International Policy Fellowship 2006-2007

Victoria K. Antonova

Conceptualizing Multiculturalism for Russia

as a State Response to Diversity

Issue Paper, September 2006

 ‘We, a multinational people of the Russian Federation...’ These are the opening words of the Constitution of the Russian Federation (1993). They evoke thoughts of national pride and cohesion, common history, shared values, and the provision of human and citizenship rights. ‘Multinational’ in the context of the Russian social and political framework refers to ethnicity, rather than to citizenship. Thus this motto also ought to embrace minority group rights, respect for cultural diversity, social inclusion and equal participation of national and ethnic minorities in all spheres of social life.

 
Posing these questions I sought to find out whether multiculturalism as a state response to diversity can be seen as a tangible objective in Russia and whether it is possible to suggest some kind of ‘Russian multiculturalism’ for this multinational country. The main matters of concern were the attitudes and values of the regional authorities towards ethnic diversity of the Perm and Saratov regions, and the ability of the civil service as an institution to incorporate that diversity.

 
Choosing the civil service as the subject matter of my research, I was guided by a number of reasons. The first is that the civil service is responsible for providing a wide range of services to citizens; therefore it addresses the vast majority of the population. The second reason is that in democratic societies the civil service is expected to expresses the public’s interests rather than the interests of elite groups. Thirdly, the civil service reflects the national government’s policies. Therefore, if accepted and practiced in the civil service system, multiculturalism could also be considered being an accepted state response to society’s diversity in general.

 
The civil service is the centre of public administration – and public administration is about how society is governed. That means that if the principles of multiculturalism are in the very fabric of the civil service, that may indicate that multicultural principles are also very principal for the public administration and the state as well. This in turn makes it possible to assume that multiculturalism is shared by both citizens and governments. My assumption therefore is that if multiculturalism works within the civil service, which is the center of public administration, it could be said that civil society, democracy, and  government institutions benefit from multiculturalism and that multiculturalism should be developed within a diverse society and within the civil service itself.  If multicultural principles are not likely to be seen as suitable for the civil service and hence for public administration, then  arguably something must be done to change the performance of civil service  in order to meet multicultural principles.  Multiculturalism is a challenge for the civil service and public administration; being successfully applied in the civil service, it can also attain success in society as a whole.

 Recently, a number of factors have emerged which will define the future of public service, and diversity is one of them. Indeed, it arguably has the potential of becoming the most important consideration for public service organizations in the twenty-first century (Rice, 2005).  The latest research by Mitchell Rice shows that the factors potentially influencing the future of public service include:

1)      ‘the increasingly ethnic, racial, and gerontological diversity of society;

2)      an increasingly gender-diverse workforce;

3)      the growing independence of the global community, which calls for greater knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of human diversity’(Rice, 2005: 4).

As a developed country Russia will and is already confronting these factors in general - however in society as a whole and especially within the civil service system, the ability to understand and manage that diversity is seemingly lacking.

Decades ago, Mosher (1968) viewed diversity as a requisite for both  democracy and representative bureaucracy, pointing out that it is crucial for good policy and for management decision-making as well.  Mosher emphasized that ‘persons drawn from diverse groups ... will bring to bear upon decisions and activities different perspectives, knowledge, values, and abilities. And the product of their interaction will very likely differ form the products were they all of a single genre’ (Mosher, 1982: 16).

Harry Kranz (1976: 110-11) considers specific benefits that representative bureaucracy grants to society, arguing that it would lead to more democratic decision-making which results in better decisions, because it would expand the number and diversity of views on policy-making.

As a new democratic society, Russia is seeking the way for a peaceful accommodation of the needs and claims of a great number of ethnic minority groups residing in its territory. After the collapse of the Soviet Union people from both groups – the Russian majority and ethnic minorities mostly from the former fifteen national republics – suddenly found themselves –often unwillingly – separated from each other,  offended by each other, and very uncertain about their future in Russia.  As some of the republics gained independence, a flowering of ethnic feelings and national self-consciousness took place, frequently accompanied by war, conflicts and hatred (Hajda, 1990;  Smith, 1998; Tishkov, 1997a; Zdravomyslov, 1997; Kolstø, 1999).  Thus the very mentioning of ethnic diversity, for instance, provokes negative reactions among the public and is perceived as an unfavourable factor bringing injustice and inequality. 

 The way a state and society treat their ethnic and racial minorities has in poly-ethnic countries always been one of the key indicators reflecting the maturity of civil society and the state of democracy. Despite the currently much lower level of a secession threat in Russia, the risks of rising irrational fear and extremism remain on Russia’s agenda (Drobizheva, 2002: 7).

It is worth observing that in the times of the Soviet Union the one and only way for the Communist Party to create an illusion of equal participation of the major nationalities in decision making at the state level, was to establish quotas for representatives of ethnic minorities in the government bodies (Arutyunyan et. al., 1992; Khabibullin, 1993; Mnatsakanyan, 1998; Sikevitch, 1994, 1999; Tishkov, 1997b, 2003a). According to the evidence assembled by Valery Tishkov (1997a), in the former Soviet Union, virtually all cultural differences have significantly diminished  under the influence of the centralized state and the dominant ‘official’ communist values. Some scholars even  talk about cultural colonialism when describing  ‘the domination over the former Soviet empire by Russian people, language, and culture, and by communist ideology’ (Kottak & Kozaitis, 2003: 82).

 In fact, under the soviet rule ethnic minorities possessed extremely limited self-government in the national republics. Officially, all the peoples in the USSR were to be united under the doctrine of ‘socialist internationalism’. As the authors Kottak and Kozaitis put it, ‘one common technique in cultural colonialism is to flood ethnic areas with members of the dominant ethnic group. Thus, in the former Soviet Union, ethnic Russian colonists were sent to many areas to diminish the cohesion and clout of the local people’ (Kottak, Kozaitis, 2003: 82).

However, recent lessons the former soviet people, particularly of non-Russian nationalities, have learned from history, teach us that it were exactly the so-called ‘Russian colonists’ who brought literacy to the national republics and developed it to a nearly universal level, who established and were in charge of a number of big and successful enterprises within different industries, who reduced poverty in those republics and included them in the process of modernisation mainly because people across the USSR adopted Russian as the language of social mobility.

 Thus, it is not fair to blame the Soviet government for the total destruction of all the minority cultures in the national republics. It must be mentioned, that according to Tishkov, there is no other region in the world except for the Soviet Union, where not a single small culture had disappeared in XXth century and where  the whole ethnic mosaic of the country has been kept alive (Tishkov, 2003a: 247).  From my point of view the ‘internationalism’ ideology has revealed both positive and negative sides, and this will be raised in the thesis. Moreover, as Tishkov argues (Tishkov, 2003b), such hallmarks of the USSR  as ‘internationalism’,  ‘friendship of the peoples” (druzhba narodov) and ‘multi-nationality’ (mnogonatsionalnost)  have always been well-known and  taken for granted in the Soviet Union. He also suggests that the ‘ethnic form of the socialist culture’ which used to exist in the former Soviet Union may be considered as some sort of multiculturalism, because it provided significant and constant support and development for a number of small ethnic cultures within the multinational USSR (Tishkov, 2003b).  

 
Whatever policy towards ethnic minorities was in place in the past, currently Russia has no fully explicit ‘nationality policy’, which deals with the ethnicities and nationalities comprising the country’s diverse population and with ethnic relations, and which is aimed at solving the long-standing and persistent ‘nationality question’ in the Russian Federation (Abdulatipov, 2001; Drobizheva, 2003; Tishkov, 2003).

As the research sites  two regions were chosen, namely, the Saratov and Perm regions. In so far as I was born, grew up and have been pursuing my professional career in different periods of my life in these regions, I know that both of them appear to be significantly diverse, but at the same time have not been listed among the regions influenced by ethnic tensions and conflicts between members of different national groups. This particular factor is considered to be an important one, as a potential region-specific conflict would amount to a disadvantage for the present research project. Such a dispute would have inevitably biased the process of the study, as well as its results and conclusions.  As Young has emphasized (1998),

                         ‘in the situation under the cultural frictions, tensions and violence, the focus of diversity management and governance in multiethnic societies is shifted in
                           the necessity to overcome ethnic conflicts. The urgent framework is not normal therefore’ (Young, 1998: xi).

The regional government is more likely to be interested in finding ways of prevention and the ‘therapy of accommodation’ rather than in the investigation of the ‘pathology of conflict’ (Young, 1998: xi).  Therefore, in the present research  I wanted ethnic diversity  to produce ‘instructive lessons’ that would help the policies to be proactive rather than reactive as a response to violence and conflicts. In order to do that, the non-conflict, non-biased by significant ethnic tensions regions have been chosen as the study’s framework.

 
It is necessary to state that each region – either Perm or Saratov –  can be considered as a local projection of the Russian Federation in terms of the ethnic background of its population . There are about 112 nationalities in the Saratov region. Although the majority of the population in the region, as well as in Russia as a whole, consists of ethnic Russians (about 81 per cent of the region’s population), the ethnic minorities such as Tatars (2.16 per cent), Mordva (0.62 per cent), Chuvashi (0.6 per cent), Kazakhs (2.94 per cent) historically consider themselves as important ethnic groups in the Saratov region (Normativnije Akti Po Nacionalnim Voprosam, 2001). These minorities seem to be integrated into the mainstream.

 Several decades ago, one could hardly describe the Saratov region in terms of an ethnically segmented or divided society. But during the period of transition a rise of ethnic self-identification took place, and now the region’s population can be seen as really diverse and multicultural (Diagram 1).  Even integrated minorities have their claims to the protection of their native languages, access to resources, and to fair treatment in the labour market.

Diagram 1         

The main nationalities of the Saratov region

(% of the total population of the region, as of October 2002 )

Source:

The data for the diagram was taken from the Census 2002 official data available at the site of the National Statistics Committee of the Russian Federation:  www.gks.ru   

 
The Perm region (West of the Ural Mountains), is also one of the most multicultural regions not only in the Urals, but in Russia as a whole. There are more than 100 nationalities living together in the Perm region, among those the most numerous are people of Russian, Tatar, Komi-Permyak, Bashkir, Ukrainian, Udmurt, and Belorussian origins.  People of German, Jewish, Mordva, and Chuvash nationalities are also represented in the region. (Chernykh, 1998: 32).  It can be easily seen that the ethnic backgrounds of the inhabitants of both regions – Saratov and Perm  - are quite similar.

Diagram 2

The main nationalities of  the Perm region

(% of the total population of the region, as of October 2002)

Source: The data for the Diagram 2 was taken from the Census 2002 official data available at the site of the National Statistics Committee of the Russian Federation : www.gks.ru

In order to develop a more relevant understanding of multiculturalism, in particular  in Saratov and Perm regions, the concept of multiculturalism as a policy  needs to be studied more carefully from the point of view of those who are responsible for the launching and implementation of the ethno-policy in the region – namely, from the point of view of  the regional senior civil servants.

My intention is to conduct an expert-survey via interviewing the senior civil servants from the Perm and Saratov regions and to utilize a Grounded Theory approach in order to derive an attributes of the ‘Russian multiculturalism’ as a concept. I am also planning to interview municipal authorities on the issue of multiculturalism,  as they usually appear to serve as a ‘front-line employees’ in resolving problems related to the accommodation of the ethnic minorities in Russia.

A number of practice-oriented recommendations for the regional governments and policy makers in the sphere of ethno-cultural policy will be developed as a result of the project presented.

The plan of the fulfillment of the project would include the two specific steps:

1)      a comparative analysis of the concept of multiculturalism in a cross-cultural perspective;

2)      in-depth expert interviews on multiculturalism with the regional senior civil servants and municipal servants  in the Perm and Saratov regions.

Bibliography