Dilemmas of Diversity after the ColD War: - Woodrow Wilson

246 Pages·2010·9.46 MB·English

Kennan Institute
Dilemmas of Diversity
after the ColD War:
Analyses of “Cultural Difference”
by U.S. and Russia-Based Scholars
edited by michele rivkin-fish and elena trubina

Dilemmas of Diversity
after the ColD War:
Analyses of “Cultural Difference”
by U.S. and Russia-Based Scholars
By michele rivkin-fish and elena trubina
WoodroW Wilson international Center for sCholars
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Lee H. Hamilton, President and Director
Board of Trustees
Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair
Sander R. Gerber, Vice Chair
Public Members: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress; Hillary R. Clinton,
Secretary, U.S. Department of State; G. Wayne Clough, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution;
Arne Duncan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education; Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services; David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States;
James Leach, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities
Private Citizen Members: Charles Cobb, Jr., Robin Cook,
Charles L. Glazer, Carlos M. Gutierrez, Susan Hutchison,
Barry S. Jackson, Ignacio E. Sanchez
Dilemmas of Diversity
after the ColD War:
Analyses of “Cultural Difference”
by U.S. and Russia-Based Scholars
By michele rivkin-fish and elena trubina
2010 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.
www.wilsoncenter.org
Cover Photograph: A detail of the fountain, The Friendship of the Peoples, which was installed
on the grounds of the Exhibition of National Economic Achievements (VDNH, originally The
All-Union Agricultural Exhibition) in August 1954 (architects K.Topuridze and G. Konstanti-
novsky). The composition consists of a gigantic sheave surrounded by 16 female figures symbol-
izing the 16 republics of the Soviet Uniion (including Karelo-Finnish, which eventually became
the Karelian autonomous republic). (Courtesy of Elena Trubina)
ISBN: 1-933549-92-0

CoNteNts
Introduction: Conceptualizing ‘Cultural Diversity’ 7
after the Cold War
Elena Trubina and Michele Rivkin-Fish
Part I: ConstruCtIng the natIon In the
shaDoWs of DIfferenCe
Chapter 1 50
from Buchach to sheikh Muwannis: Building the
future and erasing the Past
Omer Bartov
Chapter 2 80
symbols and stories of Post-soviet Buryat
national revival
Tatyana Skrynnikova and Darima Amogolonova
Chapter 3 113
Multiple Museums, Multiple nations: the Politics of
Communal representation in Post-soviet tatarstan
Katherine Graney
Chapter 4 136
Peace-Building after Violent Conflict in the Caucasus
and Beyond: Managing the symbolic Politics of ethnic
Diversity
Stuart Kaufman
AnAlyses of CulturAl DifferenCe by u.s. AnD russiA-bAseD sCholArs 7
Part II: ContestIng DIVersIty In the fIelD
of eDuCatIon
Chapter 5 174
reading Differently as a Cultural Challenge in russia:
on literature, national unity, and the Promises of Pluralism
Tatiana Venediktova
Chapter 6 193
teaching “ethnic” and “national” Differences:
the Concept of “Narod” in russian school textbooks
Oksana Karpenko
Chapter 7 218
facing history and ourselves: an approach to
teaching tolerance through understanding the holocaust
Rachel Burg Belin
afterword 233
Michele Rivkin-Fish and Elena Trubina
acknowledgements 239
about the Contributors 240
8 DilemmAs of Diversity After the ColD WAr
introduction: Conceptualizing “Cultural Diversity”
after the Cold War
elena truBIna anD MIChele rIVkIn-fIsh
W
hen the end of the Cold War and dissolution of the Soviet
Union between 1989 and 1991 presented a momentary sense
of euphoria to societies around the globe, a fundamental ques-
tion about the nature of future societal development arose: Would the rea-
lignment of geopolitical power, together with the emergence of market
economics and democratic politics, result in a global convergence of social
life and a “flattening” of difference?
The rapid and tumultuous changes that occurred in Russia during the
1990s and 2000s quickly revealed the shortsightedness of this question, as
those years bore witness to sweeping sociocultural change and upheavals,
stemming from processes such as widespread migration, the rise of nation-
alist and separatist movements, ethnic violence and war, and contestations
over universalizing discourses of human rights. The importance of scholar-
ship on “diversity” in this context and beyond cannot be underestimated;
the dire need for increased understanding of legitimate and effective strat-
egies for peacemaking, tolerance building, and the creation of a multi-
cultural society becomes inescapable as numerous high-profile tragedies
repeatedly call our attention to the violence and conflict being endured.
These include the 2004 Beslan tragedy, in which Chechen separatists took
more than 1,200 men, women, and children hostage in a school in the
southern Russian province of Ossetia, an event that ended with an estimat-
ed 330 people, including more than 188 children, dead; the October 2006
murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a major critic of human rights
abuses committed in Chechnya by the Vladimir Putin administration; and
also outbursts of hostilities, street fighting, and murders based on ethnic
animosity that have become all too common in Russian towns and cities.
Less visible in the daily headlines, but still significant in their cumu-
lative impact on society, are the myriad interactions in which perceived
social differences become the object of discrimination, symbolic violence,
AnAlyses of CulturAl DifferenCe by u.s. AnD russiA-bAseD sCholArs 9
and struggle among groups whose members increasingly see each other as
“enemy.” Such mundane events include the routine police procedures of
stopping people with dark complexions and forcing them to show their
documentation on the streets of Russian cities; struggles between students
and administrators in the sociology department of a top Russian university
in 2007 over allegations that the latter promote anti-Semitic and nationalist
ideology; and processes of deepening socioeconomic stratification—divid-
ing society into the many who suffer abject poverty; the few, outrageously
wealth elite; and a small, struggling middle class for whom the ability to
consume high-status products is becoming increasingly indispensable as a
marker of true professionalism if not human dignity itself.
In social science and humanities scholarship on Russia since the 1990s,
issues related to the broad rubric of cultural identities and diversity have
been central. Among cultural anthropologists based in Western settings,
a range of theoretical concerns have emerged, including the use of racial-
ized imagery in vernacular and intellectual discourses on difference;1 the
importance of social memory among ethnic and geographical minori-
ties;2 and the shifts engendered by the breakdown of the Soviet system in
the already varied symbolic landscape of religion, spirituality, and spiri-
tual healing.3 Of particular importance, a focus on conflict and contesta-
tion among minority groups, such as Jews4 and various Islamic groups,5
has added nuanced analysis of the diversity within diversity and provides
crucial evidence against the essentialist characterizations of ethnic groups.
Virtually all ethnographic work seeks to parse the multiple effects of the
Soviet and Russian state on subjectivity, whether ethnic, “racial,” religious,
gender-based, and so on. Many of these theoretical concerns are devel-
oped in a growing body of work examining indigenous communities in
Siberia. Scholars have analyzed these communities’ struggles to negotiate
post-Soviet change in terms of changing modes of subsistence and ways of
life,6 shifting relationships with the state,7 and the rise of indigenous politi-
cal movements.8
Another ethnographic location for questions of the construction and re-
construction of identity among indigenous peoples has been the Russian
Far East, where scholars have examined the impact of Soviet nationality
policies, state power, and local agency.9 And as Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer
reminds us, Western anthropological agendas must not be mistaken for the
only set of debates on cultural diversity and social change. It is crucial to
10 DilemmAs of Diversity After the ColD WAr