Опубликовано в журнале Неприкосновенный запас, номер 5, 2003
DEBATES ON POLITICS AND CULTURE
Issue No. 31 of NZ comes out just before Russians are called to the polls to elect a new parliament. Special legislation has muzzled the media even more than usual during most of the run-up to these elections. What’s more, the crucial part of the campaign really consisted not of a fair contest between political parties but of an unprecedented blow dealt against Russia’s liberal business elite and the country’s fledgling democracy (the arrest of ▒oligarch’ Mikhail Khodorkovsky) and vociferous but ineffectual protests by defenders of liberal and democratic values.
In this moment of crisis, NZ takes stock of the full range of ideological, economic and philosophical stances towards politics to be found in the Russian political landscape, and especially in its liberal section.
Starting with politics, we take a second look at the time-honoured opinion that the terms ▒left’ and ▒right’ are bad guides to the amorphous zoo of Russia’s political animals. The Liberal Heritage features excerpts from Norberto Bobbio’s classic book Right and Left. The Italian philosopher argues that despite appearances, left and right still have a meaning, though always a relative one, in that the Left always stands for some kind of increase in equality, while the Right always supports greater inequalities in one form or another. In an introduction to Bobbio’s text, political scientist and historian Valery Lyubin outlines the philosopher’s intellectual biography and places the book in the context of Italy’s constitutional crisis of 1994. Russia, Lyubin argues, is going through an even more serious political crisis, and though Russian parties are exceptionally fickle and deceptive, Bobbio’s distinction between right and left can do us a good service in finding our way through the labyrinth of Russia’s political system.
The three articles which follow, under the common heading Between Ideology and Politics, introduce distinctions in order to shed light on the positions of the different parties and other political groups in Russian politics. The inability of Russia’s two main democratic and liberal parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, to merge, work together or at least co-ordinate their actions, is commonly seen as one of the greatest obstacles to democratization. Journalist Kirill Rogov gives a detailed account of the origins of the divide between the two parties in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and argues that rather than being based on personal rivalries, the divergences between those who were to become the leaders of Yabloko and SPS, respectively, are rooted in an ideological conflict between the former’s rather egalitarian and democratic and the latter’s rather liberal and individualist convictions (Between Democracy and Freedom. Ideological Paradoxes of the Russian Democratic Revolution). Next, sociologist and political scientist Alexander Tarasov paints a panoramic view of The Left Scene in Russia at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Tarasov demonstrates that this scene is made up of a large but eroding Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which actually is not really communist or even left-wing, and a plethora of small and tiny left-wing parties, groups and movements, including relatively old ones which have trouble recruiting new members and a number of new ones whose membership numbers and activities are on the increase. In the long run, Tarasov argues, the left scene in Russia will probably more and more come to resemble its West European counterparts. Finally, historian Nikolai Mitrokhin traces the development of organised Russian ultra-nationalism since perestroika, from the Soviet-time so-called ▒Russian party’ consisting of Russian nationalist intellectuals, through the anti-Semitic Pamyat movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s, to the skinhead scene in present-day Russia (From ▒Pamyat’ to Luzhkov’s Skinheads: The Ideology of Russian Nationalism in 1987-2003).
In the Culture of Politics section, sociologist and economist Anton Oleinik comments on the Khodorkovsky affair by drawing attention to the Russian authorities’ attempts to appeal directly to ▒common people’ and their hostility towards businessmen, circumventing civil society and the principle of the division of powers (Execution Impossible Pardon).
Poet and economist Yevgeny Saburov devotes his Humane Economics column to the same topic. To him, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s main ▒crime’ was that he tried to build a transparent business and thus violated the unwritten laws which pervade Russian society from top to bottom. Virtually all Russians hide the main part of their income and exhibit a cynical attitude towards public life, politics and taxes, often justifying this way of life with references to classical Russian literature. While there is a movement away from literature-centredness among the young generation, Saburov argues, it remains to be seen whether this will lead them to view politics as just a big show, or whether rational attitudes towards political life will take the upper hand (Post-Literature-Centred Public Life).
The second thematic section is devoted to Russian economists’ role in, and links to, the world of politics. Entitled Between Economics and Politics, it features three articles: economist Sergei Turkin, in The Splendour and Misery of Russia’s Political Economics, reflects upon the different ways in which Russian economists have contributed to shaping and directing political decisions, be it by taking active part in political life, as academic researchers, or as quasi-independent ▒experts’. Sociologist Natalia Chmatko reports on her research into the structure and dynamics of the ▒field’ of economics in Russia since late Soviet times. Using methods developed by Pierre Bourdieu, she analysed the works and biographies of 65 Russian economists as well as their relationships with each other, and found four clusters of theoretical positions and personal connections. In her article, she portrays each of these clusters and describes how economics has helped its practitioners to accumulate new types of social, intellectual and economic capital. Economist Valery Kizilov proposes to make yet another distinction between different parts of the seemingly monolithic camp of Russia’s liberals: he discusses the respective positions of the two main groups of economists inside this camp, and argues that the ▒moderate centrism’ of economists grouped around Yegor Gaidar should be seen as quite distinct from the radical free-market ideology of liberals such as Andrei Illarionov (On Moderate and Right-Wing Liberal Economists in Russia).
The Morals and Mores rubric features an essay by Lev Usyskin on the generation which gave rise to Russia’s first wave of medium-sized business. Usyskin points out a number of traits common to most members of this generation, and discusses some of the semi-legal mechanisms which many of them are (or were at some point in the past) forced to use in order to evade taxes. He argues that these practices make it easy for the authorities to start legal proceedings against any businessman not to their liking, even if he abandoned them a long time ago (The First Millionaires).
Alexei Levinson’s, a columnist with NZ and analyst with Russia’s foremost sociological and opinion polling institute, devotes his Sociological Notes to another example of state action against an important institution of civil society: the destruction of the VTsIOM, or All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion, in the summer of this year. Levinson recounts the history of the VTsIOM and of the events which led to the departure of all of its staff and the creation of a successor institute named VTsIOM-A, and reflects upon the role of the anti-VTsIOM campaign in the framework of the current power struggle within Russia’s political elite (The Fate of the VTsIOM).
Topic no. 3 is the state and shape of political philosophy today. NZ asked five Russian philosophers aged between 29 and 52 — Vitaly Kurennoy, Ruslan Khestanov, Boris Kapustin, Mikhail Mayatsky and Artemy Magun — to write short essays in response to three questions about their view of political philosophy. Their replies are published under the common heading Between Philosophy and Politics. This is supplemented with a conversation between two well-known Russian émigré philosophers belonging to an older generation, Alexander Pyatigorsky and Igor Smirnov, On the Harm and Benefits of History and Philosophy for Life (Two Empires at the Turn of the Century).
The Politics of Culture section features a polemical piece by historian and essayist Kirill Kobrin on fascizoid writers in the Russian version of the web-based LiveJournal (Signifiers of Fascism).
This issues’ New Institution is the Association of Cultural Managers.
Our reviews sections present an overview of recent issues of Russian intellectual journals, an essay by political scientist Andreas Umland on Contemporary Conceptualisations of Fascism in Russia and the West, and a number of reviews of recent Russian, German and English books on left-wing theory and parties as well as fascism and the far right.