The Second Colloquium
The American Center, Tomsk, Russia
Friday, November 6, 1998
Siberia, Economic Development
7. In reading Russian history, the Russian interior in general and Siberia in particular may be said to represent two sets of values: on the one hand, derzhavnost' and the extension of a strong Russian state to the Pacific Ocean, and, on the other hand, volia and the tendency to create a freer and more entrepreneurial society based more on the cultural, communal, and spiritual values of Orthodox Christianity and of Russian culture than on the power of an overly controlling center. Are either or both of these variants of Russian identity (a) still relevant to Russia as a whole, and (b) likely to unify or further divide the Russian Federation? What is Siberia's potential for contributing to Russia's spiritual, political, and economic development for the future?
Sagalaev: In Siberia we can see the re-archaization of culture. There is elemental freedom (volia), lawlessness (bezzakonie), and on the spiritual side there are the followers of shamans (shamanisty), a lot of Old Believer activity, and a more pagan kind of Eastern Orthodoxy, but not the Slavic paganism you find in European Russia. Tomsk has had an intelligentsia for a long time. And if we talk about what kind of ethnic hierarchy exists in our consciousness, people will say that they are "Siberian first, then Russian." Actually, what they will say is "I'm a resident of Tomsk, a Siberian, and a Russian" (Ia tomych, sibiriak, russkii) in that order. The regionalism (oblastnichestvo) of the 1990s was extinguished by the Siberian Accord (Sibirskoe Soglasie) between governors-or rather it was institutionalized so it would be less scary. This regional identity did not oppose the territorial integrity (tselostnost') of Russia, and it did not express or reflect a wish to be separated from Russia. Siberia has always been seen in terms of how useful it could be to Russia, more the way that you look at a colony. James Forsythe, in The History of the Peoples of Siberia, describes Siberia as a northeast Asian colony of Russia. That's a pretty narrow interpretation, and if it has some meaning, it's only in economic terms. After the work of Yadrintsev, Potanin, and a host of others, Siberia acquired a sense of itself, a spiritually independent state, and a spiritual consciousness. Siberia is just too big a territory for Russia. Russia is made of European and Asian parts, and it is still not clear how they fit together.
Poyzner: Ukrainians who live here say "I am a Siberian from Ukraine." Because of the system of exile (ssylka), many groups were sent here and they practiced many different religions. . . . As for our spiritual consciousness and how it differs from that of European Russia, well, this is an enormous place and was always full of brodiagi (tramps, people who were down and out, from brodit' 'to wander, roam'), and what you might call chelovek okrainy (a person from an outlying district or borderland). Compared to Europeans [including European Russians], our character is more emotional, more open, broader, so we have the compensation of a richer emotional life.
There are positive feelings about Siberia, a local patriotism (mestnyi patriotizm), but the locality (mestnost') is very large. The qualities that are found here are ones that have been weakened or lost in the European part of the country. There is a myth of Siberia in folk literature, about our vigor, our hospitality, the spiritual treasures deep in our souls. In the absence of real economic freedom, the spiritual state of a person gives them some compensation. . . . With the Urals on one side and the ocean on the other, the great scale of Siberia gives us a kind of boldness (bodrost').
Kazarkin: Russia is preventing us from living normally. Russia saw us in two quite different ways: (1) as a wonderful, natural place, a mythical "White Water" (Belovod'e, the Old Believers' promised land) which would be transformed into a New Russia; and then the opposite, (2) as a disastrous, fatal place (gibel'noe mesto), a place where people were sent to suffer and die. As for Moscow, they don't give us anything. Who needs them? We will organize our own life here even if it will seem a little more anti-civilization and anti-West. The railroad of course passed us by. The Eurasian theory (evraziistvo) in the works of Fyodorov, Roerich, Gumilev, and Potanin can be seen as a basically European imperial complex. . . . The development of regionalism is based on the theory of Eurasianism.
The European Russian etnos has reached its apex, and we see its breakdown (obskuratsiia, degradatsiia natsii), but healthy sub-ethnic groups (subetnosy) are coming to the fore, ones that are hardier and more viable. Siberia is the future, Russian culture's second breath, which will be livelier than the first one. . . . Siberia is always trying to purify itself, but Moscow keeps sending prisoners, for instance, to the Kemerovo region where there are twenty prisons. In accord with nature's will and the laws of geography we will develop differently from other places. We will accept some economic influence from the West, but not every other kind of influence that comes with it.
Muchnik: The Siberian myth is a structure that helps shape and organize this enormous expanse. Spiritually it is the abode of suffering (obitel' stradaniia), which has led to a frame of mind that has real spiritual depth. Moscow is very practical and spiritually superficial. And each region has its own myth, one for Kaluga, another for Kazan.
Kaluzhskii: There is the myth that Russia colonized Siberia in order to use it for raw materials. Siberia could take care of itself, but Moscow hasn't tried very hard to develop it and has been content just to take the raw materials and go. The Siberian Agreement is just some governors' lobbying group and there is nothing specifically Russian about it. The regional elite are the old and new nomenklatura.
Rozov:. . . .There was the myth-not entirely false-that European Russia was ruined by the West. Russia is meant to be a bridge between Europe and Asia. The great expanse (prostranstvo) is both a resource and an anti-resource, since transporting raw materials out of here is so expensive. Behind regionalism we can see the right-wing notion that Siberia has been treated like a colony of Russia, as well as the tendency towards isolationism. I disagree with Aleksandr Petrovich [Kazarkin]-I don't see any geopolitical or cultural foundation for this possibility. I don't see any functional center in Siberia of sufficient historical depth with which people can identify. If Petersburg were on Siberian territory one could identify with a former capital. But a movement like this would be more revanche than anything else. At the very depths of Russian consciousness there is the need for control over territory and a reluctance to give up any land. The depression and frustration we feel in 1998 is precisely because of the loss of territory [in 1991] in places like Central Asia. We need to work out partnership arrangements (partnerskie otnosheniia) with different developing areas throughout the country, on the polycentric model of Germany, and even more, the United States, where besides New York, Washington, and New England, there are other centers of development in California, Chicago, and Texas, and in what was the wild west. If the research done in Tomsk and Novosibirsk were recognized internationally. . . .
Billington: The phrase "the second breath of Russian culture in Siberia" was used earlier in our discussion. What does it mean? Is it a continuation and repetition of what came before, or is there something in it that is substantially new and different for Siberia and for Russia?
Kazarkin:. . . .The pessimistic view is that Moscow and its unique culture will weaken, but that Russian culture will evolve and be preserved in the outlying regions (na okrainakh), and democratic developments will help this process along. So this is connected to democratization and regionalism. Eighty years ago there were regional initiatives under Kolchak, but then the Bolsheviks came and ended whatever had been undertaken. But the belaia ideia ('white idea' represented by the pro-tsarist, anti-Bolshevik White Army) was kept alive in the Russian diaspora and is being discussed once more. Yeltsin's Duma discussed the question of the self-organization of Siberia. It consists of Eastern Orthodoxy at its base plus the identity that comes from the native soil (pochva). We've identified various periods in our culture-post-Petrine, Petersburg, Bolshevik-and there will be another period but it hasn't got a title yet. The democracy we have now allows people to try all sorts of new ideas. Life will sort this all out (vrazumeet zhizn') and the Russian idea will get its second breath.
Lvova: I want to define more precisely the question of what Siberia can offer Russia's future spiritual, political, and economic, development. . . . I would state the question somewhat differently: is there a future for Russia without Siberia? What did Russia, the center, receive with the acquisition of Siberia? If you look at the four-century-long history of this relationship you see how much changed for Russia when it conquered Siberia, in terms of its historical vectors and the international weight (ves) of Russia. Today, in terms of size, Siberia and the Far East make up two-thirds of the Russian Federation. But this unbelievably large expanse has just 32 million inhabitants, which amounts to one-fifth of Russia's population, and in the last decade the numbers have been decreasing, both the indigenous population and those who are exiles or the descendants of exiles. There have been catastrophic events-almost the complete closing off of our northern and far eastern territories. . . .
What's going on now is a stark drama of depopulation and the disappearance of whole cultures. . . . The unity and integrity of this territory is said to be so important, but no one cares about the people on this land. This attitude is outside the bounds of all logic. This is discussed as if we are in the 1950s and there have been no technological changes. After all, it is Siberia which has become the guarantor (zalog) of our country's well-being, but this has also made the Siberians hostages (zalozhniki) of the nuclear power complexes located here. If people knew the whole story they would be afraid. . . . A short distance from Tomsk there is a closed city, full of nuclear warheads which were built in our plants. What's better, we ask ourselves, strong central control or more autonomous regional authority to regulate these processes? And Siberia is not unimportant to the health of the natural order throughout the world. Not very far away from here (riadishkom), in the northern part of the Tomsk oblast', there is the Vosiugansky swamp, which, along with the Amazon jungle, is one of the world's "lungs," a great expanse of plant life (legkie planety, zelenyi massiv). We can think about our private interests, but we must also understand the terribly important role that Siberia plays in the natural balance and harmony of this planet.
It is still early to talk about the unity of the Siberian spirit-there is a remarkable degree of interaction (soobshchestvo) between researchers within the Tomsk oblast'. But you can tell just by looking out the window of an airplane that between oblasts-Tomsk and Novosibirsk, for instance-it is more difficult to have regular contact, and the potentially important border cities are underdeveloped. . . .
The first explorers of Siberia for the most natural of reasons came up with the image of it as a no-man's land (nich'ia zemlia). . . . It is no accident that textbooks referred to all of this acquired territory as the borderland (okraina) of an empire, and that formulation hasn't really changed since tsarist times. . . .
Sagalaev: There is a certain level of domestic chauvinism (kukhonnyi shovinizm) exhibited towards the native population. . . . That's a fact of Russian history and not an attractive one. Siberian Russians are not just bearers (nositeli) of Russian nationalism, but also formulators of nationalism, and our own intelligentsia, educated at our universities, are part of this. Ethnic-based national feeling is growing, and with that, violations of the rights of ethnic minorities.
Father Leonid: In an earlier age, the conquest of Siberia was led by the Cossacks, a Christian military organization, which took icons from Moscow all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Old Believers came-the priestless ones (bezpopovtsy) who didn't recognize what they called a satanic government and kept very much to themselves-and the traditional church, and of course there was paganism. The Eastern Orthodox peasants were a little freer in their religious behavior and they had a lot of contact with the local population, which is where they got their medicine. There was a lot of missionary activity and concern about the morality of peasants so far from the center and the government's control mechanisms. The native people had good relations with the Russians who came here, and the Tatars converted to Russian Orthodoxy. After 1917 there were attempts to level off (nivelirovat') all the differences. But now when the Patriarch visits, the Tatars stage a protest. They know they are not Russians, but they don't know what exactly they want, maybe a separate parish.
Dr. Billington turns participants' attention to a question that begins with statements made at the June 1998 colloquium in Istra.
8. "During the Soviet period, we [Russians] restructured what was around us and not what was within us. Now we need not just to find a Russian identity but to find life-organizing ideas (zhizn'-organizuiushchie idei). And we need local and personal projects more than grand ones." Do you agree? What local projects are underway in the Russian interior? What ones should be undertaken? Can you give examples of life-affirming, practical local projects that are pointing to a better future at the local level?
Kaluzhskii: There are number of local [non-governmental] organizations-NGOs like the Eurasia Foundation, private American and German groups-and they help set up a variety of projects, like Krasnoyarsk Community, projects that involve local businessmen with local schools. In Vladivostok there are US-administered grants for small projects, what are called independent social initiatives (samostoiatel'nye obshchestvennye initsiativy).
Billington: Are there many projects like the ones you've mentioned?
Kaluzhskii: . . . .in Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, and Barnaul-because of the good educational systems-there are a number of local projects, including ecological activities. In European Russia there are greater resources-meaning both money and people-for carrying out these kinds of activities, and St. Petersburg is very solid in this respect.
Billington: And in the areas of the North and Far East that are especially suffering?
Lvova: Here we have to turn to foreign help.
Rozov: There are all these big ideas-Russianness, the Russian mentality. Here's another one: service (sluzhenie), an idea we got from the gentry. We need scholars and artists who will be devoted to culture (sluzhenie kul'ture), who won't be in it only for the money. When Eisenhower saw the Autobahn, he was inspired to begin a major highway building program in the United States. When I think about getting Russia better organized (ob ustroistve Rossii), to borrow Solzhenitsyn's term, I think of how badly we need highways in Russia, not just paved roads. . . . Much of the public and private investment by Americans that goes to the western part of the country could just as well come here. And we understand that mutual benefit may be the goal-Soros is something of an exception to this-and that it won't be without some price. There is a Russian saying that "cheese is free only in a mousetrap" (besplatnyi syr byvaet v myshelovke).
Poyzner: There are many tasks and a lot of restructuring to do in the educational system, for example. There is movement back and forth right now between the centers and the borderlands. Between these two poles there are places in transition, as certain former centers now find themselves on the periphery. Because of this, we need our transportation system to function properly if we are to fulfill our potential.
9. What do western authorities in general and American specialists and policymakers on Russia fail to understand about the state of Russia today, about the direction and pace in which Russia is moving, and about what, if anything, the outside world can and should do to help?
Alekseev: I think people should read Benedikt Erofeev's novel Moscow-Petushki. Russia is the suburban train (elektrichka) endlessly traveling the route between the capital and Petushki.
Poyzner: Remember how Nabokov rewrote Gogol's statement to read: "Where are you headed Russia?. . . .To the devil!" (Kuda Rossiia. . . .K chertu!).
. . . Kaluzhskii: Discussing mutual expectations helps in the search for new funding possibilities. There needs to be greater understanding of the American concept of the "third sector" of the economy in Russia. So many things are different here. For instance, I work for a private fund. I see how the people who get the money are not always the ones who can make the best use of it.
Yanovich: In the geopolitical framework, the USA continues to use the old paradigms. In general, both America and Russia are behaving in traditional ways. What we need is collaboration (sotrudnichestvo), and this can begin with some very simple projects. . . .
Rozov: I think that Russian-American relations have undergone a significant shift (sdvig). Sometimes we see the Cold War attitudes, or Russia is seen as a banana republic and a source of natural gas. . . . The United States, Europe, and Japan are trying to include Russia in geopolitical economic groups. It is very important that Russia not be pressed to the wall, which could lead to an aggressive reaction, but find its niche on the international economic scene. Exporting ready-made projects to Russia doesn't help all that much. We need help with our infrastructure, technology, and social organization.
Yanovich: We need partners for economic cooperation.
. . . Billington: Will there be civil society in Russia or not? And will there be the rule of law? These are two very topical questions.
Kaluzhskii: We could probably agree on what the rule of law means. . . .but I'm afraid that civil society means different things to Americans and Russians. Ours only began seven or eight years ago. . . . Little has been written about it and much still needs to be determined. We still aren't clear on what constitutes a third sector [enterprises that are neither public nor private, e.g. NGOs], and there is ignorance and a colossal lack of trust about some of the social initiatives that have been taken. Of course this third sector will develop and find its niche not only in economic matters. But it will take a long time for this to happen.
Muchnik: I think it was [the poet] Viazemsky who said that we don't have a society, just a population (net obshchestva, est' narodnoe naselenie). What ideas will be circulating in this civil society? The government circulates big ideas and they sound ridiculous, and some could even turn out to be dangerous. Most people feel a sense of disbelief about big ideas. What is more productive now are small ideas (malye idei) about culture and daily life, about what surrounds us. We need to become accustomed to these new ways, working first on family life, and then moving in circles outward into society. When we think of social models, the West is too much of a generalization. In the end, if these new ways are to take hold, it is because we depended on ourselves and not on the rest of the world.
Billington: The big ideas seem less important to Americans as well. Only half of the U.S. population takes part in elections-it's not so important for them. Americans are afraid that Russia is experiencing a time of trouble, a Weimar period, and that this could lead to an explosive situation, and there are all those nuclear weapons. Both here and in the States there is an eschatological perspective on the dissolution of the USSR, that it's all very unpredictable.
Muchnik: My "small idea" is that people need to know the space (prostranstvo) around them, and this is the idea that I think will take root and will become more important to people than the dangerous big ideas.
Billington: We don't fear a return to Communist imperialism, but to an authoritarian regime, like that of Milosevic in Serbia. Likhachev makes a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. When there is talk of law-and-order (poriadok), the name of Pinochet comes up, and in Russia this kind of leader might be dangerous. Do you think there could be a situation on the territory of the former Soviet Union like there is in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia? We don't exactly expect it, but we still worry about it.
Muchnik: We certainly hope there won't be anything like that. Either there will be a catastrophe or there won't. It's not really something we are looking forward to (my ne mechtaem ob etom).
Billington: If this is in fact a Time of Troubles, then at some point a Time of Troubles comes to an end. A Minin and Pozharsky come along, or a Young Guard (molodaia gvardiia, a reference from the civil war that followed the 1917 Revolution), a Romanov family appears. The question is: how will this Time of Troubles end? It may not end in catastrophe but in an authoritarian regime or a more federally structured state. So we return to Gogol: Russia, where are you headed? It seems that, like the troika in Dead Souls, we are always racing back to that first question, and to your sense of what will happen.
Parthé: And it's not only a question of what will be in Russia, but what Russia will be in the world.
Rozov: . . . .We are in the midst of a social revolution. First, there is a fiscal crisis because taxes are not being paid and are not being collected, so there isn't enough money to run the country. Second, there is a conflict between the elites, and other popular forces are moving into the fissure that has been created. And, finally, there is geopolitical pressure. In October 1993 we had a small civil war, with dual centers of power (dvoevlastie) as in the Time of Troubles: two centers of power, two presidents, two governments. We have a crisis now but there are some hopeful signs that it will not turn into anything like 1993. There is more of a tendency to find ways to work things out, to come to an agreement on important matters, and the Duma is learning how to strike bargains (torgovat'sia). So it doesn't look like the conflicts we have will lead to a complete breakdown.
Where we have a middle class, we are developing a civil society. Moscow is at a better stage than the provinces, and their justice system works, but Moscow depends on us and on the West. There are geopolitical pressures that have been building for twenty years. When the situation arose with the GKOs (gosudarstvennye kratkosrochnye obligatsii-short-term government bonds), world capital reacted as they would in the case of a banana republic. We must join the world economy over the next ten to fifteen years, or we will wind up throwing in our lot with China and the Arab world and be seen once again as an evil empire.
Rychkova: There are two alternatives on Siberia: a regional economy will develop, for which a justice system is needed, and that will allay the fears of foreign investors about legal controls and control of criminal activity, or, America will move further away from us.
Sagalaev: America worries about having to be the world's policeman, but we're no Yugoslavia. There are all these dramatic scenarios that are always being written for Russia, all this Western hysteria. We are used to being on the verge of catastrophe-the USSR collapsed, and later the ruble collapsed as well. There is a negative side to popular psychology: on the one hand there are geopolitical realities and considerations, but on the other hand there is daily life (obydennyi mir) and a civil society is developing. I don't feel as if Washington or Moscow will decide the future. And I don't think that a catastrophe is on the way. I'm tired of living in this atmosphere of impending crisis. It's as if there has to be a scarecrow (pugalo) and it's Russia, the bear, the supporter of world terrorism. But that isn't the way I see it. We can already see a lot of positive processes. How about a discussion like this? This is not a small thing. We are sitting here today having a normal conversation and that is something to think about. This kind of discussion is becoming a regular part of our lives.
Yanovich: We've had ten years of free choice. For the first time in Russia we live not by declarations but by choices. We have freedom: what will each one of us choose, what will each one of us do?
. . . Parthé: There seem to be a great many polls (oprosy obshchestvennogo mneniia). What do they tell us about what people are reading, where people are getting their information? Western researchers look mostly at newspapers from the capital. It's important to know where else we should be looking for significant material.
Poyzner: The way polls ask questions determines the kind of answers they get. We need to identify not just the current state of national identity, but more importantly, the tendencies in national identity.
Yanovich: We have to understand how the role of the individual and the individualization of roles are working themselves out (kak realizuiutsia rol' lichnosti i lichnost' roli), and what kinds of roles there are for the creative personality (tvorcheskaia lichnost') in this society.
Poyzner: There are so many roles-for ethnologists, anthropologists, psychologists. We have to study myths and archetypes-there is so much to study, so much to know.
As the formal session came to an end, there were comments about the cultural offerings that America sells Russia, which are contributing to a growing cultural semi-literacy (nenachitannost). This material passes through no external censor and is guided by no moral judgment. James Billington pointed out that the American television programs shown in Russia are not representative of the range of programs shown on American television, and are even more unrepresentative of the American people, who are among the most religiously observant in the advanced, industrialized world.
