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O. Gaman-Golutvina, D. Sc. (Political Science) RUSSIAN ELITES IN THE MODERN NOMADIC CIVILIZATION
Elite studies serve traditionally as the focus of research on political processes in the post-Soviet space. Usual objects of research are structural and functional characteristics or personal configurations of power groups. The prevalence of structural and functional discourses in the study of Russian elite and the demand for this obviously topical issue in the applied spheres overshadowed the deeper layers of meaning-of-life orientations and basic motivation of power groups. The solving of "structural and functional" research problems emphasizes the importance of considering these basic characteristics, since it is these that determine the phenomenology of political behavior -governance strategies, leadership and decision-making styles, axes of development of sub-elite communities, models of intra-elite relations and interactions along the elite-masses axis. Or, in Aristotle's terms, the understanding of the physics of the process will put metaphysical problems on the agenda.
The consideration of historical context of changes in the qualities of elite groups and motives of behavior of Russian politicians of the current generation in the focus of this article.
In post-Soviet discourse, the concept of modernization has become the most discussed concept, as well as an acid test for the human potential of post-Soviet elites of recent years. However, in the post-Soviet space, modernization is a phenomenon more so of consciousness rather than of being. One of the frequently mentioned reasons for modernization failure in post-Soviet space is structural problems of economy, the financial crisis, and even natural and climate disasters. However, in my opinion, the reason for the failure of modernization project in the post-Soviet space are, to a degree, determined b y the weakness of modernization values and attitudes in the structure of motivation characteristics of elites, i.e. specific characteristics of elite human capital per se. The fundamental attitudes of the latter had a significant effect on the configuration of specific manifestations of the inefficiency of public administration systems in the post-Soviet space. It concerns the features of recruitment and rotation of administrative and political bureaucracy (prevalence of patron-client relations and clan matrix in the elite development, levelling of meritocratic principles, virtual absence of a conceptually organized system of personal training, disproportionally big influence of private interests in comparison to public ones, non-optimality of relations of administrative bureaucracy with big business, high intraelite conflict potential, etc.). Especially malignant are the patron-client relations in the processes of elite recruitment/ Despite the ambivalence of the phenomenon (a good example is Singapore, where patron-client relation between business and bureaucracy did not hamper modernization), clientelism remains an important factor in post-Soviet space. What are the origins of the limited modernization capability of post-Soviet elites?
I suppose that, alongside specific administrative dimensions. What are they?
While solving this problem I will address the provisions of L.N. Gumilev's ethnogeny theory and, first of all, its key provision -the idea that the changes of social groups and their leaders follow certain phases, the contribution of social actors into the historical and political process is of volatile nature, and the rise and decline of individuals and whole nations are transient.
The attempts to find an explanation for the irregularity of historical development through connecting this "phase nature" with the quality of human dimension of historical process inspired L.N. Gumilev to introduce the notion of passionarity as an equivalent of the term drive. This term was meant to denote the cumulative result of actions of ethnological, geographical and historical determinants as the "factor x" making people move "Passionarity is the ability and aspiration towards changing the environment". When analysing the examples of passionarian individuals - Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Joan of Arc, Jan Hus, protopope Avvakum -L.N. Gumilev shows that the crucial elements is not personal heroism, but the creation of an ethnic dominant, which organizes the system's passionarity and drives it to the chosen target: "The work performed by an ethnic group is in direct proportion to the level of passionarian tension; "It is not passionarian individuals that do great deeds, it is the general attitudes, which can be called passionarity level.
This methodological hypothesis provides a framework for the solution to the "heroes vs. masses" dilemma as the agent of political actions. There is no doubt that the leading role in history is played by outstanding personalities, however, it does not suggest ignoring large social groups, but rather acknowledging their mediated participation: a large community becomes an agent as a result of its excessive energy (passionarity), which manifests in advancing prominent historical figures capable of solving large-scale historical tasks. One can
confidently speak of the deep connection between the community in general and the scale of leaders. Sometimes, energetic social movements emerge for petty reasons, just being an outlet for the overflowing energy of a young ethnos: "The means of maintaining the systems' integrity depends on the era, or more precisely, the stage of ethnogeny. Within young systems, there is a close contact of elements... there is a passion that causes collisions . Bloodshed often has neither an ideological, nor a class content, occurring within one social layer".
L.N. Gumilev's ethnogeny concept developed on the basis of attempts, taken in earlier classics of social philosophy, to understand the nature of energy underlying the deeds of outstanding personalities and whole peoples. In particular, G.W.F. Hegel wrote in the Philosophy of History that nothing has been accomplished without passion. Numerous pages have been dedicated by F. Engels in his famous work on the origin of the family, private property, and the state to examining the role of individual passions in the development of historical process, including the lowest ones akin to cupidity, which resulted in the development of an antagonistic social class structure. The famous French Historian Augustin Thierry left a description of massive social movements driven by insatiable but not always fully understood energy: "The popular masses, when they are in movements, do not realise the exact nature of the impulse which dominates them; they advance by instinct towards the goal which they appear to be blindly following the particular interests of some leader whose name alone has made an impact in history: however, the very importance of proper names derives from the fact that they have served as rallying cries for the masses."
Such upsurges are followed, as a rule, by declines, and the titans leading states in the times of ascending are replaced by the pigmies of
the times of decay. As to the features of post-Soviet politics, one can say that an extremely laconic characteristic of the current period of post-Soviet elite evolution is its definition as a post-imperial stage. The disintegration of the USSR, which had become the successor to the Russian Empire, at the peak of its might was initiated, to a great degree, by the national elite - the late Soviet nomenklatura. If the logic of leaders of national republics that comprised the USSR is evident -gaining independence from Moscow legitimacy - then they are hardly logical from the formal point of view of voluntary renunciation of power by the central elite. This was determined, to a great degree, by the features of international organisation, mentality, and attitudes of the national elite of the late 1980's. It is these features, that played the crucial role in the fate of the country.
I suppose that the three pillars of any empire are a peculiar "grand design, excessive energy of population (both vital and metaphysical passionarity), and efficient technologies of recruitment of imperial elite, which is aware of its mission. The aggregate of above factors comprises the metaphysical territory of empire, beyond which its physical body is not possible.
The first significant historiosophical empire design was the "Moscow Is the Third Rome" project. Later, there appeared other versions of this project; one of then was the Third International. It is not a coincidence that N. Berdyayev wrote that, instead of a Third Rome, Russia managed to be the Third International. A distinctive feature of the historiosophical doctrine of the Russian Empire (after 1917 - the USSR) was the orientation towards development: the "hand" of Moscow was heavy and cruel, but, on the periphery territories, it fulfilled the function of modernization. In this case, one can see certain similarities with the British Empire: despite the enormous cost of empire building, the empire was not considered by the British solely as
a source of profit, but rather as an interconnected community. The concept of "white man's burden", which had developed by the mid-19th century, emerged, to a degree, as a justification of the civilizing -modernizing - mission.
As to the energy of population, it is the passionarity and efficient energy of Russian population that has served as an inexhaustible resource, the "fuel" for the historical development of the country over long centuries. However, later, the 20th century, which had no mercy on Russia, exhausted the earlier limitless resource of historical energy: several revolutions, the enforced system modernization of the country, and the victory in the most sanguinary of wars required such efforts that the population of the country found itself on the brink of psychological decline at the turn of millennium.
But the most important reasons determining the characteristics of post-imperial evolution of Russia lie in the features of development and mentality of its political class.
The features of Russian elite were determined by the character, conditions and pace of empire building in Russia. An important factor was the features of territorial development of the Russian Empire. The challenge of space - the gathering of lands, the need to explore and consolidate vast territories - is a major challenge for any empire; however, in the case of Russia, it was not just another challenge, it became one of the conceptual dominants in the process of state building and the source of legitimacy of power.
The dynamics of territorial expansion in the process of development of the Russian Empire was unprecedented. Beginning from just the mid-16th century until the end of the 17th century, on average, Moscow annually acquired lands roughly the size of modern Holland (over 150 years running!). By the beginning of the 17th century, the Moscovian state occupied a territory equal to that of
the rest of Europe, while Siberia, annexed in the first half of the 17th century, had a territory twice that of Europe. (A. Toynbee wrote later that Russia paid for Siberia with civilization ...). By the mid-17th century, the Russian state was the largest in the world; by the mid-18th century, the territory of Russia was 50 times that of Grand Duchy of Moscow under Ivan the III and embraced one-sixth of the populated land. So, the Russian Empire in terms of territory, was the second largest after the British Empire. The process of territorial expansion became a fundamental fact of Russian history "the history of Russia is a history of a country that is being colonized".
In effect, the Russian ruling class has developed over the last five centuries as geocracy - a layer meant to gather lands and rule over them. Another, equally important factor was the need to protect the conquered lands. When describing the political system of the Moscovian state, Klyuchevsky emphasised that the original type of governance "is explained by the dominant interest that created it. This interest is external safety of the people. Over a significant part of its history, Russia was involved in defensive wars, which allowed Klyuchevsky to compare the Moscovian state with an armed camp.
In order to understand the role of space for the Russian elite of the historical past, one should recall F. Nietzsche's idea of external and internal space: external space is comprised of formal - social, political, etc. - structures, while internal space contains the crucial areas of spiritual sphere - language, consciousness, etc. As a result of the combination of large-scale and rapid-pace territorial expansion of Russia and the need to protect it, the land-territory became both external and internal space for the Russian elite. Moreover, the gathering of lands and their protection became a factor of legitimacy of power, which was the main initiator of territorial expansion: "The main feature of Russian colonization is that its stimulant, organizer, and
regulator, was the centre - the core of power. Mass movement of population from the central provinces to Siberia was also possible only after those territories had been "conquered", stratified, and absorbed by the power. It was the incitation or permission of the "centre" or appointed by the "centre voivodes", residing in the main Siberian cities, or industrialist, stimulated by the authorities, that equipped the audacious expeditions of Semyon Dezhnev, Yerofey Khabarov, or Vasily Poyarkov. All the marks left by them on the geographical maps were not only announced as the property of Moscovian ruler, but also connected geopolitically to one of the centers of authority - if not immediately to Moscow, then to Yakutsk, which was ruled by the tsar's voivode, i.e. became microcosms and later loci of power. Thus, space became an actual factor of legitimation of Russian power in the historical past.
Territorial expansion on such a large scale and at such a rapid pace against the background of insufficient financial resources and permanent external threats (it is not a coincidence that the Russian historian Sergey Solovyov, when speaking about Russia, used the phrases "poor country" and "poor people") required unprecedented efforts from both the general population and the elite. It is the era of Peter the Great when the dispute between the supporters of territorial expansion and advocates of moderate increase in the territory emerged -the dispute that escalated in the Soviet period.
In the conditions of empire building, the recruitment of ruling class in Russia has followed the "public service model" since the 15th century, i.e. 'privileges were a reward for serving the state". This principle suggested that the administrative class of the state - its political elite - be granted temporary privileges as a reward for serving the state. Thus, over five centuries, the Russian political elite was represented by the highest echelon of administrative and political
bureaucracy. Stemming from the Moscovian state, thanks to Peter the Great's reforms, this principle evolved into a technology for building political structures in the Russian Empire. One can definitely say that the imperial elite of Russia dates back to the rejection of the seniority and landowning principle in favour of the "public service criterion".
This criterion did not become the basis of the recruitment system by a coincidence: privileges became the "carrot", necessary to lure people into public service, since, under Russian conditions, it was a far cry from the position of idle class. Moreover, Vasily Klyuchevsky stressed that, in Russia, mandatory public duties had affected the highest public servant classes most significantly.
The position of the Russian political class was indeed far from the status of a real elite, which created the demand for the formation of a Russian ruling class according to the principle of temporary, dependent on the state service privileges. This principle gave rise to the class of boyars in the Moscovian state, nobility and imperial bureaucracy in the Russian Empire, and party-related and economic nomenklatura in the USSR. This dominant historical principle of elite formation determined the permanent nature of its aspiration to acquire hereditary rather than temporary, dependent of public service, privileges. In this contest, one can mention Peter III's Manifesto on the freedoms of nobility (1762), affirmed by Catherine the Great Charter to the Gentry (1785). The acquisition of full privileges in the 1990s was a revolution of elites as a community aimed to implement particular interests and private goals (it is not a coincidence that back then the term "elite" was one of the most frequently mentioned). Moreover, property became a parameter for recruitment into power. Privatization embraced not only the state but also the elite status. From the bearer of a mission, it turned into a private agent. Empire building is an act of "prolonged" historical will, which requires passionarity Hegel was right
to say that nothing had been accomplished without passion. But passion wears us out. The imperial elite got weary of the imperial burden, and the disintegration of territory was a materialization of the renunciation of the imperial mission.
Perhaps, the renunciation of the mission by the elite and the exhaustion of passionarity of society would not have had such epoch-making consequences for the country, if they had not coincided with a deep transformation of global context. This transformation is of a multi-aspect nature, in this context, we will consider only two dimensions, namely, the weakening association of national political and economic actors with the "place of residence" and overall marketization of social relations system.
One of the first persons to characterize the philosophical and political consequences of the first above transformations as early as the beginning of the 1990s was the many-years' advisor to President F. Mitterrand, ex-president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and author of dozens of books, the French economist and political scientist, Jacques Attali in his book entitled Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming Order. Attali described the emergence at the turn of the century of a new civilization development -a "nomad society". The distinctive feature of this civilization is the development and large-scale introduction of mobile devices and technologies, the use of which will be accompanied by the loss of traditional attachment to the country, community, and family: "the privileged residents of both the European and Pacific spheres, and of the richest regions of their peripheries, will be empowered, liberated nomads bound by nothing but desire and imagination, greed and ambition. This new nomadic elite is already forming, severing its ties with any particular place, whether nation or neighborhood... The culture of choice, wed to the logic of the market, will deliver the means
for man to reach an unprecedented degree of personal autonomy. Possession of (or access to) nomadic objects will be regarded as a sign of liberty and power".
Another related concept developed to characterize the new era is the notion of "«liquid» modernity" as a dynamic time-space flow, whose key actors are dispersedly organized inconspicuous governors without a link to a certain territory - which distinguishes them from masses clearly identifying themselves with a territory-state. An important characteristic of the new age elite is mobility. A. Neklessa coined a clear term to define this new generation "homines aeris": "the complicated and modified system of power became accessible to the generation of "homines aeris" closely connected to post-industrial (non-material, ethereal) production. This new agent is global by definition and "does not have liabilities external to themselves: they do not have either voters or tax payers".
This tendency became peculiar to the Russian elite, too. The cost of the privatization of elite status and acquisition by the former "class of public servants", hereditary rather than dependent on public service privileges of an unprecedented scale, was the rejection of modernization and renunciation of the territories by the post-Soviet elites at the end of the 20th century. Territory lost the status of a legitimizing factor, which was replaced by the factor of ex-territoriality. To a great degree, Russian elites are an inalienable element of the nomadic generation of modern elites, whose legitimacy is associated with their limited integration into global communities.
However, when speaking of the renunciation of modernization mission, I do not resort to condemning pathos, at least because the responsibility for the fate of a country rests not only with the elites, but also with the society: every country has the government it deserves. The quality of ruling class is an acid test for the quality of society.
A crisis of leadership is a sign of a nation's decline. Whether this crisis is grave but temporary or permanent is a question open to discussion. In the Philosophy of History, Hegel divided peoples into historic and non-historic ones. The task of the former is to implement the will of the world spirit (or the meaning of history in Karl Jaspers' terminology) at different stages of history. Having implemented the historical mission, a people can acquire the status of a non-historic one. I would like to believe that in case of the Eurasian space, this final has not been written yet.
As to the second aspect of transformation, the turn of the 20th century (not only in Russia, but throughout the world) marked the transition to a non-stationary system of social relations and a radical change in the role of politics and economy, when the large-scale marketization of the system of social relations became a dominant of social organization. In the sphere of politics, this transformation was manifested in its turning into a business sphere and the formation of political markets as a type of economic markets based on the principles of direct exchange of supply and demand. The latter are understood not only as a feature of modern election campaigns turned commercial processes, but as a deep transformation of the system of relations between the governing and the governed. This transformation affected the system of public administration - modern states assumed a service character, which makes them rather similar to the sphere of commercial services.
The above suggests a fundamental change in the mechanisms of legitimation of elites: "market is increasingly recognized as a proper source of legitimation", while professional participants of political processes tackle politics as business bringing their political behavior in line with business strategies. It changes the legitimacy of the existing order and gives reasons to discuss the delegitimation of democracy as
an ideal and typical model of political regime and the transition to post-democracy.
This context serves as a fit setting for the results of empirical political and biographical studies into the composition of Russian political elite, according to which, a part of the ruling class (members of the State Duma, members of the Council of Federation, governors, and representatives of federal executive power) came to politics from business as political or classical entrepreneurs.
The data obtained in the above-mentioned political and psychological study correlate with the result of other studies carried out in different periods. For the first time the conclusion that the leading tendency in recruitment of Russian political elites is not the inflow of former defence and low enforcement officers but the massive transition of business people into the sphere of governance has been made in the project entitled The most influential people of Russia, which was implemented under my supervision.
The proof that entrepreneurship became the key framework for political activity was obtained through a study of the personnel of the State Duma in 1993-2011, as well as a European project on the study of personnel of national legislatures, which was supervised by the author of the article. Other studies based on the study of big business representation among the leading Russian politicians also show that business people have accounted for a significant per cent of the Russian political elite over the last 20 years.
Thus, the immediate (for instance, the Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov running for presidency in the 2012 election) or mediated (entrepreneurs obtaining seats in the parliament or holding governor's office, which is a frequent phenomenon in Russia) participation of big business in political activities seems to be the most pronounced feature of modern Russian politics.
As to the participation of acting or former defence and low enforcement officers, an analysis shows that military or legal education is not an obstacle on the way of becoming efficient lobbyists in commercial structures, which also fits in with the mentioned traditions of overall marketization.
In Russia, the tendencies towards the overall marketization of the system of social relations and the changing mechanisms of elite legitimation are more evident than in the countries with established democratic traditions. The post-Soviet period has become more than a simple rejection of political and ideological foundations of the previous era - it has become a renunciation of the previous fundamental meaning.
Analyses of the features of Russian version of marketization should take into account its fundamental characteristic - the conglomerate nature.
This term coined by A. Bogaturov implies the existence of heterogeneous traditions and relations. In this context, it means the coexistence - alongside the system of market relations - of a fundamentally different - feudal - tradition. At the same time, these traditions are interpenetrating rather than parallel, as a result of which the Russian market sector becomes deformed and turns into a quasimarket structure. This statement requires further clarification.
The term feudal, as well as a number of other terms in the field of social science, has various interpretations. The most popular meaning is the definition of one of non-repeating stages of socioeconomic development. However, in this context, the term is used in its political dimensions to define a universal phenomenon, whose basic characteristic is the amalgamation of economic and political governance and the ensuring development of patron-client dependence between self-sufficient quasi-governmental formations in the
framework of a national state. This interpretation stems from M. Bloch's understanding of feudalism. It is such quasi-governmental formations that developed in Russia in the late 1990s. The political and financial structures (oligopolies) gained their own financial and industrial potential, organized their own security services, their own creatures in power, law enforcement and defence structures of different levels, formed their own information analysis empires and forged connections with certain regions and industries, nurtured political "parties of the couch", and established contacts with certain segments of opposition. As a result, the largest oligopolies turned into versatile and self-sufficient quasi-governmental formations. It gives grounds to infer the existence of the trend towards the quasi-feudalisation of the elite formation model, which is emphasised by the acquisition of public authority prerogatives by private structures. Another argument in favour of the quasi-feudal nature of such formations is the analysis of relations in the framework of such formations conducted by M. Afanasyev, which shows the clear patron-client character of such relations. The reproduction of clientelism relations might be considered as a sufficient reason to speak of the archaisation of elite formation processes.
The intertwining of different traditions results in the Russian version of risk society and the Russian variant of liquid modernity. The formation of risk society is a global trend affecting, to a degree, all significant segments of the world. At the same time, each of the conspicuous versions of this trend has its own features. In order to understand those features, one might use the characteristic of modern world structure proposed by Parag Khanna. Rejecting the traditional vision of this structure, Khanna assumes that its tripolar structure - the first, second, and world - became an anachronism; there is only the division into the first (USA, EU, China) and the second (all other
countries) worlds. Despite the controversial nature of this dichotomy, it can be accepted in terms if one criterion - the quality of social organization and grounds for social and political mobility. In the first world, despite its obvious vulnerabilities and weaknesses, the vector of social mobility contains, to a certain degree, the elements of advancement according to formalised rational grounds (professional competence, education, merits, etc.); in the second world, the mobility systems rest on other criteria. Taking into account the heterogeneity of the "second world", one can assume that, in the most archaic enclaves of the second world, the social organization and vertical mobility rests on clearly rudimentary principles of organisation peculiar to traditional societies (blood relationship, tribal characteristics, pronounced clientelism). In modern versions, these archaic principles are combined with, or at least disguised by, modern principles (education, party career, professional competence, work experience), however, the decisive principles, as a rule, are based on no-formal relations criteria.
In Russia, over the last two decades, experts (including the author of this article ) have been observing the prevalence of patronclient relations in the system of social relations. Scholars have also emphasised the difference between Russian clientelism and the classical version of the phenomenon not infrequent in traditional type societies represented in the post-Soviet space by Central Asian countries: if, in the latter, the principal basis for the consolidation of elite clans is kinship and common territorial origin, in Russia of the 1990-2000s, it is economic interests.
The analysis of the process of dominating group recruiting over the second decade of the current century makes it possible to adjust this characteristic - unfortunately, not towards the modernization of criteria. The analysis of the process of dominating group recruiting over the second decade of the current century makes it possible to adjust this
characteristic - unfortunately, not towards the modernization of criteria. The economic interests, which bring elite groups together, increasingly reveal a more archaic element, namely, kinship. Of course, blood relationship is most pronounced in the formation of business elites: the analysis of generation renewal of business structures shows the inflow of the younger generation of company founders' families to executive positions. However, this trend is not limited to business elite and extends to public authorities. Two generations of the Zhirinovskis, Vorobyovs, Ponomaryovs, Gudkovs, blood relationship between other acting members if the State Duma and the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly, family tandems in the government in 2007-2012 are just the visible part of the family icebergs, which clearly indicate that there is a growing kinship component to modern Russian clientelism.
The originality of this variant lie in the inconsistent combination of not only different but also conflicting traditions - the feudal and modern, even post-modern ones. If the first one involves static relations resting on the principles of static structurization, low mobility and low quality of mobility foundations, the latter implies flexibility of borders, principal relevance of division lines, and involvement of the society in the system of global communications.
Apparently, within this system, subjectness has a highly contradictory character and vector. The dominating component of subjectness is that of private relations: even individuals personifying public institutions act, in most cases, as private actors. So, the corrupted nature of bureaucracy means that it acts predominantly not as an agent of the state responsible for the production of common goods, but as a private actor in pursuit of maximizing their private profit.
It is worth mentioning that the restoration of subjectness does not suggest an aspiration to build a new empire - it is out of the question. In this context, subjectness means a more rational use of the vast and
diverse resource potential in order to implement large-scale innovative (social and technological) projects which will help Russia become a more successful and influential political player.
The paradox of the situation is that the objective prerequisites of Russian subjectness are evident - diverse potential, vast territory (the Russian Federation is the largest state in the world), and different political mechanisms. There is only one, but crucial, political mechanism missing - it is the "prolonged" political will. Passionarity. Drive. Every era recruits its own heroes: empires are created by titans. However, heroic eras are a thing of the past. Passion wears people out...
However, the decrease in political subjectness can be sublimated into economic class in a different country: financier - titan - stoic". History might repeat itself.
(Originally written in English)
"Politicheskie elity v starykh i novykh demokratiakh ", Kaliningrad, 2012, pp. 283-292.
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