WORLDVIEW: 'What is post-Soviet Russia? It has not defined itself in relation to the outside world or its boundaries. It contains several civilisations and denominations, including the north Caucasus. These could lead to the catastrophic collapse of this empire. It is like playing with fire at a gas station," writes Paul Gillespie
"Russia is multi-ethnic and multidenominational, but nobody has learned to be tolerant yet."
"We live on a powder keg of national consciousness on one-fifth of the globe".
"If I'm not a Soviet man, who am I?"
These were some of the comments made by Russian speakers at a conference in Moscow last weekend on collective memory and national identity in Ireland and Russia. They give a vivid sense of their worries about the future and the difficulty of coming to terms with its changed international role and national politics.
Russians had just observed a new national holiday on November 4th, marking the end of the "time of troubles" in 1612 when Polish troops were driven from Moscow. It is an obscure anniversary for most of them, designed to substitute for the traditional November 7th holiday coinciding with the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. This year 10,000 communists marked November 7th in Moscow, while smaller groups of neo-fascists turned out on the new holiday.
Russian intellectuals have been invited by President Putin to work out a new "national idea" - as Yeltsin did similarly in 1996. A philosopher said you will find a truth only when you are looking for it; such an artificial quest from above is doomed to fail. But he nevertheless acknowledged the need to address the issue. The Russian intelligentsia still plays a quasi-political role.
This is not only a Russian concern. As he put it, in 1917 something happened to Russia - and to Europe as well. They must co-operate in pulling Russia out of its current pit of confused identity, otherwise both will suffer. Memory can help, since it is a kind of knowledge. Effective cultures display a productivity which draws on their history; but they also create their own myths of present and future achievements - "some imaginary notion of the world perceived as a reality". That has yet to be achieved in post-Soviet Russia.
Can Russia become a nation-state or can it exist only as an empire? Is Russian nationalism civic, ethnic or imperial? What are Russia's boundaries? Is it a European or a Eurasian power? Is it a democracy, a "regime-state", or a compound polity like the post-imperial United Kingdom? Or is it better described, a journalist suggested, as a police state? There is only power here, according to a publisher who lamented the absence of real opposition or any culture of democratic change.
These questions were debated to and fro in a passionate and intriguing set of impromptu exchanges, from which it was clear to the Irish participants that an important political moment is being lived through. A Russian sociologist said it is no longer possible to base an exclusive Russian identity on Slavism, since most of the Slav central and eastern European states have joined the European Union or are about to do so. The same applies to Orthodoxy, however close (and reactionary) the convergence between that church and the Putin regime may be, since Romania and Bulgaria are set to join and Serbia hopes to. Eurasianism, too, has been compromised by Turkey's similar trajectory.
It will take time, he believes, for Russia to realise it is only a regional leader, not a messianic worldwide one. It needs to revise reality - like Turkey; and maintain its reality - in Europe. Elites and peoples caught up in such cultural cycles need periods of relative closure to adjust and accept new circumstances. A new idea will evolve to express these more specific post-imperial and post-superpower identities. They will not arise from top-down instructions but from pragmatic political adjustments.
But other Europeans should reassure Russians there is a place for them in the wider cultural Europe of which they are a part, as distinct from the civic Europe which has been hegemonised by the EU - a reality which is recognised but viewed with lingering resentment by many of this group. This will require much more thought on both sides about how to create robust and differentiated structures of political, economic, security and human rights co-operation.
Diplomats point out that Putin's new political confidence is underwritten by real economic power, since Russia will soon be supplying most of Europe's carbon fuels. We should therefore be paying more attention to its affairs. There is a substantial accumulation of judgments from the European Court of Justice against Russia, notably on Chechnya, which will oblige it to respond or opt out. So far its leaders have charted what is seen as a sensible, if minimal, course towards such pressure, indicating there is a sure hand on the tiller.
Journalists say it is hard to judge that from such an opaque and authoritarian system of rule. Putin, it is assumed, does not want to stand for a third presidential term in 2008. The country is ruled by a tiny group, most drawn from former senior ex-KGB officials like him backed by a compliant Duma. They took on and faced down the oligarchy of billionaire bankers and industrialists who reaped the rewards of the 1990s "market bolshevism" and then developed political ambitions. Since the market and rouble crash of 1998 these officials have assumed power with Putin, garnering popular legitimacy from this confrontation. But only now is there any emerging clarity about who might succeed him, following this week's cabinet shuffle.
Russia's multi-ethnicity and the lamentable absence of a culture of tolerance and independent media to sustain it were recurrent themes. The rampant convergence of the Orthodox church and the authoritarian state continues apace. This matters because the new Russian Federation lost a quarter of the Soviet Union's territory and half its population in 1991; whereas ethnic Russians were 50 per cent of the USSR's population, they make up 80 per cent of the federation's. Muslim nationalities such as the Chechens, Tatars and Bashkirs form 10 per cent of the population. Many, perhaps most, Russians are secular and do not want to discriminate against minorities - but their army has fought only against Muslims since 1979. There is a palpable ratcheting up of anti-Muslim prejudice.