritt Ord). The project involves research- ers at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo, Norway and the Research Group on Russia, Eurasia and the Arctic at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo, Norway in addition to ten researchers from five different countries (France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States). 1 <www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/projects/neoruss> (last accessed 9 March 2015). xii Notes on Contributors Contributors Mikhail A. Alexseev is Professor of Political Science at the San Diego State University, USA, where he has taught since 2000. His publications focus on threat assessment in interstate and internal wars, ethnic relations, immigration attitudes and nationalism, with a regional focus on Eurasia. He is the author of Immigration Phobia and the Security Dilemma: Russia, Europe, and the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2006), ‘Societal Security, the Security Dilemma, and Extreme Anti-Migrant Hostility in Russia’ ( Journal of Peace Research , 2011) and ‘The Asymmetry of Nationalist Exclusion and Inclusion’ ( Social Science Quarterly , 2015). In addition, he has published scholarly articles in Political Science Quarterly , Political Behavior , Political Communication , Post-Soviet Studies , Eurasia Border Review , Europe–Asia Studies , Nationalities Papers , Post-Soviet Geography and Economics and other peer-reviewed outlets. Alexseev has directed multi-year research projects on migration, ethnic demographics, xenophobia and ethnic relations funded by the National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (Title VIII). Since 1999 he is a member of the Program on New Approaches to Research on Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia), currently based at the George Washington University, USA. Helge Blakkisrud is Senior Researcher and Head of the Research Group on Russia, Eurasia and the Arctic, Norwegian Institute of contributors xiii International Affairs, Oslo, Norway. He is also Editor in Chief of the Scandinavian language peer-reviewed area studies journal Nordisk Østforum . In 2009–10 he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA. His research interests include the development of centre–region relations in the Russian Federation, in particular the reform of intra-executive relations. He has also published on state- and nation-building in unrecognised states in Eurasia. His books include Centre–Periphery Relations in Russia (Ashgate, 2001, co-edited with Geir Hønneland), Nation- building and Common Values in Russia (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, co-edited with Pål Kolstø), Tackling Space: Federal Politics and the Russian North (University Press of America, 2005, co- edited with Geir Hønneland), The Governors’ Last Stand: Federal Bargaining in Russia’s Transition to Appointed Regional Heads (Unipub, 2015). He has published peer-reviewed articles in Post- Soviet Affairs , Europe–Asia Studies , Geopolitics , East European Politics , Ethnic and Racial Studies , Nationalities Papers and Communist and Post- Communist Studies Henry E. Hale is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, USA and most recently the author of Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2015). His previous work has won two awards from the American Political Science Association (APSA), for his book Why Not Parties in Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and his article ‘Divided We Stand’ ( World Politics , 2005). He is also the author of The Foundations of Ethnic Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and a wide range of journal articles. During 2009–12, he served as Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, and he is currently editorial board chair of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization His ongoing research focuses on issues related to nationalism, ethnic politics, political regimes and elections, with a focus on Russia and other post-Soviet countries. the new russian nationalism xiv Stephen Hutchings is Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester, UK and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He has published six monographs and five edited volumes on various aspects of Russian literary, film and media studies, including Russian Modernism: The Transfiguration of the Everyday (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age: The Word as Image (Routledge, 2004), Television and Culture in Putin’s Russia: Remote Control (Routledge, 2009, co-authored with Natalia Rulyova) and Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television: Mediating Post-Soviet Difference (Routledge 2015, co-authored with Vera Tolz). He has held five large research grants with the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council since 2000. Hutchings was President of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies 2010–13 and is currently Associate Editor of the Russian Journal of Communication Pål Kolstø is Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway since 1990. His main research areas are nationalism, nation-building, ethnic conflicts and nationality policy in Russia, the former Soviet Union and the Western Balkans. Kolstø’s main publications include: Russians in the Former Soviet Republics (Hurst & Co, 1995), Nation-building and Ethnic Integration in Post-Soviet Societies: An Investigation of Latvia and Kazakstan (Westview Press, 1999, editor), Political Construction Sites: Nation-building in Russia and the Post-Soviet States (Westview Press, 2000), National Integration and Violent Conflict in Post- Soviet Societies: The Cases of Estonia and Moldova (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, editor), Nation-building and Common Values in Russia (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, co-edited with Helge Blakkisrud), Myths and Boundaries in South-Eastern Europe (Hurst & Co, 2005, editor), Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts: Representations of Self and Other (Ashgate, 2009, editor), and Strategies of Symbolic Nation-building in South Eastern Europe (Ashgate, 2014, editor). He has published roughly forty articles in English-language refereed journals in addition to numerous publications in other languages. He is a recipient of six large research grants to study nation-building and contributors xv ethnic relations in the post-Soviet world and the former Eastern Europe. Natalya Kosmarskaya is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Central Eurasian Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia). She is also a Deputy Editor in Chief of the Russian language academic journal Diaspory . Her areas of research are ethnic and diaspora studies, migration studies, urban sociology and Central Asian studies. Within these broad disciplines, she has prioritized post-Soviet migration to Russia, the position of the Russian-speakers in the newly independent states, trajectories of ethnic/social iden- tity change in the post-Soviet (urban) context, adaptation of immigrant/minority communities and their relationships with the receiving population in different ethno-cultural milieus and formation and (de)construction of ethno-cultural stereotypes. Kosmarskaya has published extensively on the above-mentioned topics in Russian and English (more than seventy publications, including two books). She has contributed to a number of col- lected volumes and to academic journals both in Russia and in the West, such as Acta Eurasica , Ethnographic Review , Nationalism and Ethnic Politics , Nationalities Papers , Europe–Asia Studies , Journal of Multicultural and Multilingual Development and Russian Journal of Communication . Her last book is ‘ Children of the Empire’ in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Mental Shifts and Practices of Adaptation (Russians in Kyrgyzstan, 1992–2002) (Natalis, 2006, in Russian). Marlene Laruelle is Research Professor of International Affairs and Associate Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, USA. She explores con- temporary political, social and cultural changes in Russia and Central Asia through the prism of ideologies and nationalism. She has authored Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia (Palgrave, 2009) and Russia’s Strategies in the Arctic and the Future of the new russian nationalism xvi the Far North (M.E. Sharpe, 2013). She is currently working on Russian and Western European intellectual connections and has recently edited Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Russia–Europe Relations (Lexington, 2015). Anastasia Mitrofanova is Chair of Political Science, Church– State Relations and the Sociology of Religion at the Russian Orthodox University of St John the Divine, Moscow, and Professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. Mitrofanova’s research interests include religious politicisation, religio-political movements, Orthodox Christianity and politics, fundamentalism and nationalism in post-Soviet states. She has published the books Politizatsiia ‘ pravoslavnogo mira ’ (Nauka, 2004) and The Politicization of Russian Orthodoxy: Actors and Ideas (ibidem-Verlag, 2005). Her most recent publications include ‘The Russian Orthodox Church’ (co-authored with Zoe Knox) in Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty- First Century (Routledge, 2014, edited by Lucian N. Leustean) and ‘Orthodox Fundamentalism: Intersection of Modernity, Postmodernity and Tradition’ in Orthodox Paradoxes: Heterogeneities and Complexities in Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy (Brill, 2014, edited by Katya Tolstaya). Emil Pain is Director General of the Centre for Ethno-Political and Regional Studies, Moscow, and Professor of Political Science, National Research University–Higher School of Economics. He has published thirteen books and more than 300 articles, focus- ing on nationality politics, ethnic conflict and terrorism in Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia. From 1996 to 1999 he served as President Boris Eltsin’s adviser on nationality issues. In 2000–1 he was a Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Conflict Resolution at the Kennan Institute (Washington, DC, USA). His main publica- tions include Between Empire and Nation: The Modernization Project and its Traditionalist Alternative in the National Policy of Russia (Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2004, in Russian), The Ethnopolitical Pendulum: Dynamics and Mechanisms of Ethnopolitical Processes in Post-Soviet Russia (Institut sotsiologii RAN, 2004, in Russian), Tolerance against Xenophobia: Foreign and Russian Experiences contributors xvii (Academia, 2005, in Russian, co-edited with Vladimir Mukomel), ‘Socio-Cultural Factors and Russian Modernization’ in Waiting for Reform under Putin and Medvedev (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, edited by Lena Jonson and Stephen White), and ‘The Ethno-political Pendulum: The Dynamics of the Relationship Between Ethnic Minorities and Majorities in Post-Soviet Russia’ in Managing Ethnic Diversity in Russia (Routledge, 2013, edited by Oleh Protsyk and Benedikt Harzl). Peter Rutland is a Professor of Government at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, USA, where he has taught since 1989. He previously taught at the University of Texas, Austin, USA and the University of London, UK. He has been a Fulbright Fellow at the European University at Saint Petersburg, Russia and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. From 1995 to 1997 he was Assistant Director of the Open Media Research Institute in Prague. He is Associate Editor of Russian Review and Editor in Chief of Nationalities Papers , the journal of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. He blogs about nationalism at http:// nationalismwatch.wordpress.com. He is the author of The Myth of the Plan (HarperCollins Publishers, 1985) and The Politics of Industrial Stagnation in the Soviet Union (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and editor of Business and State in Contemporary Russia (Westview Press, 2001). His current research topics include the state of research and development (R&D) in Russia and the role of identity politics in the failure of democracy in Russia. Igor Savin is a Researcher at the Centre for Central Eurasian Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia). His main research areas include ethnic identity in Central Asia, ethno-political conflicts in Central Asia, micro- level interaction between different ethno-cultural communities in Southern Kazakhstan and Southern Kyrgyzstan and labour migration from Central Asia to Russia and Kazakhstan, hereun- der the integration of migrants into receiving societies. Savin is the author of more than fifty publications in Russian and in English on the above-mentioned topics. His main publications include the book chapters ‘Titular Population Has the Edge in Kazakhstan’ the new russian nationalism xviii in Local Governance and Minority Empowerment in the CIS (Open Society Institute, 2003, edited by Valery Tishkov and Elena Filippova) and ‘Successful Integration but Inadequate Protection: The Meskhetian Turks in Kazakhstan’ in The Meskhetian Turks at a Crossroads: Integration, Repatriation or Resettlement (LIT Verlag, 2007, edited by Tom Trier and Andrei Khanzhin), as well as contributions to academic journals both in Russia and in the West. He is also co-editor and co-author of North Caucasus: Views from Within (Saferworld, 2012) and co-author of ‘Kyrgyzstan: Tragedy in the South’ ( Ethnopolitics Papers , 2012, co-authored with Anna Matveeva and Bahrom Faizullaev). Vera Tolz is Sir William Mather Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester. She has published widely on various aspects of Russian nationalism, identity politics and the relationship between intellectuals and the state in the imperial and Soviet periods. Her books include Russian Academicians and the Revolution (Macmillan, 1997), European Democratization since 1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, co-edited with John Garrard and Ralph White), Gender and Nation in Contemporary Europe (Manchester University Press, 2005, co-edited with Stephenie Booth), Russia: Inventing the Nation (Arnold, 2001), ‘ Russia’s Own Orient ’: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television: Mediating Post-Soviet Difference (Routledge 2015, co-authored with Stephen Hutchings). Alexander Verkhovsky is Director of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis. His areas of research include national- ism, religion and politics and anti-extremism policies in Russia. He has published the books Political Orthodoxy: Russian Orthodox Nationalists and Fundamentalists, 1995–2001 (SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, 2003, in Russian), State Policy Towards National-Radical Organizations, 1991–2002 (SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, 2013, in Russian) and Criminal Law in OSCE Countries against Hate Crimes, Incitement of Hatred and Hate Speech (SOVA Center for Information and contributors xix Analysis, 2014, in Russian). Other recent publications include ‘Counteracting “Religious Extremism”: The Russian State in Search of Responses to the Challenges of Desecularisation’ ( Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov ’, 2013, in Russian), ‘The Russian Orthodox Church as a Church of the Majority’ ( Pro et Contra , 2013, in Russian), ‘Language of Authorities and Radical Nationalists’ in Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right since 1945 (ibidem-Verlag, 2014, edited by Matthew Feldman and Paul Jackson), ‘Dynamics of Violence in Russian Nationalism’ in Russia is not Ukraine: Contemporary Accents of Nationalism (SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, 2014, in Russian, edited by Alexander Verkhovsky), ‘Federal Ethnopolitics and the Resurgence of Russian Nationalism’ ( Pro et Contra , 2014, in Russian) and ‘Party-building on the Far Right Wing of the Political Spectrum’ ( Polis , 2014, in Russian, co-authored with Elena Strukova).