AGAINST THE RHETORIC OF COMPLAINTS:

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RUSSIAN TRANSFORMATIONS

Presentation outline
By Valery Tishkov
Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology

(Valery Tishkov is director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is currently serving as president of the public Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences, vice-president of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and a member of the advisory council of the Ministry of Nationalities and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously he was a deputy director of the Institute of Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, chairman of the State Committee on National Politics, and a member of several governmental commissions. Dr. Tishkov is one of the founders of the Network of Ethnic Monitoring and Early Warning of Potential Conflicts and a center for Research and Conflict Resolution at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. Dr. Tishkov is the author of Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union, The Mind Aflame, co-editor of two encyclopedias - Peoples of Russia and Peoples and Religions of the World, and author of numerous articles published around the world. Dr. Tishkov received a Ph.D. in history from the Moscow Lomonosov State University.)
 

What we deal with in Rossia is more a state of mind, not a state of things. It is more an issue of perceptions and of politically engaged stances then an issue of material reality. For the past ten years there has been a profound and basically positive revolution in the life of the people, revolution missed or politically ignored by poorly prepared social scientists. Real freedoms and social improvements can go unnoticed even among people with academic degrees (not to mention ordinary people). Or they might ignore positive changes due to psychological, political or propaganda reasons. Rapid changes in life may overload society and everyday concerns to such an extent that even improvements in living conditions might be denied out of nostalgic for a more habitual lifestyle. Reforms must be explained, and citizens should not be fed futile sociological polls, superficial statistics, or apologetic consolations after consecutive changes of government teams.

The movement of people. With non-registered immigrants from other post-Soviet states, Rossia is in the situation of zero growth and the total population of the country is about the same as it was ten years ago (145-7 mln people). The decline in population that has been observed for the past seven years (caused mostly by an unfavorable demographic cycle) was compensated by 4 mln registered and 1-1,5 mln unregistered immigrants, who are younger, better educated and professionally better trained than the main population. Immigration nevertheless causes social, psychological and cultural problems of integrating the newcomers into the newly defined community of 'Rossiyani'. People moving to Rossia are a new domestic challenge accompanied by alarmist prophecies and political manipulations. Old settlers react negatively, not to the very fact of new arrivals, but to radical changes in the accustomed population pattern.

The migration pattern has changed radically. The intensity of internal movements went down because of economic instability and because of abrupted Soviet practice of organizing labor for prestigious construction projects in remote regions. Liberalization made possible a conflict between the private interests and elitist projects. Nevertheless, the population decline in Siberia and Far East is lower than the national average. Some regions are enjoying natural growth (Altai, Tyumen, Khanty-Mansiisk, Yamalo-Nenets, Tuva, Taimyr, Ust-Ordyn-Buriat, Agin-Buriat, Yakutia). The main source of population natural growth is the region of the North Caucasus (17% in Dagestan, 12% in Ingushetia, between 8 and 10% in other federal units). In general, the period of reforms in Rossia is characterized by the presence of some serious demographic problems (low fertility, high male death rate, and high infant mortality), but none of those problems can qualify as catastrophic.

Ethnic processing. Due to ideological liberalization, competitive strategies there is a new market of ethnic identities and ethnic mobilization have emerged. It is Rossian (Rossiiskaya) culture based on the Russian language, which defines the cultural space of the country. No ethnic cultures have "vanished" during the years of transformations. Even the smallest groups, including arctic communities, have grown in numbers. Demography of ethnic groups varies not only because of natural population movement (birth rate and migration) but also because of identity changes. After 1989 the majority of Rossia's large groups, including Russians, Bashkir, Tatar, Chuvash, Buriat, Kabardin, Komi, Kumyk, Tuvin and Udmurt had zero population growth. The total numbers of Ukrainians, Belorussians, Mordvinians, Germans, Maris, Kazakhs and Jews decreased. Compared to the country average, there was high growth among Armenians and Ossetians, among Yakuts and North Caucasus groups. The highest population growth in the poorest regions of the country confirms the fact that the so-called 'dying out of the peoples' is not connected with poor living conditions and 'schock therapy'. A more real problem is the high birth rate in Dagestan and other North Caucasian mountain villages. In these areas resources are scarce, social expectations are high, and poverty is intolerable. This combination of factors causes tension, crime and violence.

The heavily primordial vision of ethnicity is still there in the new Rossia. In a situation of greater choice, it leads to conflicts when people start to construct 'non-approved' identities based on localities or on other markers. Despite the works of academics still preaching the theory of ethnos, people and ethnic entrepreneurs venture to discover that they may be different in different places and in different situations. Under the conditions of flourishing ethnic nationalism the multiple cultural identities represent a new reality that is menacing to the accustomed nomenclature of ethnic entitites. Dozens of new groups may emerge in the 2002 census.

A growing number of 'things' and services. In the past, the population of Rossia enjoyed rather modest cuisine and diet with the accompanying lack of vitamin-containing carbohydrate foods, most of all fruit. Today, massive imports of fruit have introduced historically significant changes into the nourishment pattern of the population. Fish consumption has also increased though official statistics do not show this because of 'unorganized' (illegal) catching and selling of fish in the Far East and the Caspian Sea waters. Consumption of cheese and meat products increased too (again due to imports and local private enterprises). Official statistics on decreases in the consumption of meat, milk, eggs and other staple foods don't reflect the situation with population nutrition, especially in eating style and structure of diet. People produce on their private country plots tremendous proportion of food (especially, potatoes, vegetables, and greens). This all practically goes unnoticed by statistical agencies and academics. Contemporary Rossians cook and eat not only at home but also use publicfood services. The total number of private restaurants and cafes has increased a hundredfold (over 5000 in Moscow), to say nothing of small food stores, kiosks and individual food vendors in the streets. For the first time in many decades Rossia's people have started eating out. That is a tremendous change in the mass culture.

Another recent striking change in public life is the availability of household items never used before in Rossia, and novel services. This is especially true of everyday life directly related to the comfort, hygiene and health of people. During the past ten years millions of people started using toilet paper, diapers, different brands of toothbrushes, toothpaste and shampoos, and even those small things demonstrate changes for the better in popular culture. The past short ten years have seen more of such small but significant changes than any previous historic period. People have learned to use hundreds of new things and services: from the small things to technically complicated household items such as automatic washing machines, cell phones and telephone answering machines, heaters, microwave ovens, color TVs with remote control units and others.

The past ten years, Rossia has seen more houses built than during the whole period after the war until 1990. People have overcome a cultural barrier in their perception of living space. One- or two-room dwellings are being replaced with larger multi-level and multi-room houses that have often running water, electric or water heating systems and sewage. Rossians have built more living spaces (houses, including dachas, and apartments) than during the previous 40-50 years. The construction materials industry is on the rise and construction materials depots occupy whole blocks in towns and acres along roads. Several thousand new brick factories have been imported and commissioned. The current state statistics on housing are not illustrative because they don't take into account country houses (most non-registered) and many other things (new additions, private apartment houses, etc.). But even those statistics show that the housing area in the country increased from 2.1 billion square meters in 1985 to 3 billion square meters in 2000. Officially, private housing increased two-fold, but actually by much more if one takes into account all housing built by individuals. People got free or bought at token prices millions of new land plot (40 mln land owners) and learned to build more spacious and comfortable housing than they ever had during the entire Russian history. As to transportation, private cars (over 35 mln produced and imported cars for ten years) became available practically for all families if to count their shared use by parents and their children.

On the state and civic identity. In 1991 the word Rossia was trotted out to replace the abbreviation RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic). This state was not completely understandable and was poorly thought through. But it is not Rossia emerged in result of the USSR's breakup into 15 states. It is new 14 states emerged and the USSR has been dismemebered because of the emergence of new Rossia. In certain sense the new Rossia emerged first as an act of speech, but it was that act which rather quickly became a reality. Rank-and-file citizens accepted this new project because for them the issue of the state is not so much an issue of symbolic legacies and resources to be divided by the elite. For them, it is an issue of new possibilities for personal life that can be expected under the auspices of a new state designated to the territory where they live and stay. Average Rossian citizens including the educated intelligentsia do not possess etatist thinking in its routine version. 'Their' state is where it is better to live or where things are culturally more habitual for them.

The state that has emerged under the title "The Rossian Federation" (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya) is fait a'compli and all speculations to the contrary represent a self-destructive turn for the state and a departure from reality from the academic viewpoint. First, there exists a Rossian co-citizenship (civic) entity that is much more homogeneous than in many countries of the world considered as 'normal' nation-states. It is the Rossian cultural complexity (hybridity) that deserves political and scholarly rehabilitation, not "international relations" (mezhnatsionalnye otnoshenia), nor even "multiculturalism" - a new word for the old "multinationality".

The 'tribe on a hill' phenomenon. The power domain in Rossia, being opened for wider competition and outside assessment, turned out to be an unexpected assignment for study and provoked superficial views. That, in turn, led to the postulate about "honest" and "dishonest" power, meaning that thieves penetrated the ranks of power, which causes many problems in Rossia. The number of disappointed hopes increases with every new change in the ruling cohort and with every disclosure, and this makes one doubt the very possibility of positive morale of those in power. The problem of honest power in Rossia is first of all the problem of institutional rules and control, and only after that is it the problem of inside moral inducements and outside moral regulators. In Rossia those general rules have taken a special form of privatizing the property and the resources that used to belong to the state through the use of power or through being close to power. Basically, it became possible due to the voicelessness of the main population during the time of called glasnost.

Those in power almost always make up horizontal corporations or informal networks in order to use solidarity to keep power and sometimes perform managerial functions. Those networks, their language, symbols and rituals, are not being studied enough, though sometimes their role is more important than that of institutional connections and their strength prevails over law. Standing apart are the cultural specifics of the images of Rossian power and of hierarchy interrelations that were borrowed from the old system of status privileges and symbols. Those include special license plates for official cars, official passes, number of bodyguards, location of the dacha, etc. Foul language and especially routine drinking is not just a cultural problem but a socio-political problem reaching the level of national security issues. The important issues is the situation with the competence of the ruling corps and with the expert support for legal norms and executive decisions. Another is unfounded or cynically politicized escalation of folk mythology and of false doctrines to the level of official texts and declarations. There is the problem of the civic responsibility of those in power and the problem of their "soft landing". The main problem is uncontrolled growth of the number and cost of the state bureaucracy: 1,2 mln servants with 600,000 official cars in 2001. The cost of this garage is 1,5 billion dollars a year.

Behaviorial norms and world visions. New medium level actors emerged -- public activists, political and ethnic entrepreneurs operating outside institutional power structures. This is a phenomenon with its own cultural specifics. Often, the activists usurp the collective will of the people on whose behalf they operate. As a rule, they are leaders (legitimate or self-styled) of minority groups, either ethnic or religious. It is an interesting feature of mental privatization by Rossian citizens who have discovered that they can do a lot more things than they had been allowed to do before. The main problem is how status and prestige, together with the resources of "non-systemic" actors, coexist with order and statehood and to what degree they recognize them. There is the problem of politically correct sympathies: why one "non-systemic" activist with his Russian Kossaks uniform trousers and epaulettes receives an office in the Kremlin and joins the system and others are mistreated or not noticed.

As far as the "mass" level, during the past years Rossian citizens have started discovering the outside world. Every year about ten million people travel abroad using own money. "Popular masses" demonstrate a striking breakthrough in cultural production that even before was considered to be of priority to individuals and the state. Professional culture is experiencing one of the most wonderful periods in its history. The number of theaters, galleries and museums has grown dramatically and none of the major museums or theaters was closed. The list of book names and periodicals, even the circulation have also grown, especially if one takes into account the production of small printing houses. All schools and higher education establishments are functioning and the prestige of education is still high, if one judges by the number of students and a bigger choice of educational institutions. The number of higher education establishments double from 1985 to 2000, and the number of students grew from 2.9 to 3.2 mln during the same period. "Poor" population can not afford its 97% education level as well as "poor" country should have infant mortality around 35 and higher, not 16 as it is in Russia now

I did not mention the overall life improvements of the younger generation. All my informants recognized that "if it is better for the children it is better for all of us". Even those who would like to be returned into the past prefer to leave their children in a nowaday life. Thus, improvements for children mean general improvement. This analysis allows to conclude that life in Rossia became better though more complicated. But complexity is a sign of humanity.