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constitute the transnational community directed to its political "assimilation".
"Transnatsionalnoe politicheskoe prostranstvo: Novye realnosti mezhdunarodnogo razvitiya", M., 2010, p. 37-50.
Pain Emil,
publicist
THE COMMINITY SLAVES
The multiculturalism is one of the most ambiguous terms of the political lexicon, since both adepts and opponents of multiculturalism appraise it from different positions. The similar collision emerged in the course of discussion of the political declarations made in the end of 2010 the beginning of 2011 by the leaders of three countries -Germany, Great Britain and France relating to "failure" of multiculturalism policy.
Two groups of critics appraise multiculturalism. The conservative criticism (often called by observers to be "cultural imperialism" or "new racism") proceeds from the need to change multiculturalism for monoculturalism and insists to install the legal regime characterized by privileges for dominant cultural groups (religious and ethnic). The adepts of such position (neo-Nazis in Germany; activists of extreme right "English League of Defense" in Great Britain or party of Marin Le Pain in France) disapproved the declarations of their present national leaders considering them as "toothless", "empty PR" and "deceit of the society". At the same time, the position of A. Merkel, D. Cameron and N. Sarkozy is closer to the liberal criticism of multiculturalism, which proceeds from the assertion that preservation of cultural peculiarity is the unconditional right of all
citizens. However, the keeping of this peculiarity is not free, and it takes place under the pressure of the communities and contradicts the rights of other people, the principle of equal rights and civil substance of contemporary society. For instance, D. Cameron for the sake of overcoming the cultural split of society and installing positive pluralism proposes to replace the present narrow-community interpretation of multiculturalism by the liberal-civil conception called "energetic liberalism".
In the author's opinion, the civil integration does not oust traditional cultures but supplements them. The civil culture develops with the national cultures and does not replace them. To the mind of the British leader, integration will take place, if the people belonging to different cultural communities, "having liberated from the state pressure, will acquire the common aim", for instance in terms of common civil concern for the good of each in their country as a united home.
The liberal criticism of multiculturalism includes the following arguments: this policy ensures the state support not so much to the cultures as to the communities and groups, which without foundations assume for themselves a mission to represent the interests of the whole ethnos or religion; the state sponsorship directed to the communities stimulates development by the group of community identity, which suppresses the individual identity. This policy fixes the community's power over the individual deprived of any chance for the option. Besides, the full prohibition of interference of the state in the affairs of communities, proclaimed by libertarians-anarchists, would lead to the same result: the individual becomes a slave in the community without any protection on the part of the state; multiculturalism artificially conserves the traditional-communal relations and hinders individual integration of representatives of various cultures in civil society. There
are many cases in European countries and the USA, when the people, having lost their ethnic or religious identity, have to return to it only due to the government policy, which sponsors not the culture but the communities (their schools, clubs, theaters, sports organizations etc.). For the 1990s, in Russia the subsidies provided for "indigenous small peoples of the North" caused rapid "growth" of the number of these groups at the expense of representatives of other cultures, primarily Russian, who started to regard themselves (evidently only by documents) as representatives of indigenous peoples with intention to get social benefits; the main shortcoming of the policy of multiculturalism is the fact that it provokes segregation of the groups, creates artificial borders among communities and forms a kind of ghetto on the voluntary basis.
In many countries of the world there appeared the mono-ethnic, mono-religious or mono-racist quarters and education institutions. The tables "only for blacks" emerge in students canteens. The "Asian" hostels or disco-clubs for "colored" with prohibition for "whites" were arranged. In 2002, imam of a small French city considered as impossible the arrival to this settlement of Martin Obri, the mayor of the city of Lille and the candidate of the Socialist Party for the presidential post. Imam called the small city to be "Muslim territory", which forbids entry of a Christian woman. This is an example of the paradoxical and widely spread situation: at the level of the country multiculturalism turns out to become a fixed monoculturalism and segregation at the local level. For the 1970s, the same paradoxical transformations were the basis of the idea of multiculturalism. This policy, according to its architects, should have protected humanism, freedom of cultural self-expression and democracy. Actually, in practice emergence of closed settlements and quarters leads to appearance in them of alternative governance institutions, which block
activities of the elected authorities at the level of city and country. Under these conditions, protection of human rights is impossible. For instance, young women from Turkey or Pakistan, arrived as wives of residents of Turkish quarters in Berlin or of Pakistani quarters in London, occur to less free and protected than at home in their Motherlands. Over there, their relatives could protect them from excessive arbitrary behavior of the husband, father in law or mother in law. In European cities these young women are not saved by relatives or law. The caricature of multiculturalism deprived of values of humanism, promotes in European cities such archaic features of traditional culture, which have been forgotten in the countries of immigrants' origin. In some Islamic countries women became members of the parliament, judges, ministers and even head of the governments (in Pakistan, Turkey) , while in the Islamic quarters of European cities Turkish, Arabic or Pakistani woman may be killed for any disobedience to her husband, for any suspicion of adultery, for a not taken kerchief. It is true that in Germany a Turkish woman Aigel Ozkan was nominated to the post of minister in the province Low Saksonia; but she represents only a small group of immigrants who succeeded to leave the local community and could integrate individually in German civil society.
In closed Islamic quarters of Berlin, London or Paris the youth has much lesser chances for socialization and adaptation to the local conditions than the youngsters of the same age living outside these voluntary ghettos. Exactly due to this fact the slaves of communities are not competitive at the general level of the country. By the beginning of the 2000s, in Berlin only each twelfth Turkish school boy passed the examination in high school, while each third German school child passed such exam. Evidently, there are more unemployed Turkish young boys than German young boys. In 2006, 47% of Turkish girls of age less than 25 years and 23% of young Turks of this age were
unemployed and lived owing to social subsidies. At the same time, the chance to get these subsidies for indefinite time does not stimulate immigrants for integration in the society of the host country. The sociological studies show that the Turkish youth in Germany demonstrates lesser aspiration for integration than the Turks of the older generation. This is a real expression of failure of the multiculturalism policy, more exactly of cultural disintegration policy.
At the meeting of the State Council of the RF, held in February 2011, devoted to discussion of the problems of inter-national communication, president D. Medvedev tried to rehabilitate the word "multiculturalism" and said that the new modern slogans of its failure were not applicable in Russia. However, the Russian leader himself not once criticized the same aspects of multiculturalism like his European colleagues. He did it particularly often in his characteristic of the situation in the North Caucasus, where multicultural disintegration is clearly displayed in clanship, ethnic separatism and religious radicalism. All this creates almost insurmountable obstacles for governance of the region, shapes the unprecedented wave of terrorism, not speaking about the problems of modernization of this territory. The president of Russia, like European leaders, not once associated the problem of overcoming such parceling with civil integration, which was defined by him differently. At the meeting of the State Council, held in December 2010, devoted to the explosion of Russian nationalism, Medvedev regarded it as development of "All-Russian patriotism", while at the meeting of the State Council, held in Ufa in February 2011, he qualified it as a task of formation of "the Russian nation".
The Russian version of multiculturalism policy is older and much more complicated by its consequences, than European policy. Multiculturalism as a form of promoting the group and community identity was an inseparable part of Stalin policy of creating national
republics (union and autonomous) and national districts and regions. However, in Soviet time the disintegration consequences of such policy partially were liquidated by the imitated feature of the whole system of autonomies, which covered behind its façade the united territorial-Party governance. The problem was aggravated in the post-Soviet time, when the local elites tried to fill by the real substance the formal and imaginary sovereignty of their republics.
The decade of the 1990s passed under the sign of mobilization of the population of the so called "title nationalities" in the republics of Russia arranged by the local elites in the struggle for republican sovereignty. In a number of cases, such mobilization resulted in direct armed clashes of large groups of the population with the federal power as was in the Chechen Republic. For the first decade of the 2000s, the situation changed, and the other problems were concentrated in the focus of events, namely, the ousting by the recipient community, primarily by residents if biggest cities of Russia, of migrants belonging to different ethnic groups.
This problem engendered conflicts among different groups of the population, which resemble the event occurred in Kondopoga in 2006. At the same time, the ethnic-political system in Russia for the 2000s resembled more the problems of the global "North" countries. This resemblance seems to let Russia to a greater extent to apply foreign conceptions and cultural practice, migration and ethnic policy. However, in reality the chance of direct implementation of positive conceptions and practice is very limited.
In the West xenophobia of the host countries' societies is directed mainly to immigrants, i.e. foreign citizens arrived to these countries from abroad. In Russia the main object of xenophobia comes out not so much the immigrants as the internal migrants, citizens of the Russian Federation, residents of the republics in the North Caucasus.
This distinction alone shows that the applied in the West policy of alleviation of migration problems at the expense of restricted entry of foreign citizens and changed conditions of providing for them citizenship or residence permit can not be used as an instrument of solving Russian problems of inter-ethnic and religious tension. The direction of legislative and political-practical development in the sphere of regulation of migration, human rights protection and ensuring the rights of national minorities in the EU countries is mutually tied at the institutional level (they are included in the united block of governance) and in terms of ideology (they are founded on the common values of human rights). But in Russia the united ideological foundation for integration policy does not exist at all and the governance itself, like legislative practice, is separated. For the 2000s, the migration policy was subject to changes. But the ethnic ("national") policy of Russia remained intact in the position formed in the 1990s. The conception of the state national policy, adopted in 1996, is not being reviewed. For the period of 2000-2010, the legislative activity of the State Duma in the sphere of ethnic ("national") policy was paralyzed, while the ministry charged with carrying out this policy and renamed several times for the 1990s was liquidated.
In the West, the main innovations in the sphere of ethnic and migration policy are formulated by political parties and institutions of civil society, are subject to public discussion; further, they are adopted and codified by the legislative power becoming the norms for the executive power. In principle, the other way of formation of policy in all spheres of life exists in Russia. Its principles and norms are formulated by the executive power and later are adopted by the parties represented in the Federal Assembly. This way of policy functioning limits participation of the expert society and of the wide public circles in its elaboration and realization, meanwhile a chance of taking
counter-productive political decisions is very great. At the same time, the parties ousted from real participation in formulating the policy and not burdened by liability for carrying out this policy are inclined to populism. It is not accidental that actually all parties represented in the Russian parliament make use of ethnic phobia and migrants phobia, while in the largest countries of the EU such parties either are not represented in the parliament (like in Germany and Great Britain) or are represented by the minority of the population (like in France). Russia is within the list of European leaders in terms of mass migrants' phobia as well, although it is behind such EU countries as Hungary, Latvia, Greece and Portugal.
In EU countries the main mechanism of carrying out ethnic-cultural and migration policy is put into practice by mutual action of the executive power and the institutions of civil society. The institutions of civil society are very weak in Russia. And what is more, Russia, according to materials of international research, among 28 countries of Europe is marked by the lowest level of value of civil solidarity and mutual ("horizontal") confidence. At the same time, it will be impossible to improve the situation only by means of information manipulation for development of "All-Russian patriotism". All this makes intensification of the process of civil integration hardly probable in Russia for the nearest future.
Still, the author believes that the movement of Russia from the multi-cultural split to the multi-cultural integration strategically is unavoidable. Russia entered the way of innovative modernization, and it is not a slogan of the regular leader but a vital need for the country, which is marked by great history and great culture. The innovation economy itself is inevitably in need of modernization in the political-legal and social-cultural life as the breath needs the exhalation.
"Novaya gazeta", M., 18March 2011, p. 16-17.
