Russia Profile
February 19, 2007
Looking for Moderation
Nationalists and Liberals Must Recognize Their Common Enemy
By Alexander Arkhangelsky
Alexander Arkhangelsky is a columnist for Izvestiya.
Last week, I had the pleasure and honor to take part in a discussion about nationalism organized by people holding thoroughly democratic, pro-Western and modernizing opinions.
Democracy, pro-Westernism and modernization should surely require an openness of position and a willingness to debate and publicly defend ideas that are different, even polarized. But for some reason, it seems -- although I may be misguided -- that some who are convinced they are democrats are able to listen only to themselves and those like them, will argue only about the shades and details of their own ideology and are decidedly unprepared to look a pro-nationalism opponent straight in the eye and listen to his arguments. They don't even want to converse. The word "nationalism" produces not a polemical reaction, but an outright rejection based on the rationalization that nationalism is not for civilized people. This opinion leaves few options for a reality in which nationalist sentiment is on the rise -- either proudly ignore it, or battle it courageously.
But there is another point of view, one that is fundamentally liberal, but not of the left, or patriotic, or nationalist in consciousness.
Nationalism is a morbidly exaggerated patriotic feeling. It is dangerous not because it exploits love for one's own, but because it risks breaking into hatred for the other -- as it almost always does. But nationalism can be rescued from this fate; there must be a shift from ethnic nationalism to civic nationalism. Pride must come not from being Russian, Jewish or Tatar, but of being citizens of a beautiful country, one that is free, successful, morally solvent and unique.
Those who hold pro-Western, modernizing opinions should encourage this development by engaging nationalists in conversation, meeting with them and discussing the topic in the open. Having these conversations does not mean supporting and approving nationalism, justifying and legitimizing it, but rather opening a closed consciousness and giving this position a chance to be reformed. As long as a nationalist is prepared to talk to a liberal, he will not take the final step toward chauvinism and will not turn into a misanthrope. Of course, the liberal should be inwardly prepared for the nationalist to try to convert his ideas as well and instill in him the basics of love for the fatherland.
But this is not inherently bad.
A mature society comprises people of various stripes: liberal and nationalist, left and right. It is impossible to be isolated from different viewpoints unless you voluntarily move into a ghetto. But history shows that marginalized societies that have isolated themselves from the unpleasant outside world immediately produce their own internal divisions. Details and shades about things once insignificant and immaterial suddenly take on the status of self-sufficient ideas. Factions turn into parties, parties start to fight, and the fight ends with another schism and even greater fragmentation.
Liberals who draw up complex classifications of the various types of fascism repeat the mistake of the Old Believers: By hiding in the forests and the deserts or running away to foreign lands, the purity of the faith can be preserved. But being isolated from society means that you cannot participate in history, so this suggested path is really a withdrawal. It is possible that the growth of Russian ethnic nationalism could prove inevitable, as happened in prewar Germany; as could have happened, but did not, in post-Revolutionary France. But this is no reason not to fight against this possibility.
As for those with whom there can be no discussion under any circumstances, they are well known and exist on both the left and the right. The organizers of the Russian March and the leaders of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration are bad not because they take care of ethnic Russians, but because they unleash hatred in society, destroy it and split it from inside, and push it toward bloodshed. Their slogan, "Russia for the Russians," is dangerous primarily for Russia itself. But the fight should not between extremists on both sides against each other.
The dividing line instead should be moderates against extremists.
Maybe in discussions both liberals and moderate, responsible nationalists can recognize that an extreme, exaggerated, morbid mental state is compensation for a feeling of humiliation and bondage, that it is a strange way of playing out on a mass scale an inferiority complex and the feeling of alienation in one's own country. But the way out is not to beat up those who think differently, but to engage them in reclaiming a common country that has been seized by bureaucracy and deprived of a national face.