CC BY
63
УДК 316.3
S.N. Nikolaeva1
POST-SOVIET MELANCHOLIA AND IMPOSSIBILITY OF INDIGENOUS POLITICS IN THE RUSSIAN NORTH
Drawing on Paul Gilroy's discussion on post-colonial melancholia - Britain's inability to transcend its imperial past - which posits certain racialized and ethnicized differences as threatening, Etkind argues that the post-Soviet Russia was unsuccessful to develop a new self-description either and still defines itself within its past Soviet discourses (2014, 154), specifically by promoting archaic, essentialized, and exclusionary categories to recognize its minoritized and ethnicized citizens. Indigeneity is a highly politicized identity, however, the idea of being indigenous and using indigeneity to promote one's economic and political advancement are highly circumscribed in post-Soviet Russia. This paper argues that the legally constructed and promoted Russian definition of indigenous peoples denies their true self-recognition. This keeps them unseen, uncounted, legally disadvantaged and economically dependent on the central Russian government.
Keywords: post-soviet, post-colonial, indigeneity, politics of recognition, indigenous politics, Russian North.
Introduction
The term "indigenous" has gone through several transformations since the mid-17th century when it, derived from the Latin indigena, was introduced to identify people or products "born or produced naturally in a land or region; Native or belonging naturally to the soil, region, etc." (Hodgson 2002, 1038). The current understanding and definition of "indigenous" reflect the ambiguity of the universal concept of indigeneity as well as of universal indigenous rights, highlighting that they are neither exclusive nor necessary conditions for recognition as indigenous (Hathaway 2010, 304; Li 2000, 151). This broad definition of indigeneity made possible for many groups to draw upon it with various degrees of success in constructing their own indigenous subjectivities within a framework of shared common struggle. As such, indigenous peoples all over the world are increasingly becoming involved in demands for sovereignty, political and cultural self-determination, control over land and natural resources, strategically employing state-
1 Николаева Сардана Николаевна - PhD, социальный и сравнительный анализ в образовании, PhD, культурная антропология, Университет Манитобы, Канада.
E-mail: [email protected]
Nikolaeva Sardana - PhD in Social and Comparative Analysis in Education, PhD in Cultural Anthropology, University of Manitoba, Canada.
recognized definitions of indigeneity to challenge hegemonic powers and create new political spaces.
A host of literature on indigeneity articulations shows how indigenous groups gain attention and support from international human rights agencies and environmental organizations by strategically reasserting indigeneity within western stereotypes of "noble savage" or "primitive yet exotic people" (Conklin 1997; Cruikshank and Argounova 2000; Li 2000, 2014; Warren and Jackson 2003). Similar to other indigenous groups who relied on governmental definitions of indigeneity, focusing and celebrating indigeneity only within its cultural terms, indigenous peoples in post-Soviet Russia have to re-negotiate and re-exclude their identities to fit within the state bureaucratic category of indigeneity, in a sense, "incarcerat(ing) themselves in a certain "traditional" lifestyle" (Donahoe 2011, 413).
Building on Etkind's notion of post-Soviet melancholia and history of the categorical indigeneity in its Soviet past and post-Soviet present, this paper argues that the postSoviet Russia's inability to separate itself from its past and desire to return to its earlier Soviet political self resulted in deliberate misrecognition of indigeneity as essentialized, cultural-only, and de-politicized, leaving little room for its political and economic articulations, rendering indigenous politics as impossible.
Post-Soviet post-colonial
Indigeneity has recently become one of the most contentious and debated concepts in post-colonial studies. Weaver relates this contestedness and ambiguity of indigeneity to the certain problematic of post-coloniality to what it seems to be distinctly attached to (2005, 223). According to Weaver, the problematic is that "colonialism is not over"; moreover, indigenous peoples remain colonized as victims of internal colonialism, "swamped by a large mass of colonial settlers who, after generations, no longer have a metropole to which to return" (2005, 223). Similarly, Shohat questions an appropriateness of "post" in "post-colonial" as it implies "the notion of a movement beyond <...> a passage into a new period and a closure of a certain historical event or age" (1992, 102). As such, this new period assumes the collapse of colonialism, de-emphasizes the neocolonial spatio-temporal positionings of settler-states, as well as hinders political associations of post-colonial theories with contemporary anti-colonial or anti-neo-colonial struggles, reproducing the same colonial power relations and discourses of the Other (Shohat 1992, 104). In this sense, ambiguity of post-coloniality leaves little (or even no) space and depoliticizes the struggles of indigenous peoples, dominated by multi- and trans-national corporations within nation-states, subverting a valid critique of these neo-colonial structures of domination (Shohat 1992, 105). Additionally, colonization is more than a mere binary of colonial domination and colonized resistance, and coloniality as well as post-coloniality are more than the west and the rest (Shohat 1992; Weaver 2005). Rather, post-coloniality (or neo-coloniality) is characterized by multiplicity of discourses and contexts, and is not geographically and geopolitically restrictive and exclusive. Moore, for example, states that post-colonialism is believed to describe locations characterized by history of dependence and colonialism, desire for autonomy, and resistance to colonizing
situations, leaving outside locations without obvious colonizer/colonized binary (2001, 112). Moore further specifies that one of these left out locations was the post-Soviet sphere, which postcoloniality was paid little attention to within post-colonial studies (2001, 112). According to Moore, there are two probable explanations for this exclusion: first, he argues the postcolonial critique focused on "the First World caused the Third World's ills" where "the Second [World]'s socialism was the best alternative", second, many postcolonial scholars were Marxist or strongly left, therefore "very reluctant to identify the Soviet Union with European colonizers" (2001, 117). He further suggests that the Soviet Union attempted a very different approach to "colonization", precisely through "a multilayered "voluntary" union of republics - nationalist in form, socialist in content" (Moore 2001, 122). The Soviet Union managed to produce and maintain certain kinds of discourses, which come to be actively embraced by the colonized, destabilizing simple dichotomies of colonizer and colonized, domination and resistance, and "universalizing" categories and conditions (Moore 2001, 122-123). In this sense, the post-Soviet sphere can be better understood as post-colonial, or rather neo-colonial, as it clearly exercised and still exercises neo-colonial control over most of its territory, yet, with a careful attention to its specific conditions and modalities (Moore 2001, 123).
Post-Soviet melancholia
In his article on "post-Sovietness" of the contemporary Russian state, Etkind examines the ambiguity of the "post" in "post-Soviet", considering the current multiple problems in Russia and wondering if they are determined by its Soviet legacy (2014, 154). The post-Sovietness of Russia has been persisting since 1991, and as Etkind argues, Russia "still defines itself in contrast to its Soviet past" having failed to develop a new self-description (2014, 154). To interrogate this specific condition, Etkind adopted and expanded Paul Gilroy's concept of "postcolonial melancholia", a state of "unconscious fixation on the past" and simultaneous "denial of the past" where melancholy, the work of mourning, "remains incomplete and unsuccessful" (2005, 155). According to Gilroy, similar to the postwar Germany's "loss of a fantasy of the omnipotence" and other racial and national fantasies such as the Aryan master race (2005, 99), the Britain's postcolonial melancholia suggests that the contemporary Britain's racist and anti-immigration violence should be understood as "a means to "purify" and re-homogenize the nation" (2005, 102). It is this inability to mourn loss of empire and "loss of certainty about the limits of national and racial identity that result from it" that perpetuates Britain's longing for its past colonial empire (Gilroy 2005, 106). In a similar vein, Etkind argues the main reasons for Russia's melancholic arrested development are "its deindustrialization, corruption, dependence on foreign trade and immigrant labor, but most importantly, its economic and political reliance on raw materials, specifically - oil" (2014, 162). The Russia's "oil curse" concentrates the power in hands of a few oil oligarchs (oiligarchs as Etkind refers to them) and security apparatus, creating a highly unequal distribution of wealth, which also perpetuates monopolization of natural resources and power politics, deterioration of human capital, and an ultimate turning of the population into objects of charity who cannot control
their government (Etkind 2014, 162). These post-Soviet oppressive conditions as well as economic de-modernization processes specifically disenfranchised indigenous population (Berezhkov 2012; Koch and Tomaselli 2015; Petrov 2008; Pika 1999). Indeed, while Russia is steadily becoming the largest oil and gas producer in the world, planning to increase its production capacity of oil and gas pipelines located primarily in the North, the local indigenous groups are unsuccessful in protecting their rights to traditional territories. Additionally, Sokolovskiy argues the contemporary political discourse on indigeneity in Russia perceives indigenous peoples as primitive, backward, yet, exotic, influenced by both Soviet and post-Soviet essentialist anthropological and historical theories (2013, 194). This way of thinking facilitates prioritizing oil and gas extraction for the country's economy and development, rendering indigenous peoples' claims as unsubstantial and secondary (Hicks 2011; Koch and Tomaselli 2015; Tomaselli 2014).
Politics of recognition in the Russian North
State recognition of indigeneity in Russia is unique with its explicit primordialism, its thorough institutionalization in state policy, and requirement of the specific administrative terms and conditions (qualitative and quantitative), which ultimately serve to perpetuate the subordinate position of indigenous peoples within the Russian citizenship hierarchy. Indigeneity, as a cultural-only category, was rarely referred to in state policy prior to the Revolution of 1917, except in general terms such as inozemtsy "stray persons of different origin" (Donahoe. 2011, 403). The Russian imperialist government did not recognize indigenous populations as citizens, but merely as people from different lands who paid iasak (fur tribute) to receive protection from the tsar (Slezkine 1992, 54). This laisser-faire attitude changed by the 19th century: inozemtsy became indorodcy "people of different birth" and inovertsy "people of different faith", causing a confusion with other categorizations of outsiders and foreigners and requiring a more specific status to differentiate "local" inorodcy and inozemcy from other "others" (Slezkine 1992, 52). This caused the construction of a new concept of "backwardness", facilitated by "ethnographic" accounts of foreign and Russian travellers, political exiles, and the Decembrists, who "re-discovered" indigenous people and studied them not as scientific subjects, but as romantic symbols, like "noble savages" (Slezkine 1992, 55).
After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist Party deployed the legal terms "native peoples and tribes of the Northern regions" and "small peoples of the North" to refer to around 150,000 of indigenous peoples, mostly residing on the Arctic and sub-Arctic zones of the Soviet Union, who were targeted for the special state socio-cultural, educational, and economic policies and "protections', yet, denied the full citizenship rights because of their "semi-savagery" or "outright savagery" (Slezkine 1992, 55-56). In this sense, the state logic in relation to indigenous peoples was concerned with the creation of the "worthy citizens" with power of bureaucracy and administration (Donahoe 2011, 400-401; Slezkine 1992, 57). The new government first used the category small peoples malye narodnosti to legally define indigenous population in 1924 (Donahoe et al. 2008; Donahoe 2011; Slezkine 1992). The Committee Assistance to the Peoples of the Northern Borderlands
(Committee of the North) was also founded in 1924 and was to serve to protect "small peoples" from various capitalist "predators" and exploiters, assist them to "evolve" into full citizens of the Soviet regime (Slezkine 1992, 57). Further, the 1926 statute determined 26 groups as "deserving of special status and state protection" as indigenous peoples (Donahoe et al. 2008, 995). These groups were identified on the basis of ethnic markers such as language, religion, phenotype, traditional mode of production, nomadic way of life, remoteness from administrative and economic centers, and small population size (Donahoe et al. 2008, 995). As such, the legal status of small peoples came to imply a lower level of social organization (often "clan-tribal") and cultural backwardness, therefore, requiring and justifying special attention from the state because small peoples were "projects that needed to be turned into citizens through the benevolent guidance of the state" (Donahoe 2011, 400).
The explicit term "indigeneity" was first mentioned in the new Constitution of Russia in 1993, emphasizing differences between national and international understandings of indigeneity (Stammler-Gossmann 2009, 70). Further, the Constitution introduced the term indigenous small-numbered peoples korennye malochislennye narody and legally codified it on March 24th, 2000 (Donahoe et al. 2008, 997-998). The word korennye, derived from the Russian word for root, implied the rootedness, autochthony (original, primal and primordial right to belonging) and indigeneity (Donahoe et al. 2008, 997). In addition, the change from small malye to small-numbered malochislennye changed connotation from patronizing to more acceptable, accentuating importance of the population size of indigenous groups. Currently, the Russian Federation legally recognizes only 46 groups as indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East (Koch and Tomaselli 2015, 7; Tomaselli 2014, 1). The status of indigeneity can be granted if a group meets four specific official criteria: a number of members cannot exceed 50,000, a group needs to maintain a traditional way of life, group members must reside in ancestral and traditionally inhibited territories, and, finally, group needs to self-identify as a distinct ethnic community (Koch and Tomaselli 2015, 7; Tomaselli 2014, 1). Here, the specific 50,000 quantitative property was created using the figures from the 1989 census, when the largest recognized small peoples, the Nenets, numbered around 35,000 (Donahoe et al. 2008, 998). The convenient figure of 50,000 was determined to be high enough to allow the largest small-numbered peoples some possibility for growth, yet, the threshold was far below the size of another indigenous group, Altaians (62,000), who were not legally recognized as indigenous (Donahoe et al. 2008, 998). This numerical politics of indigeneity recognition still creates considerable tensions between the small and larger indigenous groups, as it presumes that some indigenous peoples are more indigenous than others, and that some groups can be written out of the indigeneity discourses, disadvantaging them economically and politically in the process (Cruikshank and Argounova 2000, 9798; Donahoe 2011, 410; Maj 2012, 211). Miller, for instance, argues that these sorts of bureaucratic circumscriptions of indigeneity are created and deployed by the states to control, manage, and contain indigenous populations in designated areas, minimizing
the threat posed by their assertions of difference, reducing a number of beneficiaries, and necessarily causing a conflict between recognized indigenous and would-be but not yet recognized groups (2003, 209). In this sense, the unambiguous definitions, categorizations and recognitions of indigeneity in the Russian context ignore the necessary complexities as well as contradictions of the lived experiences, consequently benefitting the state, marginalizing and disregarding indigenous peoples' rights, their potential grievances and struggles.
Impossibility of indigenous politics and movement
The current issues faced by indigenous communities in the Russian North primarily revolve around land rights, natural resources, and indigenous peoples' participation in decision making at the regional and federal levels as autonomous political agents, urging an importance of indigenous civil society, indigenous activism, and political awareness (Balzer 2014; Fondahl and Poelzer 2003; Pika 1999; Shadrin 2015). However, according to Fondahl and Sirina, indigenous groups in Russia are usually lack of practical capacity to defend their rights legally because of the legacy of the Soviet educational policies, when indigenous peoples were primarily trained to be teachers, medical and cultural workers, rather than lawyers, economists, scientists and business people (2006, 132). In addition, during the Soviet period, the political life was regulated by the representatives of newcomers, mainly ethnic Russian, organizations, which were not involved with politics at the national levels, causing a frequent manipulation with the legal rights and knowledge to benefit the state rather than indigenous peoples, resulting in a lack of political activity among indigenous peoples (Petrov 2008; Semenova 2007). This situation has changed with the emergence of international indigenous movements, protesting hegemonic neoliberal governments and economic, political, and cultural marginalization of indigenous peoples around the globe (Semenova 2007, 24). As a result, local indigenous groups turned to global articulations of indigeneity and engaged in a wide range of frameworks for constructing their subjectivities, re-shaping the post-Soviet indigeneities that came to mean much more than "pretty costumes, choreographed dances, and music ensembles" (Donahoe 2011, 404). Gradually, indigeneity became politicized in terms of access to and control over land, natural resources, self-determination, and sovereignty, giving rise to political mobilizations around it (Gray 2005; Koch and Tomaselli 2015; Semenova 2007; Silanpaa 2000). One of the largest indigenous organizations, the Russian Association of the Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North (the RAIPON) Assotsiatsiia Korennykh Malochislennykh Narodov Severa, was established on March 1990 as a non-governmental umbrella organization at the First Congress of Indigenous Peoples of the North (Semenova 2007, 25). The RAIPON's primary goal was "to protect the legitimate interests and rights of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation" (Semenova 2007, 25), including rights to land, natural resources, and self-government in line with both international standards and Russian legislation on indigenous peoples.
The establishment of the RAIPON and its attempts to transform the discourse on indigeneity from a primordialist culturalized notion ("primitive savage" or "noble savage")
to a more politicized concept essentially changed how indigenous peoples viewed themselves as well as their experiences within the post-Soviet sphere (Donahoe 2011, 404). The RAIPON and other small-scale indigenous organizations urged reconstructing essentialized indigeneity and instrumentalizing it in the human rights claims in tune with the international indigenous movement discourses and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007 (Donahoe 2011, 404). The category of indigeneity, created and deployed to control, manage and administer indigenous peoples became an important and successful source of self-determination, directly resulting in an increase of the number of indigenous groups from 26 to 46 between 1993 and 2000 (Donahoe 2011, 999).
Out of numerous indigenous organizations in Russia, the RAIPON was particularly successful in mobilizing people and promoting the rights of indigenous peoples (Semenova 2007, 25). Due to these politicized activities and efforts of the RAIPON and other emerged indigenous organizations, an increasing number of indigenous peoples started to ascertain their rights by filing lawsuits when their regional and federal rights were violated - some of them were successful, some were not mainly because of the Russian prioritization of economic revenues, such as the extraction industry in certain areas (Koch and Tomaselli 2015, 15). However, despite the considerable achievements of the indigenous organizations, indigenous peoples' living conditions continue deteriorating (Koester 2005; Pika 1999; Tomaselli 2014), and even though the problems were well documented, many regional and federal public officials stayed oblivious about indigenous social and economic everyday struggle. In addition to the continuous social, economic and political marginalization, the ecological destruction brought by industrial development and destabilizing state economic policies seriously threatened the livelihood of indigenous peoples dependent on the land for subsistence, as many of them returned to pursue the traditional subsistence activities after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Fondahl and Sirina 2006; Hicks 2011; Tomaselli 2014). It seems that, along with the economic disempowerment and poor implementation of indigenous rights in relation to land and its resources, the post-Soviet period brought a new political order, dominated by the powerful industrial corporations, concentrating the power in the hands of a few wealthy oiligarchs (Etkind 2014, 163).
These issues concerning indigenous peoples have recently become hotly discussed and caused heated debates in the Russian political arena. The continuous political and economic marginalized position of majority of indigenous peoples forced the RAIPON and other indigenous organizations to occupy a more critical position in regards to the protection of indigenous rights at the national and international levels (Tomaselli 2014, 13). This strategic attempt resulted in the Russian governmental order to shut down the RAIPON between 2012 and 2013 (Berezhkov 2012, par. 1; Tomaselli 2014, 7). In the Novaya Gazeta (New Newspaper online publication), Berezhkov, a then vice-president of the RAIPON, argues that the organization has been taken down due to its active engagement in defending indigenous rights, openly discussing the problems faced by indigenous
peoples to a wide international audience, participating in the international indigenous movement, and cooperating with the international organizations in the development of the laws pertaining to indigenous rights (2012, par. 16-33). Moreover, Berezhkov highlights that the powerful extraction companies, backed up by the Russian government authorities, are violating the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral and traditional territories, creating conflict over land and its natural resources (2012, par. 46). The RAIPON was eventually granted the permission to re-open in 2013 due to the campaign led by the Survival International, an international human rights organization, supported worldwide by the indigenous NGOs and leading experts on indigenous issues (Koch and Tomaselli 2015, 6). However, the administrative closing down of the RAIPON, the only organization empowered to represent 46 different indigenous groups in the Russian political milieu, seems to reveal the strategy pursued by the Russian state authorities to eliminate the barriers in favor of the Russian extraction corporations (Berezhkov 2012; Koch and Tomaselli 2015).
These recent predicaments with the indigenous organizations and indigenous rights confirm the Russian governmental wariness about granting rights to groups and individuals who claim indigeneity status as defined by the international and transnational organizations (Donahoe et al. 2008, 1008). Such claims, if raised, could reveal major political and economic issues, specifically threatening the state's control over the regions with economically critical natural resources (Berezhkov 2012; Donahoe et al 2008). Thus, it is not surprising that the Central Russian government chooses to maintain the strictly defined category of indigeneity, based primarily on stereotypical imageries of indigeneity and indigenous peoples (Balzer 2014; Bloch 2004; Ssorin-Chaikov 2003). Similar to the US state-sanctioned blood quantum and litmus tests (proof of blood, historical and cultural continuity) (Miller 2003, 9), the administratively constructed anti-political recognition of indigeneity serves as a practical, "graspable", and profoundly political strategy of the Russian government, which, first and foremostly, leaves little room and restricts the politicized articulations of indigeneity at the local and federal levels. As such, the deliberate identification of economically and politically marginalized indigenous peoples of the Russian North with the international more successful indigenous movements can be seen by the Russian center as a political strategy to gain control over the land and its natural resources (Hicks 2011, 230).
Consequently, many indigenous organizations and activists prefer distancing themselves from politicization of indigeneity, emphasizing its cultural-only recognition, therefore, conforming to the state norms and expectations as well as hierarchical social and political relationships (Hicks 2011; Yeh 2007). Moreover, as Gray argues, the post-Soviet indigenous mobilizations are often seen as a continuation of the Soviet social organization and Soviet civil society (2005, 41-43). Gray points out the incomplete and ineffective nature of this sort of indigenous activism as they have been dominated by a small group of urban intellectuals at the expense of the rural indigenes (2005, 36), ultimately representing what
Antonio Gramsci refers to as leadership of "traditional intellectuals" (1999, 150-151). In this sense, the post-Soviet indigenous politics can be understood as "melancholic politics", unable and unwilling to let go of the past and remain fixated in the past. In her discussion of the melancholic politics in the context of India, Roy defines the contemporary Indian feminist movement as melancholic, therefore depoliticized (2009, 343). According to Roy, melancholic politics of Indian feminism were characterized by institutionalization, being funded by foreign agencies and led by professionalized "nine-to-five" feminists, promoting corporatization and careerism rather than radical and authentic politics (2009, 343). In the similar manner, the particular melancholic attachment of the post-Soviet indigenous movements to the Soviet system of social activism seems to depoliticize the current indigenous politics and marginalize indigenous rights, which are constitutionally recognized, however ineffective and unproductive, leaving indigenous peoples victims of government's prioritized industrial interests (Tomaselli 2014, 5).
Conclusion
The idea of being indigenous and using indigeneity to promote one's economic and political advancement are highly circumscribed in the Russian context, as the legally constructed definition of "indigenous small-numbered peoples" denies true self-determination of indigenous peoples and keeps them uncounted and dependent (Donahoe 2011, 412). Similar to other indigenous groups who relied on the elite articulations of indigeneity, focusing on and celebrating particular limited markers of identity, indigenous peoples in Russia have to re-create and re-negotiate their identities to fit within the codified-in-law bureaucratic definitions of indigeneity, in a sense, "incarcerat(ing) themselves in a certain "traditional" lifestyle" (Donahoe 2011, 413). The post-Soviet period boasted the "democratic methods" of governance, resulting in intensive revitalization movements within indigenous regions, where indigenous peoples had an opportunity to re-examine and re-claim their languages, cultures, and traditional types of economic activity (Diatchikova 2011, 223). However, the post-Soviet melancholic focus on the cultural aspects of indigeneity, essentially "territorialized ethnicity", served "to reinforce and perpetuate the perception of indigenous peoples as "traditional", backward, living in isolated communities, and, because of their small population size, being on the verge of extinction, incapable of self-determination, and in need of the state's protection and administration" (Donahoe et al. 2008, 1009). As such, it is argued that the Russian government deploys its official definition of indigeneity to ensure control over indigenous peoples and leaves little room to politicized indigeneity discourse, administering and restricting political and economic articulations of indigeneity at the local and national levels (Donahoe et al. 2008; Hicks 2011; Tomaselli and Koch 2012). The creation of indigenous subjects in the Russian case is, then, a process of de-politicization of indigeneity, positioning it not as a powerful source of resistance and political voice that could garner sympathy and support from a broad international audience, but rather as a position of marginality, based on its cultural origins.
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