Window on Eurasia

Chubais Says Lack of National Idea Behind Russia’s Ethnic Conflicts

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 28, 2006 – The current upsurge of ethnic conflicts in the Russian Federation is the result of the country’s lack of a “national idea capable of unifying people,” according to Igor Chubais, head of the Moscow Center for the Study of Russia and brother of Russia's privatization chief in the 1990s.

In a press conference yesterday at the Moscow House of Nationalities, Chubais argued that the lack of such an idea meant that today “there are no rules, no order, no master,” a situation that could ultimately
threaten the territorial integrity of the country
[https://ec.ut.ee/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=30610%26print=Y].

“Why have skinheads appeared in Russia?” Chubais asked. “Believe
me, not because there are a large number of Caucasians in the cities or
because our militia works badly. The reason is that there is no
ideal;” and “when there is no ideal, individuals decide for
themselves what it should be and do what they want.”

“In tsarist Russia,” Chubais continued, “the national idea was
God. As soon as a crisis of faith began, instability appeared. After
the revolution, communism became the national idea. But this idea turned
out to be a lie” because behind its slogans, the elites continued to
enrich themselves at the expense of the population.

The Soviet Union ultimately collapsed, Chubais said, because Russians
and others no longer believed in its idea and ideals. And now, he
suggested, “we are again searching for a new national idea.”

According to Chubais, there are three possible avenues for developing a
national idea. First, the country could “build a new Russia on the
principle of the USSR.” Second, it could “use the experience of
Western countries.” Or third, it could recover its roots by turning
back “to the glorious thousand-year-old history of Russia.”

In Chubais’ opinion, the third path is “the truest one,” but he
hastened to add that “a national idea must not be viewed as the
property of a single people.” For “multi-national Russia,” it
must be “an idea which will unify all the citizens of the state,
regardless of their ethnic background.”

Also taking part in yesterday’s press briefing was Arif Kerimov, the
head of the Lezgin National-Cultural Autonomy in Moscow. Among other
things, he said that he feared that “tomorrow in the national
republics of Russia may appear people who will begin to relate to
Russians or the representatives of other nations in an aggressive
way.”

In order to ward off such “a genuine catastrophe for the country,”
Kerimov said, Russia needs both a specific policy on nationalities as
well as a ministry for nationality affairs, an institution the
government of the Russian Federation created and then did away with in
the 1990s.

The Chubais-Kerimov press conference is the first of what the Moscow
House of Nationalities, an agency of the government of the city of
Moscow, promises will be a two-year cycle of seminars “devoted to
various aspects of inter-ethnic relations” and intended to reduce
ethnic tensions.

Details about future sessions will be posted on the Moscow House of
Nationalities website, http://www.mdn.ru
[https://ec.ut.ee/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.mdn.ru/].

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