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OP #272: STRUCTURES OF RUSSIAN POLITICALOP #272: STRUCTURES OF RUSSIAN POLITICALOP #272: STRUCTURES OF RUSSIAN POLITICALOP #272: STRUCTURES OF RUSSIAN POLITICALOP #272: STRUCTURES OF RUSSIAN POLITICALDISCOURSE ON NADISCOURSE ON NADISCOURSE ON NADISCOURSE ON NADISCOURSE ON NATIONALITY PROBLEMS:TIONALITY PROBLEMS:TIONALITY PROBLEMS:TIONALITY PROBLEMS:TIONALITY PROBLEMS:

ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVESANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVESANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVESANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVESANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVESby Sergei Vby Sergei Vby Sergei Vby Sergei Vby Sergei V . Sokolovski. Sokolovski. Sokolovski. Sokolovski. Sokolovski

Minority Rights Monitoring in theMinority Rights Monitoring in theMinority Rights Monitoring in theMinority Rights Monitoring in theMinority Rights Monitoring in theRussian FederationRussian FederationRussian FederationRussian FederationRussian Federation

It is not an easy task to r eview thevast field of minority rights r esearch inRussia and sketch a state-of-the-artsummary. There are several cir cum-stances that contribute to this diff i-culty. The f i rst i s conceptual. The re l-evance of the concept of “minority” inthe analysis of various groups’ situa-tions in contemporary Russia and ex-Soviet states is a matter of debate.Even if it could be pr oved that such aconcept is r elevant, it is still not clearwhether the r elevance holds for diff er-ent periods of Russian history. Thisconceptual pr edicament has to do firstand for emost with Russia’s and otherNIS countries’ claims to democracy.The gist of the matter is simple: if webelieve (or can prove) that Russia is ademocratic country, then the term“minority”’ is applied appr opriately.The underlying r easoning is straight-forward: the term implies the idea ofdistributional justice , accor ding to whicha minority is deficient in only oneaspect of its ability to participate fullyand equally in political and social/cultural pr ocesses, namely, in itsnumerical str ength. W ithout thisdeficiency, free individuals can pr otecttheir interests thr ough voting andother democratic pr ocedur es. Minoritygroups, lacking such a powerfulresource as the necessary numericalstrength to guarantee the pr otection oftheir interests thr ough voting, needspecial additional measure s from thestate, which is contr olled by the major-ity. Hence “minority” is a term thatpresupposes a democratic context. Innon-democracies (pr oto-democratic ortransitional societies, as well as autoc-racies and totalitarian r egimes) the

numerical size of a gr oup does notconstitute a political r esource. Whatcounts as a political r esource is thegroup’s access to power, wealth, arms,and similar things. In the case oftotalitarian societies, therefore , it ismore appr opriate to r efer to r uling anddeprived gr oups or societal strata, ofelites and disenfranchised masses, orof victimized populations. If used toanalyze the situation in these coun-tries, the concept “minority” would bemisapplied. As for contemporaryRussia, it is still an open questionwhether we can legitimately use theterm “minority.” It should be usedcautiously, since the numericalstrength of a gr oup in any particularcase, or even its position within apower hierar chy does not automati-cally imply the democratic dimension.In many r egions, local decision-makingstill bears a traditional autocraticstamp that pr ecludes the sociologicallycorr ect usage of the minority-majoritytype of analysis.

Secondly, even if we pr esume thatthe term “holds,” at least generally andon the large-scale level of internationalrelations, given that Russia is a partyto many international treaties andagreements, then we are confr ontedwith one more obstacle, which couldbe named terminological . Incidentally,this aspect has a wider, if not a univer-sal character. In many countries theterm “minority” is either unknown , ornot used , or, to make matters still morecomplicated, is used along with manyrival terms , with partially or substan-tially overlapping meanings. It couldalso be used with many limiting andparticularizing attributes , stretching thesignified concept far beyond its norma-tive or internationally accepted scope.

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The last two cases—parallel usage ofterms with overlapping meanings andusage of the term “minority” withmany specifications—are typical foracademic and political discourse inboth Russia and most of the NIS.

A dilemma for someone attemptingto review minority rights r esearc h is:should he/she include all the indig-enous terms and r elated concepts, orpursue a limiting strategy and takeinto consideration only “focal” caseswith explicit usage of the term “minor-ity”? Of course, this choice does notsolve all the r eviewers’ problems. Inmany cases the term “minority,” whenused by repr esentatives of diff erentdisciplines, academic schools, and sub-fields, or by journalists and politicians,or leaders of various nationalist move-ments and ethnic entrepr eneurs,means diff erent things. In this case Iprefer to speak of diff erent paradigms,or world views, which could not bereduced to mer ely pr ofessional“schisms” and which divide bothacademia and the general public andfurther contribute to the babel ofdiscourse on minority issues.

Making matters still worse is thehuge variety of minority gr oups , whichcame into existence by a myriad ofways and which do not easily lendthemselves to the classifying andtypifying will of academics. In thisrespect the whole history of Russianethnography and anthropology couldbe described as a history of minorityresearch, and all the conflicting views,theories, and conceptualizations ofethnicity or “ethnic r eality” have adi rect bearing on minority r esearchand relevant discursive formations.

Having in mind all these obstacles,I must clarify my own position and thechoices I made when pr eparing thisreview. In the case of the first pr oblem,that is, deciding whether an analysis in“minority-majority” terms could be

applied to contemporary Russia, Ichose to answer in the af firmative,with certain r eservations. In essencemy argument is this: whether wespeak of Russia in general, or of any ofits territories and historical periods inparticular, there are a number ofsituations and contexts which permitthemselves be analyzed productivelyin these terms. So we could speakmeaningfully of minorities in Russia,though not always and not fo r everyplace, and we must be cautious not toover -generalize the analytical power ofthis approach.

Secondly, on the level of terminol-ogy, I opt for being open towards“native” or “indigenous” terminologyin minority discourse, as very often thelocal (in this particular case, the Rus-sian language) terms “fix” conceptuallinkages or repr esent tr opes whichbecome formative for and influencethis discourse and, when ignor ed, cancreate misunderstandings in inter cul-tural communication. The latter prob-lem very often arises in diplomatic andinternational politics, and internationallaw types of communication, whenpartners in a dialogue pr esume that byusing the same terms they are guaran-teeing the clarity and transparency ofmeaning. I will speak specifically onthis type of erro r, which could beprovisionally labeled as terminologicalhomonymy1, later, when I analyze theusage of the term “national minority”in the documents of the OSCE and theCouncil of Eur ope and its interpre ta-tions in Russia.

Thirdly, I restrict myself here to abrief overview of academic discoursewith short excursions into the juridicaland political spheres, thus leaving outimportant parts of discourse on mi-norities such as mass media debates,public usage, etc. This enables me to bemore inclusive in the analysis on the“ontic plane,” that is, to include in my

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review various types of minorities,minority peoples, migrant and settledgroups, ethnographic gr oups, etc.

My appr oach to the analysis ofacademic discourse will be inclusivealso, as I attempt to cover the generaltrends in the history of minorityresear ch, putting it into the context ofethnological research in general. I havechosen this strategy because I per ceivethe particular field of minority researchto be strongly influenced by predispo-sitions of a paradigmatic nature withinthe br oader academic r esearch ofethnicity.

History of Minority Research inHistory of Minority Research inHistory of Minority Research inHistory of Minority Research inHistory of Minority Research inRussiaRussiaRussiaRussiaRussia

Rossian 2 ethnography goes backto the seventeenth century—the time ofextensive colonization and formation ofa centralized Rossian state. Earlydescriptions and atlases of Siberiaincluded information on local tribalgroups. In those times ethnic diff er-ences were not depicted as such, andthe local (Russian language) terms fornon-Russian gr oups were yasachnye(paying special tribute in furs), tuzemtsy(literally meaning “living in anotherland”), i norodtsy (meaning, “being borninto an alien, for eign, non-Russian, ornon-Rossian gr oup”), or inovertsy andyazychniki (meaning pagans, non-Orthodox, non-Christian, or belongingto another faith). The diff erentiatingfeatures, thus, were fiscal status, land(or region), and faith, but not thetotalizing concept of culture, which hadnot as yet been formed as a part ofnationalistic ideology. For t hi s reasonthe terms plemya (tribe) and narod(people), though used in r espect t odiff erent gr oups, had diff erent mean-ings from those implied in the cur rentRussian ethnographical discourse.

In 1845 the Russian GeographicalSociety, with its Ethnographic Divi-sion, was founded in Saint Petersburg .

The Society published materials ondiff erent r egions, including studies ofethnography and languages in CentralAsia, Siberia and the Far East(M.Kastre n, A.Middendorf, V .Radlov).This early association of ethnographywith geography, typical not only forRussia, but for many Eur opean coun-tries as well, pr obably served as acontributing factor in the territorializa-tion of ethnicity, which later becameone of the essentials of the naturalisticparadigm in ethnicity r esearc h.

In the 1880–90’s a str ong evolution-ist school was formed, intr oducingmethods of historical reconstr uction onarchaeological, physical anthr opologi-cal, and ethnographic materials (M.Kovalevsky, D. Anuchin, L. Sternberg ).This was at a time when the firstethnographic journals had appeared,as well as many popular works on theculture s of the world. W ith the estab-lishment of evolutionism in the field ofethnographical r esear ch, the laterreification of ethnicity and culture andethnic gr oups and the appr opriation ofhistory by future nationalistic leadersbecame conceptually possible. Need-less to say, both r eification and appro -priation of history became part-and-parcel of the naturalistic interpr etationof ethnic r eality that was taking shape.Evolutionism helped to establish theconcepts of “developed” and “lessdeveloped” peoples which are stillused in some normative texts in Russiatoday. 3

The Bolsheviks subsequently usedthese established conceptual linkagesbetween ethnic gr oups and territoriesin organizing the Russian Federationand, later, the USSR. The concepts ofevolutionism were operative in estab-lishing a hierar chy of administrative-political units, from national sel’sovet(ethnic minority village Soviet) toUnion r epublics. The Bolshevik revolu-tion (1917) and formation of the Soviet

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state with territorial autonomies basedon ethnic principles, as well as the riseof ethnic periphery movements, led tovery extensive studies among allgroups, especially as a basis for design-ing bor ders between ethno-territorialunits. Ethnographers were also deeplyinvolved in developing written alpha-bets and school systems for manysmall gr oups.

In 1933 the Institute of Anthr opol-ogy, Archaeology, and Ethnographywas established in Leningrad, and in1937—the Institute of Ethnography inMoscow. This was at a time whenMarxist-Leninist doctrine (with itsfocus on social evolution levels andclass str uggle as the major force inhistorical change) started to dominatetheoretical disciplinary knowledge inevery field of social and humanitariansciences. Ethnology was pr oclaimed a“bour geois science,” many scholarswere persecuted and the department ofethnology at Moscow University hadbeen closed (1931) [Slezkin 1991, 476–84]. In the 1950–70’s the major priori-ties were still the studies ofethnogenesis, material cultur es, ethnichistories, and cartography, initiatedmainly by the central institutions inMoscow and Leningrad with activetraining and participation of scholarsfrom regional and r epublican academiccenters. This r esulted in prestigiousprojects such as historical-ethno-graphic atlases ( Peoples of Siberia , 1961;Russians , 1967–70; Peoples of the Wo rld,1964) and a multi-volume series ( ThePeoples of the Wo rld). In the 1970–80’sthere was a strong shift of inter est tocontemporary ethnic issues, togetherwith a r eorientation to the use ofsociological survey methods. Extensiveresearch was carried out in CentralAsia, the Baltic r epublics, and theVolga-Ural r egion (Y. Arutunian, L.Drobizheva, V. Pimenov, M. Guboglo).Academician Yu. Br omley and other

ethnologists (N. Cheboksarov, V.Kozlov, P. Puchkov, S. Arutiunov) weredeveloping a theory of ethnos basedon a primor dial vision of ethnicity.Along with this theory a distinctinterpretation of ethnos as a “socio-biological or ganism” (L. Gumilev)acquired a gr owing popularity.

Political liberalization since the late1980’s and the rise of ethnic national-ism and conflict have brought radicalchanges to the field of Rossian anthro -pology. The subjects of r esearch anddebate shifted to identity studies,ethnonationalism and ethnic conflicts,status and rights of minorities,ethnicity and power, and a number ofother issues. Ethnonationalistic en-gagement and the use of ethnic studiesas a resource for political mobilizationhave become a serious challenge forthe academic community. In response,anthr opology is demonstrating agrowing inter est in pr oblems of “newminorities” like Russians, Russiannationalism, and identity. Along withthe r est of society, Rossian anthropol-ogy is going thr ough a pr ocess of deeptransformation and crisis [T ishkov1997, 494].

Paradigms of Ethnicity ResearchParadigms of Ethnicity ResearchParadigms of Ethnicity ResearchParadigms of Ethnicity ResearchParadigms of Ethnicity Research

The basic ways of interpr etingethnic phenomena are usually gr oupedinto three main approaches, whichcould be designated as primordial(objectivist, positivist, or naturalistic),instrumentalist , and constructivist(subjectivist or r elativistic). The first ofthese scholarly traditions is usuallytraced to the ideas of nineteenth-century German romanticism and tothe positivist tradition of social sci-ence. Its adher ents view ethnicity as anobjective given, a sort of primor dialcharacteristic of humanity. Forprimor dialists, there exist objectiveentities with inherent characteristicssuch as t erri tory, language, r ecognizable

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membership, and a common mentality . Ini ts extreme form, this approach con-ceives of ethnicity in socio-biologicalterms as a “compr ehensive form ofnatural selection and kinship connec-tions,” a primor dial instinctive im-pulse [Van den Berghe 1981]. Someprimor dialists even hypothesize thatrecognition of gr oup aff i l i ation i sgenetically encoded and this code is theproduct of early human evolution,when the ability to r ecognize themembers of one’s family gr oup wasessential for survival.

Contemporary political discourseon ethnicity and nationalism in Russiabelongs conceptually to theprimor dialist school and is influencedto a substantial degree by anthr opo-logical theories prevalent in the historyof Russian ethnology and anthr opol-ogy since the disciplines’ formation.Explicit primordialism has played amajor role in both Russian and Sovietanthr opology. Originating in Herder’ sneo-r omantic concept of Volk as a unityof blood and soil , it was developed intoa positivist pr ogram for ethnographicresearch in the work of S.M.Shir okogorov, who defined ethnos as:

“a group of people speaking oneand the same language and admit-ting common origin, characterizedby a set of customs and a lifestyle,preserved and sanctified by tradi-tion, which distinguishes it fro mother [gr oups] of the same kind[Shir okogorov 1923, 122].”

This approach was later developedin the works of Yu. Br omley, who gavea very similar definition of ethnos(1981), and L. Gumilev. The latterbelieved in the existence of ethnos as a“biosocial or ganism” and proposed aframework for the study ofethnogenesis as a geographically deter-mined process, in which the formationof an ethnos was depicted as a com-

bined effect of cosmic ener gies andlandscape [Gumilev 1989, 1990]. As theworks of Gumilev are still very popu-lar in Russia and exert influence on theperception of ethnic r eality, especiallyat public and political levels, I willbriefly mention the constitutive char-acteristics of his theory. For Gumilev,ethnos is analogous to an or ganism inmany r espects, but one of the funda-mentals is the similarity of its life cycleto the life cycle of an or ganism. Like anorganism, ethnos is born, then experi-ences periods of gr owth and maturity,followed by inertia, br eakdown, anddeath. He has even given an estimateof ethnic life cycle duration of about1200–1500 years. Per haps more impor-tant, inter ethnic r elations and theircoexistence are believed to dependupon mutual compatibility of contact-ing ethnoses. Accor ding to Gumilevthere are three types of inter ethniccoexistence: symbiosis, xenia, andchimera. In symbiosis ethnoses peace-fully coexist, using diff erent ecologicalniches of the same landscape. Xenia isalso a harmless way of coexistence,when one ethnos is living “inside”another as an impregnated for eignparticle. But when the isolation be-tween the guest and host ethnosesbreaks down, it may give rise to chi-mera, which is characterized by nega-tive complementarity. Then bloodyconflicts, leading to extermination ofone or of both of the contactingethnoses, are inevitable. The danger ofsuch pseudo-theor etical constr uctionsbecomes evident when they are em-ployed to legitimize violence or toview ethnic conflicts as inevitableconsequences of “natural laws.”

Skeptical of the bio-geographicalappr oach, Br omley and most Sovietsocial scientists adhered to historical-primor dial theories. For them, ethnosand ethno-social or ganism, understoodas objective linguo-cultural entities,

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were the basic categories [Br omley1983]. As a dir ector of the Institute ofEthnography, USSR Academy ofSciences in the 1970’s and 1980’s,Bromley published four theore ti calmonographs [Br omley 1973, 1981,1983, 1987], which formed the back-bone of academic discourse onethnicity theory in those years.Bromley defined ethnos as:

“a stable inter generational commu-nity of people, historically formedon a certain territory, possessingcommon r elatively stable feature sof culture (including language) andpsyche, as well as a consciousnessof their unity and of their diff er-ence from other similar entities(self-awar eness), reflected in a self-name (ethnonym) [Br omley 1983,57–58] .”

This theory goes back to S.Shir okogor ov’s writings of the 1920’sand corr esponds to the so-calledLeninist theory of national question,defining “nation” as the highest typeof ethnic community (ethnos), whereethnos is viewed as an ar chetype andmajor form of social gr ouping, legiti-mizing the state with its economy andculture [Sokolovski, T ishkov 1997, 190–193].

The term “nation” itself ( natsiya ) isunderstood and interpr eted in Russianacademic, political, and public r ealmsexclusively as ethnic nation, or ethno-nation (though the latter two terms arepractically not used in Russia). Theconcept still bears the stamp of Stalin’sdefinition of a nation as a communityof people with objective characteristics(common territory, economy, language,and psychic or ganization). In its thirdedition [1974, vol.17:375–76] the GreatSoviet Encyclopedia defines nation invery similar terms as:

“a historical community of peoplecreated by the forming communal-

ity of their territory, economic ties,literary language, some specificfeatures of their culture and charac-ter, which make up its constitutiveattributes.”

Most Soviet and contemporaryRussian scholars basically share t hi sunderstanding, with the addition ofone defining element—the so-called“national self-consciousness,” that is,self-awar eness or a feeling of commonidentity. This understanding of thenation has important implications forthe interpretation of the concept ofnational minority , about which I willspeak further. The definition of anation in exclusively ethno-culturalterms (versus citizenship terms) is stilldominant, if not the only one in Rus-sian political and academic discourse.Common history, culture, and lan-guage, as well as “ethnic homeland” orterritory are mentioned or implied inevery usage of the term. As mentionedabove, the nation is understood as thehighest stage of development of anethnos in the Soviet theory of ethnos,the other stages being plemya (a tribe)and narodnost’ (a nationality, that is anethnic group). The notions of politicalor civil nations are virtually no longerused in contemporary political andpublic discourses. This explains thefact that nationalism in Russia isunderstood exclusively as ethno-nationalism and is usually per ceivedas a sort of deviation, impr oper behav-ior, or misdemeanor. It is very oftenassociated with separatism as well. Asethnonationalism is an ideology basedon the theory that ethno-nationsconstitute the basic human forms of“normal” collectivities, it becomesevident that it is based on a naturalisticappr oach to ethnic r eality, onprimor dialist versions of ethnicityinterpr etation. Ethnonationalism is theruling ideology in most of the NIS,

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including the Baltic states, and inpractically all the r epublics of theRussian Federation.

The naturalistic explanations ofethnicity and of nationalism in Russiaare still deeply entr enched, institution-alized in state policy, scholarlythought, education, and, most impor-tant, in public opinion and the admin-istrative-political str ucture of thefederation. This is also true for all post-Soviet states. The reasons for thisinstitutionalization are various; amongthe most important being the disciplin-ary tradition of Russian ethnography/ethnology, close political control andcensure of academic r esearch duringthe Soviet period, popularization ofacademic discourse thr ough the educa-tion system and media, and, to acertain extent, the “fusion” of politicaland academic elites in post-Soviettimes. Another important r eason thatneeds to be mentioned is the basicsimilarity and conver gence betweenpopular views on ethnic phenomenaand naturalistic tr eatments of ethnicreality, which are sometimes so strik-ing that I am inclined not only to speakof mutual r einfor cement of lay andscholarly opinions in this respect, butalso to suspect that the context ofnaturalistic theories’ formation wasformed, in the first place, under thestrong influence of nationalistic ideas.Here the German r omantic tr eatmentof ethnic r eality should be mentionedonce again, as not only did Russianethnology and anthr opology inheritmany of its ideological biases, but eventhe inter disciplinary boundaries andunderstanding of the discipline’ssubject in Russia was modeled in away similar to the divide betweenVolkskunde and V’lkerkunde of theGerman academic tradition.

It would be incorr ect to ar gue thatthere were no other strains of theore ti-cal thought existing side by side the

dominant primor dialist tradition inSoviet ethnology. Political liberaliza-tion since the late 1980’s and the rise ofethnic nationalism and conflict havebrought radical changes for Russiananthr opology. But even by the end ofthe 1970’s a number of appr oacheswhich could be viewed as diff erentforms of instr umentalism had ap-peared. Some authors, influenced bysystem and informational appr oaches,tried to use the concept of informationin the analysis of ethnic phenomena,combining primor dialist views onethnos as an objective entity (ethno-social or ganism) with instr umentalistperspectives on the i ntergenerationaltransfer of ethnic culture [Ar utiunov,Cheboksarov 1977, Ar utiunov 1989].Others experimented with informationpatterns or “ models” of particular“ethnoses” [Pimenov 1977]. Still othersbegan suggesting that ethnic diff erentia-tion could be adequately described as aninformation pr ocess, r educing behav-ioral expectations in a multiculturalenvironment to a set of typologicallyneat ethnic ster eotypes [Susokolov 1990].

Another instr umentalist appr oachdeveloped in the sub-discipline ofeconomic anthr opology, where theanalysis of ethnic competition in labormarkets was based implicitly on ethnicmobilization theories [Shkaratan 1986;Perepiolkin, Shkaratan 1989]. Never-theless, though these approaches,which could be labeled as instr umen-talist, were considered fr esh andexerted a certain influence, they were asort of side show at the time theyappeared and were not viewed assignificantly distinct from the pre -dominant naturalistic appr oaches,particularly since their authors wereusing the same terminology (ethnos,ethno-social or ganism and similarterms) and shared many pr esupposi-tions of the “naturalistic school.”

While the instr umentalist appr oach

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to ethnic phenomena had been in usesince the end of the 1970’s, theconstructivist approach r emainedoutside domestic social science andwas never seriously tested until thestart of the 1990’s, that is, almost ageneration later. With the emer gence ofethnic r evival and the gr owth ofseparatism over the last decade in thepost-Soviet ar ea, scholars started topay more attention to ethnicity con-struction in both theor etical andpractical r esearc h. As a result ethnicitybegan to be seen as part of the r eper-toire that is “chosen” or “indoctri-nated” by an individual or a gr oup toachieve certain interests and goals, oras a representation actively constr uctedby ethnic entrepr eneurs. This appr oachhas never attained pr edominance,though some studies have been pub-lished by sociologists [Filippov 1991,1992; Vo ronkov 1995], ethnologists andanthr opologists [Tishkov 1989, 1992;Sokolovski 1993,1994 a-c; Sokolovski,Tishkov 1997; Ssorin-Chaikov 1991],and social psychologists [Soldatova1996]. Though post-communist societ-ies contain many examples of con-structed and mobilized ethnicity, theinstr umentalist and constr uctivistappr oaches to ethnic phenomena havenot r eally been actively applied in thepolicy r ealm, r emaining known princi-pally within academia, and even therebeing met with skepticism and opposi-tion. They have failed to become morewidely used due to their inherentcomplexity and deviance from popu-larized versions of ethnic r ealitymodels. For obvious r easons, national-ist leaders oppose them as well andsupport primor dialist views of ethnicreality. The ethno-territorial nature ofSoviet federalism as it was engineeredand employed by the Bolsheviks, hasgreatly contributed to and still influ-ences the tailoring of various conflictsas ethno-territorial, for such a tailoring

exploits an appar ent legitimacy toterritorial claims on the side of “titu-lar” ethnic gr oups 4, or makes peoplethink that this or that piece of land“belongs to” a locally dominant ethnicgroup.

Part of the dif ficulty in explaining asubject like “territorialized ethnicity”is that it is often so deeply embeddedin, as to be indistinguishable fr om, thefundamental assumptions of national-istic discourse. As a topos, moreover, itis inher ent in many conceptual sys-tems and disciplinary lexicons. None-theless, we may appr oach this subjectthrough the available and muchdiscussed topic of “national minori-ties,” which potentially contains boththe idea of place (“national”) and ofethnos (“minority”). The notion of“national minority” is a cornerstone ofEuropean policies in minority issues,setting the terms for the current ap-proaches of OSCE and the Council ofEurope. Inter estingly enough, though,even here neither the field of socialscience, nor the documentation ofinter governmental or ganizationscontains a comprehensive and br oadlyagreed upon definition. I will discusstwo of the term’s meanings, onedesignated for convenience sake as“broad,” the other as “narro w.” Bothmeanings contain the topos, or concep-tual linkage “ethnicity-territory,” butthe r espective interpr etations of thislinkage differ substantially.

Let us consider first the broadmeaning, exemplified by the usage ofthe term in such documents as the“Framework Convention for theProtection of National Minorities andExplanatory Report” of 1994 (Councilof Europe) and the CopenhagenConfer ence for Human Dimensiondocument of 1990 (CSCE). Both docu-ments interpret the term “national” asreferring to “nation” in its technicaland legal meaning of “citizenship-

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bestowing,” thus excluding suchpotential beneficiaries as migrantworkers, stateless persons or apatrids,non-nationals, and r efugees whoseprotection is attended to by otherinternational agr eements. The phras-ing of the documents supports theunderstanding that the notion “na-tional minority” is extended to covercitizens who are members of ethnic,cultural, linguistic, and r eligiousminorities. This breadth of categories isthe r eason why I defined this usage ofthe term as “broad.” This interpre ta-tion of the term is also more liberalthan the narrow understanding, whichI will discuss below. Nevertheless, thisunderstanding unequivocally links theconcepts of “minority” and “state,”and the documents explicitly mentionsuch characteristics of the state assover eignty and territorial integrity,thus dividing nationalities into twodistinct categories: gr oups with “theirown” states and stateless gr oups. Thelinkage of ethnicity and territory ismediated in this interpretation by anoverar ching state.

The second, “narr ow” meaning ofthe term is more conservative. Thisunderstanding is standard and wide-spread in Central and Eastern Euro -pean literature, though not limited tothese r egions. “National” in thissecond interpr etation of the termimplies “having its own state or pol-ity” or “having a homeland,” which isalways diff erent, as in the case of“national minorities,” from the countryor region of r esidence. In Russia theterm is applied to all minority gr oupsliving “outside” their r espective landsof origin, be it a state or a politicaladministrative unit within the RussianFederation. Examples include Kazakhsand Ukrainians living in Russia, orTatars and Mor dvinians residingoutside T atarstan and Mordoviarespectively. Here the idea of a territo-

rialized ethnicity is manifested morevividly, as this concept implies theexistence of a “host state” and a “stateof origin,” “titular gr oups” (dominantethnic majorities who gave their nameto the polity) and kin gr oups “abr oad,”and ethnic “homelands” and “other-lands.” It is well documented that thisterritorializing tr end led to massivepopulation exchanges immediatelyafter W orld War I, followed by ethniccleansing campaigns and deportations.

In most of the Soviet Union’ssuccessor states the criteria of minoritystatus are ambiguous at best andsubstantially deviate from the standardusage of international law. I wi l l t ry t oclarify below the peculiarities of theminority concept understanding inpolitical and academic discourse inRussia and more generally in ex-Sovietstates. Though the disputes over thedefinition of the term “minority” seemnever to come to an end, most expertswould agree that there are at least twobasic elements essential for this con-cept, namely, numerical inferiority ofthe gr oup and its non-dominant, orsubor dinate position within the powerstructure of the country or r egion inquestion. Both elements are retained inthe Russian understanding of theconcept, but the practices involved intheir interpr etation and measur ementdiffer significantly from their westernanalogues.

Numerical Inferiority PrincipleNumerical Inferiority PrincipleNumerical Inferiority PrincipleNumerical Inferiority PrincipleNumerical Inferiority Principle

Numerical inferiority of minori-ties, as has been ar gued earlier, servesas one of the distinctive features of theconcept. It is named in both of thewidely cited UN working definitions,those of J. Deschenes and F. Capotorti(“a group of citizens of a State, constitut-ing … a numerical minority in that State”and “a group numerically inferior to therest of the population of a State, ” respec-tively). In the USSR and Russia this

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feature was extended also to indig-enous peoples, who during most oftheir Soviet history had been off i cial l ydesignated as “minor” or “small”peoples 5. But in most of the ex-Sovietstates, especially those which are basedon the principle of so-called ethno-federalism, or which have ethno-territorial autonomies, the numericalinferiority principle has taken onfurther complications and ramifica-tions which need to be mentioned.

If applied to the Russian Federa-tion formally, the numerical inferiorityfeature would mean that all non-Russians belong to minorities, asRussians constitute more than 80percent of the country’s population. Asthe Russian Federation is based on theso-called ethno-territorial principle,the relational aspect of numericalinferiority of minorities “to the r est ofthe population” becomes dubious. Therepublics and autonomous r egionswithin the Russian Federation withterritories comprising appr oximately60 percent of the entire territory of thestate and having various degr ees ofsovereignty and self-government, areoften viewed and portray themselvesas “ethnic homelands” for the minoritygroups after which they are named(Tatarstan for the T atars, Bashkortostanfor the Bashkir, etc.), thus dividingtheir populations into “titular” and“non-titular” gr oups. Their dominantpositions within the r epublics turnthem politically and sociologically intonational elites, rather than minoritiesin the standard sense of the term. Thisis one of the r easons that Russianlegislators, politicians, and socialscientists often use two r efer entialplanes at once while assessing thenumerical strength of ethnic minori-ties—ethno-territorial and state. Mostof the so-called “titular gr oups” (oftentermed as “nations” or “peoples,”though r emaining numerically inferior

to the state population) are not in-cluded in federal and local minorityrights pr otection norms. Moreover,some political scientists and sociolo-gists ar gue that Russians turn intoeffective minorities in political, legal,and sociological terms on the territo-ries of some r epublics (e.g.,Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, and Tuvarepublics).

Besides, some groups of Russians,mainly Old Believers and formerreligious dissenters, are considered byanthr opologists to be minorities oncultural, economic, and r eligiousgrounds (Doukhobors, Molokans, andvarious “old-settler” groups in Siberiaand the Far East). Most of the Siberiangroups in this list were recommendedfor inclusion in the gr oup of indig-enous peoples, as they have a subsis-tence economy similar to the neighbor-ing indigenous peoples [T able 1].

The dilemma on what scale tomeasure the gr oup ratio in population(on state or r egional scales) becomesfurther aggravated when r egionalboundaries are challenged. As expertsspecializing in Eastern Eur ope andRussia are aware, much of the systemof territorial-administrative divisionlacks legitimacy in the opinion of theleaders of ethnic movements. Mutualterritorial claims of T atars andBashkirs, Ingushes and Ossetians,Chechens, and Cossacks are well-known cases. The overall number ofethno-territorial claims in ex-Sovietstates has been estimated as exceedingfour hundred [Kolossov e.a. 1992].When territorial boundaries become anelement in the construction processesof ethnic status, and when, at least forsome gr oups, the administrativedivision seems to be cr ucial in theirclaims to be either a minority or amajority, that is a people with the rightto self-determination, the claims to

11

territory and status become inevitablyenmeshed in a power str uggle.

The relational aspect of a minoritygroup’s numerical strength in ethno-territorial federations such as Russiabrings into conflict two distinct classi-fications closely contr olled by thestate—an ethnic classification (anofficially appr oved and established listof minority categories) and the admin-istrative territorial classification (a listof regions with legitimate boundaries).In the long history of Russian expan-sion both classifications have beencontested from both sides—the stateand the ethnonational movements—many times with varying r esults. Oftentwo or more distinct peoples and/orminority categories have been arbi-trarily “lumped” together for off icialpurposes and considered one peoplewith one of ficial name (e.g., the Avars,the Altai, and the Khakass) and oneterritorial unit. At other times a singlepeople has been administrativelydivided into several units bearing itsname (e.g., the Buryats and theNenets); or two and more “minorpeoples” have been given one autono-mous ethno-territorial formation (the

Karachai and the Cir cassians; theKabar dins and the Balkars; theChechens and the Ingush).

Primor dialist conceptualizations ofethnicity have also contributed to thecomplexity of assessing a minoritygroup’s numerical strength. One of theaspects of primor dialist theories ofethnicity in Russia is the belief in the“objective reality” of ethnic gr oups,which usually means r eification of thegroup boundaries. “Ethnoses” in theseconceptualizations (be it the psycho-biological version of Ser gei Shiro-kogoro ff, the bio-geographical versionof Lev Gumilev, or the cultural-histori-cal version of Y ulian Br omley) wereregar ded as special sorts of “things,”“bodies,” or “or ganisms,” with theresult that most of the ethnographiccommunity-based studies were notdepicted as community-based, but ascharacterizing the ethnos under studyas a whole. As the primor dialist viewof ethnicity has been institutionalizedin many state practices (passportregistration, ethno-territorial federal-ism, the policy of korenizatsia , etc.), thereality has begun to conform to theo-

* Compiled from: Narody Rossii [The Peoples of Russia]. Encyclopedia . (Moscow, 1994),47–48; Indigenous Peoples and Conservation: WWF Statement of Principles , (Moscow, 1997),37–38.** Together with Indighirs and Markovtsy.

TTTTTable 1.able 1.able 1.able 1.able 1. Ethnic Russian Cultural and Religious Minorities*

No. Name of the group Location (r egions) Number (thousands)1. Doukhobors T ambov, Rostov, Krasnodar 502. Indighirs Sakha (Y akutia) ?3. Kamchadals Kamchatskaya 25–284. Kanin Pomors Arkhangelsk ?5. Kolymchans Sakha (Y akutia) 6 **6. Markovtsy Chukotka ?7. Mezentsy Arkhangelsk 10–158. Molokans Or enburg, Tambov, North Caucasus 509. Lentsy (Yakutiane) Sakha (Y akutia) ?10. Ob’ old-settlers Khanty-Mansiisk ?11. Seldiuks Krasnoyarsk 5–612. Zatundr enye Taimyr ?

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retical expectations. For example, theprimor dialist theory, popularized anddeeply entrenched in the public opin-ion of the educated strata, has beenoperative in creating particular socialpractices, including census pr ocedure s,political decision-making on national-ity policy issues, particular brands ofethnonationalism, etc. As a r esult, thecensus and state population statistics,incorporating the of ficial list of minor-ity gr oups, have been and r emainbiased in favor of off icial ly recognizedgroups, whose numbers are exagger-ated at the expense of partially r ecog-nized or unprivileged groups. Forexample, the Chulymtsy, who havebeen counted among the SiberianTatars even by experts in anthr opologi-cal publications. Siberian T atars, inturn, have been arbitrarily included inthe gr oup of T atars (that is, V olgaTatars) in census r egistration. Conse-quently the children of Siberian T atarshave to learn a “native language” atschool which they per ceive as foreign,because the authorities in the educa-tion system pr epare teachers of theTatars only in the V olga Tatar idiom.

Locally, that is within the r epublics,there is a tendency to exaggerate thenumber of a titular group at the ex-pense of all others r esiding in theregion, but especially at the expense ofthose gr oups which are considered tobe a “thr eat.” W ell-known examplesare the policies of Bashkir and T atarauthorities to r educe the numbers ofTatars and Bashkirs respectively withinthe territories of their r epublics byregistering them as belonging ethni-cally to the titular group [e.g.,Korostelev 1994]. Both academic andpublic primor dialism and local policiesin census campaigns have madecommunity-based population statisticsfar less accessible than statistics on theregional and state levels, which makesit challenging to assess a gr oup’s

numerical str ength. It is much easier toassess the numbers of an ethnic cat-egory (say, Tatars in Russia, or Ger-mans in Omsk r egion) than to obtainreliable data at the local level, wherethe gr oup’s size may and should play arole in forming particular cultural,linguistic, or educational policy.

My brief commentaries on thenumerical aspect of minority definitionwith a focus on Russia’s peculiarappr oach seem to support the viewthat:

Assessment of a gr oup’s numericalstrength in this country is a com-plex aff air, as t he relevant statisticaland r esearch pr ocedures are situ-ated in a highly politicized milieu,involving the gr oup’s str uggle forofficial status and r ecognition;

Numerical str ength of a gr oup,though important, is not a decisivefactor in determining the gr oup’sposition in power r elations and itspolitical influence.

Non-Dominant PositionNon-Dominant PositionNon-Dominant PositionNon-Dominant PositionNon-Dominant Position

The double-scale dilemma inherentin the assessment of ethnic groupnumerical str ength is expr essed also inthe assessment of a gr oup’s situation inthe local system of power sharing. Thissociologically r outine task was strictlyexcluded from the r esearch agendaduring Soviet times, with the r esultthat we have no r elevant researchtradition and statistical monitoringtradition on which to rely. The statestatistics institutions measured a lot ofeconomic and social parameters, butthese were measured r elative to theeconomic sectors or r egional popula-tions in general. For this r eason, thetask of r econstr ucting a particularminority group’s dynamics in terms ofits position within the local powerhierar chy (in r elation to other similar

13

groups) still appears Her culean. Due tothe lack of dir ect statistical data,measuring the position of a gr oup inthe local employment, housing, andeducational spher es; its politicalinvolvement; its representation in thejudiciary system; in local government;the militia; etc.; is a costly, time-con-suming, and sometimes dangeroustask. This is why many importantaspects of the minority situation interms of power relations have neverbeen the object of research or system-atic monitoring, either by state statis-tics bodies or in sociological andanthropological surveys. The informa-tion on the position of “titular” and“non-titular” minority groups in themost important public spheres such aspolitical repr esentation, or its situationin housing and labor markets is scarc eand unsystematic, which furtheraggravates the dif ficulties of minorityrights monitoring in Russia. To makethings worse, r estrictions on access tolocal ar chives that were standard inSoviet times are once again beingimposed, as more resear chers r eport ontheir arrival from the field. 6 If weacknowledge that even the collectedand published data, incomplete as theyare, remain due to their politicalrelevance either distorted or misrepre -sented, then we have to conclude thatthe of ficial assessments of a gr oup’ssituation within local systems ofpower r elations in Russia r emaintendentious at best.

Recently some Russian anthr opolo-gists, challenging the primor dialismand essentialism of their opponentsand r eification of minority gr oups,have pr oposed that minorities beunderstood as a “situation” and haverejected the idea of minority listspublished in various dir ectories,encyclopedias, and dictionaries ofminority gr oups. Although such aposition could be justified in the

context of debates betweenprimor dialists and constr uctivists thathave gained momentum in Russiananthr opology, the definition of aminority as a situation is too vague tolocate its authors’ position. Does itmean that the ethnic composition of astate or r egion is changing so fast(which is true for some of the constitu-ent “subjects” of the Russian Federa-tion due to migration flows), that thepresent majorities may lose theirposition? Or, alternatively, does itmean that the situation of a minority’sbeing at the bottom of the powerhierar chy might change overnight andi ts present vulnerability, underprivilege,and lower position turn the next dayinto privileged and elitist gr oup status(which was true in several casesduring the demise of the SovietUnion)? Finally, i s t here a subjectivefeeling of being a minority groupwhich might evaporate, or be sud-denly considered irr elevant (as was thecase with several of the “titular”nations within Russia, whose leadersrejected minority status, pr oclaimingthe sover eignty of their r epublics)?

I will agree that in all of thesesenses the minority position or statusis a situation (after all, a situation anda position are synonymous in manycontexts). But this logic seems to bebetter suited for times of rapid andrevolutionary change, which, sadly, aretimes also of minority rights neglect. Ifon the basis of supposed or expectedchanges the minority status of a groupis viewed as spurious or ephemeral,why should legislators and politiciansbother to take special measures ofprotection for these gr oups? I thinkthat the minority rights r egulationsand protection mechanisms are de-vised for str ucturally defined andstable situations, when no suddenchanges in demographic or powerdistribution str uctures are expected.

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The situation in which a minority getsto the top position and becomes aneffective majority or elite, as I haveargued earlier, is better analyzedwithin other conceptual frameworksthan the framework of “majority-minority” r elations (due to the non-democratic nature of the political andsocial envir onment where suchchanges are deemed possible).

I have discussed so far two basicelements of minority definition andthe complications of their usage in thecontext of ex-Soviet political r egimes.W ith these two elements of the minor-ity conceptual definition (its numericalstrength and its position on the scale ofdomination) being dubious, the off iciallist of Russian national minoritygroups becomes questionable as well.This explains why there is no singleoff icial ly recognized list of minoritygroups in Russia, and why legislatorsin the field of minority rights in thiscountry have to devise new criteria ofinclusion and exclusion to accommo-date the inter ests and needs of variousgroups striving for the status. I shalltry to illustrate this thesis with severalexamples.

The concept of minority pr oves tobe very sensitive to minute ideologicaland political changes in state andregional policies. Speaking generallyand from a terminological point ofview, the appearance of any newconcept in the conceptual field of“majority-minority” r elations analysisproduces a shift and changes all theconcepts in the field. Thus, the exist-ence of such terms as “nation,”“people,” “titular people,” or “indig-enous nation” in the minority dis-course in Russia not only entails theexistence of a unique set of concepts,but makes one understand that all theconcepts in this set acquire either newmeanings or new shades of meaning. Acomplex and intricate system of ethnic

categories exists in practically all ex-Soviet states; every such system isunique and r esists generalization. Thatis why an analysis couched in terms of“minority-majority” r elations is alwaysan over -simplification, suited forinternational law and similar types ofdiscourse. In Russia every constituentrepublic has its own ethnic grouphierarchy, which finds its expression inlocal legislation. As is evident, with thegrowing number of ethnic gr oupsconsidered “local,” “titular,” or “indig-enous,” the hierar chy becomes morecomplex and elaborate. Daghestan,with its population divided into morethan thirty “indigenous peoples,”provides a good example.

As in many other regions withcomplex ethnic structur es, some of thesmaller local ethnic gr oups ofDaghestan have been arbitrarily unitedand r egistered together with numeri-cally superior neighbors in Sovietcensuses since 1926. Thus twelve ormore indigenous peoples of the Ando-Cesian linguistic gr oup were arbi-trarily joined with the A vars, and theKaitags and the Kubachins with thesecond lar gest gr oup of the republic,the Dar ghins. The rest of the peopleswere unof ficially sorted into “state-forming” or the “main” and “non-state-forming.” In political analysis,the local experts often employ linguis-tic religious classifications, as well assuch considerations as length ofresidence, often counted not in yearsor even generations, but in centuries,as in the case of the Nogai, who haveresided in Daghestan since the 15th–17th centuries. Implicitly all theseclassifications serve as a basis forsorting the ethnic gr oups into “more”and “less native.” “More native” arethe gr oups speaking in local (non-Turkic and non-Slavic) languages, whoare Sunni Muslims of Shafiit mashab(not Shiites, as are Azeris), and who

15

have r esided on the territory of therepublic “since time immemorial.”

Since July 1994, according to theDaghestan Constitution, sixty-fiveconstituencies with multiethnic popu-lation have been pr oportionally dis-tributed among the “main” ethnicgroups: in 12 of them, only the Avarscould be elected to the parliament; in12, the Kumyks; in 10, the Russians; in7, the Dar ghins; in 5, the T abasarans; inanother 5, the Azeris; the Lezghins andthe Chechens had 4 electoral districtseach; the Laks, 3; the T ats, 2; and theTsakhurs, 1. The State Council could beformed from the repr esentatives of thefourteen “main peoples” (one repre -sentative from each of the “state-forming groups”). Though the gr oupswho were considered “state-forming”were also the most numer ous, as manyethnic gr oups were not off i cial l yconsidered “separate,” the resultingclassification principles are not easilyinterpreted in terms of a gr oup’snumbers.

An interesting case of conceptualstruggles involving language andeducational policies, nationalizingstates, and diaspora is pr esented byLatvia. Besides the splitting of thepopulation into titular nation andminorities, there is a detailed classifica-tion of minorities into “an ancientindigenous gr oup” (the Livs), tradi-tional or historical minorities (Ger-mans, Jews, Poles, and Gypsies), andmigrant minorities (Russians, Ukraini-ans, etc.). In the law on cultural au-tonomy adopted by the SupremeCouncil of the Latvian Republic inMarch 1991, the pr eamble enumeratesthe ethnic population categories:

“In the Latvian Republic there livethe Lett nation, the ancient indig-enous gr oup of the Livs, as well asnational and ethnic gr oups.”

There are no official explanationsor commentaries on the diff erence

between the concepts of national andethnic gr oups, but unof ficially thelegislators explained that they desig-nated as “national” the gr oups with astatehood beyond the boundaries ofLatvia (such as Ukrainians), and as“ethnic” the gr oups that lacked such astatehood (such as Gypsies) [Antane,Tsilevich 1997:26].

Along with their citizenship, thenew passports of Latvian citizensregister an ethnic origin or nationality .A child from an ethnically mixedmarriage may choose an ethnic aff ilia-tion of one of his/her par ents. In allother cases where a citizen wishes tochange a passport nationality entry,he/she must pr ove ethnic af filiation byproducing evidence of genealogical orblood relations with the gr oup, but notself-identification evidence.

In July 1994 the naturalizationschedule was adopted as a part of thecitizenship law, and with it, a moresophisticated classification of popula-tion categories. Accor ding to thisschedule, ethnic Letts and Livs couldapply for citizenship immediately afterpublication of the law. Among otherprivileged categories were “citizens’spouses,” who had lived in marriagewith Latvian citizens for ten years ormore; persons of other ethnic gr oupswho had legally entered Latvia prior to1940; former citizens of Lithuania andEstonia, and schoolchildren finishingschools in which Lettish was a lan-guage of instr uction. By 1996 anothercategory of r esidents, young peopleaged 16–20 of all ethnic origins whohad been born in Latvia were given theright to apply for citizenship, pr ovidedthey complied with the Lettish knowl-edge requirements. As these require -ments were strict, only slightly morethan 400 out of a population of 28,000eligible youngsters had applied by theend of 1996. Though for ethnic Lettsnaturalization pr ocedures have been

16

replaced by a simplified r egistrationprocedure, about 17 thousand failed tomeet the deadline of March 1996 dueto various dif ficulties in collecting theevidence of their ethnic origin [Antane,Tsilevich 1997:57–58]. By the end ofFebr uary 1996, 99 per cent of the titulargroups (Letts and Livs) had beengranted citizen status. Among the“traditional minority” gr oups thepercentage varied from 80 (Gypsies) to60 (Poles). The migrant “non-tradi-tional” minorities constituted the bulkof the population of non-citizens: only38 percent of Russians, 19 per cent ofBelorusians, and 6 percent of Ukraini-ans were granted the status of aLatvian citizen [Antane, T silevich1997:58].

Resource Scarcity in Russian PoliticalResource Scarcity in Russian PoliticalResource Scarcity in Russian PoliticalResource Scarcity in Russian PoliticalResource Scarcity in Russian PoliticalDiscourse and Legitimization ofDiscourse and Legitimization ofDiscourse and Legitimization ofDiscourse and Legitimization ofDiscourse and Legitimization ofEthnic ConflictsEthnic ConflictsEthnic ConflictsEthnic ConflictsEthnic Conflicts

“Resource scar city” r hetoric isoften employed in Russian domesticand for eign policy debates. The classictexts of geopolitics of the early-twenti-eth century placed r esource and con-servation strategies solidly within thenotion of national inter est. Similarly,contemporary Russian politicians, aswell as political elites of other newlyindependent states, are themselvesworking out notions of national inter-ests and in so doing often link thenotion of national inter est to that ofnatural r esour ces. This is especiallytrue of right- and left-wing Russiannationalists, though so-called “neo-Eurasian” ideologists employ this lineof argument as well.

What can be made of the naturalresour ce-national inter est discussion?What are the claims and how are theyjustified? This paper analyzes, first ofall, when and why this linkage hasproven compelling in the politicalsphere. That it is compelling is undeni-able, and attested to by the fact of

hundr eds of disputes over rights toresour ces that have arisen in post-Soviet states. It ar gues that this entirequestion is best understood by consid-ering two basic competing paradigmsby which natural r esour ces are under-stood to be “available” and “con-sumed”: the naturalistic paradigm andthe instr umental/functionalist para-digm. Secondly, it analyzes how theseparadigms have figured in Russianacademic discourse. Thirdly, it looks atthe concrete interactions between aspecific kind of natural r esourc e(namely, territory ) and a specific case ofnational inter est (namely, the rights andclaims of ethnically distinct gr oups ).Finally, it returns to the subject ofdiscourse, to consider how currentstreams of Russian political analyticalargument tre at resour ces and nationalinter est, and how a particular andsomewhat arbitrary and malign per-spective about this linkage is becominginstitutionalized in the public sphere .

Introduction: Conceptual IssuesIntroduction: Conceptual IssuesIntroduction: Conceptual IssuesIntroduction: Conceptual IssuesIntroduction: Conceptual Issues

Any kind of human activity (if notany activity in general) involves anddemands r esource “usage,” “consump-tion,” “waste,” or “exploitation.” It is atruism, but one worth articulating, thatdi ff erent types of activity demanddiff erent r esourc es. Any developmentor security pr ogram turns to wishfulthinking without adequate material,financial, human, and ideationalresour ces. This straightforward way ofthinking about r esour ces belongs tothe naturalistic paradigm, which atpresent dominates much of politicaland ecological theorizing. A fter a l l , i t i sself-evident to construe “naturalresour ces” as inherent in the naturalenvir onment. W ithin this pr evailingparadigm a resource is somethingobjective ; that exists “naturally,” beforeand beyond the framework of humanactivity— something that should be

17

“involved in,” or used in this activity tomaintain its ongoing operation, eitherin the form of “raw” materials, or as anessential component of human action.

A naturalistic appr oach is widelyused by scientists, who apply theconcept of r esour ces to cell and plantgrowth and other non-human types ofactivity and who build detailed classi-fications of r esour ces, basing them on“natural” or naturalized foundations, a“natural or der” of things, etc. Classifi-catory characteristics are attributed toobjects of classification as “essential,”that is conceptually transformed intoproperties of the classified things.Attributions thus are often not diff eren-tiated from the analytically isolated“parts.” This fusion of pr operties andattributes enables pr oponents of thenaturalistic appr oach to classify re -sour ces into general and species, forexample, into food and energy re -sour ces, energy r esour ces into oil, gas,and coal r esourc es; oi l resour ces intolight and heavy oils; coal into brownand black, etc.

Alternative to the naturalisticappr oach, is the functiona l or acti vi tyoriented paradigm, according to whichresour ces are not viewed as objects ofsome naturalized classification, but asfunctional units. Here, the concept ofresour ces exists entire ly within t heframework of human activity, whereresour ces are understood as a compos-ite artificial-natural entity. In thisappr oach, ther efore, something isviewed as a r esource only when andwhere there appear possibilities and themeans to use it in human activity. Inthis ontology, it makes no sense toemploy the concept of r esour ces withrespect to natural pr ocesses such asplant gr owth or volcano er uption. Inshort, the functional paradigm chal-lenges the naturalistic paradigm’sassumption that r esour ces are universaland primor dial. Even the term “natural

resour ces” becomes awkward , f orhuman history documents many casesof “useless” things being turned intoresour ces (for example, minerals whichwere always at hand, but which couldnot be used as r esour ces pr oper, such asore, oil, uranium, etc.).

An acti vity -oriented or functionalappr oach to r esour ces implies anddemands the usage of typologies (notclassifications, as in the naturalisticappr oach), that is, it aims to considerthe variety of the means of usage , not thevariety of the objects used. A typology, asit is understood here, is always represen-tational , that is, it attempts to sort andorder human repr esentations of theworld, but not the objects repr esented.As people of diff erent cultures andprofessions have diff erent representa-tions of the world, they would under-stand diff erently what a r esource couldbe; what would be waste and garbagefor one, could be a resource for another,what might be fantasies and shallowideas for one, could be used as a pre -cious r esource by another. Thus, thefunctional appr oach to r esour ces is notonly representational , but also relational ,or relativistic.

As human action and its goals vary,one and the same “natural r esource”could be employed and understooddiff erently in diff erent action perspec-tives. In the naturalistic appr oach aresource (oil, money, labor) is consumed“naturally,” wher eas in the functionalappr oach there is a variety of consump-tion forms of one and the same “mate-rial:” oil could be used as an energyresour ce, as raw material for the chemi-cal industry, as a commodity, or as apolitical r esource (i.e., means of politic alpressure ).

All this is no news, but it is inter-esting to note here that within theideology of stable development anaturalistic appr oach which is beingused there creates several paradoxes.

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Proponents of stable developmentargue that several kinds of naturalresour ces which are essential for acontemporary economy are runningthin, becoming scar cer or exhausted; sohumanity, they claim, should, in thename of coming generations, econo-mize or use only r enewable resourc es.It is evident here that the stable devel-opment theor eticians employ a natu-ralistic concept of r esour ces as theylink a particular r esource to a particu-lar type of its consumption (thuslinking contemporary economy con-sumption modes and particular re -sour ces in a rigid manner). As thesuccession of future generations couldbe thought of as practically infinite, sothe pr escribed “economy of naturalresour ces” is not a way to stability, butan inadequate or pur ely ideologicalway to a frozen state, stasis , in whichall kinds of human activity are repro-duced and there is no production per s e.In the naturalistic perspective, re -sour ces are always juxtaposed toactivity and the usage of non-r enew-able r esour ces always cr eates one andthe same pr oblem: either you stopactivity to save r esour ces, or you useresour ces to run eventually into activ-ity bypass due to r esource exhaustion.In the functional appr oach—which isoften unr eflectively and intuitivelyused by politicians and experiencedbusinessmen—the diversification ofresour ces in their practice is r eached bymanipulation of goals and activitymeans.

Ethnicity and TEthnicity and TEthnicity and TEthnicity and TEthnicity and T erritoryerritoryerritoryerritoryerritory

A naturalistic paradigm in thetreatment of r esour ces is perfectlytai l ored to a naturalistic understandingof ethnicity, which is common in allpost-Soviet states and pr obably in allof Eastern and Central Europe. One ofthe r easons, per haps, why instr umen-talist-constr uctivist frameworks have

failed to r esonate in the public’s imagi-nation is that they do not assign anyautomatic significance to territory . Inboth strains of primor dialist thought inRussian anthr opology, territory isdefinitive. Landscape plays a cr ucialrole in the process of ethnogenesis asdescribed by Lev Gumilev, whosebooks are as widely read as they arewell written (in a manner r eminiscentof historical novels, travel books, oradventure stories) and appeal to anationalistically oriented audience.Yulian Br omley includes territory inhis definition of ethnos as well , l isting i tamong the most important ethnicattributes.

“Naturalistic” ethnicity is often—ifnot always—territorialized. T erritorybecomes an ethnic homeland, anethnos’s inalienable pr operty,Lebensraum for a living ethnic “or gan-ism.” Blut (which is camouflaged insome contemporary writings as “eth-nic heritage,” “primor dial givens,” orsome sort of “intergenerational repro -duction”) in this perspective is alwaysintrinsically connected to Boden (thatis, territory, landscape, geographicallocus ). This ideational linkage of ethnosto territory would seem to prime itsadvocates for ethnoterritorial conflict.And, indeed, there were almost 300territorial claims made on behalf ofethnic gr oups or movements andparties in the CIS between 1988 and1996. Almost half of these are stillactive and ongoing. “T erritorialclaims,” “contested territories” and“territorial interests” are the mostfrequent terms that are employed inthe curr ent neo-geopolitical discourse.It is worth mentioning here that invarious ethnoterritorial conflicts thereare d i ff erent “objects” that are con-tested: very often the “object” is terri-tory itself, that is land. In this case itmight be treated and is often actuallytreated as a r esour ce. In other cases, the

19

right of a particular ethnic gr oup orcategory to live on the territory iscontested. Sometimes only propertyrights or managerial aspects of terri-tory usage on the side of one or an-other ethnic gr oup are contested.

Territorial claims on behalf of anethnic gr oup usually seek corrobora-tive legitimization. Ethnic leaders andpoliticians in ethnic mobilizationcampaigns often r esort to what mightbe called appr opriation of history , bywhich history itself becomes an impor-tant political r esour ce. The appr opria-tion of time, thus, is a strategy em-ployed in the service of appropriatingspace. Here academic r econstructionsof an ethnic gr oup’s history play acrucial r ole. These r econstr uctions areusually based on a certain conceptionof time, in which it is tr eated as ahomogenous flow, characterized by theabsence of any gap, r upture, schism, orfracture (or what Heidegger mighthave called der Riss ). This conceptionof a homogenous, continuous, anduninterr upted flow of time enablesthem to lend their time concept aquality of transpar ency, supported on alinguistic level by optical metaphors oflooking at the past, viewing it, etc.Russian historiography, archaeology,and ethnography are very often basedon this r eduction of the past to thepresent, and represent a pr ojection ofthe modern state of things and acontemporary understanding of time,based on the concepts of continuityand homogeneity in the historicalprocess [Sokolovski 1994a: 6–7].

Examples of an instr umental use ofcultural history are numer ous. Onesuch example is the case of the Azerihistorians whose nationalistic interpre -tation of the history of CaucasianAlbania claims the territory of ancientAlbania as the “grand-fatherland ofthe Azeris” (the same territories,incidentally, are viewed by Armenian

historians as “historical Armenia”).This construction of a “rich and an-cient” history of the Azeri people hasas a necessary component a descrip-tion of the Karabakh territory as the“heart of Azerbaijan.” Similarly, Geor-gian intellectuals declare Shida Kartlior Somachablo (Southern Ossetia) “theheartland of Geor gia”; Ingush leadersconsider the village of Angusht, lo-cated in a disputed ar ea, as the “father-land of the Ingush”; and Ossetianintellectuals claim that the bones of theAlans, cultural predecessors of theOssetians, “are scattered thr oughoutthe Northern Caucasus.” Many of theso-called national histories, encyclope-dias, and cultural studies often bearlittle resemblance to the balanced,unpr ejudiced, and historiographically-attentive accounts by which a people’sactual history and ethnography mightbe learned.

While objectivist interpr etations ofethnic gr oup histories aim at linkingarchaeological artifacts and cranialmeasur ements with contemporarycultur es, instr umentalists andconstr uctivists pay attention to the roleof cultural r epertoires and language assymbols around which a per ception ofethnic distinctiveness crystallizes. Forthe latter, historical r econstr uctions aremerely ideological means used tojustify the authenticity and the conti-nuity of one or another ethnic identity.

In addition to claims for an ethnic“Ur-homeland,” I would mention heretwo additional types of cases in whichthe inseparability of ethnos and terri-tory in the public consciousness and inpolitical discourse sets the stage forconflict. The first is the case of territori-ally constr ucted ethnoses such as Altai,Shor, or Khakass in southwesternSiberia, where central authoritiesarbitrarily united diverse tribal gr oupsinto one nationality on a territorialbasis. Though the constructed “na-

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tions” acquired arbitrary conceptualand territorial bor ders (which are ,however, partially undermined by theattempts of some constitutive gr oupsto have their own identity, as with theKumanda or T eleut, curr ently catego-rized as constituents of the “Altaination”), this fact has not pr eventedthe national elite from striving forhigher status and sovereignty, includ-ing control over r egional r esourc es.

The other type of case is the host ofethno-territorial conflicts arisingwher ever pastoralist and farminggroups come into close and pr olongedcontact. The classical example here isthe cohabitation of farmers andpastoralists in the T ranscaucasus(Azeri seminomads and Armeniansettled farmers in Karabakh) andNorthern Caucasus (transhumantAvars, Laks, or other “Highlanders”and Kumyk farmers in Daghestan)[Yamskov 1993].

Ethnic Conflicts over TEthnic Conflicts over TEthnic Conflicts over TEthnic Conflicts over TEthnic Conflicts over T erritory anderritory anderritory anderritory anderritory andResourcesResourcesResourcesResourcesResources

As mentioned above, a naturalisticdiscourse on ethnicity is reinfor ced bya naturalistic tr eatment of r esourc es.The Soviet and post-Soviet “politicalunconscious” binds the notion ofethnos with territory and its r esourc es,thus creating a pr edisposition to seeterritorial claims by ethnic gr oups aslegitimate. Contemporary r esearch onethnic conflicts in post-Soviet spacecontains numer ous examples of suchclaims.

Contemporary ethnoterritorialconflicts could be gr ouped geographi-cally into six large ar eas: the Caucasusand T ranscaucasus, Central Asia, theBaltic states, Moldova and Ukraine, theVolga-Urals r egion, and southernSiberia [Stepanov 1994]. Althoughethno-territorial conflicts are character-i sti c o f a l l t he regions mentioned,conflicts over scarc e resour ces are

endemic only to the first two—theCaucasus and Central Asia. Ruraloverpopulation and co-r esidence offormer nomads and settled farminggroups also characterize these regions.In pre-Soviet times, when the nowprevalent naturalistic paradigm ofethnic r eality was limited to academiaand to some extent the political elite,there were no claims to symbolic rightsover territories as “ethnic homelands.”As long as the pastoralists maintainedtheir traditional way of life, it was notfeasible for them to settle down in theareas of their seasonal pastures insummer—as in the case of the Azerisin the alpine meadows of Karabakh—or winter (as in the case of the A varsand Laks in lowland dry steppe areasamong the Kumyks). It was not fea-sible for several r easons: the dietaryneeds of their animals; their owncultural and psychological ster eotypes(e.g., the high pr estige of nomadism orof settled life in ancient villages in theupper mountain zone); or traditionalsocial and state r egulations r egar dingland use. For neighboring farmingcommunities in valleys, these alpine orsteppe pastur es, not suited for cultiva-tion, were lands used by certaingroups of pastoralists for centuries andso in some way belonging to them.Both by local state authorities predat-ing Russian r ule and by the Russianempire itself, these pastures wereofficially considered to be state-ownedlands, traditionally r ented by certainpastoral ethnic groups (“tribes” or“clans”) which normally—withoutopen war—could not be denied accessto them [Y amskov 1993].

Soviet agrarian policies of the late1920’s–early 1930’s were designed toreconstr uct the life of “under devel-oped” ethnic groups, includingpastoralists. They aimed at the culturalmodernization of all ethnic gr oups,and attempted to make them all

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equally “advanced” settled farmingcommunities. The r esults can be seenin numer ous communities of Azerisemi-nomads which were compulso-rily settled in lowlands (winter pas-tures) and in the mountains (summerpastur es) ar ound the present-dayNagorno-Karabakh r epublic. The statepolicy of r esettling “highlanders” fro mtheir ancient overpopulated villages inthe mountains to the new villages onwinter pastures in Kumykia, irrigatedby newly-built canals, lasted well intothe 1970’s. All these former pastoralcommunities, r esettled in the “new”places, were to a large extent r eallytransformed into farmers, with theState contributing considerable re -sour ces to this pr oject. From now ononly professional shepherds (and theirfamilies, in cases of former nomads)were allowed to migrate all year r oundbetween seasonal mountain andlowland pastures with state-ownedanimals. In this case, settlement pat-terns were changed drastically anddeliberately by the State, but ethnicpopulations involved still clearlyremember the “traditional” situationprevailing in the early 1920’s andbefore. Rising ethnonationalism hasaggravated the situation, and ideas of“the land,” traditionally used by andthus belonging to “us,” are widespreadin both conflicting ethnic populations.For example, there are still manyAzeris, born in the alpine zone ofNagorno-Karabakh in the 1920’s whonow live in adjacent lowland ar eas ofAzerbaijan. Many “highlanders” nowreside in new villages, constr ucted onthe same pieces of land that theypersonally used as winter lowlandpastures for sheep in the 1920’s, whenthey were boys helping their fathers[Yamskov 1991]. On the other hand,inhabitants of neighboring old farmingsettlements (Armenians, Kumyks) lookupon them as r ecent (in the steppes of

Daghestan) or potential (in the moun-tains of Karabakh) invaders of theirhistorical homelands. All these con-flicting claims give little cause foroptimism about peaceful solutions tothese conflicts. War in Nagorno-Karabakh is ongoing and a tensesituation is r eported in Kumykia,where there have been clashes betweenarmed Kumyks, on the one side, andLaks and A vars, on the other [Y amskov1993].

The pr oblem of ethnic conflictsover territories, caused by the imposedcultural modernization of one or moreof the claimant ethnic gr oups, isprominent not only in the Caucasus,but also in many Central Asian re -gions. A serious and pr olonged inter-ethnic conflict over scarc e resources(land and water) is found in the con-flict between T ajiks of the Isfara r egionand Kyr gyz of the neighboring Batken’region in 1989–90. Conflicts over waterand pastures have long been endemicin the r egion; r ecent violent clashesinclude those which occurred in thevillages of Vo rukh-T angi in 1982, andin Matcha and Aktatyr in 1988. Pr evi-ously, before the transition to settledlife, Kyr gyz semi-nomads of the Isfaravalley and Tajik farmers occupieddiff erent ecological niches. A marketexisted in Vo rukh, based on naturalgoods exchange between the gr oups.In the 1930’s a policy of compulsorysettlement for Kyr gyz semi-nomadsreached the Isfara valley. A shortage ofwater and scar city of arable lands inthe valley for ced the new permanentsettlers to concentrate ar ound winterpastures and settle on the lands whichwere considered by local T ajiks as theirproperty (they had been using thelands in summer). Re-orientation ofthe settled Kyr gyz economy towardshusbandry and cr op-growing agricul-ture, which had been intr oduced totheir villages in the 1950’s, changed the

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Kyrgyz from former (nomadic) neigh-bors into (farming) competitors.Growing demographic pr essure (fro mthe 1960’s to the 1990’s the populationof the valley grew by 2.5 times andreached 60 thousand inhabitants)exacerbated the situation, and led toincr easing claims on the part of theTajiks to the lands occupied by Kyrgyzsettlers. Though since 1989 severalmeasures have been taken to alleviatethe tension (land tenure, small busi-ness support, melioration of someundeveloped land plots, etc.), thecoming land privatization campaign inKyrgyzstan is feared by T ajiks as apossible conflict trigger.

This interpr etation of events iswidely held and shared in manydetails by both T ajik and Kyr gyz socialscientists 7. It is interesting to note herehow naturalistic concepts of ethnicityand legitimization of land claimsthrough constr ucted ethnic historiesand nationalistic discourse operate. Itis worth noting as well, that conceptu-ally the “moral” position of perma-nently settled gr oups is considered tobe more “legitimate” compared to theclaims of gr oups who were using theland seasonally. This understandingsprings from the coupled notions ofethnos and territory in the naturalisticparadigm of ethnic r eality per ception.Nomads evidently deviate from thisstandard concept of a people, for theirlinks to territory are d i ff erent. That iswhy it was considered possible andeven just to claim the r eturn of landswhich are used by settled nomads(Kyr gyz in Batken’, or A vars and Laksin Kumykia), while the r everse (de-mands to r eturn pastures previouslyused by pastoralists and turned laterinto cr op-growing plantations) neverhappened. That is, claims by settledfarmers seem to be automaticallyattributed more weight and legitimacythan those by nomadic gr oups would

be. This helps explain why formernomads feel the need for “surplusmeasur es” (e.g., the planned landprivatization) to further legitimizetheir rights to lands.

Part of the dif ficulty in explaining asubject like “territorialized ethnicity”is that it is often so deeply embeddedin—as to be indistinguishable fro m —the fundamental assumptions ofnationalistic discourse. As a topos,moreover, i t i s i nherent in many con-ceptual systems and disciplinarylexicons. We may appr oach this sub-ject, nonetheless, thr ough the availableand much discussed topic of “nationalminorities,” which potentially containsboth the idea of place (“national”) andof ethnos (“minority”). As has beenargued above, the concept of “nationalminority” as it is employed in Russiaand most of the ex-Soviet states,substantially deviates from the stan-dard international understanding. Thetheoretical issues concerning theinterr elationships of national minori-ties, nationalizing states, and externalnational homelands have been bril-liantly analyzed in the works of RogerBrubaker (see, for example, Br ubaker1994). He demonstrated the r elationalcharacter and conceptual as well as“essentialist” inter dependence ofethnicity, state, and territory (with itsresour ces) in the political discourses ofmodern Eur opean history. The hypoth-esis put forward above—that thenaturalistic paradigm applied to bothresour ces and ethnicity subtly contrib-utes to the pr oduction and repr oduc-tion of conflictual r elationships be-tween territorialized ethnic gr oups—issupported by the analysis of ethno-territorial conflicts. In Russia the topos(ethnicity—territory), or to be moreexact, ethnos— territory is furtherreinfor ced by a proliferation of geopo-litical publications and the influencethey exert on for eign and domestic

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policies, especially on such an aspectof these policies as the so-called “na-tionalities policy.” Geopolitical jargonpervades of ficial and semi-off icialdocuments of various parties, politicalspeeches, and discourses on ethnic,cultural, and security issues, etc.

The curr ent geopolitical works inRussia might be categorized intoseveral “brands” or “str eams,” rangingfrom conservative nationalism (somecommunist theor eticians and VladimirZhirinovsky), to mystical (A. Dugin)and realist (mostly academic discoursein research centers for security andstrategic studies, international re la-tions, etc.). I mention geopolitics in thecontext of this discussion of ethnicconflicts and scarc e resour ces not onlybecause it is an essential element inreproduction of the naturalistic para-digm in the tr eatment of ethnicity, butalso due to the fact that the notion ofresour ces is so fr equently invoked incontemporary geopolitical writings,that “geopolitics” springs up as anassociate whenever “resour ces” arementioned.

As for the tr eatment of r esourc es,various strains of geopolitical thoughtdiffer in their assessments of whatactually happens to the r esour ces ofRussia and in Russia. Often one andthe same author in one and the samebook or article claims that a particularkind of r esource in Russia is “unlim-ited,” “rich,” “vast,” etc., and, at thesame time, “depleted,” “becomingscar ce,” etc. Resourc e rhetoric ispresent in journalistic speculations onRussia’s future and academic r umina-tions on Russia’s past and pr esent. Iwill illustrate the way geopoliticsinfluences and is influenced by nation-alistic discourse by citing some currentRussian geopolitical publications.

The magazine Elementy representsmystical, metaphysical, or esotericgeopolitics. E. Mor ozov, in his article

“Russian-German Relations: Geo-strategic Aspects” on the pages of“Geopolitical Notebooks” in A.Dugin’s journal Elementy: EurasianReview , is constantly comparing theeconomic, demographic, and militarypower (in terms of natural populationand financial r esour ces) of the worldcenters of power (U.S.A., Japan, andW estern Eur ope), linking it to thehistory of the “Arian ethnoses ” —Germans and Slavs [Mor ozov 1994:26–27]. He explicitly mentions the work ofL. Gumilev and r easons about “r estora-tion of bio-potentials of the Russianand German ethnoses ”, which, accord -ing to his estimation, will demand nota score, but hundr eds of years.

A. Dugin, in a series of articles“Metaphysics of Continents” i n t hesame journal (later published as anessay “The Gr eat War of Continents” inthe book Conspir ology ) [Dugin 1994],describes the world system as a tripar-ti te structure: the Rich North, the PoorSouth (Third W orld), and the PoorNorth (the former second world andRussia). Accor ding to him, the PoorNorth should not strive to become richand support the “mondialistic” pr ojectsof development, progre ss, and modern-ization of the Rich North. It shouldevade as well the “a rchaization of itsown traditions and r educing them tothe folklore level of ethno-confessionalreservation.” It should be spiritual,intellectual, active, and aggr essive. Theterm “The Third W orld,” coined byrepresentatives of the Rich North, bearsa pejorative sense of “nobody’s terri-tory,” “nobody’s source of natural andhuman r esour ces,” which are meant tobe subor dinated, exploited, and used bythe rich countries.

Zhirinovski and his party expertshave published pr olifically on geopo-litical topics, but Zhirinovski’s maingeopolitical ideals are discussed in twobooks, A Thrust to the South and Spi t to

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the West . One of his basic ideas isreorientation of Russia’s partnershipties from the W est to the South, and adegree of autarky for Russia, non-interfer ence in W estern politics, whichcould save a lot of natural r esources[Zhirinovski 1995:9].

Like metaphysical or esoteric geo-strategists, he claims that the We st(“the Rich North” of A. Dugin) isplundering the r est of the world. Hespecifically mentions that Americansare very interested in Russia’s re -sources, and even more, in its territoryas a potential site for danger ous wasteinhumations (including radioactivewaste) and ecologically dangerousindustries [Zhirinovski 1995:28].

His second book contains pages onresourc e rhetoric, analysis of r esourc edepletion politics in the colonies[Zhirinovski 1995:22–30], discussion ofrenewable resour ces consumptionstrategies, etc. All these discussions areembedded in nationalistic r easoningand the analysis is permeated by thenames of ethnic gr oups and peoples.

Academic writings on geopoliticsare more balanced and neutral in theirtreatment of “ethnic/national adver-saries,” and some disclaim the nation-alistic discourse of neo-Slavophiles asoutdated. In the analysis, they putstress on r esour ces, and usually in theapposition “national inter est—stateinter est” opt for the state intere sts[Sor okin 1996: 22–30]. Natural re -sour ces and territory are viewed as“traditional geopolitical values,” and“the main factors of Russia’s geopoliti-cal might.”

They r evise the classical geopoliti-cal thought of the early-twentiethcentury and add new dimensions tothe geostrategic analysis of the post-war period. The concept of r esourc es istreated br oadly as a r ule: they includein their discussions economic, finan-cial, human (demography, quality of

population, including its educationallevel, etc.), and even moral (ideologi-cal, confessional) and political (stabil-i ty of regime, societal solidarity, leader-ship legitimacy, etc.) resour ces. Theiranalyses closely r esemble and mirro rstrategic and global pr ocesses model-ing studies and are basically similar totheir western analogues [ Global Re-sourc es, 1986].

Unlike the classical or traditionalgeopolitical str uggle for “living space,”in curr ent geopolitics the behavior ofthree diff erent types of agents isanalyzed: states, polities of diff erentlevels (unr ecognized and self-pro -claimed states such as Nagorno-Karabakh, T ransdnestria, Chechnyaetc.; Russian Federation subjects, etc.),and stateless ethnoses [Razuvaev1993:12–13]. The geopolitical analysisof ethno-separatistic movementswithin Russia forms an important partof this academic “brand” of geopolitics[Razuvaev 1993:39–48].

Unfortunately, these discussions ofgeopolitics, whether in political oracademic discourse essentially r ein-force the linkage that this paper ana-lyzes and attempts to deconstr uct—thelinkage between ethnos and resourcesformed along the lines of the naturalis-tic paradigm. This paper has tried todemonstrate that the “ethnos-re -sour ces” topos primes its adher ents forconflict, which may be based onsubstantiated or on artificial/mythicalclaims and claimants. Furthermore, thecitations noted above repr esent just asmall sample of what is in fact amassive pr esence in the Russianintellectual ar ena. The “ethnos-re -sources” link has become, ominously,an assumption of influential publicfigures and the mass public. It hasbecome part of the conceptual orlinguistic landscapes of the Russianand other NIS contemporary r eality

25

and begun to experience a degree ofinstitutionalization in the practices andplanning strategies of analysts andpolicymakers. The critical analysis putforth by this paper and its attempt tode-couple, or at least r eexamine thenaturalistic version of a linkage be-

tween ethnos and resour ces could beviewed as a step towards r eversing itsincipient institutionalization—a pro -phylactic vaccine against the onslaughtof an unexamined, and conflict-en-hancing, idea.

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NotesNotesNotesNotesNotes

1. “Provisionally” because we speak here of the so-called international terms, suchas “minority,” which are pr esent in the same graphic and very similar phonemicforms in many Eur opean languages, but may have diff erent meanings; if it wereone and the same language, then it would be homonymy in the standard use ofthe term.

2. The diff erence between “Russian” ( russky ) and “Rossian” ( rossiisky ) remainslargely ignored in the W est; “Rossian” refers to the state and empire and appliesto citizens of all nationalities comprising the polity’s population, wher eas “Rus-sian” is an ethnic category designation. Thus the term “Russian state” ( russkoegosudarstvo ) would refer to Russian polity of the feudal period, while “Rossianstate” ( rossiiskoe gosudarstvo ) means the multiethnic polity of the new and newesthistory, that is Russian empire ( Rossiskaya imperia ) and Russian Federation(Rossiskaya Federatsia ).

3. I will cite one r ecent example: a law pr oject “On the Legal Status of Ethno-cultural Associations, Representing Linguistic, Ethno-confessional, and EthnicMinorities”, discussed in the Committee of Public Associations and ReligiousOrganizations of the State Duma on March 18, 1997, contains the following defini-tion of “people, leading a traditional way of life (minority indigenous, or aboriginalpeoples): [these are ] peoples (minorities ) ) ) ) ) of the Russian Federation, at a less advancedphase of socio-economic development than that of the majority, whose way of life fully or toa large degree depends on the natural envir onment of their place of r esidence and whoselegal status is partially or fully r egulated by their own customs, traditions, or a specialjurisdiction” [emphasis added - S.S.].

4. A “titular gr oup” in the Soviet and post Soviet contexts means a gr oup whichhas given its name to the respective administrative and political unit, or state,such as Kazakhs and Latvians in Kazakhstan and Latvia; Bashkirs, Kar elians andTatars in Bashkortostan, Kar elia, and T atarstan etc. A titular gr oup, being often anumerical minority within the state—or, as in the case of some r epublics in theRussian Federation, even on the territory of a r espective republic, could at thesame time make use of its top positions in the r egional power hierar chy andeffectively be a majority (or power elite) with political behavior patterns appr opri-ate for a majority.

5. In Russian, the term malye nar ody was changed at the end of the 1980’s forreasons of political corr ectness to malochislennye narody (“small-number ed”), as theword malyi can have the meaning not of “numerically small,” but also that of“smallness” as opposed to “gr eatness.”

6. See r ecent discussion in Curr ent Anthr opology , especially the r emarks made by S.Arutiunov [1998 V ol. 39, No. 1, p. 8].

7. Unpublished r eports from Taji kistan and Kyr gyzstan of the members of theNetwork of Ethnological Monitoring and Early W arning of Conflicts in Post-Soviet States (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy ofSciences).

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The idea for this research originated in 1996, when I was a Research Fellow atJohn Olin’s Harvard Russian Institute of International Affairs in Moscow. TheInstitute’s Director at the time, Amy Crutchfield, sustained a creative atmosphereand provided help as a consistently interested and supportive editor of my re-search in Russian geopolitical discourse. I am grateful also to the staff of the J. andK. MacArthur Foundation in Moscow, who provided me with the opportunity tocarry out research on the subject of “Violence and Minority Problems in Post-Totalitarian States.” Earlier drafts of both papers included in this publication werepresented as reports at the International Studies Association Congress in Toronto(April 1997), UNESCO MOST seminar in Dubrovnik (November 1997) and ASNConvention at the Harriman Institute in New York (April 1998).

Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the staff of the Kennan Institute inboth Washington, D.C. and Moscow; particularly to Atiq Sarwari, who, throughhis ongoing support, made my research term at the Institute pass so smoothly anddelightfully, as well as to my research assistant, Sarah Shields, for her relentlessassistance in my roaming of D.C. libraries and for her infinite patience with mynever-ending research demands.

Research for this working paper was supported in part by a grant from theKennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Interna-tional Center for Scholars, with funds provided by the United States InformationAgency and administered through the Regional Scholar Exchange Program. Noneof these organizations are responsible for the views expressed.

Notes from the Author: