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#19 - JRL 2007-116 - JRL Home
Russia Profile
May 21, 2007
What Comes After Authoritarianism and Nationalism?
How the Lessons of France's Experience Can Apply to Russia

By Alexander Arkhangelsky

Last week, the two branches of Russian Orthodoxy united and the newly elected president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, set his foot on Russian soil for the annual EU-Russia summit. Sarkozy was sworn in only the day before he arrived to Russia. The inauguration ceremony was broadcast live on the Euronews channel, so we were able to relish the spectacle. In terms of its beauty and thorough planning, the ceremony was unequaled. There are more solemn, even energetic swearing-in ceremonies, such as the one for the American president, on the threshold of the United States Capital; there are far grander occasions, packed with meaning and involving far greater numbers of people such as when the new Russian leader walks through the square, up the staircases and through corridors, between a dense, elite formation of loyal subjects. But in terms of simplicity and meaningfulness, it was unprecedented.

On the square before the Elysee Palace, a parting with the former head of state was played out. From this public sphere, accompanied by several people of appropriate rank, Sarkozy walked at a brisk pace into the intimate sphere, where the rite of passage into his new post was carried out. The highest civil servants of the country and his family were present, but nobody else.

Or, rather, there was no one there except the whole of France. The culmination was the first speech given by Sarkozy in his new capacity. He removed all intermediaries that stood between him and the nation; he held the ceremony for the country, not for the elite; he gave his oath to the people, rather than to a select retinue. And the retinue gave no oath to him.

The speech, it has to be admitted, was stunning. Whatever one's opinion of Sarkozy and whatever happens under his leadership in the future, his speech will go down in history. It was not the speech of a victor in a presidential race, nor the speech of a leader of the right who had overcome opponents on the left; rather, it was the speech of a president addressing the nation.

Sarkozy spoke of what problems he sees and how he intends to resolve them. He called for former enemies to take on a share of power in order to achieve common goals, but the key point is to be found elsewhere. Descended from immigrants, he spoke of his love for France and respect for the French people who, faced with a choice between development and calm had opted for the difficulties of development. France, the French, freedom and the energy of political creativity were the main themes of his speech.

It would seem obvious that if a different president, such as the president of Russia, had given such a speech - with all its references to the nation, to the national culture, to the national spirit - he would immediately have been accused of nationalism by some and praised for such sentiments by others. Here, however, everyone understood: there was no nationalism in the speech. Sarkozy could neither be praised nor condemned for it; there is an unshakeable sense of a united civil nation, of which it is both a joy to be a part and which it is an honor to serve as leader of the state.

In 1962, almost thirty years before "the main geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century," the fall of the Soviet Union, France ceased to be an empire, losing Algeria, which it couldn't retain despite its army, police and a million French colonists. Along with that imperial status, it lost its former imperial identity and its former sense of a historic role in the outside world.

Charles de Gaulle, making a decision that would be a terrible burden for any politician, understood perfectly well that he would pay a high price for relinquishing Algeria. He was hated by the military; he was reproached by the colonists; a series of assassination attempts on his life were planned. But he also understood something else: France was relinquishing Algeria not because it had lost, but because it wanted to win its own future. It no longer had the strength to carry the imperial burden, and had to rediscover itself again.

For this reason, resolve had to be found, and there had to be a readiness for attacks on the spirit of republicanism itself. The reaction to the loss of Algeria was hysterical nationalism. But that nationalism, strange as it may seem, was both a sickness and a cure. It pushed the French towards one another, sharpening the sense of belonging to one nation, of sharing a common language: from a lack of a united faith to a reverence for a common history.

It couldn't be predicted which element of nationalism would win out, whether the public would turn towards fascism or come together in order to reacquire its homeland on new terms. The outcome was dependent on the strength of historic inertia and on the work of preceding generations of French intellectuals, but also on the intensive work of the ruling elite. The elite had to decide if it preferred the easy option of exploiting the offended sense of national dignity, or if it would take the far more difficult and dangerous path of acquiring a civil nationhood, along with a nationalism that could be common to all citizens.

In essence, today Russia finds itself at the same crossroads in its historic development. For subjective and objective reasons, Russia has reached the point where any ruling regime is fated to color itself in ever more glaring nationalistic tones as there is, at present, no uniting idea other than nationalism and no alternative to that idea can be seen in the future.

There is no point in even discussing whether that is a good or a bad thing - it's simply the way it is. And the uniting of the Russian churches is politically another step in this direction, perhaps one of the most important ones to have been taken in recent decades. The unity of the Russian church will be perceived and envisaged as a resurrection of a unified Russian culture. This feeling will provide sustenance for our contemporaries, their hearts tortured by historic solitariness. It will calm them and greatly strengthen the feeling that we need solidarity - a feeling that has already been developing for a long time.

And so the national sentiments will be reinvigorated. Internally divided, exasperated at the outside world, the subjects and the authorities themselves will have to take this into account - particularly those authorities taking over from today's leaders.

There aren't that many options: We can choose either an easy and certainly horrifying game played on these feelings, along with a loss of historic self-control and the justification of a harsh regime through the ideology of national exceptionality, or the joint work of Russia's elites - the political elite made up of those ruling and those in opposition; the cultural and academic elites; the economic and legal elites; the central and regional elites - in an effort to transform ethnic nationalism into a civil nationalism.

The first option involves a dramatic strengthening of authoritarianism, a rejection of collaboration, the self-absorbed estrangement of the authorities from society, a reliance on totalitarian special services and a worsening of relations with the outside world. The second option is impossible without openness, both internally, to one another, and to the world beyond; it is impossible without involving society in the development of a new Russian life, and without the slow but sure development of freedom, the very freedom that over the past four years has been encroached upon and whittled away almost to non-existence.

The outcome of the first option will be the kind of military regimes that emerged in Latin America, where, once they have worn themselves out, they are inevitably followed either by a coup or a peaceful transfer of power to those more capable, who will then again have to start building the country from scratch. The outcome of the second option will be a speech in the distant future; the speech of an imaged Russian president, the subject of the speech being the Russian people, the Russian land and a Russian unity that extends beyond nationalist or ethnic differences.

Alexander Arkhangelsky is a columnist for Izvestiya. The opinions expressed are the author's own, and not necessarily those of RIA Novosti's editorial board.