Опубликовано в журнале Неприкосновенный запас, номер 4, 2003
DEBATES ON POLITICS AND CULTURE
This special issue of NZ is a joint venture with the German monthly journal Osteuropa presenting a variety of Russian, German and other points of view on Russia as a European country. The Russian and German versions are published simultaneously and, though different in structure, are mostly identical in content.
After a joint editorial introduction, the Russian edition starts, as usual, with the Liberal Heritage section. In this issue we present an abridged translation of a book chapter by German intellectual historian Herfried Münkler entitled Europe as a Political Idea. Pointing out that Europe has not been very popular as a political idea in the 20th century among either left- or right-wing intellectuals, Münkler traces different conceptions of Europe in political thought from Antiquity to the present day. His conclusion is that in order to provide a viable identity for the continent today, our conception of Europe needs to focus on such historically grown features as diversity and the absence of a single political centre.
The first thematic section is entitled The Last March into Europe? It starts with a questionnaire that our joint editorial team put to historians of Russia (Dietrich Beyrau, Wolfgang Eichwede, Egbert Jahn, Alexander Kamensky, Andreas Kappeler, Larry Wolff, and Andrei Zorin), and their answers on such topics as Russia and the EU, the present-day applicability of historical stereotypes on Russia’s relationship to Europe, or the Russian influence on the rest of the European continent (Russia and Europe as Seen by Historians). This section’s first full-length article is Vyacheslav Morozov’s In Search of Europe: Russian political discourse and the Surrounding World. Morozov, a specialist in international politics, analyses conceptions of Europe in the discourse of the post-Soviet Russian political elite, and points out several peculiarities, such as the intriguing difference between the ▒West’ and ▒Europe’ in their writings and speeches. While the ▒West’ is often depicted as a hostile force, ▒Europe’, though mostly seen as distinct from Russia, may appear as a bride to be courted and to be protected from the aggressive ▒West’. Political scientist Andrei Zakharov reflects upon European Federalism in the Light of the Russian Experience, and while he dismisses the idea that there may be much to learn from the Soviet federal experience for the European Union, he comes to the conclusion that there is much more in common between West European and Russian federalist models than is usually supposed, since both are essentially imposed from the top, to the difference of American federalism, which has grown up from the grassroots. Sergei Filatov, a sociologist of religion, has penned a passionate yet well documented essay on the way in which the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church fosters an anti-democratic and anti-European consciousness in Russia. Filatov traces the roots of this ideology to a centuries-long history of subservience to the state. However, he argues, since even nominally Orthodox Russians are mostly much more democratic and more European in their attitudes towards politics and religion than the church hierarchy, the latter’s hostility towards democracy will not be able to slow down Russia’s development towards a kind of society not too different from that of other European countries (Will the Third Rome Realise its Kinship with the First Rome?). Political scientist Klaus Müller, in Russia’ Stony Path to Europe, compares the results of Russia’s political and economic transformation since the collapse of the Soviet Union with those of other post-Communist countries, and presents a cautiously optimistic view of the current regime’s efforts to strengthen the Russian state, even though he insists that political reforms will come to naught if they do not open up and democratise the political system as a whole.
The Culture of Politics section presents two opposing views in the ongoing debate about the institutional framework for co-operation and integration between Russia and the European Union. Legal scholar Otto Luchterhandt gives a critical overall account of Russia’s stance towards the two pan-European institutions of which it is a member, the OSCE and the Council of Europe, and maintains that instead of creating new institutions or inviting Russia into the EU, more use should be made of existing frameworks such as the Partnership and Co-operation Agreement between the European Union and Russia (Russia in Europe: The Institutional Dimension). Political scientist Nadia Arbatova, on the other hand, argues that the European Commission’s recent document on the stance to be taken towards the EU’s ▒neighbours’ doesn’t take into account Russia’s special importance for the EU. Rather than placing the Russian Federation at a distance from the European Union in the long run, she proposes for the EU to deepen pan-European integration by granting Russia a special associate status (Another Take on Russia and ▒Greater Europe’).
Alexei Levinson devotes his Sociological Notes to a comparison between West and Central European’s European identity as revealed by the Eurobarometer surveys, and similar data from Russia. He points out an intriguing result: while relatively few Russians are prepared to say they feel European, many more answer that they think of themselves as European. Levinson interprets this Eurosis as an indicator that the simplistic binary ideological schemes that Russian politicians try to impose on citizens leave room for alternative modes of identification.
The Morals and Mores section, subtitled On Russia with Love, presents personal images of Russia. Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych, in …But with a Strange Love, balances the positive elements in his image of Russia against the negative ones, and comes to the conclusion that he would like to see Russia’s anarchic features take upper hand against its despotic tendencies. In a comment on Andrukhovych entitled Russia as a Matter of Taste, Minsk-based philosopher Andrei Gornykh places the latter’s essay into the wider context of post-Soviet nationalisms and argues that in texts such as Andrukhovych’s, ▒Russia’ is used as a passive ▒Thing’ stimulating emotions and ideas, rather than as a concept aimed at grasping reality. Another perspective on Russia’s Europeanness is provided by Igor’ Knyazev, a politician from Irkutsk who, in Siberia — Russia — Europe, argues that Siberia not only is Europeanby virtue of a strong liberal tradition, but may also become a factor pushing Russia towards greater integration with the European Union and other pan-European organisations.
The second thematic section is devoted to the Russian Economic Landscape and European Economic Space. It opens with an analysis of Russia’s Economic Strategy in the European Union by Vladimir Mau and Vadim Novikov. Mau and Novikov take the officially consecrated yet rather vague concept of a ▒Common European Economic Area’ as their starting point for a description of what, in their view, such an area should look like in order to respond to Russia’s interests. Their conclusion is that while greater integration with the EU is desirable, Russia should also keep open options of economic integration and co-operation with other regions, such as East Asia and the USA. Economist Leonid Grigoriev argues that Russia’s Greatest Wealth — Its People — Has Never Left Europe. By drawing on a great range of social and economic indicators, Grigoriev shows that Russia is currently in a hybrid position, whereby socially it is a European country though economically, in some respects, it is more comparable to countries such as Brazil. Roland Götz analyses Russia’s current status as one of Western Europe’s main sources of oil and gas in Positive and Negative Aspects of Economic Co-Operation: The Example of the Energy Partnership Between Russia and the European Union, and concludes that the Russian state would be best advised to follow Norway’s example and invest the financial surplus from oil and gas export into funds that would ensure the prosperity of future generations. Tobias Münchmeyer, a Greenpeace activist and expert on atomic energy who has been barred from entering Russia by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs for several years, recounts how the Russian government has agreed for Russia to become a global nuclear waste dump despite massive protests from citizens and NGOs, and draws attention to Western governments’ responsibility in mitigating the effects of this disastrous policy (Russia’s ▒Nuclear Prostitution’).
The Politics of Culture section (Booksellers, Poets and Critics) takes stock of the state of the Russian book market and literary life just before this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, where Russia will be a special guest. Boris Khlebnikov provides an international framework in The Book Market: Some German Background for Russia, providing a detailed description of the system of book distribution in Germany and arguing that the absence of a unified nation-wide bookselling system throttles the development of the market for books in Russia, and makes official statistics mostly worthless. Sociologist Boris Dubin presents a pessimistic analysis of publishers’ and readers’ strategies in post-Communist Russia, dwelling especially on the predominance of mass culture and the weakness of autonomous intellectual life (Between Canon and Topicality, Scandal and Fashion: Literature and Publishing in Russia in a Changed Social Space). Finally, literary scholar Birgit Menzel writes on Changes in Russian Literary Criticism as Viewed Through a German Telescope. Menzel defines three ideal types of literary criticism and analyses the development of Russian literary criticism with reference to theses types and to the situation in Germany. In particular, she draws attention to the potentially dangerous coalition between post-modernist literary critics and ultra-nationalist writers that has dominated the Russian literary scene over the past year or so.
The third thematic section presents a ▒bottom-up’ view of Russia as European country by focusing on The European City as Will and Representation. It starts with an essay by philosopher Boris Groys entitled The City in the Era of Its Touristic Reproducibility. Groys shows how modern mass tourism has transformed the modern city from the utopian project that it once was into a mix of features drawn from across the planet. Historian Karl Schlögel tells the tale of Moscow and Berlin in the 20th Century — Two Cities, Two Fates, and shows how closely certain milieus from Berlin and Moscow were intertwined in the period before the First World War, which meant that meetings between Russian émigrés and Germans in Berlin after the October Revolution were often meetings of old friends. Moscow and Berlin, Schlögel writes, epitomised 20th century modernity before dropping out of it due to Stalinism and Nazism, and now, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, both are fast becoming global cities. Vladimir Paperny shows how West European intellectuals could get lost in the ideological maze of Stalinist Moscow, in Faith and Truth: André Gide and Lion Feuchtwanger in Moscow. Moving to Saint-Petersburg, art critic Stanislav Savitsky casts an ironic glance upon the recent tender to find a new outfit for the legendary Mariinsky Opera House, and critically reviews Saint-Petersburg’s attitudes to historical memory as expressed in urban architecture (A One-Prompter Play: Notes on The Modernisation of a Museum City). Musical historian Dorothea Redepenning, in Saint-Petersburg as Musical City: Reflections on the Dialogue of Cultures, shows how Russian music, from the beginning, was, firstly, a Saint-Petersburg phenomenon and, secondly, thoroughly European precisely in its traits seen as most authentically Russian. Delving deeper into Russian history, Larisa Ivanova-Veen and Oleg Kharkhordin present Novgorod as a res publica: The Bridge to Greatness. Presenting detailed written and pictorial evidence, Ivanova-Veen and Kharkhordin show that, contrary to received opinion, the central political institution of republican Novgorod was not the city assembly, or Veche, but the bridge across the Volkhov river, which may prompt us to reconsider the importance of public things, res publicae, in the life of the body politic. Finally, political scientist Vladimir Gel’man gives an account of the current reform of municipal self-government in Russia, and shows that rather than giving greater power to local communities, the so-called Kozak reform is likely to curb their autonomy even further since it is based on the idea of municipalities as simply the lowest level of a centralised administrative hierarchy (The End of Local Autonomy?).
Yevgeny Saburov makes the same point in a more emotional vein in his Humane Economics column through a reflection upon different models of municipal self-government, and upon the flawed ways in which foreign models have been imported into Russia in recent years (Communal Coma).
The Journals Review section features a survey by political scientist Svetlana Pogorelskaya, entitled Russia in Germany: A Review of the Russian Press and Academic Journals in 2003. Pogorelskaya notes that the discourse on Russia in the German press is still haunted by stereotypes, however, she notes, there is a much deeper understanding of political realities in academic debates. This section also contains a presentation of our partner journal, Osteuropa, by its editor-in-chief, Manfred Sapper.
Finally, the New Books rubric contains a dozen reviews of recent Russian and German books about cities, architecture, urban history, and Europe.