Vera Tolz

Right-wing Extremism in Russia: The Dynamics of the 1990s

Part 1 The extreme right in the ascendancy: stronger than ever, Peter H. Merkl ten theories of the extreme right, Roger Eatwell the growing threat of the radical right, Hans Georg Betz. Part 2 Comparing the public opinion indicators: racism and the political right - European perspectives, Charles Westin explaining national variations in support for far right political parties in Western Europe, 1990-2000, Allen Wilcox et al the development of the extreme right at the end of the century, Piero Ignazi. Part 3 Changing national contexts: the front national in context - French and European dimensions, Michael Minkenberg and Martin Schaim the FPO - from populist protest to incumbency, Kurt Richard Luther right-wing extremism and xenophobia in Germany - escalation, exaggeration or what?, Ekkart Zimmermann right-wing extremism in Russia - the dynamics of the 1990s, Vera Tolz patterns of response to the extreme right in Western Europe, Jaap van Donselaar conclusion, Leonard Weinberg.

European Democratization since 1800

Notes on the Contributors Introduction Liberal Democratic Theory: Some Reflections on its History and its Present A.Oldfield PHASE 1: The NINETEENTH CENTURY Democratization in Britain J.Garrard Bearing the Stamp of History: the Elitist Route to Democracy in the Netherlands R.van der Laarse PHASE 2: BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS Democracy and War R.White The Attempt at Democratization under Weimar S.Berger The Corporatist Challenge and the Overthrow of the Spanish Second Republic A.Smith PHASE 3: POST-1945 Restoration and Stability: the Creation of a Stable Democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany M.Roseman PHASE 4: POST-COMMUNIST EASTERN EUROPE Post-Communist East Central Europe: Dilemmas of Democratization T.Rakowska-Harmstone Russias Democratic Transition and its Challenges V.Tolz Insiders, Mafiosi and Stationary Bandits: Some Stories about Russian Capitalism P.Hanson Citizenship and Democracy E.Teague Democratic Destination: the Examples of Britain and Italy J.Newell Conclusions J.Garrard, V.Tolz & R.White Index

Regional governors and the Kremlin: the ongoing battle for power

Abstract This article examines the relationship between heads of regional administrations (governors) and the federal government in Russia since 1992. It looks at the methods with which governors have enhanced their powers vis-a-vis Moscow and at the policies of the federal authorities aimed at preserving some form of control over regional officials. The article argues that the gubernatorial elections of September 1996–March 1997, which gave almost all governors a popular mandate, will not considerably change the balance of power in center-periphery relations, despite fears to this effect among members of the Presidential Administration.

Rethinking Russian–Ukrainian relations: a new trend in nation-building in post-communist Russia?

This article analyses new trends in the assessment of Russian–Ukrainian relations by representatives of the Russian elites in the late 1990s. It sees a discussion of the historic roots of Ukrainian separatism in the Russian media and attempts to identify the origins of the ‘Russian national homeland’ outside Kyiv Rus as the first steps towards a revision of traditional Russian perceptions of Russian–Ukrainian relations. The article argues that the new trends have become particularly visible following the signing of the Russian–Ukrainian inter-state treaty in May 1997, which it regards as an important landmark in Russias acceptance of the independence of Ukraine.

Faultlines in Russia's Discourse of Nation

On 6 December 2010, four Spartak football fans became involved in a late-night altercation with a group of men from the North Caucasus in northern Moscow. The circumstances remain shrouded in controversy, but there is no dispute about the tragic consequences: one fan, Egor Sviridov, died after receiving four bullet wounds. Six men were detained, of whom fi ve were later released. Aslan Cherkesov, from Dagestan, was later charged with Sviridov’s murder. The event sparked mass demonstrations by Spartak fans, culminating in a violent riot on Manezhnaia Square in central Moscow on 11 December as fans gathered to protest the dual outrage of Sviridov’s murder and the apparent incompetence (or, worse, complicity) of the law enforcement agencies. The rioters targeted their anger both at the latter and at people whom the Russian media typically refers to as being of “non-Slavic appearance.” Numerous shocking beatings occurred. It took the rearrest of two of the original suspects, interventions by Dmitrii Medvedev and Vladimir Putin on 12 and 13 December, respectively, and Putin’s appearance at a Sviridov memorial meeting, all broadcast on prime-time television, before calm was fully restored in the capital and other cities where protests in solidarity with Moscow rioters took place.1 Seen now as a milestone in the troubled history of interethnic relations in post-Soviet Russia, the Manezhnaia riots delivered a blow to the nation-building effort which, since the end of the last century, had been launched to create a sense of common purpose and overcome interethnic differences and separatist tendencies under the auspices of a supposedly powerful, confi dent state.2 This Kremlin-sponsored national unifi cation project entails simultaneously a discursive promotion of the concept of the civic Russian multiethnic nation (grazhdanskaia rossiiskaia natsiia) and

From a Threatening 'Muslim Migrant' Back to the Conspiring 'West': Race, Religion and Nationhood on Russian Television during Putin's Third Presidency

This article analyzes official discourse of the nation during Vladimir Putin’s third presidency, as reflected in Russian television coverage of Islam and migration. It argues that the replacement of earlier deliberately ambiguous definitions of Russian nationhood with clearly framed exclusive visions reflects the change in the regime’s legitimation strategy from one based on economic performance to one based on its security record. In this context, the systematic promotion of Russian ethno-nationalism for the purpose of achieving the regime’s general stability began not at the time of Crimea’s annexation, as it is often assumed, but at the time of Putin’s re-election amidst public protests in 2012. The goal of representing the authorities as attentive to public grievances in a society where opinion polls register high levels of xenophobia has prompted state-controlled broadcasters to use ethnoracial definitions of the nation that they had previously avoided. The media campaigns analyzed here also reflect abrupt changes in the precise identity of Russia’s main Others. Such instrumentally adopted sharp discursive swings are unlikely to constitute an appropriate tool for societal consensus management and for the achievement of political stability in the long term.

Broadcasting agitainment: a new media strategy of Putin’s third presidency

ABSTRACT This article argues that accounts of the Russian media system that tend to view the time from Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 2000 as a single homogenous period do not capture major qualitative shifts in state-controlled media coverage. By analyzing the output of Russia’s two main television channels during Putin’s third presidential term, we identify a range of distinctly new features that amount to a new media strategy. This involves a significant increase in the coverage of political issues through the replacement of infotainment with what we term agitainment—an ideologically inflected content that, through adapting global media formats to local needs, attempts to appeal to less engaged and even sceptical viewers. Despite the tightening of political control over the media following the annexation of Crimea, the new strategy paradoxically has strengthened the constitutive role played by the state-controlled broadcasters in the articulation of official discourse.

Constructing Heritage in Early Soviet Central Asia: The Politics of Memory in a Revolutionary Context

SUMMARY:The article analyzes discourses and practices of historical monument preservation in Early Soviet Central Asia. Already at the turn of the twentieth century, Russian activists and scholars engaged in preservation work regarded Turkestan as the main archaeological treasury of the empire. In the sources they analyze the authors debunk a widely accepted view of the preservation work as a rare venue for apolitical cultural activity of the intelligentsia that tried to disengage itself from ideological service to the regime. The authors claim that, contrary to this view, the Soviet regime in Turkestan made preservation of the ancient Islamic architecture one of its most important instruments of propaganda and population mobilization. In this regard, the regime broadly relied on experts who had been involved in this work well before the revolution.The article compares discourses and practices of monument preservation in the late imperial and early Soviet periods, and studies the influence on them of broader European debates at the time about “historical heritage” and its reconstruction. This comparison shows that preservation work was always perceived in the region as part of imperial and then Soviet integrationist projects, and as such provoked multiple conflicts both locally and in the capital. The turning point in the ideological reappraisal of the role of monuments of Islamic architecture came neither with the Revolution of 1917 nor after the official establishment of Soviet power in Turkestan in 1920. Not until the beginning of the process of national delimitation in Central Asia in 1924 did local interest in cultural preservation gain momentum. Between 1928 and 1931, national committees for monument preservation were established in every newly founded Central Asian republic. This development institutionalized the profound transformation of transnational cultural imagination that had been formed by the early twentieth century into a new, ethnocentric understanding of “culture.”Резюме:В статье анализируются дискурс и практики охраны исторических памятников в Средней Азии в раннесоветский период. Уже на рубеже XX в. российские деятели, вовлеченные в охрану памятников старины, провозгласили Туркестан главной археологической сокровищницей империи. Анализируемые в статье источники демонстрируют, что, вопреки распространенному мнению, после революции 1917 года охрана памятников в разных регионах бывшей империи не превратилась в отдушину для аполитичной культурной работы представителей интеллигенции, пытавшихся держаться в стороне от идеологических требований нового режима. Напротив, советский режим сделал охрану памятников исламской архитектуры в Туркестане одним из важнейших орудий пропаганды и мобилизации населения при широком участии тех, кто был вовлечен в эту деятельность еще до революции. В статье сопоставляются дискурсы и практики охраны памятников в позднеимперский и раннесоветский период и анализируется влияние на них общеевропейских тенденций в области конструирования исторического наследия. Сравнение отношения к памятникам российских экспертов и населения региона показывает, что охрана памятников воспринималась как орудие имперской и общесоветской интеграции, вызывая многочисленные конфликты как на местном уровне, так и в центре. Поворотным в идеологическом переосмыслении памятников оказался не 1917 г. и не провозглашение советской власти в Туркестане в 1920 г., а начало национального размежевания региона в 1924 г. Между 1928 и 1932 гг. создаются отдельные национальные комитеты по охране памятников новых среднеазиатских республик. Произошедшая перемена в дискурсе о памятниках имела огромные идеологические последствия, коль скоро на смену транснациональному восприятию культурных процессов, сформировавшемуся на рубеже ХХ в., пришло этноцентричное понимание “культуры”.

Reconciling Ethnic Nationalism and Imperial Cosmopolitanism: The Lifeworlds of Tsyben Zhamtsarano (1880-1942)

Abstract This article intends to make a contribution to our understanding of how the Russian empire was shaped by its colonies by shifting the focus away from the circulation of knowledge between the European empires and onto crosscultural transfers between the imperial center and one part of Central Asia – the Buryat lands in southern Siberia and Outer Mongolia, during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The article looks at these transfers through the life of one remarkable individual, Tsyben Zhamtsarano, a Buryat from the Aga region on the eastern shores of the Siberian Lake Baikal. It argues that Zhamtsarano’s case strikingly exemplifies a situation concerning the production of knowledge about the colonial periphery in which the colonized could have an upper hand, and their pre-eminence could be, at least partially, acknowledged in the imperial center. It is also demonstrated in the article how and why such an empowerment could only be temporary in Russia’s ever changing imperial context.

‘Race and ethnicity in the Russian media: rights, responsibilities and representations’, Public debate, The Frontline Club, London, Thursday 18 October 2012

reforms’ replace their personal life stories. This group of papers on hybrid autobiographies of the nineteenth century was conceptually joined by the paper on the text written in the twentieth century, Sof’ja Tolstaja’s ‘My Life’, where the autobiography gives way to the memoirs of the author’s great husband (Roberta de Giorgi, Udine University). A quite representative corpus of papers dealt with autobiographical and biographical forms in twentieth-century Russia. A number of conference contributors discussed the pre-revolutionary period of Russian autobiography: journalists’ memoirs (Natal’ja Rodigina, Novosibirsk University, and Tat’jana Saburova, Omsk University); the combination of verbal and visual means as a ‘space of memory’ for symbolist and realist writers (Aleksej Cholikov, Lomonosov State University, Moscow); and the particularity of life-writing practices by Andrey Bely as a multi-dimensional autobiographer (Oleg Kling, Lomonosov State University, Moscow), as a serial autobiographer (Maria Levina-Parker, the Sorbonne), and as an autofictional writer (Claudia Criveller, Padova University). Hybrid genres, such as fictional memoirs or memorialistic fiction and the combination of autobiographical subjectivity with ‘social request’, in Russian prose of the 1920s–1930s, were examined by Francesca Lazzarin (Padova University) and Patrizia Deotto (Trieste University). Tolstoy’s autobiographical devices as projected onto RAPP aesthetics and socialist realism were discussed by Evgenij Dobrenko (Sheffield University). Exploration of the memoirs of the epoch of Stalin’s repressions was provided in the papers on the writings by escapees from Soviet camps (Andrea Gullotta, University ‘Ca’ Foscari’ of Venice) and on Vasilij Grossman (Pietro Tosco, Verona University). Il’ja Kukulin (the Higher School of Economics, Moscow) presented and analysed the highly innovative montage-like principles of autobiographical writing by Pavel Ulitin when compared with European and American experiments in autobiography. Particular international aspects of the ‘space of memory’ were addressed by Massimo Tria (Venice University) as illustrated by memoirs of Russian émigrés in Prague.