Window on Eurasia

Kremlin Fails to Recognise Young Russians Are Not Soviet People

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 4, 2004 – The Kremlin has failed to recognize that young Russians who have grown up since 1991 are fundamentally different than their elders who grew up in Soviet times, and as a result, it has adopted policies that have divided those in power from the people who should be its most natural supporters.

That is the judgment of Aleksandr Samovarov, a Moscow commentator, who
writes in Friday’s “Novaya politika” that consequently, “the
political situation in Russia is developing along the linies of the
most stupid scenario one could possibly imagine
[http://www.novopol.ru/opinion11081.html].

Over the last few months, Samovarov argues, the Kremlin and its
advisors have offered up a series of what the regime quite justifiably views as
extremist, even fascist Russian nationalists as part of its effort to
present President Vladimir Putin and his regime as a lesser evil as
2008 approaches.

But this campaign has run into difficulties at home. On the one hand,
those who have been charged are not “primitive marginals” acting
out of blind hatred or for money but rather “dreamy youths who are
convinced that they are suffering for an idea,” precisely the most
dangerous kind of opponents any regime can have.

And on the other hand, there is increasing evidence to suggest that
many of these people the regime calls extremist in fact enjoy widespread
support among a wide range of Russians, whose “defensive
nationalism” after the events of the last 15 years is understandable
even if in the eyes of many people not especially praiseworthy.

Soviet people, Samovarov continues, would respond to charges that these
individuals, be they Col. Budanov who raped and killed a Chechen girl
or those charged with killing foreign students or ethnic immigrants in
just the way that the leadership assumes all Russians now will.

Indeed, the Moscow commentator says, “the majority of Russians in the
end backed Budanov [regardless of what he may have personally done to
the Chechen girl and her family precisely] because the colonel defended
Russians” against those most Russians view as their enemies.

While such attitudes are unfortunate, they reflect a fact that the
Kremlin and its advisors on ethnic affairs have failed to understand:
“they live not among the Soviet people who were kept in line by fear
but among a young people of a new country by the name of Russia.”

As an increasing number of Moscow commentators have done in recent
months, Samovarov singles out for particular criticism Vladimir
Tishkov, the head of the Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Ethnology, a former
nationalities minister, and a member of the Societal Chamber.

Instead of recognizing that most Russians view immigrants as a threat,
as competitors in the workforce and groups that will change the face of
Russian cities, Samovarov continues, Tishkov argues that the media
should be told to write “every tenth article” on the contribution
migration can make to Russia.

And the influential Moscow ethnographer has argued, Samovarov says,
that increases in the number of ethnic Russians who back the slogan
“Russia for the Russians” are not a reflection of popular attitudes but
rather the product of the fact that pollsters are asking this question.

“It is obvious,” Samovarov says, that “in his soul, Tishkov has
remained a typical docent with a Marxist-Leninist education. This
baggage in no way will help him to fulfill those funcions which the
ruling class of Russia have laid on him.” For that class, he
continues, is not interested in “the victories of internationalism
and tolerance.”

Instead, Samovarov says, its members want to “preserve their position
in society and their money. And perhaps this instinct for
self-preservation will force them to find in Russia people who unlike
Tishkov understand what in fact is taking place in [their] country.”

Today’s Russians, the Moscow commentator insists, are “hardly
blinded” by hatred, but “they all the same want to live in a
country where their opinions are taken into account” – something that an
increasing number of Russians, especially those who have grown up since
1991, do not believe is currently the case.

What is happening, Samovarov argues, despite the obliviousness of the
Kremlin and its advisors on ethnic affairs is the rapid appearance of
“the first generation that has been formed not under the communists.
This group of 20-year-olds,” he continues, does not have that baggage
which its predecessors had.”

And consequently, at least some of its members are prepared to act,
often in dangerous, counterproductive and self-destructive ways. But
instead of recognizing that reality and seeking a dialogue with them,
the Kremlin and its advisors act as if they can ignore this new
generation and its values.

The Russian government “ought to begin to talk with these young
Russian nationalists, to find serious people (not Tishkov) and to begin
negotiations” with them rather than continuing to assume that these
people and their views can be successfully presented in the way that
the Soviet authorities would have done.

The fact that the Kremlin has not done so, Samovarov concludes,
represents a curious “paradox.” “The generation of 20-year-olds
was formed in Putin’s times. And why should the government argue with
its own young people? What is the meaning of this opposition? What is
the logic?”

For the Americans, who are prepared to support those who oppose the
central power of the Russian Federation by almost any means, not
talking to these young people would make perfect sense. Indeed, what the
Kremlin is doing seems more the product of what Washington would like to see
rather than what the Russian government should.

Samovarov ends his essay with a comment that many may see as brutal but
that nonetheless is likely to have a certain resonance: Yeltsin, he
notes, in the view of many could have avoided the Chechen war, “if he
had met with [former Chechen leader Dzhokhar] Dudayev.”

But now it should be obvious, Samovarov writes, what the Kremlin must
do “it needs to meet not with Dudayev but rather with its own Russian
people.”

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