The 21st Broadyard Workshop of the Institute of Area Studies, Peking University (博雅工作坊), titled “Russia’s Choice of Approaches to State-Building: Past and Present,” was held at the Yingjie Exchange Center on September 5, 2019. More than 10 experts and scholars from universities and institutions, including Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Moscow State University, Oxford University and Hokkaido University, participated in the workshop and engaged in-depth discussions.
Since the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine in 2014, Russia has been forced to abandon its traditional diplomatic strategy focused on its European allies and turn its attention to the “East” to actively promote a new Asia-Pacific strategy. However, academics, home and abroad, have been questioning how long Russia’s Asia-Pacific strategy would last. Some have stated their belief that the ideological swing caused by the geographical difference between East and West has always been one of the most fundamental problems in Russia’s “state-building.” Looking back at the history of Russia’s state-building, every seemingly accidental choice was actually a consequence of deep historical traditions. A review of Russia’s state-building approaches in history would help to understand the development trend of modern Russia and provide a reference for the future development of Sino-Russian relations, they said.
Dimitrii Andreev, deputy dean of the Faculty of History, Moscow State University, traced out the factors that, during the period from the mid-18th century to 1905, eventually led to the elimination of Russia’s autocratic monarchy. Catherine II allowed the aristocrats to have territorial autonomy, which gave rise to the birth of anti-monarchy political culture and increased free expression of public opinion. With the development of society, both the autocratic monarchy and bureaucratic groups saw waxes and wanes in their power and authority. In 1905, Emperor Nicholas II was forced to sign the 17th October Manifesto and began to share power with the Prime Minister. In this way, the monarchy’s supreme power was substantially weakened.
Alexander Morrison, associate professor of the History of Modern War in the History Faculty, University of Oxford, focused on the fragility of Russia’s colonial rule in Central Asia from the 19th to the early 20th centuries. He presented his analysis of specific governance issues, such as taxation and land, showing how they revealed the Russian rulers’ fundamental lack of knowledge about local socio-economic structure. Their neglect of this knowledge was based on their firm belief in the superiority of Russian civilization and their assumption that Central Asian culture would gradually become “de-Islamicized” and be assimilated by Russian culture. Such ignorance and self-confidence caused Russia’s colonial rule in Central Asia to be ineffective and led to its failure to integrate Central Asian regions into the Russian Empire.
Shi Yue, an assistant professor from Peking University’s School of Foreign Languages, introduced his research on the 1822 Statute on the Siberian Kirgiz. He opined that the statute for the first time extended Russian imperial bureaucracy to the eastern part of the Kazakh steppe, and allowed Russia to rule the Kazakhs using a vertical management approach. It marked the beginning of Tsarist direct rule through bureaucracy on the Kazakh Steppe and laid the foundation for Russia’s further expansion into Central Asia in the 19th century.
Uyama Tomohiko, a professor of Central Eurasian studies with the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University, talked about the different views Russian imperial policy had of its non-Russian subjects: some people called the empire a “prison of nations,” while others held the view that Russia was more racially and ethnically tolerant than other European empires. He opined that Orientalistic and discriminative attitudes toward non-Europeans were common in Russian and other European empires. However, the “tolerant empire” theory and the “prison of nations” theory are both problematic: both of them tend to treat Russian policy toward non-Russians as something largely consistent throughout the imperial period and toward all peoples. In reality, Russian policy greatly changed over time, and there were also stark differences among its policies toward different peoples.
Prof. Zhang Guangxiang from Jilin University analyzed Russia’s “state-building” from an economic perspective. After its defeat in the Crimean War, the Russian government resolved to revitalize its economy by building railways and developing national industries. After the reform in 1861, the principle of developing national industry and commerce in a capitalist manner was finally established. Given its poor industrial and commercial base, insufficient domestic capital accumulation and underdeveloped land transportation, the Russian government was forced to adopt state interventions and resolutely implement industrial and commercial policies to protect tariffs, introduce foreign investment and build railways. These methods were a great impetus that drove the rapid development of Russian national industry and commerce. However, due to the incomplete reform of Russian peasants and the contradictions between the political system and economic policy, Russia’s industrial and commercial policies continued to have flaws.
In his discussion on the transformation of the contemporary Russian system, Pang Dapeng, an expert on Russian politics with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, described how the concept and measures of governance during the Putin era—generally referred to as “Putinism”—have sparked debates between the West and Russia on state governance and the road to development. “Putinism” has clear internal logic, which is in line with the characteristics of Russia and the tradition of state governance in its history. Its connotation can be summarized as the controllable nature of its politics, the political nature of its economy and the cohesiveness of its diplomacy. “Putinism” has far-reaching effects on the world situation and the development of Russia.
Prof. Zhang Jianhua of Beijing Normal University analyzed Russian national identity and civic identity, and pointed out that after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the tension between “national identity” (national progress) and “civic identity” (state progress) is a concurrent and thorny question that may go in the same or opposite direction in the course of rapid political, economic, social and cultural transformation. Given that Russia remains a multinational state under a federal system, issues and policy relating to its multiethnic population continue to be urgent matters that the Russian government should manage carefully. Therefore, how to properly handle the relationship between “national identity” and “civic identity” will be a struggle between authority and rights that will not be easy to solve.
Zhuang Yu, an assistant professor in the Department of History, PKU, discussed the process of the construction of the Soviet Union from the perspective of the construction of its cultural system. With the extensive discussion on socialism and realist creative methods in the Soviet literary and art circles in the 1950s as her point of entry, and taking the system of drama management as an example, she discussed Soviet Union’s construction of its cultural system through transforming cultural theory policy and its practice.
Scholars at the workshop also interacted on issues relating to Russia’s research on teaching and research paradigms.
