Russia and Post-Soviet “Russian Diaspora”: Contrasting Visions, Conflicting Projects

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Russia and Post-Soviet “Russian Diaspora”: Contrasting Visions,Conflicting ProjectsNatalya Kosmarskayaa

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Russia and Post-Soviet “Russian Diaspora”:Contrasting Visions, Conflicting Projects

NATALYA KOSMARSKAYAInstitute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences

Russia’s attitudes toward millions of Russophones in the Newly In-dependent states (NIS) have been noted, since 1991, for their am-bivalence. The concept of a “Russian diaspora” has been pursuedas an ethno-selective ideological project. On the practical-politicallevel, however, Russian authorities were obliged to rest upon a loosenotion of “compatriots.” In this article, “virtual diasporization” isjuxtaposed with Russophones’ identities and behavior to substanti-ate the point that these populations do not possess the “diasporic”features ascribed to them. Moreover, official Russian policies havefailed to evoke any “diasporic” sentiment within Russophones to-ward their putative “homeland.” I argue that, to be more realisticand responsive, these policies should be more sensitive to common-alities and zones of common interest between Russophones and thetitular populations of the NIS.

INTRODUCTION

I recently attended a meeting of a Russian organization in the small townwhere my parents lived. A consul or attache from the Russian embassywas there too, and this person stood up and said: “You have just told ushow many of our own Russians lived here; could you tell us now howmany of our own Tatars and Bashkirs do you have here, in . . . [name ofthe town]?” I was so amazed. . . . And I could not keep from taking thefloor and saying: “This country is going through a difficult period, andwe want to be perceived here as ‘their’ own people, not as ‘yours.’ Youbehave in such a way as if to lay claim to us, and through this you makeour life here more complicated.” He was evidently surprised and hurt bymy words. During the break I went up to him hoping to talk “normally.”

Address correspondence to Natalya Kosmarskaya, Center for Central Eurasian Studies,Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Rozhdestvenka str., 12, Moscow,107031, Russia. E-mail: [email protected]

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Russia and Post-Soviet “Russian Diaspora” 55

But he looked at me and said: “You are a traitor!” turned his back, andwent away. (interview with Irina,1 Russian, 50 years old, a school teacher;Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Sept. 2008)

This episode could well serve as an epigraph to the article as a whole. Itreveals, quite unambiguously, the existence of serious tensions between theattitudes, goals, and shared expectations, on one hand, of the Russian state(as personified by Russian authorities) in relation to what is usually called the“Russian diaspora” in the Newly Independent States (NIS) and, on the otherhand, members of this putative “diaspora.” One might deduce that, sincethe break-up of the USSR, both sides have been living in parallel worlds. Isthis impression true? To what extent does the official Moscow vision of thesituation concerning new-abroad Russians adequately mirror the real state ofaffairs?

The goal of this article is to (re)conceptualize the status of Russiansand other Russian speakers in the post-Soviet states in conjunction withthe conception and transformation of Russia’s political approach toward its“diaspora” over the last two decades. This approach is even more justifiedby the scope and angle of elaboration of the “political” aspect in relevantacademic literature. Russia’s politics toward Russophones, who “overnight”found themselves “abroad,” have gained considerable academic attention.2

However, these works focus mainly upon Russia’s behavior as the homelandof all the Russians from the external point of view by closely scrutinizing allpossible implications of this behavior for international peace and security.The burning topicality of this problem was determined by political instabilityin Russia in the 1990s, combined with Russia’s military strength and themobilization of right-wing and patriotic opposition in the mid-1990s. Withthe passing of time, the idea of the “Russian threat” has gradually lost itsacuteness,3 and researchers’ interest has also faded away. As a result, the bulkof existing works are based on research of Yeltsin’s presidency and the earlyyears of Putin’s era. In contrast, I would suggest looking at Russia’s “diasporapolitics” as an internal affair, going through certain stages, reconfigurations,and inconsistencies throughout the post-Soviet period.

Here I should make an important note: I am a sociologist with ex-tensive fieldwork experience in different Central Asian countries, but I amnot a political scientist. I will therefore concentrate mostly on a microlevelanalysis—that is, on ordinary Russophones’ perceptions and behavior, witha special emphasis on their perceptions of their putative “motherland,” andto what extent these attitudes were a response to Russia’s political gesturesand the changeable situation in Russia itself. In terms of empirical findings,this article is based on my fieldwork among Russian speakers in Kyrgyzstan(1996–2003) and its urban populations (2007, 20084), which was conductedmainly using qualitative methodology (in-depth interviewing in a life-historyand topic-guide format).


56 N. Kosmarskaya

A “PASSION FOR DIASPORA” AS A BACKGROUND FOR POLITICALDISCOURSE ON THE NEAR-ABROAD RUSSIANS

Since the late 1980s, there has been an outburst of interest in so-called dias-poras in the West—in academia, among politicians, media, and human rightsworkers. Globalization and the rise of transnationalism revitalized debate onexpatriate communities and their identities. In Russia, the use of the term“diaspora” has also proliferated massively since 1991, having penetrated intoacademic and public discourse as well as everyday vocabulary. The reasonsbehind this are more Russia centered and relate to what Valery Tishkov callsa “passion for diaspora” and an ongoing process of “diasporization of thewhole country.”5

After the break-up of the USSR, Russia found itself with a huge andpolitically and socially disturbing “diasporic” heritage, both external and in-ternal. First, as a result of geopolitical cataclysms and movement of stateborders Russia turned (formally, at least) into an “external homeland” for anenormous “Russian diaspora” dispersed in the NIS. Second, it has graduallybecome one of the world’s leading recipient countries, attracting, in grow-ing numbers, labor migrants from homelands in the former Soviet republics.Throughout the 1990s, the main areas of exodus were poverty- and/or war-stricken Transcaucasian republics as well as the Northern Caucasus in Russiaitself. Recent years have been marked by a kind of “asianization” of immi-gration flows due to growing economic turmoil and political instability incertain parts of Central Asia.

Because of inadequate state funding for extensive fieldwork and poorlydeveloped traditions of qualitative sociology, these new phenomena havebeen seriously understudied. Lack of empirical knowledge has been compen-sated for, so to speak, by a sort of “over-theoretization” within the frameworkof the essentialist paradigm deeply rooted in the Soviet tradition of treating“the ethnic.”6

Academic and public debate on the new immigrant and expatriate com-munities inside and outside Russia has been severely ethno- and group-centered, the most illustrative manifestation of which is, among others,their universal labeling as “diasporas.” Quite in line with the “mythology ofgroupism, which has suppressed the Russian academic, political, and massconsciousness,”7 ethnic boundaries between groups (and a heightened senseof ethnic belonging of their members) are taken as natural and fundamental.The “diasporas” in question are perceived as strongly consolidated entitiesled by “diaspora leaders” and unified by collective responsibilities, goals,loyalties, and an ethnicity ascribed at birth. According to this way of think-ing, membership in a “diaspora” is not a result of an individual choice butrather an inevitable consequence of a person’s “ancestry.” His or her loyaltyto the country of residence seems to be highly questionable according tothis understanding, even in the cases of second or third generations living



there (this is the case, for example, with Armenians, Georgians, Koreans, andothers). At the same time, the identities, cultural allegiances, civil loyalties,and behavioral strategies of the “rank and file” of the “group” remain, inmany cases, “a deep, dark secret.”

As far as immigrant communities in Russia are concerned, there are alsopractical and administrative reasons behind the “diasporization” describedabove. Trying to cope with the growing diversification of the ethnoculturalmap of Russia, state officials of all ranks have sought to create a “nomencla-ture” of “diaspora communities” as a hierarchy of institutions, starting fromthe Union of Diasporas of Russia at the top and relevant “unions,” “councils,”etc. on the regional, city, and lower levels. The leaders of these organiza-tions act as the main counterparts to the authorities, who take them as truerepresentatives of all the populations in question.

Turning to Russians in the NIS, their treatment as “our diasporas” (“ourown people”)—an object of special responsibilities and special rights onthe part of their “motherland”—was mainly due to political and ideologicalconsiderations, with managerial reasoning playing a lesser role.8

THE RUSSIAN DIASPORA AS A TOP-DOWN POLITICAL PROJECT

The objects of “diasporization” have been, in this case, millions of Rus-sian and other Russian-speaking residents of Soviet republics who foundthemselves separated from Russia by the collapse of the USSR. Historically,these settler communities sprang up over the course of the Russian/Sovietstate’s centuries-long colonization of its imperial peripheries. These waves offorced, semivoluntary, and voluntary migration brought to the former Sovietrepublics millions of people of different social origin, religious affiliation, andethnicity (for example, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Byelorussians, Tar-tars, Jews, Poles, Armenians, Koreans, and many others), all of whom couldbe metaphorically called “children of the empire.” In this respect, the term“Russian speakers” (“Russophones”), implying peoples with shared histori-cal destinies, common social roles, interests, and culture, is more adequate,in the author’s view, than “Russians” (or especially “ethnic Russians”), foranalyzing the fortunes of former settler populations.

Though the situation of Russian speakers in the NIS, not surprisingly, hasbecome an object of serious public and political concern in post-Soviet Rus-sia, academic and official debate on these sensitive issues has been severelyethnocentered. The most illustrative manifestation of this stance has beenthe universal labeling of Russophones as the “(Russian) diaspora.”9

Seeking an explanation for this, Hilary Pilkington and Moya Flynn write:“The newly independent Russian government sought to exercise Russia’sgreat-power status in the ‘near abroad’ through a discursive reconfigurationof the borders of post-Soviet Russia according to the geographical location


58 N. Kosmarskaya

of the Russian ethnos, rather than the current administrative borders of theRussian state. Indeed it was not only ethnic Russians who were declared tobe the responsibility of the Russian government; all ethnic groups with acultural and historical ‘link’ to Russia were ‘diasporized.”’10 As a result, theauthors continue, “the process of ‘diasporization’ of the Russian-speakingcommunities by the Russian state has led to an ambiguous and wide-rangingusage of the term ‘diaspora’ in Russian media and political discourse.”11

The idea is correct in its essence, but one important elaboration isneeded. The leaders of the choir of “diaspora-makers” were not the Russian“state” or “government” but powerful factions of political opposition, espe-cially those of nationalistic and patriotic orientation (the Liberal-DemocraticParty of Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the Kongress Russkikh Obshchin[KRO]—“Congress of Russian Communities”—should be mentioned first andforemost), together with publicists and journalists popularizing their ideas.To “exercise Russia’s great power status in the ‘near abroad”’ has been oneof these politicians’ concerns, but not a priority.12 There were more importanttasks within this routine political play: to maintain their own status within thepolitical structure and to attract money flows and voters’ sympathies. As faras the Russian speakers beyond Russia are concerned, the word “diaspora”turned out to be an ideal instrument for the realization of these goals.Through manipulations of this word, mythical images of Russian-speakingcommunities were constructed, and it was not a difficult task to instill theminto the public mind, given the seriously underdeveloped research into theissues under consideration. Actually, more than a few Russian academicscontributed to mythogenic activities in relation to the “Russian diaspora.”13

Along with “state interests,” an emotional, personalized aspect shouldnot escape our attention. That is what I was told in 2006 during an informaltalk with a Russian migration official: “The feeling that there are millions of‘our own people’ all around the former republics warms my heart.”

“Imagined diasporas” have been created through ascribing those fea-tures to the Russian-speaking communities that are, in the view of advocatesof this approach, inherent to “true” diasporas14:

• Ethnic homogeneity;• Heightened feeling of ethnic belonging, and specifically belonging to the

“core” ethnos left behind in Russia;• High degree of solidarity based, besides ideological unanimity and strong

support for the leaders, on a developed institutional structure and lack ofinternal social diversity;

• Striving for return and whole-hearted orientation towards the historic (eth-nic) homeland as the basic element of identity.

Alongside the word “diaspora,” some other words with “unifying”and “consolidating” connotations have been widely used as its synonyms:



namely “communes” (obshchiny15) or “Russian communes” (in an ethnicallyselective sense) or even “fellow-tribesmen” (soplemenniki). It is symptomaticthat both cliches bear a touch of archaism. In media and academic publi-cations, “Russian” organizations in the NIS are not infrequently called “in-stitutes of Russian communes.” One of the influential political parties ofthe 1990s, playing the nationalist card by referring to the “Great Return”to Russia and unification of the “Russian ethnos,” was called the Congressof Russian Communities. Whilst this party, together with some others thatalso possessed considerable political weight, has already left the sceneas political pluralism is becoming more and more decorative in the post-Yeltsin epoch, proponents of nationalistic ideas have just moved to otheroffices.

What has also been going hand in hand with virtual “diasporization”is the ethnicization of media, public, and academic debate on the Russo-phones of the NIS. Predominantly ethnic Russians have been taken as themain object of whatever activity, be it research, public debate, or politicaldeclarations. Here it would be worth mentioning the ongoing attempts toextend the nomenclature of “our own people” by using the ethnic criterionagain, and dividing potential candidates for Russia’s patronage into “wanted”and “unwanted” categories. This resulted in the popular usage of a very am-biguous term, “ethno-Russians” (etnorossiyane),16 designating peoples witha “historical home” on the territory of Russia (besides ethnic Russians, theseare Tatars, Chechens, etc.—all members of the so-called autonomous territo-rial units—but in no case Armenians, Germans, Ukrainians, or, for instance,Koreans).

Such an approach not only represents a violation of historicalfacts—Russians, I repeat, constituted only a part (though a larger one) ofthe human stream that colonized and developed the peripheries of thecountry—but it is also unjust from the humanitarian point of view (whyshould Armenians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, or other peoples sent by the“center” to develop the country’s distant corners be deprived of potentialsupport from Russia, a formal successor of the USSR?) and, last but not least,politically and socially destabilizing.

Because of these considerations, as well as some others, the jus san-guinis principle of detecting “our own people” abroad has never been pro-claimed in Russia on an official (legislative) level, despite frequent publicappeals for Russia to behave like a “normal country,” the “classical” exam-ples of which include Germany’s and Israel’s use of purely ethnic criteria for“gathering the nation” and supporting its members abroad.17

This is quite in line with the fact that the very popular term “diaspora,”because of its habitual perception as an ethnic project, was never used inofficial documents (as well as “communes” and “fellow-tribesmen”). Both theliberal regime of Yeltsin and the more strong-handed one of Putin pursueda deliberately nonethnicized vision of who should be taken as “our own


60 N. Kosmarskaya

people” in the post-Soviet states. Instead, a very loose concept of “com-patriots” was created; by this the Russian state started to make welcominggestures (though mainly on paper) towards an amorphous conglomerate offormer Soviet citizens speaking the Russian language and retaining someemotional links to Russia.

Thus, the state program Main Directions of Compatriots’ Support, firstadopted in 1994, was characterized by one scholar as a “manifesto ofmulticulturalism.”18 A newspaper article19 about the essentials of “compa-triots politics” entitled “One Can Be Black and Our Compatriot” is veryillustrative in this respect. After being provocatively asked by a journalistwhether a black person can be “our compatriot,” a state official replied:“Why not, if he loves Russia and Pushkin!”

Why did it happen so? Certainly not because there have been no peo-ple with overtly nationalist views (or those perceiving the nation as a purelyethnic collectivity) among Russian officialdom of all ranks. I would like todraw special attention to the long-standing ambivalence, in the post-Sovietperiod, of official views concerning near-abroad Russians and Russian speak-ers. There are two different reasons for this ambivalence. The first is morefundamentally appealing to the nature of the contemporary Russian state.The competing perceptions of the populations in question (as “diaspora” or“compatriots”) promoted by various segments of the political establishmentand intellectual elite, mirror Russia’s implicit wavering between two compet-ing versions of nation-building and national identity construction (namelyan ethnic nation versus a civil one based on the multiethnic character of theformer USSR and Russia as its political assignee).

The second reason is practicality. You can permit yourself to promise alot while making political declarations, that is, to look like a nationalist oreven like a chauvinist, but when it comes to concrete and practical steps,the imperatives of Realpolitik inevitably come to the fore. The authoritieshave been well aware of the huge practical difficulties of “gathering theethnic nation” (denoting the difficulty of separating “true” Russians fromnon-Russians) in a multinational country like Russia or the entire formerSoviet Union.

A “passport nationality” criterion could not serve as an adequate meansof such a separation: under Soviet rule, “Russian” was a socially prestigiousnationality, and many offspring of mixed marriages preferred to be “Russians”in their Soviet passports.20 Similarly, relying on an individual’s self-perceptioncould hardly achieve the desired result. Here, I would like to draw atten-tion to the fluidity and malleability of the boundaries of “Russianness” in amulticultural environment typical for the “imperial” peripheries. The result-ing hesitant stances of people asked to define themselves in ethnic termsare demonstrated, quite expressively, by the following interview fragment(Ol’ga, Russian-Ukrainian, 41 years old, an accountant; Bishkek, July 2003):



The problem is . . . I do not know how to explain this. . . . As faras pure Russians are concerned—though all of us were registered asRussians—there were no pure Russians in a certain sense; somebodyhad a [non-Russian] mother, somebody had a father. . . . There are manybloods in us . . . Who are we? A combination of nations . . . But in generalwe were taken as Russians, Russian speakers, so to say.

The ways to overcome these difficulties that were proposed by theproponents of “blood purity,” with their “smelling badly” connotations remi-niscent of Germany of the 1930s, could not be taken on board by the Russianauthorities. Here is, for example, one of the comments sent to the Komso-mol’skaya Pravda newspaper in the course of discussing its Dec. 2005 articledevoted to the Russian speakers of Uzbekistan: “All the people with RussianDNA, wherever they now live, should be immediately granted citizenshipof Russia through its foreign consulates. Otherwise, Russia will croak quitesoon, and we will be obliged to read the newspapers in Chinese.”21

As a much more acceptable alternative, not specifically “ethnic Rus-sians,” but all the (former) holders of Soviet passports were taken as a targetgroup in all the cases when legal, administrative, and/or financial measureswere needed to settle concrete problems involving Russians and other Rus-sian speakers of the NIS.

In the 1990s, this was the case with forced migrants’ adaptation schemes.After the collapse of the USSR, hundreds of thousands of Russophones,helpless in the face of new ethnopolitical and social realities and disturbed bydiscrimination, or what was perceived as discrimination on the part of titularethnic groups, started to leave their countries of residence, mainly for Russia,but also for some other NIS and, in much lesser numbers, for certain Westerncountries (attracted by their repatriation programs). To create a legal basefor their reception in Russia and to provide them with some institutional andmaterial support, a special law “On forced migrants” was adopted and theFederal Migration Service (FMS), a state institution, was established in 1992.

Migration rates have undergone radical decline from 1995–1997, andpublic concern for the “diaspora” has gradually subsided in Russia. Later,an increasingly acute internal demand for a labor force, caused by growingdepopulation, has stimulated some fresh solutions that might encourage mi-gration of near-abroad Russophones to Russia, now on a voluntary basis. In2006, the State Program of Voluntary Resettlement to the Russian Federationof Compatriots Living Abroad was launched by Putin, but formally with thesame designated target group of “citizens of the former USSR.”

Similarly, the “compatriots concept” outlined above predetermined thenonethnicized character of the laws that regulate the granting of Russiancitizenship. The first very liberal Law on Citizenship of the Russian Federationadopted in 1993, together with a much more strict one adopted in 2002,


62 N. Kosmarskaya

defines candidates for citizenship as “apatrides,” “foreign citizens,” or, in thelater amendments of 2003, as “citizens of the states which were parts ofthe former USSR.”22 Therefore, these laws have hardly anything in commonwith the automatic granting of citizenship rights to repatriates on the basisof descent (compare, for example, the Israeli Law on Return).

However, to frame the previous judgment, I would like to emphasizethe following point. Beyond the pressures of concrete legal and/or organiza-tional decisions, in the sphere of ideology and public or political discourse,the concepts of “compatriots” and “diaspora” have been frequently inter-twined. For many Russian intellectuals participating in debates on “our ownpeople,” the word “compatriot,” intended as very inclusive, really implied(1) at least some degree of ethnic selectivity (for example, etnorossiyane)and (2) belonging of “children of the empire” to Russia and its responsibilityin relation to them. Set phrases used by a Russian official at the meetingdescribed at the beginning of this article are very illustrative in this respect.

“Virtual diasporas” that are political constructions created by the effortsof mass media, academics, and politicians should be distinguished from com-munities whose members’ feelings and behavior might be treated as diasporic(in one sense ascribed to this term) or might not be. In my mind, there shouldexist a clear-cut division between “diaspora as a political project” and, as Icall it, “diaspora as a state of mind” (or rather, “state of mind and soul” asboth rational and emotional dimensions of the people’s attitudes should betaken into account).

My qualitative data, collected during sessions of fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan,together with some survey data collected by scholars in other countries,clearly testify that en masse Russian speakers of the NIS neither have feltnor behaved like populations with the features ascribed to them by theproponents of “Russian diaspora.”

RUSSIAN SPEAKERS THROUGH THE LENS OF IDENTITY

The real situation in regard to Russian speakers has been more complicated,multidimensional, and “open” in terms of their future trajectories than isperceived by the proponents of “virtual diasporization” in Russia.

First, Russian speakers are highly heterogeneous according to a widerange of characteristics of “being,” “consciousness,” and behavior. Through-out the 1990s, the period of intensive out-migration, a visible line, for in-stance, divided those “willing to stay” (people who have consciously chosento stay in the country of residence) and those “willing to leave” (who wouldprefer migration to Russia or wherever else but did not have adequate re-sources for resettlement). What is most important from the point of view ofdiaspora formation is that Russian speakers are far from unanimous in theirattitudes toward Russia, perceptions of homeland, and civil loyalties.



Second, Russian speakers’ consciousness is a complicated and highlydynamic structure; their identities intertwine and compete with each other,and “Russianness,” understood as a sense of affinity with Russia and theRussian people (I call it a transborder, uniting identity), is far from being theonly form of their ethnocultural allegiance (even if only ethnic Russians areconsidered).23

To understand the roots of a weakened sense of ethnic identity amongRussians in the “imperial” peripheries, a short historical reference is neces-sary. The role Russians were supposed to play within the prerevolutionaryand Soviet “imperial” order predetermined specific features of their languageand culture, which were largely deprived of ethnic connotations and intimatelinks with Russians as a specific ethnic group. The efforts of the prerevolu-tionary state to russify and acculturate non-Russians living in the colonizedperipheries were not aimed at their ethnic assimilation proper but “took theform of an attempt to foster an identification among the minority communi-ties with the tsarist system.”24

Despite massively reshaping the previous sociopolitical order, Sovietrule brought some elements of continuity into this sphere. Heavily sovi-etized Russian culture served as an ideological backbone for the regime andformed, together with the Russian language, core elements of Soviet self-consciousness. This has made a considerable impact on Russians’ identityin the former republics: “Ethnic identities were not primary in the settler-dominated areas. Russians formed the nucleus of highly sovietized, predom-inantly urban, and largely industrial settler communities. . . . The identity ofthe settler communities was primarily defined in socio-cultural rather thanethnic terms.”25

These historically rooted trends largely explain the fact that, besides aprimordial-like component of Russianness, there also exists a broader cul-tural dimension. As my interview transcripts testify, for many of Kyrgyzstan’s“children of the empire,” adherence to Russian culture and language hasconstituted a crucial component of their self-identification as Russians orRussophones. I call it Russkokul’turnost’—a kind of unifying identity linking,on the one hand, all the Russophones of the NIS and, on the other, thoseof one particular state—with its titulars sharing similar linguistic and culturalpreferences and lifestyle.26 For the reasons just outlined, “Russian culture”is taken in this context in broad terms: as a sovietized, urban way of lifewith relevant values and world-outlook, rather than a set of folklore-likestereotypical traits of “Russians” (see below).

Importantly, there is also a specific ethnocultural identity of “childrenof the empire,” which is wholly oriented toward the country of residence(I call it a local, dividing identity). It can be defined as a sense of belong-ing to a local (territorial) ethnocultural community (for example, “CentralAsian Russians,” “Baltic Russians,” etc.) and includes emotional and rationalcomponents.


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As far as the emotional aspect is concerned, the majority of Russianspeakers consider Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Ukraine, etc., but notRussia, their true homeland. Since my first visits to Kyrgyzstan in early 1990s,numerous interviews with Russian speakers testified to these feelings to-ward their country of residence, with symbols of this attachment varyingfrom a familiar city street (“I walk along the street, and everything insideof me trembles”), magnificent mountain landscapes (“the smell of an Asiannight through the balcony door”), forefathers’ graves, and “unforgettabledays spent here with my playfellows.”

As these patterns of attachment have been quite persistent over time, Idid not include in my surveys any questions related to perceptions of home-land. However, my qualitative findings have received convincing quantitativesupport. In representative surveys of Russian speakers conducted in Kaza-khstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Belorussia, responses to the open-endedquestion “What do you consider to be your homeland?” revealed the follow-ing trend: the share of respondents considering Russia to be their homelandfluctuated around a mark of 20 percent, whereas two times more people(three times more in Central Asia) named their country of residence as theirhomeland.27

In rational terms, Russian speakers’ local identities also tend to be ofa “centripetal” nature. Their sense of belonging to a specific cultural com-munity is based on clear awareness that they are different from residents ofRussia because they have been living for generations among the peoples ofCentral Asia, the Baltic region, and other peripheral parts of the former USSR.

This was a kind of a “dormant” identity until the collapse of the USSR.According to field materials I collected among Russian speakers in CentralAsia and among forced migrants in Russia, their experience of travelling toRussia in Soviet times made them feel clear-cut divisions between “them” and“us” in terms of life modes, morals, everyday culture, culinary preferences,perceptions of the natural environment, etc. Here is a fragment from aninterview with a Bishkek resident (Sergey, Russian, 43 years old, a factory-worker; Sept. 1999):

I went to Russia in 1986, my factory sent me to the town of Ivanovo ona month-long business trip. And there I saw what remote Russia lookedlike. Well, I traveled round the country by bus and saw things, youknow . . . Dirt, wooden pavement, rural housing in the city . . . I thoughtthat one might shoot a movie about pre-revolutionary Russia in such aplace. I approached an old lady who was selling apples—I was well-dressed, in a Japanese anorak—and she thought I was a foreigner whohad learnt Russian well! And indeed I felt like a foreigner there. In thetown of Ivanovo, in a trolleybus, [I saw] two women, well-dressed, town-dwellers, not even drunk, and they were swearing all the time. . . . Well,



I thought, here you do not even know where Bishkek is, but such thingsdo not happen there. . . . Maybe I am a patriot, there are mountains here,and Lake Issyk-Kul; there are no mountains around in Russia, I don’t feelat home there . . . Maybe I got attached to it [this land]? I came to Tashkentafter my business trip—it is my home, too, in Asia I feel at home.

However, these “tourist” observations underwent reappraisals and rein-terpretations during the social and political turmoil of the 1990s. Thus, theenormous amount of new and predominantly negative information aboutlife in the “homeland,” which was brought by migration (through contactswith friends and relatives who left for Russia, and, in some countries, likein Kyrgyzstan, by the returnees), was overlaid on previous impressions andmade perceived barriers between the Russian speakers and “compatriots inRussia” more appreciable. Ineffective state support programs for migrants,with their low budgets and bureaucratic clumsiness, taken together with thewidespread enmity of receiving populations annoyed by what they perceivedas preferential treatment of their supposed “ethnic brethren,” largely “cor-roded” the pull effect of Russia under the massive migration of the 1990s.Later on, when these flows had largely subsided,28 general dissatisfactionwith Russia had been renewed by policies that were, as usual, more wordsthan deeds. This has added to the preexisting feeling of alienation from theputative “motherland.”

A good example is the State Program of Voluntary Resettlement men-tioned above. Its goal was quite explicitly to lure “compatriots” into de-pressed and depopulated regions of Russia, with a package of state supportthat could hardly compensate for all the disadvantages of such a venture.The results of this program’s implementation turned out to be discouragingfor the authorities, and experts went on to call it a “bureaucratic fiction.”According to initial estimates, a stream of resettlers was expected to amountto about 50,000 people a year. But during the last four years only 17,000 ar-rived in Russia under this scheme.29 Here is an interview fragment depictinga talk between my informant and the Head of the FMS branch in Kyrgyzstan(Viktor, Russian, 57 years old, a university teacher; Bishkek, Aug. 2007):

Some time ago we went with some friends to this Russian service, to seewhere they send the people . . . Just for curiosity, we all have some ex-pectations here. . . . Well, I looked at the offers, and then asked [official’sname]:

“Listen, what fool would go to Lipetskaya region, to a village calledRazoryayevo30 . . . What kind of person, with an advanced degree, willgo there?”

“Well, if you need to, you can retrain.”


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“And what will a 50-year-old retrain to be? Is an engineer going to retrainto become an animal herder?”

The variety of perceptions of Russia among Russian speakers does notnegate one positive aspect: with its economic strength growing during thesecond period of Putin’s presidency, it has increasingly come to be seen as a“country with good opportunities” (for making money, career building, etc.).In fact, disregarding the Baltic States, among post-Soviet states, only Russiaand Kazakhstan (which has been doing quite well since the mid-2000s) havebecome attractive for the residents of neighboring countries showing muchpoorer economic performance. As a result, during the last decade, Russianspeakers were gradually replaced in migration flows to Russia by membersof titular ethnic groups acting as classical Gastarbeiter, or migrant workers.But in any case, this perception of Russia, which seems to be widely sharedby Russophones, does not imply any “diasporic” link with the “motherland.”

POLITICAL ACTIVISM WITHIN AND BEYOND“RUSSIAN” ORGANIZATIONS

The “compatriot” politics discussed previously are chiefly connected withcertain activities within Russia itself. Now I would like to make the followingpoints regarding “Russian” organizations (frequently called “Russian com-munes”) that are “diasporic” signs of Russia’s presence in the post-Sovietstates. What are Russophones’ views on them? Do they rely on institutionsthat are created, as is supposed, for their “protection,” or, alternatively, aretheir prevalent modes of political and/or civic participation (if any) not eth-nically charged?

The following interview fragment recorded in Bishkek (Anna, Russian-Byelorussian, 37 years old, nongovernmental organization [NGO] activist;Aug. 2008) provides some clues in a concise and uncomplimentary way:

A: My God, does anybody there, in Moscow, see what is going on here?Do they see anything? Nothing! Well, if we are taken as colonists, thenRussia should develop some activities here . . . But me, for instance, I donot know anybody in the embassy. They are quite invisible!

NK: But they have a special person there responsible for “work with theRussian-speaking population.” But what he is doing—that is the question. . . Organizing folk festivals, Cossack choir concerts . . .

A: But this is merely an “etnika”31 . . . Is this a person who controlslocal “Russian” organizations sponsored by Russia? Here we have 27 ofthem. But almost all of them consist of four or five people, not more. . . .You would be surprised: we have a Russian organization responsible



for confronting the spread of AIDS in Kyrgyzstan! Can you imagine this?Why on earth have they organized this when there is a lack of Russiantextbooks in our Russian-language schools? They should work on whatis desperately needed, for all the people here.

Here the core problems with and around “Russian organizations” liebefore our eyes. They are closely linked to Russia’s formal and informalstructures of “compatriot” support (and, I should add, are usually initiatedand cosponsored by NIS authorities). They are not popular among ordinaryRussophones, the majority of whom do not take them as true representativesof their interests and are dissatisfied with what these “councils” and “foun-dations” have been doing, and how they have been doing it.32 Their goals,and the object of their patronage, do constitute another serious problem.During the 1990s, one of the main goals, according to my interviews with thehead of the Slavonic Foundation (SF), was to help potential migrants leavethe country “in a civilized way,” but this created an overlap of functionswith Russian state organizations. Later, the main goal was formulated morebroadly as the “preservation of the social atmosphere to keep the peoplefrom migration.” Here again, much is beyond the competence and possibil-ities of a public organization. To serve as a human-rights-monitoring insti-tution might be a good solution, but, in this capacity, the SF inevitably rubsshoulders with several other nonethnic organizations existing in Kyrgyzstan.

The definition of the objects of support is also vague, reflecting the am-biguity of Russia’s “diaspora politics” itself. Care for “compatriots” in the of-ficial sense means that any person of whatever nationality, “loving Pushkin,”could be a potential client and/or activist of “Russian” organizations. If so,the preservation of Russian linguistic and cultural space within the NIS, in abroad sense, should be a priority. But striving to work for or with specifically“ethnic Russians,” with all the etnika accessories, is considered ridiculousby ordinary Russophones.33 This is quite understandable, given the historicspecifics of the formation of ethnic identity among “peripheral” Russians (out-lined above), going hand in hand with the fact that Russian language and cul-ture have never been only ethnic Russians’ value and legacy, to be carefullypreserved in the “sanctuaries” of “Russian communes.” To follow this line ofargumentation, “children of the empire” have entered the post-Soviet epochpoorly prepared mentally for the use of ethnicity as a means of politicalmobilization.

In summary, everything described here hardly fits the institutional modelof “diaspora” as engendered by its members’ “mind and soul.” This does notmean, however, that socially active Russophones have not taken part inpolitical or civil activities. The diversity of identities, forms, and ideologicalplatforms for the Russian speakers’ consolidation has constituted a varietyof options, as well as allies and adversaries. Kyrgyzstan, after 1991, providessolid ground for examining these phenomena.


68 N. Kosmarskaya

Until the early 2000s, with a relatively mild authoritarian regime exert-ing weak control over social life, the main divisions were going along thelines of “authorities-opposition” but not “Russian speakers-titulars.” What-ever opposition factions are examined—parties, social support and humanrights groups, or mass media—almost all of them were “international,” withKyrgyz working hand in hand with Russians, Jews, Koreans, Uzbeks, etc. Thepeople were mobilized for action by burning national-level problems (pooreconomic situation, corruption, shrinking of civil freedoms, etc.). Moreover,stimuli for purely ethnic (or ethnocultural) consolidation were further un-dermined because the struggle for the preservation of the Russian culturalmilieu has been off the agenda in Kyrgyzstan34 (the Russian language herehas official status at the constitutional level).

Later on, Kyrgyzstan gradually lost its well-deserved reputation as an“island of democracy” in Central Asia. Political freedoms, including freedomof speech, shrank as the regime became overtly authoritarian during thelate phase of Akayev’s presidency (the first half of the 2000s), and morevisibly after Bakiyev came to power in March 2005. The political apathyof the majority of the population, irrespective of nationality, was typicalof Kyrgyzstan during recent years, with a situation very similar to that inKazakhstan and some other NIS with established authoritarianism: “Actually,just as it has happened with the majority of former Soviet citizens, Russianshave now turned away from politics, which they actively engaged in onlyduring perestroika and the first post-independence years. The political sphereis taken as an alien one, usurped by the corrupted elites lining their pockets;something beyond the people’s everyday needs, whereas everybody is nowstriving for survival, for an adequate welfare level.”35

IF NOT DIASPORA, THEN WHAT?

Given the prevalent identities and behavioral patterns described above, Rus-sian speakers can hardly be treated as “diaspora communities” with thefeatures ascribed to them by the “homeland.” The formation of a Russia-oriented diaspora is theoretically a possibility, especially if Russia turns fromwords to weighty deeds in the sphere of “compatriot” support. Turning torealities, “diaspora mosaic” does not fit properly because it contains somealien elements that, instead, fit very well into another conceptual schemeexplaining Russophones’ status in the NIS. I call it the “autochthonous”project.

This perspective was first proposed by Pal Kolstø in his article quiteexplicitly entitled “Territorialising Diasporas: The Case of Russians in theFormer Soviet Republics.”36 He proceeds from the point that “between thepositions of autochthonous and diaspora there is not an empty space buta continuum, and the Russians may gradually move from the diaspora end



of the spectrum towards the center. There we find the rather amorphouscategory of national minority.”37 In my view, this fruitful idea does need,nevertheless, to be further elaborated and corrected.

First, Kolstø is linking “territorialization” (implying that Russophonesview their country of residence as a patron and object of attachment) to thefailure of Russia to support them properly and, through this, to evoke theiraffinity for the homeland. In my mind, this is merely the last straw added tothe Russophones’ sense of being not newcomers, but rather “their own peo-ple,” in their countries of residence. The mental soil for these sorts of claimshas long been tilled. The localized ethnocultural identity described abovemight vary in different parts of post-Soviet space depending on such factorsas colonization pattern, cultural distance between “children of the empire”and titulars, and Russian speakers’ willingness for further acculturation. Andyet, in spite of all the nuances, this identity makes many Russophones claimtheir local roots and links them tightly to the land where their forefatherswere buried and their children have grown up. Manifold discontent withRussia, irrespective of the reasons behind it, is important, but not the initialor basic factor of “territorialization.”

Secondly, Kolstø sees the processes as successive; Russian diasporashad already emerged (and, as he puts it, “not one diaspora, but fourteen”),and then there appeared some signs of their “territorialization.”38 In myopinion, what we have is rather a parallel unfolding of two competingtrends—the Russophones may become a diaspora or a national minority intheir countries.

Some years ago my analysis might have concluded by saying, for ex-ample, that the situation is open and dependent on the interplay of manyfactors—global, regional, and country-level ones. However, my recent re-search in Kyrgyzstan in 2007 and 2008 provides grounds for more concreteestimates.

I would like to emphasize that the Tulip revolution of March 2005and the ensuing years of sociopolitical instability did not bring substantialchanges to the identity patterns or attitudes towards the putative “historicmotherland” of Russian speakers. The prevalent academic and public de-bates on “compatriots,” trapped by the “diaspora paradigm,” have soughtto emphasize all the possible divergences between the titular communitiesand Russian speakers (taken as a distinct ethnic group with specific interestsand a “Russian diaspora”). In my own research, quite to the contrary, I havetried to be more sensitive to possible commonalities and zones of commoninterest. In short, the most powerful societal divisions in Kyrgyzstan werenot those between ethnic groups, but those manifested in (1) unequal distri-bution of wealth and power and (2) sharply felt cultural barriers. This mat-ter concerns Russophones’ cultural affinity (a mutually felt one!)39 with theso-called urban Kyrgyz, namely the Russified and modernized segment ofthe titular population, tangibly different from their rural coethnics brought


70 N. Kosmarskaya

to the cities in large numbers by the migration waves of the late 1980s andearly 1990s.

Moreover, my findings, together with the research conducted in otherNIS, tend to reveal a number of new factors working against the “Russiandiaspora” scenario. One of them contributes to the heterogeneity of Russo-phones themselves; the other sets up an even broader platform for solidaritybetween the latter and the “titulars.”

Thus, it is worth mentioning a growing intergenerational gap withinRussophone populations, manifesting itself both on the mental and behav-ioral levels. People younger than 25–30 years, who reached maturity “aftersocialism,” care little for their ethnicity. Compared to their elder coethnics,they are relatively well integrated into the social landscape of their coun-try, and their civil identity is more important to them. Their life trajecto-ries are based on pragmatism and individualism, whereas their migrationplans (if any) view Russia as the least preferable option. This phenomenonis most typical in post-Soviet countries with relatively good economicperformance—Kazakhstan40 and the Baltic States. Besides the afore-mentioned traits, Russophone youth living in this part of post-Soviet spacedemonstrate proficiency in titular languages and devotion to the Western(European) lifestyle. That is why the use of the term “Euro-Russians” has pro-liferated to designate this segment of the local Russian-speaking population.41

The other trends bring to the fore the idea of the Soviet (past) that(mostly spontaneously) appears in respondents’ narratives (as a reactionto the question: “Please, tell me about your life here in Kyrgyzstan”) muchmore frequently than during the 1990s. Here is just one example from my re-cent research on post-Soviet urban change. Interethnic tensions, a presumedcompanion of post-Soviet “nationalization,” fade into the background as oldcity residents of all nationalities close ranks in front of rural migrants. Thealternative images of Bishkek, constructed by older residents as a reactionto the harsh realities allegedly brought by migrants, all appeal to the Sovietideal of the city and city life organization (although different connotationsare attached to “Soviet normalcy”).42

(Re)interpretation of life under socialism by residents of the NIS andthe growth of ordinary people’s interest toward that period is an intriguingtheme in itself. For the purposes of this article, just one aspect should beemphasized: the references of ordinary Russian speakers and Kyrgyz to theSoviet past give new and informative touches to the picture of a world whereboth groups feel they are in the same boat.

CONCLUSION

In late March 2010, the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MID) initiated“minimizing” amendments to the current law on “compatriots” of 1999.43



In brief, in order to be considered a compatriot, someone living outsideof Russia must (1) belong to the “peoples historically living in Russia” (anew euphemism for etnorossiyane), (2) have expressed freely one’s spiritualand cultural affinity to Russia, and, most importantly, (3) have turned thesefeelings into concrete deeds, working in/with “Russian” organizations. Whowill define the “true” organizations and “true” compatriots deserving a goodpiece of Russian state money? The answer is obvious: MID officials.

This plan has been severely criticized for its huge potential for corrup-tion and juridical absurdity. But I would suggest evaluating it from a differentangle. In my view, implicitly this MID initiative is a (lame) attempt to makethe law more realistic. They proceed from the belief that a new generation ofNIS citizens who grew up after socialism (titular youth in the first turn) havehardly anything in common with Russia, and, for this reason, the notion of“compatriot” should not be so inclusive as before. As some recent researchtestifies, this is not completely the case. Stefan Kirmse, in his excellent es-say on cultural globalization as experienced by Kyrgyz youth in SouthernKyrgyzstan, demonstrates that the locals use global cultural genres in formsadopted and reinterpreted in Russia.44 This also includes a growing inter-est towards the “Soviet.” All this brings to the fore the idea of preservationand enlargement of Russian linguistic/cultural space in the NIS as Russia’sprimary goal.

The recent outburst of interest in the “compatriots” issue and criticismsurrounding the ongoing debate give some hope that Russian political de-cision makers might lend an ear to the voices of well-informed experts and“compatriots” themselves (“They [Russian authorities] should work on whatis desperately needed, for all the people here”45). That would mean givingup attempts to seat themselves comfortably between the two chairs—thoseof ethnic nationalism and perversely selective ethnocultural diversity (et-norossiyane), and to sit fixedly on the third chair—that of vigorous culturaland humanitarian activities (across ethnocultural divisions) based on recog-nition of common interests between Russophones and the titular populationsof the NIS.46

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author expresses her gratitude to the Special Projects Office, Spe-cial and Extension Programs (Central European University, Budapest, Hun-gary): Fellowship Program taken up at the Nationalism Studies Departmentof CEU in spring 2007. It was an inspiring contribution to my researchthat has made the writing of this article possible. I am also grateful tothe anonymous reviewers for their thought-provoking comments, and toEvan Sparling for his invaluable assistance during the preparation of themanuscript.


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NOTES

1. Respondents’ names have been changed for the purposes of anonymity.2. See, for example, Paul Kolstoe, Russians in the Former Soviet Republics, Part III (London: Hurst

& Company, 1995); Igor Zevelev, “Russia and the Russian Diasporas,” Post-Soviet Affairs 12(3): 265–284(1996); Neil J. Melvin, “The Russians: Diaspora and the End of Empire,” in Charles King and Neil J. Melvin,eds., Nations Abroad: Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union (Boulder,CO: Westview Press, 1998), 27–57; Igor Zevelev, Russia and Its New Diasporas (Washington, DC: UnitedStates Institute of Peace, 2001); Pal Kolstø, “Russian Diasporas in the ‘Near Abroad’: Implications forInternational Peace,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10(2): 297–305 (2001).

3. Pal Kolstø writes, summing up his review of Igor Zevelev’s book: his “bottom line—that theWest should not see all Russian attempts to foster greater (voluntary) integration among FSU states asneo-imperialism—seems reasonable.” And further: “From the European vantage point, the threat of anew hegemonism in the 2000s seems to stem more from the West than from the East” (Kolstø, “RussianDiasporas,” 304, 305).

4. These series of fieldwork were conducted within the framework of the international researchproject “Exploring Urban Identities and Community Relations in Post-Soviet Central Asia” funded by theLeverhulme Trust (the UK).

5. Valery Tishkov, Requiem for Ethnos. Essays of Socio-Cultural Anthropology [in Russian](Moscow: Nauka, 2003), 467.

6. See, for example, Marcus Banks, Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions (London and NewYork: Routledge, 1996), chapter on “Soviet Ethnos Theory.”

7. Valery Tishkov, “A Passion for Diaspora: The Political Connotations of Diasporic Discourse,”Diasporas 2:161 [in Russian] (2003).

8. It is worth noting that the Russian case is not unique in the post-Soviet context. However, po-litical motives underlying state-level projects of diaspora building might differ. For instance, in Azerbaijansuch a project was launched as an attempt to raise the country’s geopolitical standing and compete moresuccessfully with the “worldwide power of Armenians.” However, as some recent research convincinglydemonstrates, there exists a tangible gap between the unifying aspirations of a putative “ethnic homeland”and the allegiances of various segments of the Azerbaijani immigrant population, which have settled indifferent countries during the last decades; see, for example, Sergey Rumyantsev and Ruslan Baramidze,“How ‘Diasporas’ Are Constructed: Azerbaijanis and Georgians in Leningrad/Saint-Petersburg,” Diasporas1:6–38 [in Russian] (2009).

9. Analysis of public and political discourse on “Russians outside Russia” is based on numeroussources. These are seminar presentations and discussions attended by the author (including regularseminars within the framework of a “Programme on Post-Soviet Migration” in the Moscow CarnegieCentre, and workshops in the Moscow office of International Organization for Migration); ParliamentaryHearings on the “Concept of State Migration Policy”; newspaper and magazine materials; interviews withrepresentatives of the Russian Embassy and Federal Migration Service in Kyrgyzstan—the last meetingstook place in Sept. 2008. Newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta, which published most of the materialsrelated to “compatriots,” with its supplements Sodruzhestvo (“Commonwealth”) and Russkyie Obshchiny(“Russian Communes”), was read and analyzed on a regular basis from 1993 up to 2005. It gave thefloor to many public figures. In the last years, the relevant discussions shifted from paper editions to theInternet (Polit.ru, Fergana.ru, Centrasia.ru). To grasp the heated discussions on the new amendments tothe Law on Compatriots, I have analyzed numerous materials of the Information Agency Regnum.

10. Hilary Pilkington and Moya Flynn, “A Diaspora in Diaspora? Russian Returnees Confront the‘Homeland,”’ Refuge 23(2): 56 (2006).

11. Ibid., 5712. Ibid.13. See, for example, Nadezhda Lebedeva, New Russian Diaspora (Moscow: Institute of Ethnology

and Anthropology, 1997); Sergey Savoskul, Russians of the New Abroad: Choice of Destiny (Moscow:Nauka, 2001) [both in Russian].

14. As a rule, the use of the term “diaspora” has gone hand in hand with this perception ofRussophones, but it is not always used. That is why I do not discuss here any definitions of “diaspora”;my main task is to recognize clearly whether the community under study possesses those features thatare habitually ascribed to it.



15. In the Russian language, this word evokes stable associations with traditional peasants’ com-munes existing in Russia prior to the abolition of serfdom in 1861.

16. As the “ethnic” is merged here with the “supra-ethnic” (rossiyane, in Russian, are residentsand/or citizens of Russia, irrespective of their ethnic origin), Pal Kolstø quite aptly describes this wordas a “curious hybrid, bordering on oxymoron”; see Pal Kolstø, “Territorialising Diasporas: The Case ofRussians in the Former Soviet Republics,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28(3): 624 (1999).

17. Post-Soviet Russophones’ massive resettlement to Russia could not be arranged, on a le-gal/administrative level, according to a model of so-called ethnically privileged migration; moreover,neither out-migration motivations nor real practices of migrants’ reception by the host communities inRussia conform to this model. See Natalya Kosmarskaya, “The ‘Other Russians’ or Just Different People?Rethinking Russians’ Status as Post-Soviet ‘Ethnically Privileged Migrants,”’ in Jasna Capo Zmegac, Chris-tian Voss, and Klaus Roth, eds., Co-ethnic Migrations Compared: Central and Eastern European Contexts(Munich and Berlin: Otto Sagner, 2010), 213–230.

18. Zevelev, Russia and its New Diasporas, 273.19. Sergey Evgen’yev, “One Can be Black and Our Compatriot,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, Moscow,

16 Aug. 2001, p. 3.20. This refers mainly to mixed marriages within the Russian-speaking community and to the so-

called third-republic intermarriages (the case when neither partner is “titular” in relation to the republicof residence). I am grateful to Adrienne Edgar for drawing my attention to this point.

21. See www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=4149 (accessed 17 March 2007). To be fair, this approachto Russianness appealing to genetics is not widespread amongst the Russian-speaking populations of theNIS.

22. Law of the Russian Federation of 11 Nov. 2003, “On Changes and Amendments to the Law onCitizenship of the Russian Federation,” [in Russian], www.rg.ru/2003/11/13/zakon.html (accessed 30 Jan.2011).

23. For a detailed analysis of various facets of Russian speakers’ identities based on the author’sresearch in Central Asia, see Natalya Kosmarskaya, “Children of the Empire” in Post-Soviet Central Asia:Mental Shifts and Practices of Adaptation (Russians in Kyrgyzstan, 1992–2002) [in Russian] (Moscow:Natalis Press, 2006), 368–422.

24. Melvin, “Russians,” 31.25. Ibid., 33.26. Similar cultural bias in ethnic identity was revealed in Estonia through a country-wide survey

of Russian speakers in 2003. See Triin Vihalemm and Anu Masso, “Identity Dynamics of Russian-Speakersof Estonia in the Transition Period,” Diasporas 2:251–252 [in Russian] (2003). In her qualitative researchon Russian speakers in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Moya Flynn has also found Russkokul’turnost’ to be animportant feature of local Russophones’ identities. See Moya Flynn, “Renegotiating Stability, Securityand Identity in the Post-Soviet Borderlands: The Experience of Russian Communities in Uzbekistan,”Nationalities Papers 35(2): 281–282 (2007).

27. Lowell B. Barrington, Erik S. Herron, and Brian D. Silver, “The Motherland is Calling: Views ofHomeland Among Russians in the Near Abroad,” World Politics 55:296 (2003).

28. It was caused both by difficulties faced by migrants struggling to adapt to life in Russia andpositive changes in social conditions at the points of departure.

29. Alexander Karavayev, “New Law for Russian Diaspora,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 12 April 2010,www.ng.ru/courier/2010-04-12/11 law.html (accessed 17 April 2010).

30. Tellingly, the village name was a derivative of the Russian verb razoryat or “to destroy,” “tobring to ruin.”

31. By this word, pronounced with visible irritation, the informant meant a set of symbols stereo-typically associated with “true Russianness” (samovar, balalaika, folk songs, etc.).

32. According to my survey of 325 Russian speakers in Bishkek (1998), half of the respondentshad never heard of the Slavonic Foundation (SF) of Kyrgyzstan. About half of the remaining respondentsreplying to the open-ended question evaluated the SF’s activities in very negative terms, describing itas an opportunistic and ineffective structure. The rest of the sample produced noninformative estimates.The situation in Kyrgyzstan is not exceptional. According to the head of the Human Rights Center inEstonia, a “specific cohort of ‘professional’ compatriots emerged during the last years as a clientele ofthe Russian state and patriotic organizations. . . . What they can only do is divide themselves into ‘good’and ‘bad’ in order to reveal who are better compatriots to find the shortest way to the feeding-racks”;see Alexey Semyonov, “Russia Recalled About its ‘Own People,”’ Nezavisimaya gazeta, 22 Nov. 2000,


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www.ng.ru/ideas/2000-11-22-8 recall.html (accessed 14 April 2010). A well-informed analysis of scan-dalous struggles for power and resources behind the facade of “Russian” organizations in Kazakhstan canbe found in: Marlene Laruelle and Sebastien Peyrouse, Les Russes du Kazakhstan: Identites nationales etnouveaux Etats dans l’espace post-sovietique (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2004). The Russian-languageedition appeared in 2007 in Moscow.

33. This is more so in comparison with the activities of the other “national cultural centers” (I haveinterviewed leaders of the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Tatar ones). People visit them to read books andnewspapers in their native languages, to sing folk songs, etc. All of this is appealing to the hearts of thevisitors, mostly elderly people.

34. Although the Russian language enjoys legal status in only a few NIS, it retains its status in keysocial spheres in all of the states with huge Russian-speaking communities.

35. Laruelle and Peyrouse, Les Russes du Kazakhstan, 87.36. Kolstø, “Territorialising Diasporas.”37. Ibid., 630.38. Ibid., 615.39. Convincing evidence for this point through a large-scale survey can be found in: Regina

Faranda and David Nolle, “Ethnic Social Distance in Kyrgyzstan: Evidence from a Nationwide Opin-ion Survey,” Nationalities Papers 31(2): 177–210 (2003). See also Regina Faranda and David Nolle,“Boundaries of Ethnic Identity in Central Asia: Titular and Russian Perceptions of Ethnic Commonali-ties in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13 Oct. 2010 (iFirst). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2010.516004 (accessed 3 Dec. 2010).

40. See Konstantin Grigorichev, “Russian-Speakers of Central Kazakhstan: Generational Specificsof Identity and Life Strategy Formation,” Diasporas 2:154–172 [in Russian] (2006).

41. See Irina Novikova, “The Image of Russia in the ‘New Abroad’: The Russian-Speaking DiasporaAlong the Baltic,” in Tetsuo Mochizuki, ed., Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian CulturalContext (Sapporo: Hokkaido University, 2007), 348.

42. See the author’s “Contribution to a Discussion on the Anthropology of a Post-Soviet City,”Forum For Anthropology and Culture 12:74–85 [in Russian] (2010).

43. On 4 June 2010, these amendments passed the first reading in the State Duma (Parliament ofthe Russian Federation).

44. Stefan Kirmse, “Urban Youth Culture in a ‘Southern’ City: ‘Nested Globalization’ in Osh, Kyr-gyzstan,” in Wolfgang Kaschuba et al., eds., Urban Spaces After Socialism. Infrastructures, City Symbolsand Everyday Life in Eurasia (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, forthcoming).

45. The diversity of the NIS should certainly be taken into account. In the case of Central Asia,this strategy could be twice as beneficial, restraining demodernization of the region and facilitating theadaptation of numerous Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Tajiks working and living in Russia.

46. Anna, NGO activist, interview by the author, Aug. 2008.

Natalya Kosmarskaya is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Oriental Studies,Russian Academy of Science, Moscow. Her areas of research are Ethnic andDiaspora studies, Urban Sociology, and Central Eurasian studies. Her last bookwas published in Moscow in 2006 under the title “Children of the Empire” inPost-Soviet Central Asia: Mental Shifts and Practices of Adaptation (Russians inKyrgyzstan, 1992–2002).


Russia and Post-Soviet “Russian Diaspora”: Contrasting Visions, Conflicting Projects

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