April 20 is Adolf Hitler's birthday. May 9 is the anniversary of VE Day. Which of these two dates is more important for Russia now? What or who is the talk of the day? The answer is clear - Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachev and unidentified racists aka skinheads. Who made them stars of the show? What is the regime busily pretending not to notice, and what has been happening to us? With all these questions I approached Alexander Asmolov. Firstly, he is a professor; he heads the department of individual psychology at the psychology faculty of the Moscow State University, and the department of social anthropology at the international University. Secondly, he is the author and research director of the federal tolerance program adopted by the government last August.
Question: Political scientists and observers are left with the impression that we see some planned script unfolding before our eyes nowadays. Communists went away, all of a sudden and in no time at all. Skinheads on the contrary have arisen. They appeared in Russia long ago, but this is the first time they are so active. What we hear are like reports from the front. Someone must have ordered them to go for it, them and Krasnodar governor. Tkachev's statements are no less shocking than the prospect of young skinheads brandishing metal rods. The only difference as I see it is that the government repeats again and again that he intends to act by the law...
Alexander Asmolov: I can only remind you that the best legal minds ever were officials of the Third Reich. They never sent anyone to the gas ovens unless a fundamental legal foundation had been created first. Governor Tkachev's discourses on the law are like that. As for the rest of the evaluations and estimates, I'd be more careful. I would not rule out spontaneous chauvinism, so typical of Russia. It is an entirely different matter that this turn of events may be suppressed by tough measures in no time at all. Or else, it may fester. Everything will depend on who plays the social explosion card.
Question: For some reason, this somebody - or whatever force it is - plays this card again and again. Embassies of the United States, Japan, and other states advise their compatriots to leave Russia if possible, otherwise not to use municipal transport. In other words, foreigners sense a state of emergency. At the same time, Tkachev is getting noticeably bolder, particularly after his much publicized Inostranets [Foreigner] operation. A Kurdish family was deported from the Krasnodar territory, and Tkachev claims that it should thank him because the Kurds in question didn't have to pay for the move. This unprecedented cynicism, this absolute effrontery - all this leads to the conclusion that there must have been some order from the top...
Alexander Asmolov: I want us to understand one simple truth. Self-reproduction is the only task and goal of the powers-that-be. The only one. We should understand that the men bred as professionals in the sphere of national security eventually become the men smart enough to figure it out that a conflict - any conflict - is needed for them to retain the power.
What is Tkachev? That's a win-win situation. I mean for the federal government. If "patriots" condemned it, it can always say that Tkachev in his Krasnodar has his hands untied. See, how we support the indigenous population? If the West made noise, the federal government may always kick Tkachev out. What matters is that we will have in the country someone who will make this decision. And the same someone will go on keeping Tkachev and his likes on a leash. The length of the leash depends on specific circumstances.
Question: In other words, Tkachev is a joker cherished by the state?
Alexander Asmolov: The federal government needs him for its political solitaires and political games. Hence the regime's attitude towards Tkachev and others like him: take your time and have fun but remember that as soon as a new motive appeared in your rhetorics and you used the term "liberal fascism" like Zyuganov did, it will be your last day. Communists were thrown out in the matter of days when Zyuganov associated Putin with liberal fascism. This is the response of the regime to the prospect of challenging a certain elite group that is ruling Russia nowadays.
Question: But the same elite group adopted the program of tolerance. How can it be compatible? This is a different script we are seeing unfolding.
Alexander Asmolov: Here are the events as I see them. Communists were left without the majority of seats on the parliament and it went almost unnoticed. What does it mean? It means that we here in Russia are approaching a period when - like in America - it doesn't really matter who comes to power, Bush or Clinton. The country will not change because one is elected and not the other. Style of foreign politics will change, some economic parameters may change as well, but the way of life in the United States remains the same, whether it's Clinton or Bush. We didn't even notice how we approached this phase. The Duma is full of Communists, or the Duma is full of members of Unity, as a party of the nomenclature. Will it change anything? I don't think so. We are approaching a very interesting model of development. I'd call it liberal dictatorship.
Only the naive could think that liberalism will encompass all our lives all by itself in a country like Russia, right? The regime needs to encounter substantial resistance in order for dictatorship to appear. It must be able to say that we have enemies. These days, we don't have strong chauvinism or national-patriotism on the nationwide scale. What we have is a regional national-patriotism. You will find it in Kursk, Penza, and of course in Tkachev's Krasnodar.
More is needed nowadays than Zyuganov's national-patriotism. Something else is required. Something like Stalin's deportation. The logic of liberalism teaches us that individuals are responsible for all this. Individuals, not nations or social groups.
Question: Then jokers are the enemy, in theory?
Alexander Asmolov: Of course, because they shift blame onto entire peoples and ethnic groups. This nuance can be played on.
Question: When you were a deputy minister of education, you told me once of the battles you fought to remove from history text-books the endless demagoguery about class struggle as the driving force of progress. It seems that ethnic struggle is the driving force nowadays - but in fact it is he who incites these wars who is the enemy of the regime. It is just that this is a weak enemy for the time being, an enemy that has to be made stronger first on blood and humiliation of small ethnic groups before it becomes a truly serious enemy... That's garbage.
Alexander Asmolov: What is the dynamics of the Russian powers- that-be? The process of replacement of the ruling elites. This is the only process that is taking place. It is important to understand that the process is underway when a powerful elite group is in the driver's seat.
Take a look at the president's statements. He is calm and tranquil, his statements too. Putin's meetings with the Cabinet are pure politics, something our rational economists have never understood. The president is a politico and he wants to know where the ambitions are. Here is an almost verbatim quote, "Why is our government without ambitions?" Objectives should be ambitious for the country to successfully tackle this or that task in critical situations. Without ambitions, it is doomed to developing a complex of inferiority which will eventually lead to failure. But now we've been developing muscles of ambitious prestige and doing little else. Compared to these ambitious muscles which the regime is developing, Schwarzenegger is a child. The regime of national security will last only while there is a danger to national security. It is this regime that is developing these muscles. This is what we should understand and remember.
Liberalism is possible only through tolerance. I insist that tolerance is the ideology Russia desperately needs. Culture of tolerance as a culture of support of diversity has substantial evolutionary reserves. The state that can afford diversity has a great deal of options in crises. That is why I think that culture of tolerance as a universal culture is the bridge towards a dialogue in the situation with skinheads and Meskhetian Turks nowadays. Dialogues do away with fundamentalism where everything is solved on the basis of the principle "red against white" or "one against the other".
No matter what might be happening to it, the program of tolerance is alive, it is this program that will eventually form Russia's ideology. When the president mentions the necessity of tolerance in his statements - regardless of what he does - the word sticks, and people start thinking in terms of tolerance.
Question: You are optimistic...
Alexander Asmolov: I don't want to appear simply optimistic., Remember Don Rumata from the Strugatskys [Strugatsky brothers - famous Soviet SF writers] in the episode when he sees the city overrun by fanatical black monks? He sees grey troopers hanging from lampposts and muses, "These are who all these vendors and merchants have been paving way for." And this is followed by the superb phrase, "Where greyness rules, the dark comes to power sooner or later." The grayness which is a symbol of the brownsshirts, skinheads, and stormtroopers is the force that will be swept away by some other force. (Translated by A. Ignatkin)