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Teaching Patriotism in Contemporary Russia: Finding the Line between 'Russian Civilization' and Ethnocentrism

Victor Shnirelman, Senior Researcher, Department for the Study of Ethnic Conflicts, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Moscow, and Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, Kennan Instiute; Marlene Laruelle, Associate Scholar, French Center for Russian, Caucasian, and East-European Studies, Paris, and Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center

Date & Time

Thursday
Mar. 23, 2006
1:30pm – 3:30pm ET

Overview

Contemporary Russian society is multiethnic, infused with nationalist sentiments, and confronted by globalization at every turn, stated Victor Shnirelman, Senior Researcher, Department for the Study of Ethnic Conflicts, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Moscow, and Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, Kennan Institute, at a recent Kennan Institute seminar. Ethnicity, as a socially constructed category, was politicized during Soviet times when the USSR was divided into many different national republics to form an ethnofederal state. That politicization still exists today. Shnirelman noted that a number of ethnic groups have coexisted on Russian territory for a very long time. Russia's ethnically-defined national republics were named for indigenous groups, not immigrant groups, and they exist today within a hierarchy determined by the central government. According to Shnirelman, in the Soviet period, the central government discriminated against certain groups by allocating smaller amounts of financial support to them from the federal budget and granting them lesser degrees of autonomy, giving rise to structural interethnic hostility and competition. This struggle for scarce political, social, and economic resources keeps going nowadays.

Shnirelman argued that the exacerbation of interethnic tensions in post-Soviet Russia has been reflected in its education system. Immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ministry of Education, which is in charge of defining the history curriculum taught in schools nationwide, developed a new concept of history education and divided a curriculum unevenly between "federal" and "regional" components. This was a sharp departure from teaching students mainly about a singular Soviet identity, and different ethnic groups eagerly explored their own histories and cultural achievements. At the same time, nationalism flourished during this period, and its advocates began to use ethnic past as a powerful tool for various claims. Shnirelman stated that interethnic tensions flared as multiple groups laid competing claims to history, territory, and accomplishments. In 2000, the state undertook an effort to curb interethnic conflict by encouraging social integration and promoting one inclusive Russian civic identity. The Ministry of Education encouraged a shift to a civilizational approach to teaching history, and civilizational entities replaced social classes in the textbooks; Soviet class ideology was pushed aside to make room for nationalism with a distinctly "organic" bend. The Ministry of Education hoped that this inclusive hegemonic approach might overcome further ethnicization and fragmentation of common history. As a result, at the federal level, "the national idea" is being tailored to fit the "Russian (rossiiskaia) civilization," a concept which offers all ethnic groups membership in a highly integrated cultural and political body. In reality, "Russian civilization" amounts to an ethnic Russian civilization serving to foster Russian imperial identity and cultural fundamentalism. Indeed, with this concept, ethnic Russians appear as the sole active agent of history, whereas non-Russian ethnic groups tend to be presented as its mute objects. The result of this sort of education is that, despite noble intentions of the Ministry of Education to combat xenophobia, federal schools' reluctance to address ethnic issues adequately deepened the tendency among students to treat the non-Russian peoples of Russia as the ‘fifth column', a weak link that might break in a critical situation undermining the integrity of the state. It is in this way that the imposition of the "civilizational identity" on Russian students seems to produce the opposite effect, breeding intolerance and chauvinism.

Marlene Laruelle, Associate Scholar, French Center for Russian, Caucasian, and East-European Studies, Paris, and Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, described the emergence of a new interdisciplinary academic school of thought, culturology, in the late Soviet and post-Soviet years. Culturology, she explained, is the teaching of nationalism, the institutionalization of identity. The Ministry of Education formalized the requirements for obtaining a degree in culturology in 1995, and today the majority of students take a required course in culturology in their first or second year of higher education. She attributes the creation and rapid expansion of this new field to the federal government's desire to replace the predominant Soviet-era Marxist ideology of dialectical materialism and to provide instead, through culturologists, new definitions of a specific Russian national identity, history, and culture. These new definitions claim that Russians possess a unique mentality, argue that authoritarianism and Orthodoxy are natural ways for Russia, and position Russia as a bridge between East and West. They provide both students and state elites with a new "ready made" way of thinking and speaking about Russia.

Laruelle argued that there are a number of disturbing aspects about the teaching of culturology in Russian institutions of higher education. The textbooks approved by the Ministry of education present an essentialist worldview, in which individual nations are described as having certain inherent values, traditions, and characters. According to Laruelle, a primary function of culturology is to differentiate the character and values of the Russian nation from those of other nations—particularly from the United States and European nations, as treatment of other parts of the world in culturology textbooks is limited or nonexistent. While this exploration of Russian national identity and Russia's place in the world may be understandable, given the turmoil and intellectual uncertainty that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union, Laruelle is concerned that culturologists present their categorizations of national traits as scientific facts. This claim to scientific legitimacy is being bolstered by state support.

Both speakers noted current trends in academia toward conservatism and anti-West sentiment. The state line has clearly influenced how and which history is taught in Russian classrooms; however, this has not changed the reality of Russia existing as a multicultural, international state.

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Kennan Institute

The Kennan Institute is the premier US center for advanced research on Russia and Eurasia and the oldest and largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Kennan Institute is committed to improving American understanding of Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the surrounding region though research and exchange.  Read more

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