A political commentary

A long time has gone by for several reasons. First, the last time I tried to write I was very upset about the situation in Georgia and several conversations with Russian acquaintances about Americans. Second, I panicked about my research and got very involved with that. But so much has happened, and I finally have a quiet day. So here is the “political” entry, including comments about the Russian-Georgian conflict, “ethnic” violence in Kondopoga, and the murder of Anna Politkovskaia.

I’ll repost some of an entry that I wrote in great indignation at the end of September. As commentary to that entry, I would like to point out that another country’s nationalism is very apparent to a visitor, whereas the nationalism of one’s own country seems to disappear into the natural order of things while one lives at home. I like “nationalism” and “patriotism” (as they are typically understood) less and less all the time, and I hope people in every country can relate to those concepts more gently and more creatively. As I wrote in my September 30 Georgia entry, it is annoying to see how much one country’s nationalistic rhetoric resembles another.

Someone sent me a Washington Post editorial about how Russia was oppressing poor democratic Georgia, and those big bad Russians once again are making the world unsafe for democracy. I will write about Politkovskaia in a minute, but first I want to suggest some local reasons why Russians don’t see it that way. To understand the reasons, you have to remember that Abkhazia (a piece of “Georgia” in the northwest right on the border with Russia) wants to be independent of Georgia and also that Russia has military forces on a base there (someone correct me?) that the Abkhazians don’t mind having as a buffer.

First, perhaps most trivially at first glance, Russians used to take their vacations in Georgia and Abkhazia in the days of the USSR. Lots of people have personal memories of being there, but now take their warm-climate vacations in Turkey and Tunisia because it is safer, cheaper, and less hassle (both countries make it easy for Russians to get visas, whereas Georgia does not). Lots of people that I talked to regret the fact that they can’t go there anymore, and feel a little possessive about it.

Second, people in Abkhazia are not all that happy with Georgia. They wanted to be independent too, and Georgia demonstratively does not want that; the Georgian government is unhappy with Russia because the latter has supported Abkhazian claims to autonomy. So you could be cynical about Russia’s position (it is certainly to their advantage that Abkhazia is not happy with Georgia), but you also have to accept that lots of Abkhazians are genuinely grateful for the support. The president of Abkhazia has made official request to the Russian parliament for support.

Third, things are not going all that well in Georgia. A significant portion of the population lives in poverty or near poverty, and the government can’t provide electricity all the time. Saakashvili (the president, who was educated in the West and has a European wife) likes to say that everything is wonderful, but apparently it isn’t. A lot of Georgia’s real income comes from family members who travel to Russia to work and send home part of their earnings. Some commentators think that Saakashvili ratcheted up the volume on this conflict in order to distract people’s attention. (That’s an old trick, yes?)

The average person in Russia loves Georgia. They love Georgian food, Georgian singing, Georgian romance and openness. I read lots of columns criticizing thick-headed politicians for making too big a fuss over the whole thing, and backing themselves into a corner where they have to use more and more severe measures or else lose face. I hear comments about this situation all the time along the lines of “it’s just the politicians fighting, the peoples of Russia and Georgia don’t want to quarrel.”

A lot of people here will say that Russians are nationalist, or perhaps racist, and I think in general that could be true. I’m not sure they are any more nationalist than any other people; maybe it’s the contrast between the high level of education and prejudice that makes it seem like Russians take the prize. But in many ways it’s a stereotype with a strength of its own. For instance, Kondopoga. This town in the Karelian (Finnish) part of Russia northwest of here was the scene of a riot and then a big anti-foreigner meeting at the very end of August. I read lots of pieces about this warning about the deep racism in Russian society; lots of Russians even wrote that. But Friday afternoon I heard a lecture given by a young sociologist who went there two weeks later to try to understand what had happened. He said it was hard to learn any more than was already available from the internet and newspapers, and that he already knew all the versions of the situation from those sources. His experience did, however, lead him to believe that the conflict was not about ethnicity as much as it was about drunkenness and local loyalties (someone in the pub at the wrong time – 3am), and certainly did not lead him to believe reports that some kind of Chechen mafia controlled the local market. His main conclusion was that people with various motives have been using this situation ever since for their own purposes (whether to constrain Chechens and Georgians in other markets, or to prove that Russians are racists), and that the residents of the town itself were surprised at how much press the incident garnered in succeeding days. It seemed to him that the mainstream Russian media is on the lookout for proof that the country could explode any day into ethnic conflict, and latch onto any evidence that presents itself. He also suggested that today’s Russian “nationalists” speak about democracy in a way that they didn’t in the 1990s (without irony), and that they are trying to gain access to public discourse about power structures and decision-making. So, I won’t suggest that this means that the picture is rosy, but it does mean that it’s more complicated.

Right about the same time, Andrei Kozlov was shot down in Moscow – a deputy minister for something to do with economic reform. At the time, I remember thinking that that was the more serious incident, and the murder a week ago of Anna Politkovskaia confirms that impression. As several journalists here have written, the fact that so many prominent journalists and officials have been murdered since Putin came to power points to several things. Among them is the sense that Russian society is not governed by respect for law. We sort of knew that – we assume that American society, as British society before it, is based on laws and respect for them. The murders of Kozlov and Politkovskaia, again as several people have written, suggest that a group of people close to power believe that violence is a good way to resolve situations, and that people who irritate the system should just be removed. That’s much more chilling that Kondopoga.

An acquaintance of mine made the comment a while ago that most people in Russian society have little experience with compromise. Partly this is due to the historical belief that final decisions should be unanimous; that everyone should agree; that the person in charge channels the agreement of the whole; thus that if you disagree, you are going against the interests of the whole and become dangerous. If you listen to what Putin said about Politkovskaia while he was in Germany, you see that he didn’t speak about her work: he called her a mother and a wife, and that it was criminal to kill such people. Subtext: her place really was at home as a wife and mother, and if she had been doing her part to further the collective interests of Russian society this wouldn’t have happened. (And by the way, we’ll look into it a little bit.) The emphasis on collectivity of political will and thought goes very deep. Someone else remarked to me recently that if a Russian were to examine the US Constitution and see how many powers are allowed to the states, he would be sure that the US would fall apart tomorrow. Thus, partly, the belief that Russia shouldn’t really be a federation (which is what has happened in practice: it isn’t).

Much as I have always wanted to be more positive than negative about what is going on here, things are definitely seriously troubling. But this is the work of part of the population, and most of the folks that I am meeting are amazing examples of people trying to work within the space that is left to make new possibilities for themselves and other people. So, if you find yourself remarking out loud about the “Russians,” it might be worth substituting “the Russian power elite” or at least “the Russian government.”