Part 2. Will Russia Fall Apart?

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22. As stated before, it’s no use looking for any analysis of the actual chances, if any, and inevitable consequences of Russia’s disintegration in Furman’s paper. His conception, with its pseudo-Hegelian focus on what goes on in the mind to the exclusion of all else (see above), posits that the one thing that keeps the Russian Federation from instantly falling apart is the Russians’ warped mentality (consciousness, or self-awareness).

Of the latter he writes literally this: "Russian self-awareness has not yet morphed out of the cocoon of imperial and Soviet self-awareness. It is a morbid self-awareness vacillating between imperial chauvinism/revenge-seeking and Russophobic self-abasement and fear of disintegration of nation and state.”

In my view none but a truly morbid consciousness (or one working within a set propagandist paradigm) could produce this chimera. Russians’ self-awareness is just as imperial as that of the Americans, the Chinese or of the nuclear ethnic groups of Europe’s mini-empires. It is the self-awareness of a people with a thousand-year-long history, a people that has built a vast and powerful state.

In that state 80 percent of the population are ethnic Russians, and practically 100 percent, Russian-speakers. It has been said (perhaps debatably) that this kind of ratio between ethnic Russians and the rest of Russia’s ethnic communities makes this country, to all intents and purposes, a mono-ethnic state. Anyway, Russia’s ethnic makeup is nothing like the motley ethnic landscape of, say, India, which nevertheless defends its national unity against the separatism of its various ethnic groups quite successfully (crushing not long ago the Tamil Tigers, to take just one example). Why the self-awareness of Russians living in such a practically mono-ethnic state should vacillate between the horrific extremes painted by Prof. Furman is altogether beyond comprehension.

Nor can one hope to find a rational explanation for his contention regarding the sufferings of the Russian people said to be lacking a "national home” of their own. No polling data are provided to back this claim; it is strictly the author’s own invention. Try and ask any Russian whose mind has not been muddled by reading papers like the one being discussed here whether they have a rodina (literally, Motherland; "home” is merely a journalistic curlicue) – and the answer will be utterly predictable: they have both their malaya rodina (literally, "lesser Motherland”; the place where he or she comes from) and the Rodina with a capital R stretching from Kaliningrad in the west to Vladivostok in the east. The same fully applies to any other Russia national, not just an ethnic Russian or someone who regards him/herself as such[24].

The real problem Russia’s society has to deal with now (see Section 2 above) is not at all some ethnic group lacking a "national home” of their own, but rather the fact that once they leave the bounds of their malaya rodina, the lesser Motherland, ethnic minorities have difficulty in adjusting to the new cultural environment. Vast experience shows, however, that such adjustment is merely a matter of time. European states also encountered similar problems in the past, and there too these difficulties were overcome through mutual adjustment, without their states falling apart (the first instance that naturally comes to mind is that of Scotland and England, but that is just one of innumerable cases).[25]

Not one of the "normal national” European states came into this world as fully democratic at birth, like Aphrodite out of Zeus’ head. On the contrary, such states as Spain, Italy or Germany have known, both in the distant past and quite recently, extremely undemocratic regimes, yet eventually they developed into democracies – without "self-determination taken to the point of secession.” Why such a path of development is ruled out in Russia’s case is not susceptible of any intelligible explanation. Apparently the only grounds for rejecting that possibility out of hand is the irrational conviction that nothing good at all can ever happen in Russia – only authoritarianism and "vacillating self-awareness,” for which Russia’s disintegration is the only cure.

I believe enough has been said above to show that Furman’s way – through locking up both the nuclear ethnos and ethnic minorities in "national homes” – spells suicide in the first place for the latter, simply the operation of purely material factors. What is now the Russian Federation has for too long a time developed as an integrated economic organism, both in the Soviet Union and before that. The consequences of the disruption of economic links that had evolved in the Soviet Union can be observed daily throughout Russia which provides jobs for millions of gastarbeiters from the now independent Ukraine, Georgia, Moldavia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirgizia.

None of this is of any concern to Furman. The principal target that he hits out at is the Russians’ "morbid mentality (self-awareness)” that stymies them and prevents them from rising to the heights of democracy via disintegration of the Russian state. In discoursing on this subject Furman makes statements that are not just astounding but at times simply shocking: "Russians are a people with a vague, uncrystallized national self-awareness.” The Russians’ self-awareness has not only "crystallized” over the many centuries of their history; it also found expression in extremely diverse forms – political, social, ideological, and cultural. Only in the heat of propagandist myth-creation can anyone negate the existence of such "crystal structures” in the Russians’ consciousness. Really, only in that kind of fever is it possible to forget the names of Russian geniuses who produced some shining crystals not only for the benefit of their own people’s "consciousness” but that of all humankind, too.

23. Just as astounding is this statement: "The system imitating democracy that has become established here does not have an ideological basis, it is internally contradictory and fragile; it is naturally falling apart, and what awaits Russia in the future is an inevitable crisis connected with a new attempt at transition to real democracy.”

Truly this is a unique collection of absurdities and fact juggling. This bit about Russia’s political system lacking ideological foundation is especially peculiar. Both the Russian elite and the Russian people have opted for sovereignty, independence, market economy, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and other generally accepted values of the civilized world. Does that not constitute a necessary and sufficient ideological basis on which to build state and society? I would claim that as far as ideology is concerned, things are more or less fine in this country[26]; it is the practical implementation of a fairly well constructed and tested project that is beset with difficulties – just as everywhere else in this imperfect world.

As regards the imitative character of democracy, I’d say Russia has a great deal to learn from, say, the USA. Gore Vidal once observed rather astutely that the American political system has "two right wings.” And still this zoological monstrosity flies about and even preens itself as the world’s most democratic creature whose mission is to impose its notions of democracy on everyone else.

Next point: Russia’s political system is "contradictory and fragile.” Well, for one thing, just show me some political system devoid of contradictions. There simply aren’t any, not outside a Utopia. As for the fragility or strength of the system, Furman’s claim is too patently absurd. The country was closest to disintegration (as heralded by Brzezinski and others) in the damned nineties (see section 1) which are now upheld as the time of efflorescence of freedom and democracy by Western propagandists and Russia’s fundamentalist liberals. Since then Russia has moved away from the brink of that abyss, its unity and strength have markedly increased – which only well-blinkered eyes will refuse to see.

Next point. I will agree that a crisis of Russia’s political system is possible; not inevitable, just possible. But that danger does not lie in ethnic contradictions, as harbingers of Russia’s disintegration would have us believe. The main cause of a potential crisis lurks in socioeconomic and consequent political contradictions. The country is currently dominated, economically and politically, by Big Business, an oligarchy that bears down on medium and small businesses, mercilessly exploits the country’s natural and human resources, and is essentially transnational and antinational. Naturally, I can only touch on this subject in passing here. Let me note merely that a discussion of problems of democracy focusing entirely on ethnic problems and ignoring socioeconomic ones is not only conceptually defective – it does a lot of harm, diverting attention from the real difficulties of building democracy in Russia.

24. Let us do some summing up. Nationalism is incompatible with democracy. That is why the dismemberment of historically formed communities like Russia, the USA, China, and others that have become cemented over centuries by the action of economic, political, social, demographic, cultural, linguistic etc. factors, their division into "national (ethnic) homes” under slogans like "Scotland for the Scots,” "Basque Country for the Basques,” "Tataria for the Tatars,” and so on can only engender ethnic strife and xenophobia, not the flowering of democracy.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union provided abundant evidence of that. Take for instance Baltic states like Latvia or Estonia (to a lesser degree, Lithuania). Having ceded from the Soviet Union, they eventually joined the European Union – that is to say, they rose to the highest stage of national democratic development, according to Furman’s template. In fact, however, they practice apartheid of the vilest kind: hundreds of thousands of people born in these "democracies” are officially classed as "non-citizens,” that is, in effect, second-rate citizens, while the ethnically pure Latvians and Estonians have the status of a higher race. Though racial terminology is not in official use there, it’s racism of the (ethnically) pure water. Thus what we have here is the flowering of extreme, simply indecent forms of nationalism or racism rather than of democracy.

Russia has been lucky in this respect. For centuries it was part of the Russian Empire, for over seventy years, part of the Soviet Union, and in none of these periods was nationalism a dominant ideology or the prevailing attitude of the masses.

In the Russian Empire there was no place for such an ideology for the simple reason that the very idea of a nation was nonexistent, superseded by the religious idea: a Russian saw himself above all as an Orthodox Christian, brother to Serb, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, etc.; at state level, the prevailing state ideology was that of imperial greatness and expansion. In the Soviet Union the dominant ideology was that of internationalism and friendship of the peoples; several generations were brought up in this spirit from infancy, and this could not but have a positive, long-lasting impact on interethnic relations.

In this light the idea that Russia is a country of the "catching-up type of development” which has yet to go through the stage of disintegration to be followed by subsequent entry of the scattered pieces in the European Union is factually untrue and clearly absurd. The Soviet Union actually led the world in terms of interethnic relations, it became a supra-ethnic community long before the European Union did, and that’s an undeniable historical fact. That supra-ethnic community, the USSR, was not democratic, it was a one-party state lacking many democratic attributes, the hand of the imperial Center was heavy, but interethnic peace and cooperation were not just an ideological dogma – they were part of everyday life[27]. The Soviet empire was fully up to the job of keeping interethnic peace, a function every empire worth the name should perform. In any case, it did this job much better than the states that have recently fallen away from Russia are doing now.

The most vital task now lies in consolidating this positive heritage on a new, democratic basis. In specific terms, this task is solved (or at any rate must be solved) through strengthening the rule of law; that is to say, through the state machine ensuring equal rights of any citizen in any given part of the country irrespective of which ethnic group sees itself as "titular” in this part. The notion of "titular” ethnic group is not even mentioned in the Russian Constitution, and the sooner it disappears from actual socio-political practices and everyday life, the better for the country and for each of its citizens[28].

2. These characters are clearly mentioned here merely as convenient markers, labels for certain historical processes..

3. Igor Panarin has been an active proponent of this idea since 1998. See, e.g., http://www.e-reading-lib.org/chapter.php/134273/5/Panarin_-_Krah_dollara_i_raspad_SShA.html

4. I cannot forgo the pleasure of mentioning in this connection that I predicted the coming to power in Russia of a leader whose strategic goal will be the rebirth of Russia as a united, sovereign and independent power way back in 1996, when Russia’s situation was most troublous and uncertain, several years before Vladimir Putin appeared on the federal political stage, let alone was elected as president. See Sergei Roy. "Russian Ethos in War and Peace.” Moscow News, 1996, issue No. 9, July 3rd.

5. Here’s an example from my personal experience: my native (well, practically native) Pyatigorsk, a southern town where the street crowd has always looked somewhat more colorful than in central Russia, was mostly Russian only a decade or so ago; nowadays it is even outwardly dramatically different in ethnic terms – its streets display a clear overabundance of the dark-haired swarthy type.

6. This idea has been elaborated, among others, by S.V. Kortunov; see, e.g., his monograph Stanovlenie politiki bezopasnosti (The Formation of Security Policy), Moscow 2003.

7. There is a linguistic difficulty here. Russian has two words for one English one: Russky (meaning an ethnic Russian) and Rossiyanin (pl. Rossiyane) designating a citizen of Russia of any ethnicity. Whenever possible, I will use the phrase "ethnic Russian” for Russky; in some contexts – as in the present – the use of the term Rossiyanin (-ne) is inevitable. There is also the more manageable Ross for Rossiyanin, only it’s decidedly obsolete.

8. See, http://www.nlobooks.ru/rus/nz-online/619/2051/2054 Incidentally, that article was eagerly reposted on dozens of other sites, which just shows that Furman’s views cannot simply be ignored.

9. In his paper the author calls Russia, and Russia only, a mini-empire at least a dozen times. This way of referring to the planet’s largest country with a population of some 150 million looks a bit odd and points to the way the author feels about his subject rather than to the subject itself. The same can be said of the term "lessening of Russia” (the Russian word umalenie is in fact much more derisive) – a most desirable process for Prof. Furman. This is very typical of a section of Russian citizens or rather individuals resident in Russia. While calling Russia a mini-empire and wishing it to shrink further, they are dead against the lessening of, say, Georgia (that has now lost Abkhazia and South Ossetia for good); nor will they ever refer to Georgia as a mini-empire, though the name fits that country to a T, as it does some others in post-Soviet space.

10. Taking into account what they would become in the future, they could be designated as proto-empires, although it is hardly worthwhile to use that term: entia non sunt multiplicanda.

11. I have already had occasion to point out the positively comic nature of charges of "energy imperialism” leveled against Russia by the West: "One of the conditions for Russia acceding to the WTO is that it should raise its internal price of gas to world levels – in accordance with market principles. Yet when Russia raises the price of gas it is selling Ukraine to world levels, she is accused by the United States, WTO’s major player, of "energy imperialism” and similar nonsense. To stay "non-imperialist” in the eyes of the West, Russia is supposed to subsidize Ukraine to the tune of $3-5 billion a year. Similarly with Georgia, Moldova and other post-Soviet countries. And that is just one example of the crudity of the prevailing criticism of Russia’s "imperial ambitions.” (Sergei Roy. "Russia: An Evil Empire or Just an Empire?” The piece was posted in 2006 at the Russia Today website and at www.intelligent.ru , an internet journal that met an untimely demise a while ago).

12. S.V. Kortunov. "I vse zhe: byt’ ili ne byt’ Rossii imperskoi?” ("And Still: Will Russia Be Imperial, or Will It Not?”). I quote from an article published in 2006 in www.intelligent.ru .

13. I am reminded here of an amusing episode that occurred during the trial of Powers, the pilot of the U2 spy plane shot down over the Urals in 1961. In the preliminaries he was first asked about his citizenship, and he promptly replied ‘United States.’ The next question was about his natsional’nost’ "nationality” (properly speaking, ethnicity) which obviously baffled the American. After a short pause, he merely repeated, ‘United States.’ That was his national’nost’ indeed, and it never entered his head it might be anything else. America’s example in this area is certainly something to imitate and aspire to.

14. What is particularly interesting about the Captive Nations Resolution is its origin. It was penned by Lev Dobrianski, professor of Economics at Georgetown University, a rabid Ukrainian nationalist and Russophobe. It has been pointed out that "the list of "captive nations" had the unmistakable markings of Nazi propaganda. The non-existent "nations" of White Ruthenia, Idel-Ural, Cossackia, had all been invented by Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's notorious minister for "Eastern Regions." (Ed. Lozansky. "The Captive Nations Resolution: 50 Years On.” In: http://www.america-russia.net/eng/face/187144499.

See also Susan Lisa Carruthers. "Cold War Captives: Imprisonment, Escape, and Brainwashing

15. Russia’s history generally abounds in such instances of self-determination by various ethnic groups. Seventy years after Ivan the Terrible had conquered Kazan, Tatars joined Prince Pozharsky’s host in the fight against Polish intervention, although they could well have recalled past grievances and hit him in the rear. That was a distinct case of the Tatar people’s historical choice – to link its destiny with that of Russia.

16. Actually I’ve heard complaints about the iniquity of statistics, some Tatars insisting that Bashkirs are only the third largest ethnic group in Tataria. This is anecdotal evidence, of course.

17. Before the revolution of 1917 Dagestan alone annually lost several hundred men in their prime owing to blood feuds.

18. The Chechens did not constitute a uniform state or a quasi-state entity at the time when they were part of Shamil’s Imamate, either.

19. For more details, see Sergei Roy. "Chechnya and Russia Before and After Budyonnovsk.” Moscow News, 1995, issue No.26. There I wrote this, among other things: "The tragedy has always been there, and it's bedrock simple. Bare rocks yield bare subsistence, and not for too many. Ethnographers even explain hillmen's explosive pride and vendettas, constant internecine strife and brigandage, as nature's own remedies against over-population. In the past, and not too remote past either, bands of Dagestani, Chechen and other "abreks" or brigands from one or several "auls" (villages) terrorized their neighbors, who lived in constant fear of being raided and sent their own youth on similar raids. The result was a siege mentality, contempt for honest (because useless) toil and an attitude toward the world outside the clan/village as a legitimate playground for killing, stealing and hostage-taking.”

20. Naturally, no discussion of the history of Chechnya can bypass the deportation of that people to Kazakhstan during the war. The issue is quite thorny and painful, but I stick to this view: wartime excesses are just that – wartime excesses. In 1944 the Red Army could not launch an offensive against the Germans to help out Russia’s British and American allies (who were then in pretty dire straits) while there was the risk of an armed uprising in its rear, which was much hoped for by the Nazis who kept sending considerable numbers of their agents into those parts.

21. For more detail, see my 1995 piece referred to above. It says, in part:, "As all industries except rudimentary agriculture ground to a halt, virtually the whole nation turned "abrek" combining age-old "abrek" mentality with 20th-century weapons and techniques: robbing trains and trucks; going on forays outside Chechnya to steal cattle, cars, tractors, and to take hostages; receiving stolen goods, especially cars stolen in Poland, Russia, Germany and elsewhere; hijacking planes to demand ransom; shooting holes in pipelines and filling tankers with precious petrol; running drugs, weapons and poisonous vodka made out of medicinal alcohol, forging money by the truckload, buying up planeloads of Russian currency in the newly independent states which had introduced their own currency, undertaken to destroy the Russian banknotes and hadn't; sending out armed gangs as far as Magadan's gold fields to buy up stolen gold; and a great deal else that would take a criminologist to describe.”

22. Adherents of more traditional Islam maintain that interpreting the notion of jihad in such a spirit runs counter to true Islam. One can’t go into the finer points of theology here; what is important is how those ideas actually worked in the given historical setting.

23. The most amusing thing here is of course the fact that such work on formulating an ideological basis for the disintegration of Russia is carried out at the Russian Academy of Sciences, that is, at the expense of the Russian taxpayer.

24. It is perhaps necessary to explain this phrase of mine about people who regard themselves as (ethnic) Russians. I had a school mate whose mother was Armenian and father, Lithuanian; the only Lithuanian thing about Slava was his surname; he was an ordinary Russian chap. In my travels all over the Soviet Union I have come across even more exotic combinations: father a Komi, mother a Karakalpak woman; true, their daughter had a smattering of Karakalpak, but that’s because they lived in Karakalpakia (for those who have never heard the name: Karakalpakia – of which the literal translation would be something like Blackcaplandia – is part of Uzbekistan). For the rest the lady (quite an intellectual, let me add) regarded herself as a Russian woman just like any other. Considering the intensity of mixing and interfusion of different peoples in Soviet times, there must be millions of cases like that (incidentally, unaccounted for in any census). How would they fit in the project for building "national homes”? They would not, and that’s a fact. They already have a home, and no one should be allowed to monkey with that.

25. I intentionally restrict myself to examples from the past at this stage. What is now going on in Western Europe under the guise of multiculturalism is a separate and very interesting topic, and I would not like to touch on it merely in passing.

26. The initial reaction in new Russia to the seventy years of communist ideology dominating the country was revulsion against any single ideology prevailing on the national level. Little by little this absurd situation gave way to societal consensus on basic ideological principles; the ideology described in the text solidified as a sort of natural process.

27. Let me cite here my own experiences to illustrate this. For decades I followed a hobby highly popular in this country – sailing and kayaking on remote waterways, mostly solo on a tiny inflatable kayak (for essays about many such trips see www.sergeiroysbooks.de ). Among other areas I kayaked along the coasts of the Aral Sea and the Caspian. The locals I came in contact with were mostly poachers. These were on the whole a pretty rough lot, yet they invariably treated me as a welcome guest: the way they explained it to me, a wayfarer is a gift from Allah. That Muslim precept and custom worked in perfect unison with the official ideology of friendship among peoples, no contradiction between these tenets at all; total harmony, in fact. I often think what would happen if I tried anything like that now, in these times of disintegration of the Soviet empire and triumph of nationalism. One morning I might jolly well wake up a hostage or else minus my head, I guess. This sort of thing makes one wonder willy-nilly which is better, national self-determination or a not quite democratic empire; and which is higher, the right of nations to self-determination or the right of each innocent human being to life.