A battleground of identity

Vladimir Putin and President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev held talks in Astana. Photo: President of Russian Federation (CC) http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/15593/photos

First fiddles

Most of the new states, emerging from the ruins of the Soviet empire, had to start creating their own historical and identity policies. These efforts were accompanied by other actors (also from outside the region) who were interested in influencing the nation-building processes and promoting their own narratives on the post-Soviet space. Among them were the United States, China, the European Union, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and others. As a result of soft power policies, the former Soviet republics became territories that were no longer solely under Russian influence.

Central Asia was the ground where the most intense identity-related battles between outside powers took place. In this region, and even today, the first fiddles are played by Russia, followed by China and the EU. Characteristically, while all three players use the same concepts, such as Eurasia and the Silk Road, they do it with different intensity and understanding.

In response to outside influences, Russia has started a counter-offensive and created new soft power tools, including the Russkiy Mir Foundation, launched in 2007, and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), established in 2015. The latter in theory is an economic integration project but is defined by the Russian elite primarily in civilisational terms (see below). Clearly, these two ideas – Eurasia and the Russian World – have become the foundation for Russia’s identity narrative directed at the post-Soviet space. Historically speaking, the term Russkiy Mir (Russian World) was occasionally used in the medieval period to define the cultural and religious community of ancient Rus’. It was abandoned in subsequent epochs, returning in the 19th century when it was apparently used by Sergey Uvarov, the main ideologue of Tsarist Russia. It is probably more correct to point out the revival idea of the Russian World with the activities of some radical pan-Slavic groups which, in 1871, established a journal tellingly called Russkiy Mir. The publication promoted a vision of Russia as a world empire, uniting all Slavs in Europe and expanding to non-Slavic territories in Asia.

Overall, in Tsarist Russia Russkiy Mir was not the most popular term in use. More prevalent were terms such as the Russian spirit, the Russian soul and the Russian idea. The real popularity of the term “Russian World” only came after the fall of the Soviet Union, and especially since Vladimir Putin defined it as an identity that “unites all those who value the Russian language and culture, no matter where they live, be it in Russia or beyond its borders”.

Altar and throne

The Russian World concept is based on a very broad definition. On the Russkiy Mir Foundation website it “refers to our compatriots in the countries of the nearer and farther abroad, emigrants from Russia, their descendants, foreign nationals speaking Russian, students and teachers of the Russian language and all those who are sincerely interested in Russia”. Admittedly this all-encompassing definition is in contradiction with the Kremlin’s emphasis on Orthodoxy and Kyivan Rus’ as the foundations of Russian civilisation.

The contribution of the Orthodox Church to the spread of Russkiy Mir has been quite considerable, to the point its clergy coined a rhyming slogan: “Russia, Ukraine and Belarus / There you have it: the Holy Rus’.” The unison of the altar and throne was sealed in 2013 when Putin joined Patriarch Kirill on his annual pilgrimage to Kyiv. They arrived in the capital to celebrate the 1025th anniversary of the baptism of Rus’. During this visit Putin first publically announced that Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians are one people.

In a slightly wider approach, the quasi-religious definition of the Russian World includes Orthodox Christians (especially Slavs) and assumes the existence of the various circles of the Russian World. Paradoxically, most inhabitants of the post-Soviet states belong to the most distant circle because the majority of them are Muslims of non-Slavic origin. The autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which recently took place, poses a serious threat to Russia and its soft power potential. Without Ukrainians, who are the biggest ethnic group in the countries regarded by the Kremlin as its sphere of influence, the core of the Russian World will have to be moved to the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

The ideological roots of the Eurasian Economic Union stem from the concept of Eurasianism – an internally diverse political movement that emerged within the Russian diaspora during the interwar period. Its members believed that Russia was a separate civilisation, one that belongs neither to Europe nor to Asia. Additionally, the idea of Eurasia was inspired by the imperial steppe traditions (i.e. the Mongol Empire and the Golden Horde). The term was coined in the 1880s by the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess.

The recent revival of Eurasianism can be attributed to Aleksandr Dugin who reinterpreted the idea by adding a universalistic, imperialistic, xenophobic and anti-western flavour to it. Indicatively Dugin, who became influential under Putin, wrote that “Eurasianism, historically and geographically, [represents] the entire world, with the exception of the western sector of world civilisation.” This may suggest that Eurasianism guarantees Russia a superpower status. Despite claiming that universal Eurasianism excludes xenophobia, Dugin has also advocated that there should be special legal regulations to secure the preservation of the ethnic Russian identity within the supranational Eurasian empire. Astonishingly, in his view legal regulations of this sort are the “norms of ethno-cultural hygiene”.

State-civilisation

The civilisational idea behind the EEU was articulated by Putin in his famous 2013 Valdai Club speech which he – not incidentally – delivered shortly after China announced in Central Asia the New Silk Road initiative (sometimes referred to as the One Belt, One Road initiative). While addressing his audience, Putin stated: “The Eurasian Union is a project for maintaining the identity of nations in the historical Eurasian space in a new century and in a new world. Eurasian integration is a chance for the entire post-Soviet space to become an independent centre for global development rather than remaining on the outskirts of Europe and Asia.”

Russia feels it is predestined to lead the EEU because, as Putin argued, “Russia has always evolved in ‘blossoming complexity’ as a state-civilisation, reinforced by the Russian people, Russian language, Russian culture, Russian Orthodox Church and the country’s other traditional religions. It is precisely the state-civilisation model that has shaped our state polity. It has always sought to flexibly accommodate the ethnic and religious specificity of particular territories, ensuring diversity in unity.”

The idea of a state-civilisation which gathers around itself smaller, allegedly similar, countries in fact hides in itself an assimilationist Russian nationalism. As Putin said in his own words, “in this kind of state-civilisation there are no national minorities. This civilisational identity is based on the preservation of the Russian cultural dominance, the carriers of which are not only ethnic Russians, but all carriers of such identity regardless of the nationality.” It is quite clear Putin places Eurasianism in opposition to the West. Therefore, the Kremlin’s identity narrative refers to Russian/Eurasian vitality, masculinity, traditional spirituality, tolerance, and communitarianism based on solidarity. These values are contrasted with decadence, effeminacy, egoistic individuality, libertinism, materialism and European (more broadly western) colonial violence.

The role Moscow expects the Eurasian project to play with regards to China is more complex. Officially, the Kremlin claims that a Russia-led EEU and a China-led New Silk Road should ultimately allow for the development of a greater Eurasian partnership. It is quite clear Moscow will not accept voluntarily the status of a junior partner in such a relationship. Thus, it wants to have the EEU as leverage in its relations with Beijing. Quite indicatively, Russia rather avoids the term “Silk Road” in its rhetoric.

A multicultural paradise

The Eurasian narrative presents Russia as a multicultural paradise which is deeply rooted in the past and different from Europe. In this belief, and during the earlier mentioned Valadai speech, Putin said that “in Europe and some other countries the so-called multi-culturalism is in many respects a transplanted, artificial model that is now being questioned, for understandable reasons. This is because it is based on paying for the colonial past.” At the same time, he argued that “over the past centuries in Russia, which some have tried to label as the ‘prison of nations’, not even the smallest ethnic group has disappeared. And they have retained not only their internal autonomy and cultural identity, but also their historical space.” When they suffered, presumably the ethnic Russians suffered even more.

This logic was reiterated by Putin in March 2014 when – while, at the same time, declaring the annexation of Crimea – he said that “there was a time when Crimean Tatars were treated unfairly, just as a number of other peoples in the USSR.” The truth however is that, proportionally to the size of the population in the 20th century, the Crimean Tatars lost many more of their people than the ethnic Russians ever did. What is more, in the last two centuries the territories of the former Soviet Union were an arena of mass violence, including genocides, committed by Tsarist and Soviet regimes against indigenous populations. Conversely to western post-colonial powers, Russia has proved it is unable to recognise it did not only bring civilisational progress to some areas, but also committed atrocious crimes, including genocide.

This uncritical vision of the past is Russia’s biggest obstacle to effectively exploiting its unquestionably large soft power potential. The lack of self-criticism provokes the Russian ruling elite to show superiority towards its neighbours. Putin’s offensive statements about Kazakhstan, issued in August 2014 just a few months after the annexation of Crimea, are exemplary here. He said, “Kazakhstan is part of the large Russian World that is part of the global civilisation.” And, moreover, he called Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, a prudent leader that has “created a state on a territory that had never had a state before. The Kazakhs had no statehood.” In his response Nazarbayev explicitly said: “Our independence is our dearest treasure,” adding that “Kazakhstan will not be a part of organisations that pose a threat to our independence.” To emphasise that point Kazakhstan pompously celebrated 550 years of Kazakh statehood in 2015.

The New Silk Road

China has been an initiator of numerous soft power activities in the post-Soviet space. Its main project, the New Silk Road, also has a strong Central Asian component. This was demonstrated during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2013 visit to Kazakhstan where he unveiled the initiative.

As an identity-building policy, the New Silk Road is supposed to symbolise the Golden Age of Chinese history, to evoke the memory of ancient and medieval China when it was the world power and to present its image as an historically and allegedly benevolent power exporting prosperity and stability to Eurasia. In this discourse, the People’s Republic of China is presented as a direct descendent of the Middle Kingdom, currently returning to the place where it belonged. Finally, the Chinese narrative attempts to create, among the nations along the Silk Road, the sense of belonging to one Eurasian community.

The 2015 mission statement of the One Belt, One Road initiative says that “More than two millennia ago the diligent and courageous people of Eurasia explored and opened up several routes of trade and cultural exchanges that linked the major civilizations of Asia, Europe and Africa, collectively called the Silk Road by later generations. For thousands of years, the Silk Road Spirit – peace and co-operation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit – has been passed from generation to generation, promoted the progress of human civilisation and contributed greatly to the prosperity and development of the countries along the Silk Road. Symbolising communication and co-operation between the East and the West, the Silk Road Spirit is a historic and cultural heritage shared by all countries around the world.” With these words, the document postulates the exploration of the historical and cultural heritage of the initiative which promotes the idea of a multipolar world, economic globalisation and cultural diversity.

Despite the above, there are serious obstacles that hamper China’s ability to implement the cultural activities of the New Silk Road in Central Asia. One of them is the command of the Chinese language which is obviously much smaller among Central Asian societies than their familiarity with Russian, Turkish or European languages. The same might also be said about knowledge of Chinese culture. Even more important is the difference that exists between China’s official identity narrative and the political reality in western China, namely, Beijing’s massive repression of the Turkic Muslim population living in Xinjiang (Uyghurs, Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz people). The discrimination and persecution of Turkic nations, if continued, will substantially weaken the allure Chinese soft power has in the region.

European underperformance

The European Union is engaged with the post-Soviet space through two main initiatives: the Eastern Partnership and the Strategy for Central Asia. As part of the Central Asia strategy, the EU launched the Central Asia Research and Education Network (CAREN) which is aimed at creating a co-operation forum for academics, researchers and students in Central Asia. CAREN is seen as a continuation of the historical Silk Road which is believed to have been the information super-highway of its time.

However, even a glance at the official documents (Strategy for Central Asia and the Conclusions on Strategy) reveals that the identity narrative occupies in the agenda of the EU a less important place than in that of Russia and China. Terms such as “people-to-people contacts”, “culture”, “cultural policy and diplomacy”, “nation-building” and “regional identity” were not mentioned at all in the EU Strategy. Recognising the importance of education, the EU strategy did not address its content. In the strategy, the section on “building bridges: inter-cultural dialogue” is the least developed, containing only four sentences in the text that totals to more than 18 pages. Even worse than that, at times the EU imitates its two rivals by mentioning both the concepts of Eurasia and the New Silk Road without making any attempts to reinterpret them. Finally, the EU has not created an identity narrative about Central Asia that would put the region in the centre of European cultural heritage and by default would enhance its image in this part of the world.

Frank Starr, an American historian and author of the ground-breaking book Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane, argued that the subject period of his analysis “was truly an Age of Enlightenment, several centuries of cultural flowering during which Central Asia was the intellectual hub of the world”. He went on, writing: “It bridged time as well as geography, in the process becoming the great link between antiquity and the modern world. To a far greater extent than today’s Europeans, Chinese, Indians, or Middle Easterners realise, they are all the heirs of the remarkable cultural and intellectual effervescence in Central Asia.”

However, what is crucial is that Western Europe (via the Renaissance and later the Enlightenment), much earlier and on a larger scale than Russia or China, had incorporated into its culture the legacy of the Golden Age of Central Asia. Moreover, it was Western Europe which often transferred this legacy to the abovementioned countries.

Translated by Iwona Reichardt

Adam Balcer is head of the foreign policy programme at WiseEuropa, a private Polish think tank. He also works as a national researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and is a lecturer at the Centre of East European Studies (SEW) at the University of Warsaw. The article is based on research conducted with the framework of the SEnECA project which is dedicated to the relations between the EU and Central Asia.

Central Asia, Russkiy mir