National Self-images and Regional Identities in Russia by Bo Petersson

Author:Bo Petersson [Petersson, Bo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351741071
Google: aPhKDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 38506300
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

Foreign Role Models

In a situation where crisis persists in the political and economic fields, and no immediate ways of solving the problems present themselves, it would seem to be tempting for political elites to begin to search for more or less ready-made recipes. As we have seen above, the Russian past offers scant guidance. Some inspiration could be drawn from the Stolypin reforms of the early 20th century as regards economic reforms, but as far as the political arena and democratising practices are concerned, no candidates from the 20th century present themselves. It is quite telling that, apart from those remarks indicating that inspiration should above all be drawn from the Soviet period, the most recent examples that are offered pertaining to the political arena date back to the 1860s and the zemstvo reform of local self-government. Even more revealing is the multitude of references regarding the reign of Tsar Peter I. This would only seem feasible in a state where a large number of people feel confused about where to go and why.

If this is the case, one might imagine foreign role models to be the proverbial catchers in the rye. If the well of domestic inspiration has run dry, one might try to tap foreign sources.4 The issue of foreign models is closely attached to the more general one regarding friends and foes, in other words the categorisation of Others in the outside world. It is quite a common phenomenon that the search for foreign role models occurs in inchoate states, during stages of political and economic development (Dijkink 1996:12, cf. Neumann 1999:178-179). Thus, the question on foreign models was quite a natural one to ask the respondents. In this respect, the study also provided a sequel of sorts to other interview-based studies centred on Russian political elites. Lane (1996) asked a similar question to members of the Gorbachev-time political elite. The results engendered by my own research turned out to be quite interesting and conformed partly to the pattern earlier identified by Lane.

Out of 62 respondents, 23 denied the validity of foreign models, whereas 12 were unreservedly in favour and 26 thought that they might be partly applicable (1 respondent was undecided). Interestingly, the willingness to accept foreign models as sources of inspiration seemed to be greater among my respondents than among interviewees subject to previous, related research, Lane’s study included (Lane 1996:177, Avraamova 1998:57). In those studies, the largest category of elite respondents by far denied any applicability of such models to the Russian case. Still, a substantial number in my study also held Russia to be so unique that no external models could be used. Russia had to define its own path. This was said to be due to historical traits, among others the long dominance of the Communist party, and above all, perhaps, to the fact that Russia is a vast country that straddles two continents. In the words of one vocal respondent, every attempt to force a model upon Russia was likely to backfire:

I am opposed to all models.

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