The Second Colloquium
The American Center, Tomsk, Russia
Thursday, November 5, 1998
Opening Session
Dr. Billington welcomed participants to the second colloquium on the topic of Russian national identity in the 21st century. In describing his ongoing work on this topic, he referred to his three-part public television series "The Face of Russia" and his book of the same name, and the conferences he organized on this question in Washington in October 1996 and March 1997), and in Istra in June 1998. Dr. Billington then introduced Dr. John Brown, the Cultural Attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow.
John Brown began by saying that he had just arrived in Russia after an absence of 25 years. Looking back on his experience as a graduate student in Leningrad, it was no small measure of the many positive changes that had taken place in this country that a representative of the American Embassy could openly take part in a discussion about Russia, in Russia, and with Russians. The difficult economic situation was occupying the country's attention, but at a time of major historical change in Russia, questions about national identity were of tremendous significance.
Dr. Billington was my adviser at Princeton University, where I wrote my dissertation under his direction. . . . The Icon and The Axe, his magisterial book, is one of the works that introduced me to Russian culture . . . . One of his greatest merits as a scholar is that he has been able to communicate to audiences larger than just academic groups. By speaking with him and Dr. Parthé, therefore, you will be exchanging views with interlocutors who in the near future will pass your thoughts and opinions on to a broad spectrum of Americans eager to find out more about Russia. By speaking with them, you will in many ways be speaking to the American people. This fact, I believe, gives added importance to a conference that is already dealing with an important topic.
Dr. Billington explained the format for the two-day symposium. After brief and direct answers to the question guiding each session, there would be ample time to broaden the discussion. There would also be a general discussion to determine where there is complete agreement, and where opinions are diametrically opposed to one another.
Russia in 2020: Predictions
1. What do you think Russia will be like in 2020? How will the country differ from Russia today-geographically, politically, economically, and in the area of culture-and what will the main differences be?
Vladimir Alekseev:. . . .This is a very Gogolian question. We all remember what Gogol said: "Russia, where are you headed?. . . . everything is rushing by."11 I will try to answer that question, because it is one that we always face, since we are forever being carried off in one direction or another. I see on the surface two possible directions as we approach the year 2020. . . .
At present there are two factors at work: (1) those political forces that are directed more towards the Communist past, and (2) the new democratic tendency. . . . As we look more deeply they have a great resemblance, despite all the differences in their economic and political declarations. Each of them seems to make only a minimal effort to take into consideration the facts of our past, our historical and cultural experience. The October Revolution carried off not just the social and economic structures; it caused a temporary break (proryv) in the consciousness of the Russian people which was brought about (obuslovlen) by a complete rejection of all the traditions that had been worked out over a thousand years of Russia's development. This is very easy to illustrate: just think of the first decrees of the new government in 1917 when they repudiated the obligations of the previous government, and when they abolished all the former institutions and annulled the entire legal system. Changes on this scale cannot be brought about violently, in an instant. It has to be the result of a lengthy process. But this has been our history: a series of changes, each forcibly introduced, and each new one rejecting past structures. . . .
The contemporary democratic variant also asks that we forget a great many of our cultural values and much of our historical experience. If the people bringing about all these changes in our country had even minimally taken into account our past experience, then I am sure that the things we were striving for could have taken a different form, proceeded at a different pace and in a more civilized fashion, and could have come about less painfully.
Billington: And what would your prediction be?
Alekseev:. . . .I believe that we will find and follow a third path of development (tretii put'). This term means different things to different people and has no set definition, but today's realia dictate the need for this third path. Many of the molds and patterns we are using on the way to democratization and greater stability just repeat what is done in the West, which may not be possible here.
Leonid Yanovich: I agree about the importance of looking at our historiography and culture, and working to restore knowledge of our past. This has been the primary goal of my publishing house since it was founded in Akademgorodok in 1991.12 In the near future, I see two tendencies dominating a significant part of consciousness as they do today: (1) the geopolitical emphasis, focusing on the dissolution of the imperial state (imperskaia derzhava) and the trouble this will cause for Russia, and (2) the attempts, especially by representatives in the Duma, to try to bring about some kind of union that includes Belarus', Serbia, and parts of Russia, including Siberia. One of the reasons for the present crisis is that national consciousness (obshchestvennoe soznanie) is still caught up in the old ways and has not recognized its past, has not come up with a new set of stereotypes, and has not recognized the new political culture, by which I mean the relationship of human beings to state power. This unreconstructed national consciousness is transforming the principles and ideas that are being applied to the economy.
. . . The democratic political alternative has never been properly formulated and incorporated into the government, and now we are suffering from a shortage of genuine leaders (iavnyi defitsit liderov). . . . I agree that we do not need to acquire European values or policies; rather, we need to find another path. There are two cultural tendencies, and it is not yet clear which one will predominate: a gradual move towards a liberal, European, rational democratization, or a move towards a country that is imperial (derzhavnaia) and despotic. These tendencies are both present in Russia today to one degree or another and they can determine Russia's fate. That's how I see Russia's future. There is an important role for the intelligentsia to play by studying this. I am trying to do my part by working on the publication of declassified (rassekrechennye) sources. . . .
Our reformers simply announced things-nothing was explained to the people, including the agreement in December 1991 to dissolve the USSR. There was a policy of silence (politika molchaniia). The question of the space that Russia occupies is a question of governance (vopros prostranstva-pravovoi vopros). The intelligentsia needs to raise its voice. There are changes in national consciousness going on, and this would become clearer if the values we had ten years ago were to be restored.
Mikhail Kaluzhskii: We are using old terms to discuss new phenomena. What do we mean by the intelligentsia today? We talk about the reformers, but were there really any reforms? What were the values ten years ago and who held them? The people as a whole? We have to get our terminology straight before we can talk about 2020, about the future. Terms like zapadniki (Westernizers) and gosudarstvenniki (adherents of a strongly centralized state) preserve the tendency to identify oneself not with society but with the government. When we are talking about and planning for the year 2020, we need to remember that while politics unfortunately still determines too much in our lives, it is not the only thing people are thinking about. There are other important social and cultural phenomena, and the government is becoming increasingly distant from private life and the life of society.
Aleksandr Kazarkin: When considering the future, the important issue is regionalism (regionalizm, oblastnichestvo) and possible disintegration, and whether, as Lev Gumilev asked, there is enough energy-and a reason-to keep the empire going, whether that comes from Orthodox ideology, or a resurgent Communist party. There is a little-noticed tendency towards regional unification, that is, unification of the new cultural and economic centers, the ones that are more promising, that will lead to a confederation. It will be a powerful force, and any attempt at a restoration of centralized communist power would be short-lived and tragi-comic. That path functions as a negative alternative, the way we do not want to go. There is a strong and genuine Siberian regional identity (sibirskoe pochvennoe oblastnichestvo). We foresee possible Chinese expansion into Siberian lands (prostory) that they see as empty spaces, as wilderness (pustyni) and we wonder whether the Americans would help us to keep this from happening.
The rebirth of Russia-you have to be careful when you use that word, because there cannot be any re-birth. Just like Tatar Muscovy could not be the same as Kievan Rus, post-Petrine Russia could not be just like pre-Petrine Muscovy, so post-Soviet Russia cannot be like pre-Soviet Russia-it's moved even further away. Moscow is at present the conduit (provodnik) of Western economic principles, but will oppose a Western cultural influence. We have resources, and we will be more independent and self-reliant, and there will be a new variant of Russian culture. Siberia has always distanced itself from the West and will continue to do so in the future. It will do what Japan did, taking the most appropriate ideas from Western economics while also preserving its own culture.
Father Leonid Kharaim: The revolutionary, critical (perelomnye) moments in our history were: the acceptance of Christianity, the time of Peter I's reforms, the events of 1917, and what we might call provisionally the move away from socialism towards democracy in recent years. To a significant degree there was a change in both the philosophical and cultural foundations of the very idea of the nation, but we only started talking about this after it had happened. So we are attempting, after the fact, to understand the basis of this change, which makes it very hard to plan for the future. But since it is now possible to talk more openly, we can discuss the two major influences there are at present: the first comes from the commercial or business sector and from those researchers who study economic questions; and the second could be called the humanitarian-intelligentsia influence. Although the term intelligentsia isn't adequately defined at present, it is that influence which is based in the traditions of Russian culture, philosophy, and the Russian Idea, and it is not yet possible to predict which one of these will prevail. But political ideas will not influence the people, since our politics is seen as having little to do with Russian national identity-it is applied (prikladnoe) rather than basic.
Nikolai Rozov: . . . .When looking ahead to 2020, we have to talk about processes, laws, and conditions which depend on what's going on in the outside world, as well as what depends on the government, and on us. There are a number of alternatives and possible scenarios for the future.
1. The null hypotheses, i.e., the most probable case, not requiring extensive proof-this means we will continue as we are, with no major changes, as Russia becomes more and more marginalized (periferizatsiia). This can go on for quite a long time-maybe there will be a change in political forces and the Communist Party will come to power. We will still have our natural resources. . . .but the supplies are not unlimited and infrastructure problems make it hard to use the resources of Eastern Siberia. We could be in a half-criminal situation, with the possibility of a break (lomka) in the identity and integrity (tsel'nost') of Russia. There could be an economic and demographic rupture (razryv). . . . Right now the [Russo-Chinese] border is stable, and China's interest is focused on the lands to its south, where the United States and Japan have interests as well. Russia will have to either move people into the underpopulated areas of the Federation or the Chinese will.
2. Restoration and rebirth-there could be a move backwards (brosok nazad) towards an empire and a strongly centralized state structure, reflecting the wish to once again be a military power that everyone fears. We have successfully carried out military expansion for 500 years, and no one has threatened us from the North or East. We suffered territorial losses in 1854-6 and 1904-5. After 1945, our empire-that is, where our troops were located-stretched all the way to Berlin. A new move towards an empire would not be successful, given that we are surrounded by countries that we cannot count on as friends, and any such attempt would lead to territorial disintegration.
3. Russia could choose to adopt a strategy that was adequate for the purpose of uniting the population.
It's absurd to think that our stores are selling butter from Belgium. What we really need to do is get the technology from Belgium to produce better products ourselves. We need to find and follow a third way. . . .
Nelli Krechetova: It is easier to take a longer view, to go beyond 2020, because all these changes take time. Our traditions were disrupted-we have no traditions, including in the sphere of Russian Orthodoxy. And we haven't experienced the kind of regionalization that would lead to a true confederation. . . . There are no meaningful values reflected in the support for regionalism. The center is weak and what we are seeing is more anti-center than pro-region. . . . And there will be no restoration of either the empire or the Communist Party's role. What is really going on? . . . .There has been a break in the system of values (razlom tsennostei) and a move towards a liberalization of Russian values. It's as if we are in a swamp, and it feels sticky and heavy. But if we are depressed, it is still a positive kind of depression, because little by little we are moving ahead.
Andrei Sagalaev: How can we understand the dynamics of such a complex system and predict further developments? There will definitely be a bifurcation (bifurkatsiia, razvilka) and it may split into two or three or more parts. We can describe national identity before it breaks up, but at the moment of the split, chance factors play a major role, so it would be very risky to talk about what directions national identity will take after that. . . . It would be very desirable to have in 2020 some kind of functioning national system shaped by (pod upravleniem) our national identity. When we use the word upravlenie (direction, authority) we associate it with an administrator who sits in his office and sends out senseless directives, but what I have in mind has more to do with the way evolutionary biologists describe the transition from one stage of development to the next, where the dominant characteristics change.
We don't have one national consciousness, we have multiple ones: one for the Russian Federation, and then local ones, for example, Siberians, and Tatars in the Tomsk Republic. We have to examine the content and structure of national identity to see which values are stable (ustoichivye) and which are movable (mobil'nye). There are binary oppositions, like the ones examined in The Icon and the Axe, that help us understand the Russian mentalitet. Our job (zadacha), our project-however utopian it may sound-is to analyze these components and think about how the system will look in the year 2020.
Viktor Muchnik: You know, it's going to be very hard for us to talk about these things because among the other crises we face, there is a language crisis. It's a little awkward-the words are not adequate to the realia we face. We say 'reformers,' 'counter-reformers,' 'Communists,' 'empire,' 'a third way'-is there a fifth and sixth way?-'the Russian idea' that has been such a popular term in our history, and the 'yellow terror' (zheltaia opasnost'). We talk about China and we predict that in a certain number of years-ten, twenty, thirty-they will violate our borders and take over our land. My warning concerns how we use certain terms-we speak so boldly, with such conviction. Perhaps we are not predicting but communicating our fears, in which case we need to do this intelligently, like well-educated people (intelligentno, obrazovano) and not just blurt it out (progovaryvat'sia). Then we can all judge how serious these fears are. Our reality is very distinct (svoeobrazna), and we need to be careful in the terms we use and what kind of prognosis we make. . . . When we use concepts carelessly, aggressively, they can get away from us and start living their own separate existence and go in directions we hadn't expected. When we say that Russian identity has to be formed and shaped (russkoe samosoznanie nado formirovat'), the way the government has talked about it these past few years . . . , we see how it can turn into some mix of the military, the bureaucratic, and the Orthodox-in a distorted form.
. . . Alekseev: A given term can always have two different meanings. Let's use the terminology that would be acceptable in the mass media, in a newspaper.
Sagalaev: I don't agree that our traditions were disrupted (prervany). Russia is a very traditional country, that is our strength and our weakness. There wasn't any rupture, there was some kind of a stoppage (ostanovka) so that later there could be a return to those traditions. One can hardly say in any serious way that in 1917 Russia became Communist, and then in 1991 it became Orthodox again. And I have to disagree with other speakers who say that there is a binary foundation to the Russian mentalitet. It's actually a ternary system. If it's a binary system then we have to be either Orthodox or Communist. Russian culture is always in motion but it has evolved according to already determined components. Because we have always been a traditional society that changes slowly, it is possible to look ahead 20 or 30 years and see that the new things that have been added to the mix these past years are going to be around for a while, that's what's sad. Something's brewing (chto-to varitsia) but it isn't exactly clear what.
. . . In Russia now we are groping about trying to see what direction development should take (nashchupivanie vektora razvitiia), while the West comes up with commonsense solutions for us. Maybe the solution we need is not self-evident, not trite (banal'noe), one which in the West may seem completely crazy (sovershenno dikovato). I honestly don't see any straightforward solution at the moment-not on the geopolitical level, not for the Siberian region. There is Russia the empire or federation, and Russia the society. There is the official ideology, economy, and politics, and there is a lot that is unofficial, in the shadows (tenevoe), that goes on living its own life-the people's (narodnaia) ideology, economy, and culture-and this isn't any less of a factor now than it was under Nicholas II, or under the Soviet leaders. There is the playing out of all these forces, and the people will have to decide for themselves. We have to keep that in mind when we think of what it might be like in 2020. We need to understand what we would like to have happen, what role Russianness (russkost') will play in the search for a religious, ethnic, regional, and political identity-this isn't a cosmos where all lines intersect. It is important that at the end of the 20th century, 'Russian' not come to signify simply 'Russian Orthodox'-that would be a step backwards. A person amounts to more than Russian Orthodoxy or Buddhism. We haven't gotten to the specifically Siberian questions yet, but I want to mention that what is interesting about Siberia is that we still have a frontier, like America used to have, an open political, economic, and cultural border between Russians and native peoples. How that relationship develops will have a lot to do with the future of the place. Up till now there has been no line drawn (razmezhevanie) between the two groups, unlike the United States.
Eleonora Lvova: What Andrei Markovich [Sagalaev] says about the regional structure of Siberia could be said about the country as a whole. Russia is a multi-national country. . . . Over the course of 500 years there was an expansion of the lands occupied by the Russian people through warfare or the simple adding of new territory. Now we are in a different situation and talk about gathering our people together from other lands-UNESCO now refers to us as one of the national groups that has been split up (k chislu. . . .raskolotykh natsii). Ethnic Russians are now the absolute majority in the country, whereas before 1991 Russians made up barely 50% of the population. Given this, it is natural to ask what fundamental ideas are held collectively by this ethnic group which has lived for so long in a multi-national setting. Despite different ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds, the entire Russian (rossiiskoe) population can unite at least around one cultural idea, one unifying force. . . .the idea of suffering. Because it is around the idea of the suffering we have gone through, as Father Leonid rightly said, that one can construct the entire history (istoriosofiia) of Russia. There is a poem that refers to Peter the Great as the first Bolshevik; our entire contemporary history is structured around the suffering we have overcome.
We tend to talk about the question "What is Russia?" from the point of view of our generation, who will be of a pretty advanced age twenty years from now. We really need to direct this question to those who will be working at the peak of their strength-the 20 and 30 year olds. In my seminar I try to cover this question with my young students: what do the future and the present look like to them? And while they have different perceptions of the present, they all sense the tragic nature of Russia's historical path. There doesn't seem to be any way to answer the question: what will Russia be like in 2020? One shouldn't make any predictions because everything is happening now-it's as if it is all taking place in a dark tunnel. We don't know what combination of factors and forces-rational and irrational-will affect the latest of Russia's regularly occurring tragic situations. There can be results that are completely unexpected, quite irrational. . . .
Olga Rychkova: I can talk about the consciousness of the younger generation, my generation, the ones who are between 25 and 40 now. . . . The government is seen by the majority as being distant and hostile, and not behaving very honestly. They are afraid of being deceived, and the feeling is that we have only ourselves to rely on. In fact we really don't even see ourselves as a generation, and the only thing uniting us is our language. When I look at the fate of Russia-maybe it won't happen by the year 2020-I'm afraid that if history moves in spirals, then we may return more or less to the disintegration of Kievan Rus when people retreated into separate principalities (udel'nye kniazhestva), what we now call regions, and Siberia could be a separate entity. . . . The consciousness or identity of the younger members of this group has little to do with nationality and a lot to do with computers. They have cut themselves off from this world since their childhood and live in a virtual reality, and it is difficult to say how they will act in light of all the changes. I am afraid that about most things they are rather indifferent.
Russia Today: Unifying Forces
2. What common memories, values, and goals unite the Russian people? Are the forces that unite the population of Russia stronger than the forces which divide them?
Lvova: What we have now are negative values: a profound estrangement (global'noe otchuzhdenie) from the government, an absolute, internalized lack of trust (vnutrennee absoliutnoe nedoverie) in everything that the government says and does.
Father Leonid: What I said earlier didn't apply just to religion, but to the special qualities of the Russian character as a whole. Suffering isn't just a negative value, because we can learn from suffering. It always makes a person spiritually rich, because suffering brings out the desire to share with others, the desire to endure these things together. . . .
Billington: And what will result from the fact that Russians have suffered so much?
Father Leonid: It isn't that we have suffered so much, but that when you look at our history as a whole, it is the constant suffering that has kept us on a steady course, and has kept us from perishing spiritually. . . . Russian civilization-maybe no longer called an empire, but a multi-national society (soobshchestvo) imbued with Russian values-has always oriented itself around compassion (sostradanie) for those who suffer. If you look to the very beginning of our history as a state, you see the story of Boris and Gleb13-compassion for them helped the Russian people raise themselves up and strengthen their government as well. . . . Suffering actually kept this society from dying out (k neumiraniiu) during the Soviet period and, for all its horrors, what we experienced between 1941 and 1945 bound us together, allowed us to feel forgiveness for all that had happened to us, and strengthened us for all the years that followed. Suffering is one of the values and moving forces in our society.
Alekseev: . . . .The key is not what we must remember, but that we must remember in order to avoid another break in generational continuity, a break in our way of thinking (razryv v sisteme razmyshleniia), a break in knowing our identity . . ., all those things that influence culture, broadly defined. When we talk about the phenomenon we call culture, we have in mind the fundamentals (osnovy) that we have lost. We live in the atmosphere of a culture not entirely our own (v nesvoistvennoi nam kul'ture), a culture on a more democratic plan, which over all the world lowers itself to the point where it merges more easily into society. This is quite a change from the past, where high culture was the achievement of a much smaller segment of society-it was more clearly defined, more individualistic, better-suited to its purpose. The process of disunification (protsess raz'edinitel'nyi) so strongly felt in our time is due to the cultural break between past and present that has taken place. It is difficult to say when this happened, maybe it was 1917, maybe earlier.
Father Leonid: There is a real predictability about generational continuity and change-things change as we grow older. We really weren't so different from these young people when we were their age.
Rozov: Here's how I would describe the social groups in Russia today: there are depressed potato buyers (19%), immobile villagers (16%), potato growers (26.5%), the lost generation (12%), the home improvers (10%), white collar workers (6.7%), young Russians (5.7%), and elite groups that I call the Manhattans (3.9%), and all of these groups have their own values. The research that has been done on them is very weak in terms of theory.
In their Orthodox-centered world, peasants used to judge actions by the government against the standard of a just cause (delo pravoe). Before the Revolution, the tsarist government definitely embodied a set of values. Placing a value on suffering is a tricky thing. It was useful to the government to have a very patient, long-suffering people, and in World War II, the military was able to throw soldiers into battle in such great numbers that we won. What we see now is a cross-roads (perekrestok) of world values, rather than one set of values for the entire population.
Yanovich:. . . .One thing that is clear is that the myth of the state has been preserved.
Billington: The state is still seen as the source of direction, but its opposite, private life, is becoming more important. As for people who believe in a strong state and a strong leader (derzhavniki i gosudarstvenniki), these terms both appear to be fairly new.
. . . Kaluzhskii: I don't really want to use the term generation, because people aren't really identifying themselves as belonging to a particular generation, with its own set of values-they aren't really experiencing things that way. What is important now is how people see themselves vis-à-vis the government, and where they see themselves in terms of our economic reality. There is now what we might call a private believer in a strong central government (chastnyi gosudarstvennik). . . . Basically, it amounts to a belief that the government should be left to fulfill its functions, while individuals take care of their business. . . . You will not find many thirty-year-olds working for the government, just older people who have worked for the state all their lives. Younger people are much more likely to be working in the private sector. The events of mid-1998 strengthened this process, both the value given private life, and the feeling of distance from the government.
Billington: Let's turn now to the question of your dreams and visions of the future.
Russia in 2020: Ideal Visions
3. What kind of Russia would you like to see in 2020? What must be done, what must be changed, where must attention be directed, so that your vision of Russia could be realized? With the present economic difficulties, do you think it will take significantly longer for this to happen?
Kazarkin:. . . .Perhaps Russia's inertia is a good thing in that it has helped save some regional differentiation in culture at a time when all around the world cultural difference is disappearing. . . . A difference in natural and geographical features ought to be reflected in culture. What do Russians want? That there won't be ecological catastrophes, that this won't be the end of our culture. I would like to see a Russia with many facets, many cultures. I believe, I want to believe, that cultural energy will be strong in Siberia, that it will become-to use Spengler's words-the location of a mighty culture (velikaia kul'tura) and have a mighty future. . . .
Rozov: In the past, all Russians were part of the state system (gosudarstvenniki), and both members of the gentry and peasants all claimed to serve the tsar. Everyone served the state in one capacity or another. Now there is a dangerous split (raskol) between the population as a whole and each person in particular, and between the government and middle-level organizations and corporations. Now no one pays taxes, no one trusts anyone anymore, particularly in the government, which like the bureaucracy of Imperial Russia, generates a steady stream of data. And this lack of faith is due to the fact that there was so much deceit.
As for the question about the future of Russia, we need to compete in world markets. . . . And as we do that, we should remember that Russia has a single set of interests (tselostnye interesy)-it's the same for the government, for all political groups, for corporations, and we all need to unite around this. And people should remember that we need to buy Russian goods (pokupat' rossiiskoe), which is important. I am happy to see in Tomsk that there are regional goods for sale. This is a normal economic strategy. As far as material prosperity (material'nye dostatki) goes, what would I myself like to see? Despite our formidable winters, there are still too many places that don't have their own bathrooms. That's awful. I want to see a prosperous Russia with well-built homes, with very nice bathrooms, where homeowners and housewives have a comfortable place to live and the women are healthy. There is a lot of talk about the fate of culture in the future, but I'm not worried about that-a distinct Russian culture will always exist. Until we have heated bathrooms, it doesn't seem right to have conversations about high culture.
Alekseev: In essence, we all want to see Russia in 2020 as a country full of good roads and smart people.
Sagalaev: I want to see people not all having to grow potatoes. Right now, 75% of the potato growers are neither peasants nor city dwellers, not the intelligentsia or the middle class-they just have some pitiful strip of land. They're a segment of the population that has been thrown to the mercy of fate (narod broshen na proizvol sud'by), afraid that tomorrow there will be nothing to feed their children. It's a paradox-we listen to all these political leaders talking on television, it's a farce (balagan), and people are working so hard to have a sack or two full of potatoes. There are so many people who resemble the little man (malen'kii chelovek) familiar to us from our literature, and they are in a pauperized, pitiful state. What I would like to see in 2020 is a middle class, even a modest one.
Yanovich: Russia could lose some of its national values and interests. We can join economic unions with other countries, with Europe, that's fine, but along with this process of unification, national interests and values have to be preserved. We see in Europe how borders are beginning to be transparent, but there are still national interests along with the supra-national interests (interesy soobshchestva). And supra-national interests have to be raised to a higher level, along with national interests.
Muchnik: The ideas and habits of private life are increasingly valued, and that is a good thing, because it helps to increase the level of trust (doverie) between people and between people and the government that we need in order to do business. We had it in the 17th and 18th centuries when we were doing business with Europe. Nothing could have worked for us without trust. But now there isn't a very calm attitude towards the government and there's a lot of anxiety between individuals doing business. The government creates rules that can't be followed.
Alekseev: When you talk about relations between businesses and the government, it's a legal question. But when you talk about behavior within the business world, that's a moral-ethical question. We are touching on some very important and painful places that make our society feel unnatural (maloestestvennoe) at present, and that demand to be clarified, to be strengthened, that require our attention. . . .
Russia in 2020: History's Values
4. If you were to write an introduction to a textbook on Russian history and culture for schoolchildren, what institutions, problems, and achievements would you especially stress in order to help the next generation create the kind of Russia that you would like to see in the year 2020?
Kazarkin: I would talk about how Russia has evolved in a number of spatial settings, from the great expanse of the nation as a whole, to the region, and to the home (prostranstvenno, regional'no, domashne). First, how Russia was formed (sozdavalas') region by region: Kievan Rus, the northern forested regions, the area along the Volga and the Don, the Urals, and Siberia. During the Soviet period, research and publishing on local history (kraevedenie) was pretty much curtailed, and this tradition has to be restored as we create a new patriotic consciousness, which has to be a living thing. Religion is important, and Russian Orthodoxy definitely falls within the boundaries of this identity. Paganism was also a factor but not as the state religion of a unified Rus, so there was no such thing as "Pagan Rus'" (iazycheskaia Rus') but the pagan beliefs of a number of tribes which varied from region to region. For the past thousand years, Orthodoxy has played a key role in the history of our state and the identity of its inhabitants. We can't talk about Russia as being something united only by a common language-that wouldn't be enough to make us a people. And when we talk about the Russian character, of course we have to bring in Russian literature in the broadest sense, the Russian classics. Literature can still be seen as something that holds the nation together (derzhit natsiiu). We need to prepare textbooks that will help the younger generation to appreciate their national identity.
Kaluzhskii: We don't need something of a purely instructive nature (vospitatel'nogo kharaktera), but a history of the country's economic, historical, and military development, something with primary documents, and not just the interpretation of documents. Previous textbooks decided to ignore major aspects of our economic history, and were simply blasphemous (bogokhul'stvovali) on other subjects. Textbooks should include a number of documents: at least parts of our Constitution, important newspaper articles from different points of view. . . .
Alekseev:. . . .Textbooks are a curious genre, the culmination of all the best that has been achieved in a particular field. So a textbook takes the form of a gathering (sniatie) of all previous knowledge, a compression (szhimanie) of all this information, in a way that will be accessible to the next generation. It is an attempt (opyt) by each generation to pass things down in the best possible form. We need to pass on much more than a collection of documents, and it must be made clear what position the documents reflect, because according to which documents you choose for these books, I can determine your point of view. Textbooks are a kind of instrument in the formation of the next generation. We face many problems today (aktual'nye problemy). We may not be able to resolve all of them, but at the very least, we can leave an explanation of how this has affected our national and personal lives, and help the people who follow us to solve these problems.
One such problem is the attitude towards official regulations. The whole system of laws that regulate the activities of government needs to be analyzed. After the Revolution everything from the old order was cast out, and new regulations were written in a great hurry while the civil war was going on, and yet we are still living by and with a number of these regulations today. . . . Why is there so much corruption? We have no legal consciousness (net pravovogo soznaniia) in this society-such a consciousness never developed and we need to work on this. Our history is full of material that we can put in a textbook: the old law codes, like the Russkaia pravda [from Kievan Rus], and the law code (sudebnik) under Ivan Vasilevich14, which further developed the laws. We can see how a new law code succeeded a previous one. And then, in the 20th century, there is the complete rejection (ottorzhenie) of everything that had accumulated over the course of a millennium. The political forces in our society today-the right, the left, and the different types of centrists-are all using the same raw materials (syr'e), the same tools-the incomplete law codes of the post-Revolutionary period-as a basis for reform.
. . . Yanovich: To write the kind of textbook we would like to is not yet possible because as a discipline, history hasn't asked or answered some very important questions about the nature of our political institutions and practices. Whose fault is it that Russia is backward? Chaadaev had some answers for us in the 19th century. He saw problems in our cultural heritage (kul'turnaia genetika), in our spiritual links to Byzantium. Others say that the Tartars are to blame, the West, the Jews. To this day we have no serious answer to the question of our backwardness. We need to work on these topics. We know so little about the rise and rapid predominance and international renown of Moscow, about the 15th and 16th centuries, the policies of Ivan III, about the Josephites and others, the struggle between Volokolamsk and Nil Sorsky and how the tsar intervened in this struggle, or about Novgorod and its defeat, the Livonian War, why certain policies were formulated, who advised the rulers, about the Time of Troubles, and how Peter was trying to solve old problems. We need to understand the rules of the game for the 17th and 18th centuries. A textbook ought to include positive achievements as well, to illustrate positive things.
Boris Poyzner: I'm from an Old Believer family. Among Old Believers, people knew each other, knew how the other person would act, and they didn't need pieces of paper to regulate their behavior towards one another, just a person's word of honor. That's a pretty serious thing and at some level this can work at other times and places. If we try to remember what were the best of the Soviet initiatives, we should remember that the government didn't just guarantee work and pay, but also kindergartens, Pioneer camps, everything from the conditions of individual work to factories. Some of this system could be saved, there could be some kind of symbiosis from different systems, even if the fundamental values changed. Right now we have a situation where the banks act as if they exist in a different world than the government and the people. Banks, other businesses, universities, all need to unite in a common cause and take part in the transformation of the country, in figuring out how to make us productive once more. Let's all figure out how it is that the Americans have done so well.
Textbooks can be positive and patriotic, but can't limit themselves to that. Along with remembering the power of Russian arms, a textbook should discuss some of the truly superior products we've made, the progressive post-reform law courts, the private companies and banks of the late 19th-early 20th centuries, and support for the arts by successful members of the business community. A textbook ought to identify where the gaps and problems are, how it is not good when the power at the center is weakened. People fled Moscow to seek a new land, but they cooperated with the state and there was a kind of symbiosis. Coming from an Old Believer family, these topics are of special interest to me.
Alekseev: In order to help the government, we need a cultural and educational institution that focuses on the legal basis for government actions, and that studies how government actions can be guaranteed and affirmed by law. . . .
Lvova: Pushkin showed us, in a very enlightened way, how to love our homeland when he wrote: "There are two emotions that are equally dear to us and that nourish our hearts: one is love for the family hearth, and the other is love for the graves in our native land" (I dva chuvstva ravno blizki nam / V nikh obretaet serdtse pishchu: / Liubov' k rodnomu pepelishchu, / Liubov' k otecheskim grobam). Pushkin expressed himself with amazing subtlety and any textbook ought to keep those two emotions in mind. To love one's homeland not only as a flourishing civilization, well-satisfied with its own existence, but with all its tragic history and all the complicated circumstances and the drama of its existence-for me, that's the most important part. . . .
There is a curious fact about the life of Grigory Nikolaevich Potanin, a regional expert and advocate (oblastnik, regionalist). I think it was when he was in exile in Tot'ma that he sketched out a plan for a textbook based on local history (uchebnik kraevedcheskii) that would begin with the home and radiate out to the land surrounding it, the village, and the county (okolo doma, usad'by, sela, uezda), moving all the way out to the furthest borders of our native land. This is a very important foundation for the structure of a history book with texts in it, and they cannot leave out the best historical understanding (soznanie) we have, because a person's general culture and state identity is based on knowledge and understanding of their personal history, their memories, and their own freely-developed orientation in history, that gradually moves outward into broader spheres. This is a way to conceive a new kind of textbook.
I think that one of the leading characteristics of the history of our country is its spatial fate (obrechennost' prostranstva). This is connected with our historical path, our greatest successes, and our greatest losses. And by losses I don't mean just territorial losses but the loss of historical principles and a sense of personal responsibility (poteri istoriosofskie, poteri lichnoi otvetstvennosti), because ruling large territories made us forget about our smaller homelands (o malykh rodinakh) and territories. The idea of something large and important (ideia velikogo) covered up and obscured the idea of everyday life (ideia povsednevnogo). . . . And this complex aspect of our national life needs to be examined at each stage (srez, meaning a cut or microscopic section) of our history. As an ethnologist, I have to say that when you look at the history of this land from the beginnings up to the present day, you come across many different groups, large and small, of different ethnic backgrounds, religions, ways of life, all of which contributed something to the whole. . . . But in telling this story, we must not neglect the dominant role and positive aspects of the ethnic group that has flourished as the majority in this land. All of this is significant and has to be included in a textbook of Russian history.
Krechetova: A textbook should analyze the leading alternatives and ask, for instance, whether it would have been possible to avoid the turn that events took in October 1917.
5. What meaning does the concept "Russian national identity" have for you? Do you think that Russia's national identity consists of a set of core beliefs, values, and characteristics, or is it something that varies greatly through time? Does russkost' (Russianness) in St. Petersburg mean something significantly different from russkost' in Siberia?
Billington: Does Russianness change, depending on where you are?
A general discussion followed about the way the question was structured. Alekseev was disconcerted by the use of St. Petersburg instead of Moscow as a point of contrast. Others believed that the word russkost' is not in common use (ego net v russkom obikhode) and sounds alien (chuzhoi) to them. Parthé explained that russkost' was frequently found in contemporary Russian newspapers and journals. Participants said that what is meant by russkost' would be discussed in Siberia as russkii kharakter, russkii dukh, or russkii tip uma (the Russian character, the Russian spirit, the Russian intellect). Kazarkin claimed that if a Russian-speaking Tatar went to Ukraine, he would be called a Siberian, while in Moscow he would be treated as a Tatar. The category of Russianness means less in Siberia where so many are of mixed ethnic background and anyone who speaks Russian is considered one of the group (svoi). But Russian culture changed as it moved eastward so that some aspects of Russianness are different depending on where you are in this country.
Yanovich: Russkost' is a very individual feeling. In Siberia, for instance, many people have no extensive family biography15, and a given generation may know very little about their rod (the family, extended through time) beyond one generation back. Father Pavel Florenskii taught us about Russianness in Znanie svoego roda (Knowing Your Family Background), which he felt was the way to know Russian history. . . . Some really interesting books have come out recently on the Russian emigration, especially Russians in France, and how the children of the emigrants were taught to be Russian.
Father Leonid: It's very interesting to think about the contrasts between what russkost' means here and in St. Petersburg. Let me remind you about Aleksandr Nevsky, who lived in an age where Russia was being threatened from both East and West. Paradoxically, he did all he could to get along with the East, with the Tatars, who were of a different faith. He put up with a lot so that he could devote his energies to fighting enemies from the West, who were after all fellow Christians, spiritual relatives. But he saw his Western neighbors as a threat to russkost'. Peter the Great, in founding St. Petersburg and making this foreign place Russian, paid great attention to Aleksandr Nevsky, naming the main boulevard after him and bringing the saint's relics to the new city from Yaroslavl'. So there was an attempt to bring closer together Russianness and the West, which is especially visible in the architecture. You see this as well after the Revolution, when the spirit of the International put a lot of pressure on Russianness, although one can argue about how strong this pressure really was. In Moscow, a number of the most Russian aspects of the city's architecture, of its profile, were destroyed after 191716, but in St. Petersburg the beautiful old buildings remained, with their peaceful unification of the Western and the Russian.
Siberia, with its variety of peoples, is more like the American West, where the emphasis is on present challenges and future possibilities. St. Petersburg, our West, is orienting itself towards the West, while Moscow is marked by the intensity with which it remembers its roots, its past, its traditions. Think of how popular Nikita Mikhalkov is. Moscow is attracted by all aspects of antiquity (starina). Siberia depends on itself, relies on its own strength, and is sure it will survive thanks to its inner potential.
Lvova: Let's address the question of whether Russian national consciousness consists of unchangeable (neizmeniaemye) values, or whether this idea is constantly in the process of changing. If "National idea" is equated with "ethnicity," then ethnicity is going to look quite different at various historical moments and framed by various institutions. The ethnic idea can reveal itself as an idea of the state (gosudarstvennost'), as a religious idea, or as the idea of a small local group of people. No one group can display all the aspects of the etnos. What we get instead is a collection of sub-ethnic formations (subetnichnosti) against the background of the group as a whole. In this sense, I have no doubt that there is a Siberian Russian identity and an identity based in central European Russia-I don't make a distinction between Petersburg and Moscow. . . . I've posed provocative questions to the young scholars in my seminar, and I got answers that were amazing in their artlessness (prostodushie) and specificity (tochnost'). One student said that she spent the summer with relatives in their dacha on the Volga, and found the people there, these Volga Russians (volzhskie russkie), to be very strange. They walk slowly, converse slowly, and even think slowly, she said.
You can talk about a Siberian sub-ethnic formation with more confidence when you look at material from the second half of the 19th century. Then the distinct characteristics really come out of a vigorous, energetic, self-reliant population that had never known serfdom (moshchnogo, energichnogo, samobytnogo i ne znavshego krepostnogo prava naseleniia). Siberian industry developed rather quickly and intensively and changed the makeup of Siberia, which, like the ethnic composition of the United States or Canada, was heterogeneous, so that there are ways in which we can genuinely compare our ethnic and national cultures.
The picture changed in the 20th century. The structure of the population of Siberia, especially that part of the population whose culture has a folkloric foundation, changed repeatedly. Now you almost can't find a Siberian settlement whose inhabitants have been living there for four or five generations. The changes that came after 1929 [with collectivization] transformed the structure of Russian ethnicity in Siberia. There is very little rootedness any more (ochen' malo ukorennosti teper'). Residents of the Altai mixed with those of Tomsk, while Tomsk people went further north. I'm not even including all the different kinds of people who were deported or exiled to Siberia, sometimes in great numbers. But all the same, Siberia is so far from the capitals (metropoliia) that it has worked out its own way of reacting to things. Siberians sense that they have their own higher cultural identity (osobennoe povyshennoe kul'turnoe samosoznanie sibiriakov) which consists of a sense of superiority. We realize that Siberia amounts to three-fourths of the land in the Russian Federation and about the same percentage of its natural resources, and we realize that 32 million of us, including one million native inhabitants, carry the burden of pulling the engine of the Russian state. The poet Batiushkov said that Siberia was the flywheel (makhovoe koleso), a heavy wheel which regulates the movement of a mechanism) of Russian history and the pledge (zalog) of its greatness. One way or another, this sense of our worth makes us wonder about the center's exploitation of Siberian territory.
Rozov: Siberia has always been a bit hungrier than Moscow or St. Petersburg. On the subject of identity, I wonder how "British" Americans felt before the Revolution. General Washington was once a lieutenant in the British army, so from one point of view, what he did was treasonous. Halfway around the world, we Russians see a land that found its identity. Siberia had such a chance, we all know about it, its capital was Omsk, it fell apart, and people identify the whole undertaking with Kolchak. We know that we live on a vast territory with vast resources. . . .allowing us to feel it was okay not to conserve these resources, that there was always another place to go. We ought to have some self-respect and realize that we are a very rich territory.
Alekseev: A lot of what we are talking about comes under the term mentalitet. I think that we can find a lot of material that will help us mark off some limits to the mentalitet of people of the northern capital and our ancient capital (o pervoprestol'noi stolitse) from the mentality of someone from Siberia. None of this happened yesterday-it's the fruit of our historical development. Who came to Siberia from the very beginning? Enterprising people, people who didn't fear physical or spiritual challenges. There is a lot of documentation from the 17th and 18th centuries, for instance from the Yenisei Cossacks, about individuals who could do any number of different things. This created a certain kind of person-energetic, goal-oriented (deiatel'nyi, tseleustremlennyi) and decisive (skorogo resheniia vsiacheskikh del).
But what about more recent times? I remember that when you used to arrive in Moscow by train or airplane, you would see the slogan "Moscow-City of the Communist Way of Life" (Moskva-gorod kommunisticheskogo byta). Someone coming from Siberia would look with eyes and mouth wide open and think that here was the radiant future we had been building for so long and with such effort. There were products, especially groceries, that didn't require coupons and you could get them in any store and you could take as much as you wished (beri skol'ko khochesh'). This all went to determining the specific atmosphere of that relatively small territory where all the important decisions at the very highest level were being made. The aura had to be sufficiently calm, prosperous, and contented (dostatochno spokoinyi, blagopoluchnyi, umirotvorennyi), and full of the good things in life. Siberia for centuries had the reputation of a Russian Golgotha, with all the stages of the journey (etapy) to the place of hard labor (katorga) or exile-this is how Siberia was used. And then we were asked to build Communism. The government attitude towards this region has formed a certain kind of Russianness that differentiates a Siberian from a Muscovite. I specifically say Moscow, because in that respect Petersburg also feels its provincial character vis-à-vis Moscow.
Billington: Siberia represents a different aspect of the Russian theme, one that focuses on pioneers. In connection with this, there is a new American-Russian project called "The Meeting of Frontiers" that has won Congressional support. We will begin gathering materials on Siberia and the formerly Russian parts of North America for an interactive web site, among other venues. We already have a number of relevant manuscripts in the Library of Congress, including those connected with the translation of the Bible into the languages of the indigenous peoples of Alaska, and the whole history of the Orthodox Church in Alaska. . . . Siberia calls to mind the image of exile, which is how a number of nationalities wound up here.
Yanovich: That's quite true, and a fund has been set up to help publish some previously unpublished materials, including memoirs by Krasovtsev and others.
Rozov: So many prisoners representing so many different nationalities came to Siberia, and the genuine criminals left their imprint on the culture. In prison you find one of the ethnographically most interesting subcultures, and this criminal subculture flourishes throughout the country but particularly in Siberia. Sometimes when I pay for a ride somewhere, like this time coming from Novosibirsk, the driver plays the music of this subculture. Theirs is a language mixture with lots of Belorussian words and other secret criminal slang called fenia that includes virtually no Russian words. There is a lot that would be interesting for ethnographers to study.
Krechetova: On the one hand you have pioneers, and on the other hand prisoners and people living in exile.
Billington: When California was still the wild west, you could find some questionable characters and in general a lot less law and order. And of course there was Chicago in the 1920s. But what about inner, moral values in Russia now? A few years ago, right after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a flurry of interest in the church, in being baptized. Is this continuing and deepening and are there difference between the church here and in the European part of Russia? Young people seem to have an absence of faith these days.
Father Leonid: You can't call the criminalization of culture or language in Russia. . . .a Siberian development. Camps and places of exile existed in the western part of the country as well. Think of the infamous SLON [initials of a camp set up on the grounds of the Solovetsky Monastery on a real archipelago in the north of Russia]. The exiles sent to Siberia had a positive influence in that they brought what they knew of Western culture to the people living here, including notions of tolerance. Because of the exiles, some relatively isolated places in Siberia, in the Tomsk region, wound up having one or more theaters and a library where you wouldn't expect them to be found in the 19th century.
Some very religious people fled here from what they saw as the corrupt, sinful atmosphere of Western, Europeanized Russian civilization, and in the places where they settled, monasteries were founded. You see the evidence of heroic, righteous behavior (podvizhnichestvo) in the deep religious roots in Tomsk, for instance, where Orthodoxy helped the people to resist the temptation of criminal behavior. After the Revolution, especially in the twenties and thirties, the Orthodox Church was less oppressed (ispytyvali men'she gneta) here than in the western part of the country. So we don't say that there has been a re-birth of Orthodoxy, but simply that it has opened up a bit wider and come out more into the open (raskrylas'). St. Innokenty of Moscow brought the idea of Orthodoxy and Russianness to America. Remember that when Russians pushed towards Alaska and through that territory to America, priests from Siberia went along with them. In terms of spiritual values, Siberia has very rich traditions. Now to a certain extent things have leveled out and it is hard to see the regional differences in the way that Orthodoxy functions.
6. The period since 1991 has been called post-totalitarian, post-Communist, post-Soviet, post-imperial, post-perestroika, mezhvremen'e (between two identifiable time periods), and bezvremen'e (timelessness, hard times). Which of these terms do you think most accurately characterizes this complex period? When do you expect that Russia will arrive at a new era that can be named and judged in its own right?
Alekseev: . . . .We are trying to characterize our situation today on the background of our whole past: at what point are we on our historical path of development? And then we have to find a name for the period. If we call it transitional we won't be wrong, but transition from what and to what? Then we have to pick more precise places from which to take readings (pravil'nye tochki otscheta). I will come up with one set of places but someone else will have another set.
. . . I think we can call this period transitional, if we expand our view a little to see the origins of the rupture (razryv) in society. The problems we've been looking at-especially of national identity-have been linked to events that took place in the 20th century, but I think that we are just reaping the fruits from seeds that were sown in the previous century, when at some point Rus'-Rossiia-began to act quite differently. For instance, why did we sell Alaska to America? We expanded towards the east, and then we ran out of time for swallowing that final piece of our great expanse (gigantskoe prostranstvo), a piece to which we had only weak geographical links. We found ourselves at a dead end in our journey and the imperial idea could go no further. That led to a sense that there had to be a change, a reorientation in history. So we sold Alaska for a purely symbolic sum to America to mark the end of that stage.
How would things have gone had it not been for the events of 1917? After the Revolution, our imperial ambitions, such as they were, were directed not east but west. Now we have to determine: what are we changing from and what are we changing to? It's hard for me to pick a name for this period because we don't know the vectors we are moving along.
Parthé: I've seen the term post-perestroika many times in Russian journals, and it seem to have a negative meaning, in the sense that something hoped for didn't happen. Post-sovetskii seems to just say that there was a Soviet Union, but it no longer exists.
Kaluzhskii: Post-perestroika is the government's term and it disappeared with the Soviet Union. All post-communism says is that there used to be communism-otherwise the term has no content and just indicates the absence of something. Post-Soviet society conveys a sense that there has been a continuation of some aspects of Soviet society. Post-totalitarianism-that's just a statement of fact.
Krechetova: Some of the terms convey something important, others don't have a lot of content if they just tell us what is no longer active and it isn't a useful way of dividing things up. As for post-perestroika-at least there was an attempt at liberal reform.
Parthé: What I find most interesting in your journals and newspapers is that I don't come across any terms for what I sense is beginning, only for what is ending.
Krechetova: Things are changing and it's hard to know what to call it.
Rozov: The terminology is secondary-the essence of the matter is more important to understand. In August 1991 there was an attempt to go back in time, but this led to the end of the USSR. The term post-imperialism is accurate in a non-journalistic sense, in that we have a 500-year history of imperial expansion and it is over. But it is used not descriptively but pejoratively in journalism so it is better not to use it here. There is no returning to that stage and this is a positive move for us.
Yanovich: What we are going through now I would call a Time of Troubles [smutnoe vremia, referring to the years between 1605 and 1613]. There is a genuine search for a new type of dialogue, and lot going on that is hidden from view, something very deep, and at some point we will see what the results are. I call it smutnoe (vague, confused, troubled) because we don't know what's going on, nothing is fully formed yet (nichego ne opredelilos'), and it isn't clear what we ought to be doing.
Rozov: I see Time of Troubles (smuta) as a dangerous term when used in the mass media. You can find this historical reference, for instance, on the masthead of Nash sovremennik (Our Contemporary, a conservative nationalist journal) with Minin and Pozharskii [heroes of this turbulent period], and it appears to hint at military mobilization.
Yanovich: The system created in Russia was oriented around extreme situations and was structured to mobilize people. In normal situations it didn't work well.
Billington: If there is a crisis of legitimacy, where is it? For instance, only 2% of the population seem to support Yeltsin, and people prefer "none of the above" when asked how they feel about various leaders. What does this mean?
Rozov: That there are no bold ideas and no bold people.
Yanovich: There is a society-wide depression and a sense of paralysis of our impulse for action. The myth of the state is paralyzed, it's in an expectant state, a state of disenchantment (razocharovanie).
Billington: But was there an enchantment (ocharovanie) before the disenchantment?
Yanovich: In the late 1970s the government (vlast') didn't want to forge ties to the intelligentsia because it didn't want their help, which was a very infantile attitude. One may speak of historical memory as non-continuous (diskretnost' istoricheskoi pamiati). There was a vacuum of ideas (ideinyi vakuum). The ruling power was always merciless (bezposhchadno) towards any independent thinking.
Kaluzhskii: I can tell you that on paper the legislation we have for things like social organizations (obshchestvennye organizatsii) seems very progressive now, but it isn't clear to all sides what legal orbit these organizations function in, and there are a lot of them now that aren't government and aren't private but something else. We haven't had a genuine emancipation of consciousness in the government or in the private sector and we still really don't trust one another. When people hear the words "social organization" they think of Komsomol and the profsoiuzy (Soviet-era labor unions).
Lvova: In 1945, in the ruins of Berlin, we could have asked the same questions. Seeing the ruins of one empire, we might have wondered what would happen to other empires. Like all imperial civilizations, Russia in 1998 is a complex world in its psychological expectation of big new structures, a new ideology for the external world, a society that is still part-open/part-closed, and in our memories of the past. Remember the lines from Mandelstam about not feeling the country beneath our feet?17 We ethnographers go into villages where, for example, there are exiled Russians and Germans, and we learn how people reacted, how they were disillusioned.
Rozov: You can compare post-fascist Germany and a defeated Russia at the end of the Cold War, except that Germany was reborn, it repented, there are even young Germans who travel to Israel to do volunteer work. Here there was no cleansing and no purification from Communism. . . .
Yanovich: Attempts to bring the Communist Party to justice won't work.
There is a general discussion about the aftershocks of the dissolution of the USSR. One person can't believe that a visa is needed to go to Kazakhstan and another participant mentions that all his family graves are in Ukraine. Their personal geography is no longer coterminous with national borders and that feels very strange to them.
