Model of common existence of Russians in the 21st century

Author: VK

Vladimir Putin has described the need to develop a strategy for the state national policy in one of his famous pre-election articles. In late summer, at the first meeting of the Council on International Relations, President has instructed to prepare a draft strategy, where politics is considered not only in terms of individuals and nations, but also as a factor of national security. In autumn, this document recording the unifying role of the Russian people and language, migration issues, issues of preservation of national cultures, became the subject of public discussion in all Russian regions. Until the end of the year the strategy should be adopted.

According to Vyacheslav Mikhailov, head of the Working Group on the draft strategy of state national policy of the Russian Federation of the Presidential Council on International Relations,”the strategy of the state national policy to some extent can be considered as a continuation, given the changes that have occurred over the past decade, of the concept of the state national policy, which was adopted in 1996. In general, the adjustments to the concept of 1996 were proposed to Vladimir Putin in 2004. But during those eight years we could not just make adjustments and keep the concept as a benchmark. So in this case, this strategy can be considered as a new strategy for the period of development of Russian statehood. The principal difference from the concept is that the concept in 1996 set itself the task of harmonization of interethnic relations in the conditions of the collapse of the Soviet Union and a very difficult situation in the Russian Federation, you remember the situation in the Caucasus and in other regions of the country, that is, we had to find a document that would become a document of consent at that stage. Admittedly, Ramazan Abdulatipov, who is here, began the development of this document, being the chairman of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation. Precisely because of the efforts of the Council of Nationalities the Federation Treaty was adopted in 1992. The Federation Treaty was also a kind of compromise - you remember layering of the treaty, with its allocation of powers between the center and the republics, between the center and other federal entities. But the process of adopting the concept even after the Constitution was also very hard. The first document was sent by Ramazan Hadzhimuradovich to President Yeltsin at the time. That is the process that is happening today; for two months our paper has already been discussed in different federal entities, this paper was discussed much longer there, and the consensus was not found. Imagine that to some extent a consensus was found only in 1996.

Here's the difference. I do not think we will agree on our strategy for 4 years. Decree of the President says that by December 1 the document which could be signed as a decree should be prepared. I cannot say today if it will be ready on December 1 or not, but today the comments that we have received from the subjects of the federation and the expert community allow us to hope that this document will still be approved by the president.

One of the features of this paper is that the main aim of the strategy is the issue with the fixing, we can find any words here, of our national unity and civil accord. In short, for the first time, as opposed to the concept in 1996, we introduce the concept of Russian civil nation, political nation. The peculiarity of our scientific approach to these problems is somewhat different from Western Europe. If in Western Europe nation is a political phenomenon, in our understanding, both Russian and Soviet, nation is both a political and mainly ethnic entity. Today, there is one consensus in the scientific community: we share the concept of "nation" as a political community and "nation" as an ethnic group. That is very important.

The second feature of our paper is that we have tried, figuratively speaking, to reconnect times. The meaning of this concept is that, perhaps, the tragedy of our social development was the fact that, having gone through geopolitical catastrophe twice - in 1917 and in 1991, we abandoned the past, that is, in the period after 1917 we seemed to cross out all the achievements in the imperial period of our development, and in the 1990's we crossed out all the features and some progress in addressing the national question in the Soviet period. Therefore, this concept tries to incorporate all the best that has been linked to the solution of the national question and the achievement of ethnic harmony both in the imperial period, the royal period, and in the period of the Soviet Union. This is a very important point.

Another very important condition of our paper is that our activities are well-defined. We formulate the concept of strategy as an integrated, cross-sectoral approach to address this issue. Our peace and international harmony depend on the success or failure of our economic development, because in the area of economic development, we have very serious social stratification, on culture and education. That is, the structure of this strategy literally permeates every pore of our lives and answers or tries to answer the question of how to act in this or that direction”.

“For Russia, with its variety of languages, traditions, ethnicities, cultures, national question without exaggeration is fundamental”, Ramazan Abdulatipov, Deputy Head of the Working Group on the draft strategy of state national policy of the Russian Federation of the Presidential Council on International Relations, says. “Any responsible politician, public figure should be aware that one of the main conditions for the existence of our country is the civil international harmony. This awareness – we know that Russia is historically multinational, etc., but when it comes to the second part, recognizing the responsibility for the state of and prospects for inter-ethnic relations in the country, and that it affects the well-being and development of the state, the nation, and so on - this understanding is, unfortunately, not exists. The strategy is comprehensive. This is, first, a strategy that should coordinate the activities of all governmental bodies and of civil society to perform certain tasks and certain behavior in this area. And second, independent national issues are rarely present because these problems are a thing of the system of social relations. You remember what Marx had written: personality is not an abstract inherent in each single individual, but there is a set of social relations. Nation - is not an abstract inherent in each single ethnic group, but there is a reflection of relations of society, where this nation is functioning, and therefore, it is about getting the strategy to the health of society, because as soon as everything is getting worse in the social sphere - ethnopolitical context is found, and the crisis in the economic sphere always provokes looking for the guilty, but not among economists and politicians but among people of other nationalities. If people want to cover up their ignorance, they start to appeal to the national customs, traditions, etc. This is a complex area, which covers maybe not so much the level of rationality as the irrational level, because love and hate are rather irrational sphere. Of course, we tried more fundamentally describe the fact that international problems are now primarily cultural issues, culture and politics in the common living of Russians. We come to the conclusion that we have a vast historical experience, we live together, our children are common, but there is a stage where we largely have to re-learn how to live together in a multicultural community, if we want to preserve our state, our country .  If not, we will continue to arrange collapses. The strategy of the state national policy is a model of living together for Russians in the XXI century. According to the article by Putin and our paper, we can say that this is a civil and patriotic model of national policy”. 

 
Vyacheslav Mikhailov believes that “the rise of national and national-radicalism is generally connected to the redistribution of property. You understand that the struggle for private property that was taking place in our country followed the schema of early capitalism. And this struggle, according to Marx, is connected to contradictions. I do not believe that the capitalism of today is not the capitalism that Marx was writing about. But the capitalism that we went through at first is the one described by Smith, Ricardo and Karl Marx. Therefore, the redistribution of property forced people to split into national groups in the struggle for property”.

Ramazan Abdulatipov thinks that “the country is in a catastrophic condition in the sphere of inter-ethnic relations in numerous regions. One shot from a traumatic gun can cause a conflict between two peoples, because everybody is just waiting for a provocation. Many people come to Moscow or other cities from regions with excessive labor resources. And some of them are quite wealthy, have their own business, have expensive cars. Three sisters of mine live in the mountains in Dagestan on their extremely small pension without any other income. But the local population does not know it, they see only those who came here. What are we doing so that the best people, those who are useful to the state, come? 

And unfortunately, the oligarchs, wealthy people are either completely indifferent to the situation in the society, even in their nationality, or play with them if it is economically profitable. Before the elections I talked to Prokhorov and said to him: “Mikhail, you understand that if at the emergence of capitalism that capitalists would behave the same as our capitalists behave today, there would have been no capitalism as a social order”. Do you understand?  Our property form remained on the non-cultured stage. When I present, I say that previously there was a thesis that we went from feudalism to socialism avoiding capitalism. While now we have gone back to feudalism, avoiding capitalism again. We cannot get into that capitalism, civilized, with human rights. We cannot get there! We are lost! And it is more dangerous, because it leads to chaos. Our strategy is aimed at bringing order to these processes. You understand,
that inter-ethnic relations are always relative because of something – property, culture, history. Russian cultures are thenational idea of Russian in the 21st century. All the meaning, ideas, all the understanding of the world is put into the culture of the people. What else do we need? Any idea that appears turns into ideology, ideology turns into politics and politicians start implementing their tough approaches. That those have to leave, those should be cut down, those should increase. Russian culture as the national idea of Russia in the 21st century, if we really realize all the potential of Russian culture.

Yesterday I had a meeting with the president of Tajikistan, Rakhmon. We were discussing the problems of post-Soviet space, and he said: “You know, we cannot stabilize post-Soviet space, because we lost and did not find the cultural ideas that united us.” And he added: “Neither I as a president nor my culture can provide such an idea, only Russian can provide it”.

Russia significantly lost the role it used to play in the Eurasian space. We say today that migrants are changing Russia. On the other hand, the growth of extremism and nationalism in the central regions leads to a loss of what Likhchev called cultural perceptiveness, the ability to feel and reproduce multiple cultures, starting from Greek culture, and then with all the Turkic and Finno-Ugric lines. Russia as a community, as a state, is losing this capacity. You know, I was talking about it in 1990, 1991, at the party congresses.

A Russian man should not try to be an Estonian in his attitude to the USSR; a Russian man has a different historical mission. And what are we doing now? We are endlessly scaring each other?  And the conscious and educated people, and there are many of them in Russia, became hostages of extremist forces. At my recent meeting with president Putin I told him that Dagestan is becoming a hostage of extremist forces. But on the other side they also meet extremism. And we can be caught between these extremist forces above the abyss. Civilization should be saved. This is the main task of our strategy. I repeat that for several years I have been proposing programs for the adaptation of migrants. After one such talk on Romodanovsky eve a special department for cultural adaptation of the migrants was created, but we need programs for every group of migrants. We should not confuse ethnic and migration policy. There are concepts of the state migration policy. But the inter-ethnic situation in the country complicates migration policy. For instance, a Russian person somewhere in the Yaroslavl region does not see the difference between people from Dagestan and Tajikistan, and does not know who is a citizen of Russia. We need adaptation. Russian needs migrants. If we want to develop, we have to have the potential of the labor force. But sometimes we do not take it from within the country but from outside. You understand, that these are very serious questions and their solution is the basis of our strategy if it will be realized.