Читать книгу The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin's Russia I - Ivo Mijnssen - Страница 8

«History is the succession of generations. Each generation is faced with the choice of either disappearing unnoticed or changing the world. Today, we, the generation of young Russians, are facing this choice.» (Nashi 2005a)

On 15 May 2005 a new organization appears in the spotlight of Russia’s political stage: the Democratic Anti-Fascist Youth Movement (Molodezhnoe Demokraticheskoe Antifashistskoe Dvizhenie) Nashi (Ours). Founded just one month earlier, Nashi gathers 60’000 young people shortly after Victory Day, in a show of solidarity with the veterans of the Great Patriotic War[1] – and with Vladimir Putin. The demonstrators have a clear message: Russia’s youth is patriotic and values the country’s historical achievements. Russia’s youth is loyal to Putin and ready to take on the challenges facing the country.

Two weeks later, Putin receives a delegation of Nashi-«commissars» – the organization’s cadres – in the Kremlin. The meeting demonstrates the president’s blessing for the youth movement. Putin appears to support Nashi’s aim of carrying out a «revolution», a revolution that will put a patriotic new elite in power, one that «believes in the future of Russia» (Nashi 2005a).

Fortunately for the Russian government, Nashi’s revolution is with, not against Putin. Since he stands for returning Russia to its rightful status as a global great power, Nashi argues, he deserves the support of Russia’s patriotic youth. Only a powerful and modern Russia can maintain its sovereignty in a globalized system of ruthless competition and safeguard the freedom of its people, writes Nashi. Russia must be an open and innovative country that buttresses its position not by military might, but because of the «attractiveness of Russian culture, its way of life, its political, economic and social system» (ibid.).

Despite the clear affinity between the Kremlin and the patriotic-minded youth organization, both go to great lengths to avoid the impression that the organization is state-run, presenting it instead as a grassroots initiative (Kashin 2005c). Nonetheless, the relationship between Nashi and the authorities is close from the start. The organization was able to make large-scale use of the government’s «administrative resources»: mass demonstrations in Russia did not take place without official blessing in 2005.

Nashi-founder Vasilii Iakemenko was a former official in the Presidential Administration with a history of founding pro-Kremlin movements: his previous project was the organization Idushchie Vmeste (Going Together). Another early driving force was Vladislav Surkov, architect of Sovereign Democracy, which discursively combines Russia’s democratic development with a strong emphasis on safeguarding the country’s national sovereignty.

The Kremlin’s willingness to mobilize tens of thousands of young Russians shows that the authorities took the threat of an Orange Revolution very seriously. Nashi was only the largest of a number of newly founded pro-Kremlin youth organizations.[2] Political scientists disagree on the extent to which the Ukrainian events endangered the Putin regime. Robert Horvath believes that Russia faced a potentially revolutionary situation in 2005 (Horvath 2011: 2). Viktor Eremin argues that Nashi’s demonstrations were merely meant to show to the opposition the mobilization potential of pro-Kremlin youth groups (Eremin 2007: 3).[3]

Nashi was founded to stabilize Russia’s political system and to take back the streets from opposition demonstrators. Journalist Maksim Sokolov called Nashi the Kremlin’s «Iron Soldiers» (zheleznyi frunt) (Sokolov 2005), and Ivan Bol’shakov, political scientist and liberal politician, termed them «storm troopers» (Bol’shakov 2006: 120). These polemic descriptions of Nashi nonetheless pinpoint a major problem of the organization – the propensity for violence among parts of its activists. However, they are neither analytically profound, nor do they account for Nashi’s ability to attract large numbers of youth or its longevity. Nashi played an important political role long after its main goal – the prevention of an opposition coup during the presidential elections of 2008 (Nashi 2011b) – was fulfilled.

A more analytical line of research sees Nashi as a vehicle for official youth politics. As the Putin administration has traditionally kept a tight lid on political expression, these authors maintain, Nashi serves as a kind of valve to channel popular discontent in a controlled fashion (Robertson 2009: 545). Sergei Balmasov defines Nashi as a «puppet youth movement» (Balmasov 2006: 21) of the Kremlin, and Sergei Gavrov considers their actions to be political theater (Gavrov 2006: 353). Philosopher Pavel Gurevich writes that Nashi is an «imitation» of youth politics (Gurevich 2005: 24). This strand of research argues that the Russian government is unable or unwilling to provide youth with avenues of upward social mobility and political participation. The authors place the emergence of Nashi in the context of Russian politics, without, however, conducting an in-depth investigation of this context.

Aside from promising upward social mobility, Nashi directs potential aggression among youth against real and imagined enemies that block activists’ – and Russia’s – success. These «enemies» were repeatedly the target of verbal and physical attacks by Nashi. Dmitrii Andreev conceptualizes this channeled discontent as «managed passion» (upravliaemaia passionarnost’):

«For the impassioned (passionarii), some kind of an enemy is absolutely vital. Or not even so much an enemy as some kind of a negative example, an object of anti-imitation (ob’’ekta antipodrazhaniia), a strong idea of what one does not want to be under any circumstances.» (Andreev 2006: 50)

«Ours»’ sense of shared identity thus relies to a significant extent on a shared opposition against those who are «not us».

Only a handful of scholars have published more profound analyses of Nashi. Liubov Borusiak was the first to scrutinize the organization’s ideological foundations (Borusiak 2005). Ulrich Schmid focuses on Nashi’s political function. He points to the discursive connection between war memory and the fight against a vague «fascist» enemy (Schmid 2006: 14). This connection plays an important role for the analysis in this book as well.

Douglas Buchacek’s MA thesis on Nashi (Buchacek 2006) focuses on Nashi’s mobilization mechanisms and ideology. He convincingly analyzes Nashi’s early publications but rarely contextualizes them further.

All of these publications came out within a year of Nashi’s foundation. Since 2006, interest in the movement has waned considerably, with some scholars predicting the organization’s inevitable decline as early as 2008 (Heller 2008). The important exceptions are Maya Atwal and Jussi Lassila, who wrote their dissertations about Nashi.[4] Both negotiate the tension between its status as a vehicle for the promotion of official policies in the youth sphere and the organization’s independent maneuvering space. Atwal’s article tracks Nashi’s development since 2008 and provides an important framework for understanding the movement’s continued existence. According to her, Nashi refocused its activities in the economic realm and achieved a modicum of independence from the government (Atwal 2009: 756). Lassila believes that Nashi has to fulfill a difficult balancing act between propagating a government platform and providing its activists with a means of expression appropriate to the youth sphere. He highlights the importance of Nashi’s performative acts in creating emotional attachment to official ideology among youth (Lassila 2012a: 110ff.).

As an important actor in the sphere of youth politics, Nashi conveys a government-sponsored political identity to young Russians. This book analyzes Nashi and its ideas in the context of Russian politics and youth politics in particular, tracking the organization’s development from 2005 to 2012. The book principally analyzes Nashi’s discourse at three specific points in its history, localizing it in the political environment of contemporary Russia. These three «focal points» (Hansen 2006) include Nashi’s founding in 2005, its actions in the «memory wars» with Estonia in 2007, and the «International Youth Forum 2010» at Lake Seliger.

The foundation of Nashi and its discursive underpinning, I maintain, cannot be understood separately from the values and worldviews of the Putin government. Nashi reflects government-sponsored efforts to stabilize the field of politics and official values following the 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Union.[5] The most important demands in this official discourse are a strong Russian state anchored in its heroic history, a modern economy, global great power status, and a society united against its enemies. Nashi conveys these demands to a youthful audience.

Nashi thus offers to its activists a political identity, a historical genealogy, a sense of belonging to a community, and, possibly, a career. An idealized narrative of the Great Patriotic War plays a crucial role as a discursive template to make sense of the current situation in Russia. It has contributed significantly to state-sponsored attempts at consolidating youth politics and Russia’s national identity. As will be shown, its mobilizing power is considerable, especially in times of perceived threat.

However, the most important moments of Nashi’s discourse remain in tension with one other – particularly with regards to Russia’s position in the world: warlike imagery of the world suggests an exclusive focus on defending the country, while a modern economy demands a degree of openness. Moreover, Nashi promises its supporters self-realization and simultaneously demands submission to a highly hierarchical system. These contradictions are a great problem for Nashi’s professed goal of turning Russia into a country that is internationally competitive. The contradictions in Nashi’s discourse thus threaten to undermine its goals. At the same time, the variety of goals and demands in Nashi’s discourse – and in the ideology of Sovereign Democracy on which much of it is based – is the precondition for mobilizing a broad cross-section of Russia’s youth. The analysis of the effects of these contradictions thus plays an important role in this book.

Background and Context, the first chapter, provides the methodological and theoretical framework of analysis. This includes the basic terms of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse analysis and of the politics of history and memory. I then discuss Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver’s concept of securitization, complemented by an analysis of the historical background of the Putin regime, which focuses on the government’s attempts to stabilize the political situation after the Soviet collapse and the chaos of the 1990s.

The second chapter, Russia’s Youth, the Orange Revolution, and Nashi, turns to Russia in 2005. Nashi’s founding occurred as a direct consequence of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, which deeply affected Russian politics. The analysis in this chapter shows that official discourse presented the Orange Revolution as threatening the stability of Russia’s political system. Government agencies and Russian political scientists wanted to safeguard the patriotism and political reliability of a young generation often perceived as exposed to harmful (Western) influences and in need of guidance. The stabilization and securitization (Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998) of the youth sphere through the foundation of Nashi became a crucial political task.

The promotion of an idealized, mythologized narrative of the Great Patriotic War was a key component of programs for the youth’s patriotic education. Nashi presented itself as standing at the forefront of a struggle to build a Russia anchored in its historical identity and ready to face present and future challenges. The war myth became a template through which to interpret the ambitions and obstacles on Russia’s path to great power status. Drawing on historical parallels, Nashi identified enemies that threatened Russia’s statehood and subsumed them under the signifier «fascist». Combined with Vladislav Surkov’s ideology of Sovereign Democracy, the war myth provided a hegemonic response to the political instability of early 2005.

The conflict over the removal of the «Bronze Soldier » in Tallinn, Estonia is the subject of chapter three, Remember! Nashi and the Bronze Soldier. The riots after the Estonian government’s removal of the Soviet war memorial from downtown Tallinn on 26 and 27 April 2007 were one of the few instances in which conflicting interpretations of World War II turned violent. In the aftermath, Nashi picketed the Estonian embassy in Moscow and attacked the ambassador.

Analysis of Nashi’s online publications reveals the role the war myth played as a template for interpreting the political conflict with contemporary Estonia. Nashi discursively equated the supporters of the National Socialists in World War II with the contemporary Estonian state and thus evoked a sense of immediate threat to present-day Russia: both were subsumed under the term «fascist». This threat perception led to the securitization of memory, which legitimized drastic measures by Nashi.

In chapter four, The Foundry of Modernization, the focus shifts to the International Youth Forum Seliger 2010, which the Russian government and Nashi organized. Seliger is a further «focal point» for Nashi. Nashi calls the camp its «foundry of modernization» and has steadily extended both its size and the scope of participants.

The organizers first opened the secretive camp to foreign participants in 2010. As a participant observer, I was able to study the manner in which official Russian identity concepts were conveyed to an international audience. The war myth and the moment of unity against Russia’s enemies played a smaller role than the themes of modernity, international cooperation, and Sovereign Democracy. Nonetheless, the organizational structure of the camp and unofficial documents still revealed strong securitizing moments: the demand for openness and modernization was undermined by a perceived need to maintain control.