Global Media and Communication

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Denationalized digerati in the virtual near abroad : The internet's paradoxical impact on national identity among minority Russians Robert A. Saunders Global Media and Communication 2006 2: 43 DOI: 10.1177/1742766506061816 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gmc.sagepub.com/content/2/1/43

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ARTICLE

Denationalized digerati in the virtual near abroad The internet’s paradoxical impact on national identity among minority Russians ■

Robert A. Saunders Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on internet use as a mediating factor in identity formulation and maintenance among the minority Russian community living within postSoviet space, but outside of the Russian Federation. I argue that regular internet usage among ethnic Russians in the near abroad has precipitated a denationalization of identity since the breakup of the USSR. The shock of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the often painful demands of living as an ‘immigrant’ in one’s birth country, and the concurrent psychic traumas of globalization have created a powerful nexus which has deeply impacted younger near abroad Russians who, in turn, have turned to cyberspace to help them make sense of their place in world – a process which has, rather paradoxically, promoted postnational, globalist identities. Through regular web use and the creation of transnational communication networks, these Russian digerati are increasingly acting as agents of globalization within their own communities and steadily distinguishing themselves from the larger Russian community residing in the ethnic homeland. KEY WORDS

cyberspace ■ digerati ■ Russia ■ ethnic minorities ■ ethnic Russians ■ globalization ■ internet and society ■ national identity ■ near abroad ■ new media

During the 1990s, two seminal phenomena challenged the identities of ethnic Russians living outside of Russia. The first event was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which forced the dispersed Russian community – hitherto primi inter pares in the USSR – to come to grips with their new status as national minorities in nationalizing states.1 The second watershed was the impact of globalization, which was felt most keenly Global Media and Communication [1742-7665(2006)2:1] Volume 2(1): 43–69 Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA, New Delhi: http://gmc.sagepub.com)/10.1177/1742766506061816


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through economic upheavals and technological advances across the former USSR. The last decade of the 20th century also saw the evolution of cyberspace from a highly esoteric technology platform into a mainstream medium for communication, information, and collaboration. This article focuses on internet use as a mediating factor in identity formulation and maintenance among the minority Russian community living within post-Soviet space, but outside the Russian Federation. In this article I argue that regular internet usage among ethnic Russians in the near abroad2 has precipitated a denationalization of identity since the breakup of the USSR. Despite the pervading notion that internet use among national minorities tends to strengthen national identity (Appadurai, 1996; Tyner and Kuhlke, 2000; Dahan and Sheffer, 2001; Poblocki, 2001; Kaldor-Robinson, 2002; Ranganathan, 2002, 2003; Trigo, 2003; Whitaker, 2004), research reveals a paradoxical relationship between web use and national identity;3 in effect, sustained internet activity acts as a dampener on nationalism among near abroad Russians despite myriad opportunities for nationalist mythmaking and political mobilization in cyberspace. My findings also contradict the prevalent notion that diasporic Russians in the former Soviet Republics would ultimately become fifth columns promoting the interests of their ethnic homeland. Rather than using the internet to rail against the ethnonationalist policies of their states of residence or rally the support of the co-nationals in Russia, the vast majority of cyber-Russians in the near abroad are instead using the web to build transnational personal and commercial networks across Europe and Eurasia and to develop their English skills for employment and educational opportunities in Western Europe and elsewhere. The shock of the collapse of the USSR, the often painful demands of living as an ‘immigrant’ in one’s birth country, and the concurrent psychic traumas of globalization have created a powerful nexus which has deeply impacted younger near abroad Russians who, in turn, have turned to cyberspace to help them make sense of their place in the world – this process has tended to promote postnational identity.4 I argue that once one begins to make reference to his/her individual place within the global community and divorces one’s national/ethnic identity from any fixed political or geographic entity, national identity has given way to postnational identity. Through such actions web-savvy Russian elites are increasingly acting as agents of globalization5 within their own communities. Such patterns are paradoxical when compared with the extant literature on cyberspace’s impact on national identity, which has hitherto suggested that the internet strengthens minority identity by


Saunders Denationalized digerati in the virtual near abroad

enabling ethnic entrepreneurs to create virtual ghettos that allow their ethnic brethren to ‘feel at home’ on the web. The web has been a godsend to the small, powerless nations who now have a mass media platform that endows their communities with all the ability to replicate the functionality of TV, radio, and the newspaper in a single platform. While the Russians in the virtual near abroad certainly have the capacity to do likewise, they have instead opted to use cyberspace to develop transnational networks (often with non-Russians), to learn a third language (English), and to develop their attributes as ‘global citizens’ and in doing so are becoming denationalized digerati.6 My research7 suggests that the internet acts as a dampening agent for both emergent Russian nationalism and backward-looking Soviet nostalgia, and instead tends to promote notions of difference rather than sameness across the Russian ethnic space. This is despite the fact that Russian cyberspace now teems with an impressive array of nationalist sites which are readily accessible to anyone with fluency and internet access.8 Cyber-Russians – influenced by the corporatist, nonterritorial structure of the internet – are slowly but steadily eschewing nationalist mythmaking and instead opting for personal economic and social advancement outside the confines of the ‘nation’. In effect, the internet is the glue which binds together a number of elements of globalization, effectively promoting the emergence of postnational identities among near abroad Russians. Curiously, non-internet-enabled Russians in the near abroad show a comparatively high tendency to associate themselves with the Russian nation, the Russian Federation, the Putin administration, and the USSR. While I do not suggest a causal relationship between lack of internet access and increased nationalism, I do believe that the socio-economic factors which prevent regular web use may also serve to marginalize minority Russians within their states of residence further cementing their identity as Russians. Vorsprung durch Technik: the web as a tool of advancement for minorities The advent of cyberspace – a conceptual universe created by, and sustained through, electronic interactions of humans over global computer networks and shaped by ever-changing geographies of digitized information – has radically altered the structure of media production and consumption for national minorities.9 Previously at the mercy of state-centric broadcast media platforms, elites within ethnic and religious minority communities now have the means to produce


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and distribute their own content on a local, national, and global level. Furthermore, the internet embodies all the functionality of earlier mass media platforms (newspapers, motion pictures, radio, TV, etc.) and traditional communication technologies (fax, telephone, the post, etc.). Thus, the internet and cyberspace represent powerful tools for simultaneous and anonymous communication as well as an alternative universe where marginalized groups have the ability to craft discursive imaginaries which challenge the pre-existing structures imposed on them by their states of residence and dominant elites within these states. Cyberspace thus offers great promise for the preservation of identity and national culture (although there are certainly limitations to the benefits of nation-building in cyberspace). Through computer-mediated communication, small and/or marginalized nations have the ability to maintain and reinforce their identity in new and compelling ways. Anthems, legends, genealogies, histories, photographs, manuscripts and other tangible assets of national culture are being protected, distributed, and accessed in cyberspace. Furthermore, the internet, in conjunction with other information technologies such as satellite television and inexpensive mobile phones, has significantly contributed to the so-called ‘death of distance’, thus lessening the need for individuals or communities to have face-to-face contact in order to build and maintain strong ties. While satellite television and mobile phones have allowed for new modes of minority media production, each suffers from limitations; satellite TV is a broadcast medium which is frequently outlawed by authoritarian governments, whereas mobile telephony is a one-to-one communication platform and one that is under the suzerainty of state governments. Conversely, the internet is truly an emancipatory medium. Its use is quite difficult to regulate by state actors and it provides nearly simultaneous, one-to-many communication. Furthermore, the web allows for the production as well as consumption of information, thus differentiating the internet from its technological predecessors (radio, television, etc.). As Back states, ‘The medium is both public in that it facilitates communication dialogue between people who are geographically dispersed, and private because it can be conducted from the vantage point of the domestic computer keyboard’ (2002: 629). This development is especially relevant for national minorities or nations which have been rent asunder by changing state boundaries. In addition to connecting small and archipelago nations,10 the internet is especially helpful in connecting the critical mass of the nation with its diasporic members living abroad, especially in wealthy, industrialized countries with high levels of cheap internet access.



Combining new media with globalization, many groups have been able to ‘transcend’ local media monopolies which are embedded in the Westphalian state structure, advancing nationalist projects which are in opposition to the status quo (Dahan and Sheffer, 2001; Back, 2002; Kaldor-Robinson, 2002; Whitaker, 2004). Furthermore, the combination of ‘distance shrinking technologies’ and post-Cold War conditions of chaos and global integration have created a powerful nexus that is partly, if not wholly, responsible for countless revivals of once dormant ethnic identities (Dahan and Sheffer, 2001: 85). We should be careful to note, however, that older power structures are so embedded in traditional space that they will make their presence felt in cyberspace – in fact, the internet often serves to reinforce existing hierarchies or becomes a tool of those wishing to re-conquer lost authority (Sardar, 1998). As Saskia Sassen puts it, ‘Digital space, whether public or private, is partly embedded in actual societal structures and power dynamics: its topography weaves in and out of non-electronic space’ (2000: 198). Web-based national projects tend to be an excellent embodiment of such complexity. Mikula (2003) states that internet-based nationalism ‘conjures up the passing away of the traditional national discourses and ushers in a new, more fluid concept of cyber-nationhood, which transgresses and at the same time replicates conventional territorial, cultural, ethnic or linguistic national boundaries’ (p. 173). The internet is a new, remarkably expressive canvas upon which various identities are being recast on an almost daily basis. This evolution is still in its infancy, but it is clear that the ramifications of internet use for nations, identities, and national identities are substantial. Cyberspace is filled with web pages which promote the interests of one national group over another. A Google search of nearly any nation will reveal various attempts at discursive manipulation of the past and present, from Armenian attempts to cast the Turkish Republic as a genocidal regime to diatribes against the ‘criminal’ Latinization of Erdély (Transylvania) to Pan-Turanian chat rooms which argue that the ‘race’ of Turan11 will inherit the earth. Small nations which lack a state to act in their interests have also used the web to create virtual homelands. A prominent example is the Assyrians who maintain a strong web presence12 which has come to center around Assyriska (http://www. assyria.se/), an Assyrian-immigrant football team which is based in Södertälje, Sweden, uniting the global Assyrian diaspora through the combined media of spectator sports and internet communication. Indigenous peoples in Alaska and the American northwest have formed internet discussion groups in an attempt to pass on Native American


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languages to younger generations (Fishman, 1998). Cornish, Manx, and other languages that are only a generation or two in the grave have seen new interest from web-based advocates. Even in the face of almost certain annihilation, the web allows for seemingly hopeless national identity building projects. A case in point is the Livonians, a Finno-Ugric speaking nationality in Latvia, who have a website for almost every surviving member of this miniscule linguistic community. The internet also serves as a transnational communication tool for challenged nations, including those which are in conflict with their states of residence. Web-savvy Basque politicians use the internet to speak directly to their constituencies in Spain and elsewhere. Chechens in the Russian Federation use the web to coordinate actions against the Russian military and security forces, while Kosovars engage in polemics against Serbia and seek international support for independence or accession to Albania. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip communicate with friends and relatives in the West Bank through cyberspace in order to circumvent Israeli travel restrictions. Unfortunately, cyberspace also provides a fertile landscape for white supremacists. The internet provides a context [for a] trans-national notion of whiteness that unites old world racial nationalisms (i.e., in Europe and Scandinavia) with the white diasporas of the New World (i.e., United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and parts of South America). New connections are being established between ultra right-wing sites in North America, Western Europe and Scandinavia at a considerable pace. (Back, 2002: 635–6)

On a more positive note, the web also allows distant expatriates to maintain daily contact with their homeland though local news websites, email, remittances, instant messaging, even weather and religious news. Combined with satellite TV and cheap mobile telephony, the trauma of migrancy13 has been significantly lessened and the forces which encouraged the development of tightly-knit immigrant ghettos have to some extent dissipated because of the ubiquity of information and communications technology in the industrialized world (and increasingly in metropolitan areas of the developing world). In my own research I have detailed the existence of web-surfing Russians in the former Soviet Republics who have effectively colonized portions of cyberspace in a quixotic attempt to re-establish national dominance over particular regions, albeit in conceptual rather than real space (Saunders, 2004). One example is ‘Forums at Dushanbe.ru’ (Forumy na Dushanbe.ru at http://forum.dushanbe.ru/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl) which is for Russian and Russian-speaking (former) residents of



Tajikistan – the tag line reads ‘The place where former residents of Dushanbe meet’. The site includes postings on politics, migration, jobs and the situation of ethnic Russians in Tajikistan, etc. Russian nationals in Moldova run the website Kishinev.ru, an information site for those of Russian extraction living in the country or those interested in the situation of the Slavic minority there. The Slavicized, Soviet-era spelling of Moldova’s capital and the Russian Federation tag ‘.ru’ leave little doubt about the loyalties of those who own and operate the site. Besides the colonization of cyberspace, the Transdniestrian conflict has spawned a generation of ‘bloggers’ (citizen-journalists who regularly post web logs on particular topics) on both sides of the ideological divide concerning the future of the Moldavian state. Russians in the near abroad have even used the web to gain access to the highest authority in their national homeland. In a recent web cast, President Putin fielded questions from a number of sources including a ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ residing in Tajikistan who requested permission to immigrate to the Russian Federation. Such activities are heartily supported by Russian nationalists in Russia proper. Despite getting off to a slow start, Russians have joined the information revolution with gusto. There are more than 5 million Russians in the ‘ethnic homeland’ that regularly access the internet and roughly a fifth of that group are employed in the information technology sector, making the online Russian community quite potent despite the small percentage of the total population which is active in cyberspace. The visibility and growth of cybernational communities among ethnic minorities like the ones discussed above prompted my initial research, which intended to answer the question: what impact (if any) does the existence of such virtual ghettos have on offline political behavior? My ultimate findings revealed that such networks of nationalist websites have little, if any, direct influence on national identity among near abroad cyber-Russians. My research is thus at odds with that of scholars who endow the web with extensive – almost mystical – properties of nation-building. While a number of authors have identified internet usage as cause of resurgent nationalism among ethnic minorities, and one which may ultimately threaten state sovereignty (Jayasekera, 2000; Dahan and Sheffer, 2001; Ranganathan, 2002, 2003), my own research among ethnic Russians living outside the Russian Federation suggests the exact opposite conclusion. I believe the web to be a revolutionary technology for communication and community building, but I assert that the intrepid scholars who have been quick to ascribe it with boundless potential for national


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projects have failed to prove their case. While not totally eschewing nationalist pursuits in cyberspace, my test subjects have been enticed by other imaginaries14 – especially those related to mobility and personal prosperity. Reduced access to ethnic media in nationalizing states seems to encourage greater internet use among the minority Russians living outside the Russian Federation, however, regular use of the internet seems to act as a dampener on nationalist sentiment among the near abroad Russians. Rather than being ‘Russified’ by their cyberspatial experiences, ethnic Russians roaming the electronic corridors of the virtual near abroad are instead being ‘globalized’, that is, undergoing identity shifts which promote inclusion in the deterritorialized community of transnational elites who possess a powerful suite of skills (technical acumen, English fluency, and knowledge of and comfort with ‘global’ norms)15 that endow them with extensive mobility and personal and professional opportunities. Technology has proven to have a powerful impact on self-perception and identity. However, nations are, of course, composed of living, breathing individuals that inhabit actual space in ‘real’ countries. This being said, national identity is on the whole a mental construct which is just as at home in the digital corridors and cul-de-sacs of cyberspace as it is in an Irish pub, an Armenian church, or the Arab street. According to Bhabha, ‘Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye’ (2001[1990]: 359); and as Trigo states, ‘Cyberspace makes it possible to experience the ultimate truth of identity as a sheer construction with no other point of sustenance than pure and simple desire’ (2003: 110). The web thus has the potential to function both as a lens and a prism, alternatively bringing into focus and refracting national identity. Like all technology, the internet is neutral – it is only through regular use and evolving patterns of interaction that it becomes endowed with life-altering properties. ‘A particular technology, be it pop music or the internet, has no inherent ideological orientation. Rather, the relationship between form and content is found at the interface between particular technologies and their utilization’ (Back, 2002: 633). Yet the absence of faceto-face contact tends to have a tangible impact on the ways in which the nation is constructed and maintained. It also allows for a more fluid relationship with the nation, for example, one can be railing against the imperialist policies of the titular majority on one Microsoft Explorer screen and be shopping for computer parts on another. Such tacking back and forth from nationalism to the banal may certainly retard serious commitment to web-based national projects.



It is perhaps better to think of the web as an extension of media than some transformational meta-structure which is often en vogue among communications theorists. As Marshall McLuhan so famously stated, ‘the media is the massage’ (although he is even more famously misquoted as saying ‘the media is the message’). In other words, the delivery system shapes and molds the ways in which the information is processed. This is certainly true when one considers the corporatist structures of the modern internet, which is littered with the detritus of consumerism – a form of consumerism which tends to use the lowest common denominator in order to reach the largest audience possible. Despite the emergence of tightly bound (occasionally bordering on xenophobic) epistemic communities in cyberspace, the overall structure is built to be inclusionary rather than exclusionary. In my own research I have witnessed a rapid and palpable change in the consumerist orientations of youth in post-socialist societies from the mid-1990s until today. When questioned, young Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, and Kazakhs alike tend to suggest that the proliferation of corporatist messaging which is transmitted through ‘global media’ platforms such as the internet, music videos, Hollywood, manga, and lifestyle magazines, significantly contributes to their desires and selfimage. As Rantanen (2002) states, ‘Globalization challenges the process of national identity building by producing competing identities’ (p. 7). Thus, the mental space which might have previously been reserved for national identity is now being encroached upon by Benetton, U2, The Matrix, LG, and Microsoft. Travel and personal contacts with people outside their local, ethnic, and national communities tend to reinforce transnational commonalities, thus fueling globalized (or at least denationalized) identities. Despite such trends, the internet is and most likely will remain a place where blood-based nationalism, racial hatred, and sectarian diatribes proliferate. As stated previously, the medium itself is neutral – only through the actions of its users does the internet emerge as social space. While Dahan and Sheffer (2001) and other scholars are quick to suggest that the internet poses a threat to national sovereignty, there is little evidence to suggest that access to the internet overrides the roles played by territory, habits, institutions, etc. which are key to the ‘living’ of national identity. The ‘imagining’ of national identity is certainly affected deeply by the new conceptual universe of bits and bytes, but it is important to contrast this with real world behavior. The absence of real world interaction (work, shopping, face-to-face leisure activities, etc.) is a serious impediment for the building of true, nation-based


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communities. Experiences in cyberspace often ring hollow when compared to real life events, emotions, and responses. Henri Lefebvre’s conceptual triad of spatiality (the conceived, the perceived and the lived spaces) is helpful in theorizing the success of identity constructed on the internet (Lefebvre, 1991). The conceived and perceived are quite viable in cyberspace but ‘living’ there is, as yet, an unrealized goal. One cannot experience the heat of the jubilant crowd, the eerie sense of connection that comes from a thousand voices chanting in unison, or the smell of one’s homeland on a spring morning on the internet – in other words the lived is still the exclusive property of real space. This being stated, the internet does offer ethnic entrepreneurs the potential of mobility and economic transformation on a personal (rather than national) level and it in this arena where I discovered the most profound impact on conceptualizations of community and identity. While cyberspace may provide a temporary narcosis from the daily travails of minority status for Russians in Latvia, Kurds in Turkey, or Sorbs in Germany, it does not rewrite the rules of daily life. Thus, the internet does not override reality, but like a drug, it offers a temporary escape from it. On the other hand, the web does connect individuals to opportunities abroad. And while these new opportunities entail significant challenges, they typically do not carry the institutional barriers to personal promotion which are endemic to life as a residual imperial minority in a nationalizing state. Post-imperial elites or transnational mediators: understanding the Russians of the virtual near abroad Russians in the near abroad represent a unique diaspora with only limited commonalities to other dispersed minority communities. As a marooned imperial minority, Russians outside of Russia are most frequently compared to Germans who found themselves beached outside the rump successor states of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg empires.16 This is especially true in those states where Russians represent a substantial percentage of the population (Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Latvia, and Estonia) and where they are relatively contiguous with the critical mass of the Russian nation residing in the Russian Federation. In the other post-Soviet Republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, etc.), Russians are generally located in metropolitan areas and lack contiguity with the rest of the Russian nation. In these cases, there are some similarities between offshore Russians and Englishmen in Rhodesia, Afrikaaners and other European settlers in South Africa and pieds-noirs in



Algeria.17 Therefore, the Russian diaspora after 1991 shares spatial distribution patterns with both the contiguous imperial (German and Austrian) and far-flung colonial (British and French) examples discussed above. However in both cases, unlike other imperial diasporas, most Russians did not consider themselves to be colonizing outsiders at the time of migration nor did they have the mental preparation of more traditional diasporas, for example, Filipinos in the US, South Asians in the UK, or Vietnamese in Eastern Europe. I personally draw an additional parallel between offshore Russians and the Mexican-American community in the United States’ southwest. While a majority of Mexican-Americans in New Mexico, Texas, and other states are descendants of immigrants who came to the US for economic reasons, a sizeable percentage descend from Mexicans who ended up on the ‘wrong’ side of the border at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War (1846–8). These Mexicans saw the border cross over them rather than the other way around.18 Curiously, both the Mexicans in the American southwest and the Russians in the near abroad are consigned to a particular role in their ‘new’ societies, that is, immigrant rather than native, regardless of the history which put them there. The reaction to the presence of Russians in the near abroad since 1991 is steeped in history. Whether they are seen as ‘aliens’ (Latvia and Estonia), ‘settlers’ (southern Central Asia), or simply a constituent part of the multi-ethnic fabric of society (Kazakhstan, Belarus, and the Ukraine), the Russian populations of the Newly Independent States remain a seminal issue in the local, national, and international politics of the near abroad (Saunders, 2005). De-Sovietization combined with the nationalization of the state represents a massive undertaking, which is complicated by the presence of ethnic Russians who, to many in the newly independent republics, represent an unwanted reminder of a painful past when ethnic Russians and the Russian language ruled supreme. The ubiquity of the Russian language in the spheres of business, government, culture, and education served to promote Russification of national minorities and favor ethnic Russians throughout the history of the USSR (and Russia before it). Russian literature was seen as the norm for all Soviet peoples due in no small part to the international respect conferred on Russian high culture during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Highly centralized control of the education system likewise ensured that the ideas, desires, and norms of Russian life would nearly always receive more support than those of ‘peripheral’ nations whose lifeways were less universal than those of the Great Russians. As Rogers Brubaker (1996) has stated, ‘Russianness, like


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“whiteness” in the US, was in a sense invisible; it was experienced not as a particular nationality but as the general norm, the zero-value, the universal condition against which other nationalities existed as particular and particularist “deviations”’ (p. 49).19 While functioning as a de facto ruling class, the Russians in the USSR tended to see themselves in rather neutral terms. Expanding Brubaker’s analogy of ‘whiteness’, there was simply nothing odd about all aspects of society being oriented towards the Russian language, Russian culture, and Russians themselves. The role of the Russians (especially urbanized, European Russians) as the vanguard of the revolution initially established a hierarchy of authority within the Soviet state. While Lenin often railed against Great Russian chauvinism and promoted korenizatsiya, that is, the indigenization of the political mechanism of the republican state apparatuses, Stalinist policies tended to favor Russianness in almost all spheres. The Communist Party and the ruling elite, referred to as the nomenklatura,20 were much more likely to be Russian than any other nationality. Such careful engineering of society led to the promotion of Russians above their counterparts, especially in ethnically diverse republics like Kazakhstan, Latvia, and the Ukraine. With the creation of new, unwelcoming and even openly hostile successor states seeking to aggressively nationalize the public sphere by asserting the rights of the core nation over minorities (especially the post-imperial Russian minority), Russians have had acute difficulties in coming to terms with their new status (Smith, 1997: 75). This situation has been most acute in the Baltic Republics (less so in Lithuania),21 primarily due to the strength and depth of historical memory associated with the loss of independence in the 1940s.22 The situation was much more subdued in the Caucasus where Russians were a rather small minority; although post-independence politics have led Georgia and Azerbaijan to look on their ethnic Russian population less favorably as these two countries have decided to pursue close relations with the United States while simultaneously wriggling out from under the thumb of Russian hegemony. The new republics of Central Asia – perhaps the most reticent recipients of independence – did not pursue nationalizing policies in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the USSR. The authoritarian governments of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have, however, opted for pursuing nationalizing strategies to lend legitimacy to their rule, while Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have attempted to perpetuate the Soviet idea of fraternal coexistence and cooperation between their respective national groups while quietly supporting the indigenization of the bureaucratic ranks.



Today Russians are scrambling to remain in, or regain, a position of dominance (or at least equality) in lands where Russian hegemony has been, until quite recently, an indisputable fact. Severed mentally, politically, and geographically from their homeland, these ‘new immigrants’ have had to rethink what it means to be part of a diaspora community and to mentally place themselves within that conceptual space. This process has, of course, been easier for the younger generation of ethnic Russians who have chosen to pursue assimilationist or accommodationist strategies such as learning the titular language, embracing cultural symbols of the new state, taking loyalty oaths, etc., whereas older generations (and some disaffected youth) have chosen exit (emigration), retreat (self-imposed isolation), and voice (protest, violence, etc.) to show their lack of approval for nationalizing policies and/or their inability to cope with the new challenges that accompany their freshly bestowed minority status. My respondents represented a third category. The Russians with whom I worked are mobile, relatively affluent, and technology-savvy – digerati in every sense of the word. The changing nature of the global economy is opening doors for them as fast as the nationalizing state can close them. As Brubaker states: The state is thus a powerful ‘identifier,’ not because it can create ‘identities’ in the strong sense – in general, it cannot – but because it has the material and symbolic resources to impose these categories, classificatory schemes, and modes of social counting and accounting with which bureaucrats, judges, teachers, and doctors must work and to which non-state actors must refer. (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000: 16)

But with mobility, cyberspatial communication, and imaginaries of the past, present, and future, cyber-Russians can confront, contest, and usurp these constraints. One of the primary ways they do this is by placing themselves in a global rather than a state- or ethnic-based social space. By using the term ‘global’ here I do not mean to imply that ethnic Russians feel as bonded to Ouagadougou as they do to Omsk, but instead I suggest that the mental mobility enabled by cyberspace allows Russians to conceive of denationalized personal trajectories which are not constrained by their minority status within their country of residence. Mental migration may ultimately lead to actual movement out of the country by removing many (if not all) of the occupational, social, and economic constraints with which they are burdened in-country. This new local–global nexus makes old rules of national identity production somewhat obsolete. This is not to say that Russian nationalists do not use the web to promote their own agendas – they


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most certainly do – only that the impact of such cyber-nationalism has no discernible effect on the populations I studied.23 Despite the marginalization that many Russians experience in the near abroad, postindustrial development in the form of new commercial opportunities and increasingly information-based economies (more so in the Baltics, but relevant in all states except perhaps Moldova, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan) circumvents traditional paths that in an earlier era would have led to radicalization, such as the Eastern European Germans in the 1930s. While there are certainly segments of the population which are nationalistic, the elites among the near abroad Russian population do not seem to be promoting political action. This is perhaps because they have open avenues for economic advancement – a distinction which many of their fellow minorities around the world lack.24 As history demonstrates, the hopes and wants of the masses are meaningless without dedicated elites to shape and project collective will. My research suggests that those elements of society which would take up the banner of national liberation have opted instead for other, more individualistic pursuits. Marshall McLuhan once prophesized that new media would make nationalism ‘impossible’ since the phenomenon was utterly dependent on print media. Instead, he theorized that a global village would emerge where human beings were ‘irrevocably involved with and responsible for one another’ (quoted in Wolfe, 2004). Partially supporting McLuhan’s notion, I have found that there is a strong tendency towards denationalization – that is, rejecting the nation-state as the basic building block in economic, political, and social interactions. Cyberspace represents the ultimate triumph of Ferdinand Tönnies’ Gesellschaft (‘society’) over Gemeinschaft (‘community’). Individuals are judged not on their origins but their capabilities. By its very nature the internet is designed to lessen rather than accentuate geographic, ethnic, gender, and economic disparities. The classic New Yorker cartoon ‘On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog’ serves as an undying testament to the web’s egalitarianism. The reason for this structure lies both in the internet’s original design and its increasing corporatist bent which is intended to make consumers out of all and enemies of none. In the case of the Russians in the near abroad, the local is an important force in their lives but they choose to connect themselves to localities across their own nation-state, regions, and the world. The internet is a powerful tool in this process. ‘Non-formal political actors are rendered invisible in the space of national politics. Cyberspace can accommodate a broad range of social struggles and facilitate the



emergence of new types of political subjects that do not have to go through the formal political system’ (Sassen, 2003: 13). Sassen astutely identifies the emergence of ‘communities of practice’ that create increasingly relevant networks of communication, solidarity, and collaboration which she deems ‘micro-instances of partial and incipient denationalization’ (Sassen, 2003: 10). Russians in the near abroad are using the internet in just such a way, but I did not find that such activity increases national identity or promotes Russian/Russophone nationalism.25 One of respondents in Kazakhstan told me: The internet – especially emails and ICQ – make it easy to keep in touch with my family and friends in Russia. I always know what is going on there and they know how I am doing in Kazakhstan since, with all the politics, it is difficult for [citizens of the Russian Federation] to know what life is like for us here in Kazakhstan.

Her statements reflect the competing nature of mass media in a globalized world. As Rantanen has pointed out, the highly centralized nature of television in the Russian Federation tends to promote nationalism (Rantanen, 2002; Rantanen and Vartanova, 2003). The internet, however, is a way to cut through the statist messaging of postSoviet political regimes and connect citizens on an individual basis. Ironically, titular nationalism is, in some cases, indirectly promoting the denationalization of the elite Russians in the near abroad. This is accomplished through economic reform which encourages foreign direct investment by Western transnational corporations and formal or informal hiring networks which preclude Russian employment in stateowned enterprises. As one of my Latvian Russian respondents put it, ‘Latvia forces us to work harder, be smarter, and learn English since we can’t get public sector jobs. As such, multinational corporations are happy to hire us.’ It is the poorer, less-educated, and downwardly mobile Russians that criticize the actions of the state and retreat into the imaginaries of the Russian nation as a resurgent political force. Among this segment of society, attachment to the Russian Federation is strong and apertures have opened which the Russian state or other actors representing interests in Russia might use to influence the political behavior of offshore Russians. It is, however, unlikely that the internet will be a decisive element of this type of activity since such Russians are not very web-savvy.26


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Webs of identity: the internet’s impact on national identity among near abroad Russians Globalization, as it expands ‘social horizons’, tends to weaken placebased community identity (Rofe, 2003: 2517). Paradoxically, various authors have simultaneously argued that such change both weakens and strengthens national identity. Despite the internet’s theoretical capacity for increasing national identity, my research tends to suggest that cyberspace in fact weakens national identity in cases where a strong attachment to the nation does not already exist (as is the case among the Russians in the near abroad and some might argue Russians in general). Von Herder once said that ‘We find that the imagination [associated with national myths] is particularly vivid among people who live in solitude, or inhabit wild regions, the desert, rocky country, the stormy coast, the foot of volcanoes, and other areas full of movement and wonders’ (2001[1791]: 88). Such conditions are mutually exclusive with cyberspace. Web-enabled elites are almost by definition urbanites who embrace the hustle and bustle of city life and its requisite vices and virtues, thus leaving little time for quietude and contemplation.27 National mythmaking may find new life on the web for certain groups who have been denied access to mass media for centuries,28 but it will be ephemeral since the conditions that gave birth to such myths will eventually suffocate in the embrace of wires, modems, and computer screens. The internet is thus a double-edged sword for national identity projects. As Jayasekera states, ‘All in all, the effect is schizophrenic; Web users celebrate the internet’s ability to transcend national borders, but fall over themselves to place themselves in corners of cyberspace with national identities’ (2000: 143). Internet-enabled elites among my research groups frequently noted that the more time they spend on the internet, the more they think of themselves as ‘global citizens’ even as they spend time, effort, and money connecting to their national brethren. In conducting dozens of interviews and some 200 questionnaires with cyber-Russians in Latvia, Kazakhstan, and other post-Soviet states, it has become clear that nationalist aspirations quickly take a back seat to globalist desires in cyberspace. Russians are seeking to break out of a claustrophobic environment imposed on them by political systems over which they seem to have little control. Orienting themselves towards a self-serving and often ham-handed Russia achieves nothing, but choosing to embrace communities of interest (Russian or otherwise) across Europe, Eurasia, North America, and even Australia is a helpful tool for personal advancement and identity maintenance. Furthermore,



ethnic Russians, because of the legacy of their unique role within the Soviet Union’s nationality classificatory scheme, that is, the general norm or zero-value, are perhaps more susceptible to the de-nationalizing effects of the internet than more ‘primordial’ nationalities like their Latvian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian counterparts whose attachment to the land and peasant folkways provides a temporary (but by no means failsafe) inoculation against globalization. As I spoke with my respondents (most of whom chose English as the preferred medium of communication), I began to recognize the importance they placed on English language skills. English is – perhaps even more than the internet – a tool of mobility. It allows them opportunities far beyond the geographic space they find themselves in. Technological acumen and the internet round out this skill set for younger, upwardly mobile ethnic Russians in the near abroad. Cyberspace is often the first direct contact that the nascent near abroad Russian elite have with Western Europe and the United States. During this mental migration, the role of English proficiency is extremely important. More than 80 percent of the content posted on the internet is in English, even though an estimated 44 percent of online users speak another language in the home. Not surprisingly, both the global supply of and the demand for English instruction are exploding. Whether we consider English a ‘killer language’ or not, whether we regard its spread as benign globalization or linguistic imperialism, its expansive reach is undeniable and, for the time being, unstoppable. Never before in human history has one language been spoken (let alone semi-spoken) so widely and by so many. (Fishman, 1998)

The web in conjunction with English proficiency allows these ‘trapped’ individuals to imagine their way out of politically and culturally restrictive environments. I believe the cyber-Russians of the near abroad are emerging as a transnational elite in response to perceptions of limited mobility within their country of residence. My respondents and their peers show clear signs of becoming a globalized ‘gentrifying class’ based on their socio-economic profiles, lifestyle aspirations, and spatial manifestations (Rofe, 2003: 2512). Rather than moving toward becoming a non-territorially bound entity (referred to alternatively in the literature of transnational elites as ‘stateless persons’ or cosmopolites),29 Russians in the near abroad are instead constructing political, economic, and cultural identities based on perceived differences from the ‘Russian Russian’ population. These differences stem from such variations as economic prowess, greater mobility, minority status, and membership in trans-border communities. For these identities to remain vibrant, they must however be nursed by real world


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experiences (actual travel, commercial transactions, educational exchange, etc.). Without the interplay between the virtual and the actual, cyberspatial identity projects (be they nationalist, globalist, or other) soon become untenable and ultimately unsatisfying trompes l’oeil. The real world aspects are clearly more accessible for the Baltic Russians who now enjoy extraordinary advantages of mobility (both physical and economic) when compared to their co-nationals residing in either Russia or other parts of the near abroad. Despite the lessened levels of actual mobility among Russians residing outside of the European Union, I found that imagined mobility in cyberspace (traveling without moving) ultimately leads to actual mobility regardless of one’s state of residence (for example, Kazakhstani Russians were almost as likely to pursue work and study abroad as Latvian Russian respondents despite the impediments which exist for the former). The ‘good job’ in the United Kingdom, the university stint in Germany, or emigration to America all become part of the realm of possibilities for cyber-Russians. Plans for such undertakings were systematically crafted through regular internet-based contact with Russians and Russophones in the ‘West’, most notably the UK, Ireland, Germany, the US, Canada, and Australia.30 Whether or not they ever choose to emigrate, the imagined window of opportunity allows cyber-Russians to reconcile their existences in their states of residence. While nearly all cyber-Russians maintain constant and meaningful contact with their co-nationals in the Russian Federation, the influence of their Russian-speaking comrades in the West seems to debase the ability of Russia (or, more appropriately, nationalist elites within Russia) to manipulate the offshore Russians for their own purposes. This is due in part to the benefit/risk ratio related to any actions taken by offshore Russians. The short-term, concrete, personal gains made possible by the web are certainly more attractive and entail less risk than long-term, nebulous, national gains promised by ethnonationalist agitators in the Russian Federation. Not even the most radical Latvian nationalist would accuse a Latvian Russian of being part of a fifth column because he or she chose to work in Germany, study in England, or run a joint-venture with an American company; whereas even the slightest support of Russian-language causes, cross-border Russian organizations, or special rights for ethnic Russians is increasingly seen as detrimental to the state and evidence of the presupposed disloyalty of the Russian population. By embracing a globalized identity untethered to ethnicity, cyber-Russians are basically pursuing the path of least resistance, but one with tangible payoffs.



Conclusion While my findings present acute contradictions to the widely accepted theory that greater use of the web among national minorities strengthens national identity, the effect of the internet on diasporic Russian minorities is not neutral. Paradoxically, increased internet use is having an impact on societal relations by stimulating Russians to seek global rather than national/ethnic paths to personal development. They are satisfying their ambitions outside of national frameworks which are in many ways determined by the titular majorities in the states in which they reside. I believe this to be the case for a number of reasons. Firstly, those internet-enabled Russians I spoke with tended to have a more realistic view of life in the Russian Federation than their non-internet enabled counterparts. I believe this distinction is directly connected to nationalist tendencies among the near abroad Russians. Those Russians who felt life was better in Putin’s Russia tended to argue little had changed there with the collapse of the USSR and that Russians were happy with conditions in the new Russia. Cyber-Russians tended to have a rather negative view of life in the Russian Federation and it was based on regular communication with friends and family residing in the country. Furthermore, cyber-Russians more readily saw themselves as somewhat set apart from the rest of the Russian nation (especially true among Estonian and Latvian cyber-Russians who readily adopted the mantle of Baltic Russians). Although my research shows that both websavvy and non-internet using Russians alike travel frequently to Russia, cyber-Russians seemed to have a better grip on the challenges faced by ‘Russian Russians’ in their everyday lives and eschew any fundamental sameness31 with the Russians of Russia. This was especially true among the Central Asian cyber-Russians who maintained contact with friends and family who had emigrated to the Russian Federation and faced economic hardship in addition to maltreatment based on their status as ‘immigrants’ even in their ‘ethnic homeland’. Secondly, I believe that the internet offers users a new realm of experiences and possibilities, especially for politically (although not necessarily economically) marginalized groups like the near abroad Russians. The cyber-Russians with whom I spoke frequently discussed well-laid plans for working and/or studying abroad. In effect, the goal was to follow in the footsteps of other Russians who had gone before them. My respondents had established solid, long-term internet-based relationships with other Russians32 living in Dublin, London, Boston, and Berlin and were constantly considering the possibility of leaving Latvia, Estonia, or Kazakhstan and living for at least a few years in


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another (Western) country. Those who were committed to staying put often pointed to the internet as a reason why they were sanguine about their future in their country of residence. Despite being a national minority,33 they feel that English fluency, knowledge of global mores, and internet expertise afford them a bright future. In fact, as one respondent noted, ‘As English-speakers and web users, we have better chances of economic success than non-internet using titulars because we can work for transnationals or travel abroad and get a job where English is required’. In effect, the internet is to some extent ‘globalizing’ the Russian minority in the near abroad by providing a meritocracy-based (global) alternative to their ethnically determined societies. Thirdly, I contend that the very structure of the internet as a corporatist, non-nationalist space massages identity in a way that weakens rather than promotes nationalism. The constant bombardment by messages of consumption and internationalism poorly serve the interests of both the Heimat and the nation. Imaginaries of global commerce, intellectual and ideological freedom, and personal mobility burn brightly on the internet whereas geographically or nationally bounded thoughtrealms are pushed into the dark, rarely traversed corners of cyberspace. As elites embed themselves in cyberspace, they often feel that their economic and personal potentials have increased many times over. While there may be some incentives to mobilize the masses towards national emancipation, it is much more expedient to emancipate oneself first and foremost. Just as urbanization reduced the culture of collectivity and shrunk the depth and length of social relations, so does the internet. Cyberspace promotes Gesellschaft, and, like urban space, leads to the widespread atomization of society and puts the focus on individualism. I was constantly reminded of this in discussions with my respondents who lauded the internet as a place where success was not determined by one’s nationality, but by one’s abilities. In cyberspace, as in urban spaces, community bonds and collective will are displaced by organic solidarity based on an individual’s own skills and desires. The conceptual space engendered by the internet emphasizes competition, achievement, innovation, specialization, tolerance, and tangential relationships while simultaneously resulting in superficiality, selfishness, and a loss of traditions. In such a mental environment, nationalist myth-making and mass mobilization become secondary or tertiary concerns for internet-enabled elites. Unless one enters cyberspace with an ideological commitment to nation-building, the very structure of the web tends to subtly but steadily weaken pre-existing nationalist orientations – something I found to be especially true among cyber-Russians in the virtual near abroad.



Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Michele Commercio and Valters Scerbinskis for their helpful comments on the draft of this article and Alexander J. Motyl for his constant support in the research and writing.

Notes 1 A nationalizing state, according to Rogers Brubaker (1996), is one that is involved in the ‘compensatory’ project of elevating the interests of the core nation above the interests of other nationalities. Such activity typically occurs in a milieu where the core nationality has historically been oppressed by another nationality. In effect, the state is built upon the eradication of the legacy of pre-independence which confined the majority nationality to a position of weakness (Brubaker, 1996: 5–6). The behavior of the state towards the lingering imperial minority tends to range from disinterest to outright hostility. 2 The term ‘near abroad’ (blizhnee zarubezh’e) is commonly used by Russians both inside and outside of the Russian Federation to refer to those states which formerly comprised the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (excepting Russia itself). While I understand that this term has certain imperialistic overtones for the titular majorities of the 14 non-Russian republics, I have chosen to use it throughout the text in the interests of brevity. 3 This research (as with my initial investigation of the internet’s role in national identity formation and maintenance) is framed by Anderson’s (1991) theory of the imagined community which is created and sustained through state control and/or influence over mass media platforms. Anderson’s theory stems from earlier investigations of media’s impact on identity, especially those of Deutsch (1953), Innis (1972) and Gellner (1983). 4 By using the term postnational I am making central the nation-state’s decaying monopoly on loyalties, allegiances, and power which in my view demands an updated view of national identity. Nowhere is this transformation more profound than among ethnic minorities who are no longer shackled by the restrictions on communication that defined an earlier age. 5 Saskia Sassen has pointed out that much of what we tend to call globalization is in fact denationalization. According to Sassen, there are ‘powerful imaginaries’ at work which gird the political and economic actions of those who live in networked places. In her writings, she has repeatedly called for a deeper understanding of the ‘additional political dimensions of the spatiality of the national and the global’ in the current age of fast-moving networks of goods, people, ideas, and money (Sassen, 2003: 10). 6 ‘Digerati’, a portmanteau of ‘digital’ and ‘literati’, describes opinion leaders in cyberspace who promote the internet and other information and communications technologies (ICTs) as transformational elements within their societies. The term was purportedly coined in the early 1990s in the USENET. It gained widespread usage in 1996 with the publication of John Brockman’s Digerati: Encounters with Cyber-Elite. 7 This article represents an abbreviated version of my dissertation ‘Unweaving the Web of Identity: Assessing the Impact of the Internet on Identity among National


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12 13

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Minorities’ (Rutgers University, 2005). I conducted field research in Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan in 2002 and Riga, Latvia in 2004. My sample was prejudiced towards the economic elite within the Russian communities of these locales; however, my distribution included respondents from across the economic, political, and social spectrum. My research is based on both questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. In each case I collected 100 completed questionnaires for a total of 200 completed questionnaires and 25 personal interviews. I continue to probe Russian cyberspace conducting virtual interviews via the web with ethnic Russians in the Newly Independent States. I also communicate regularly with Russian immigrants to the United States from these countries. See for instance, Polyuha 2005, for a discussion of Russian internet users and their attempts to reintegrate the Ukrainian nation into the fold of the ‘eternal Ukrainian-Russian brotherhood’. A national or ethnic minority is defined as any group that: (a) forms a numerical minority in a given state; (b) does not dominate politically; (c) differs from the majority population due to ethnic, linguistic or religious characteristics; and (d) expresses feelings of intra-group solidarity in preserving their own culture, traditions and language (Minority Rights Group, 1991). Archipelago nations are those nationalities which exist in non-contiguous pockets across multiple states. In my own writing, I further differentiate between stateholding archipelagos like the Russians, Serbs, and overseas Chinese which exist as minority communities in multiple states, but have an ‘ethnic homeland’ that can/does act in their political interests, and stateless archipelago nations such as the Rusyn, Basques, Kurds, etc. which lack any state to call their own. Pan-Turanism’s goal is to unite the Turkic, Mongolian, Finno-Ugric, Korean, and Japanese-speaking peoples into a cogent political force which would coordinate action from Helsinki to Budapest to Istanbul to Tashkent to Urumchi to Seoul to Tokyo. See for instance ‘Nineveh On-Line’ located at http://www.nineveh.com/. I define migrancy as the mental reorientation which results from social, cultural, and economic changes among immigrants in their receiving states. This reorientation is not necessarily permanent, instead it is a liminal experience which allows migrants to move back and forth between the realities of their life as migrant and their existence as a member of the homeland community. In using this term, I borrow from Arjun Appadurai’s theories of identity politics. Imaginaries are self-constructed worlds which are buttressed by social, technological, cultural, and literary interactions with others in self-selected communities of interest. Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe (2000) point out that there is an increasing tendency toward ‘global literacy’, i.e., the ability to comprehend and converse in the internationally accepted language, mores, and culture of an interconnected world, among groups who use communications technologies to bridge time and space in order to connect with ethnic, national, and cultural communities across borders. For an interesting analysis of the similarities of these two imperial diasporas, see Rogers Brubaker’s Nationalism Reframed (1996). Despite Brubaker’s thoughtful comparison, there are few if any geopolitical imperatives that would cause Russia to follow the irredentist path trod by Germany in the interwar period.



17 In these cases European immigrants did not tend to view themselves as ‘traditional’ immigrants who would need to assimilate into the dominant society; instead they created parallel worlds which replicated their own legal systems, linguistic and educational norms, economic systems, etc. 18 Russians who migrated to Northern Kazakhstan, Belarus, and the Ukraine fit especially well into this analogy since they never crossed anything that could be considered a formal political boundary. 19 In fact, Russians in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) were denied the ‘special rights’ of nationality conferred upon other titular nations in their republics or autonomous regions. There was the perception of a type of national trade-off whereby the Russians were ‘at home’ anywhere in the USSR, while other nationalities received extra representation within their ‘homeland’ (see Suny, 2001: 252). 20 The nomenklatura were those individuals who were deemed politically reliable by the Communist Party to hold sensitive positions within industry and the cultural fields. Over time, these individuals grew into a blue-collar elite which was critically described by Milovan Djilas (1983) as the ‘New Class’ of bureaucratic officials which had supplanted the earlier capitalist-bourgeois elites of the ancien régime. 21 In both Estonia and Latvia, the non-titular population swelled due to massive inmigration of Slavs (principally Russians) during the decades of Soviet rule eroding the political position of the Balts. This phenomenon occurred after the liquidation and deportation of much of the Baltic States’ intellectual, bureaucratic, and economic elite. The impact was less severe in Lithuania due in part to its larger population. Today Latvians account for 56 percent of the population and Estonians for 62 percent of the population in Latvia and Estonia respectively. Russians represent 30 percent of both states’ populations. In Lithuania, the Russians are only 9 percent of the population and the Lithuanians enjoy a clear-cut majority at 80 percent. It has been suggested that the demographic superiority of the titular majority in Lithuania allows Vilnius to be magnanimous towards its Russian population. 22 The USSR’s annexation (deemed an ‘occupation’ by the Baltic Republics which maintained governments-in-exile during the Cold War) of the previously independent states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia during World War II and enduring Anglo-American support of these countries’ governments in exile engendered a categorically different worldview among the Balts towards the USSR than in other parts of the USSR which had been under Moscow’s rule much longer (with only a few brief interludes). Similar parallels can be drawn to the Moldovan response to Soviet rule since much of the republic had only been under Russian rule in the distant past. These societies did not believe there was any organic relationship between themselves and Moscow (unlike significant portions of the populations of Belarus, the Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia). 23 In my research, I did come across a handful of stridently nationalist web users (though they tended to use the internet only infrequently). However, it became obvious that such individuals developed and propagated their nationalist sentiment in offline settings and found the web to be ill-suited for promoting nationalism (because of its domination by ‘America’, ‘big corporations’, ‘the West’, etc.). The web thus provided these Russian nationalists with an additional tool to acquire information about the ‘fascist Latvian government’ or ‘American imperialism’ but was not especially useful in locating new adherents to the cause.


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24 Gellner (1983) suggests that the transition and accompanying uneven economic development were key components in the development of nationalism. The ‘havenots’ of modernity tended to radicalize around nationalist symbols and rhetoric. If the elites among the ethnic Russian community were to be denied access to the benefits of globalization (the early 21st century’s answer to the modernity of the late 19th century), one might guess that they too would similarly radicalize. 25 Russophones (russkoyazychnye) are those individuals whose mother tongue is Russian and who tend to identify with a Russian/Soviet identity. While all of my respondents identified themselves as ‘Russian’, many were in fact of mixed or nonRussian heritage. Such a tendency is increasingly prevalent among residents of the Newly Independent States who are neither ethnic Russians nor members of the titular majority, e.g., Ukrainians or Tatars living in the Baltic States or Armenians and Poles living in Central Asia. 26 The internet, as mentioned previously, has failed to become a major breeding ground for agents of Russian nationalism, precisely because those individuals who tend to be attracted to such messages are less inclined to be regular internet users. Target audiences among this demographic can effectively be reached through radio, television, newspapers, churches, and various civic organizations. 27 While I realize that in the United States and other parts of the post-industrial world, there is a proclivity among certain sections of the ultra wealthy to flee the city but to preserve many of its amenities through the use of information and communications technology. With broadband satellite, one can retreat to the wilds of rural America yet continue to remain connected to one’s business, trade stocks, watch 500 channels of television, and shop. Joel Kotkin has identified this as the Valhalla Syndrome (Kotkin, 2000). This phenomenon is, however, confined to a tiny elite in the wealthy countries of North America and Western Europe and has not (as yet) manifested itself in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. 28 Much of the research in the field of national minority internet nationalism has focused on those groups which have historically been deprived of a voice in mass media, e.g. Tamils in Sri Lanka, Kurds in Turkey, etc. 29 See Rofe (2003) for a fuller discussion of the terminology surrounding transnational elites. 30 Many of respondents in Kazakhstan based their perceptions of Germany and Western Europe on email and instant message communications with Kazakhstani Germans who, under Germany’s long-held repatriation policy for Volksdeutsche, chose to emigrate during the 1990s. While ‘ethnically’ German, these returnees were culturally Russian and were seen by the native German population as such upon arrival in Germany. These individuals tend to use the web to maintain contact with friends and family who stayed behind in Kazakhstan. 31 I borrow here from Rogers Brubaker’s essay ‘Beyond “Identity”’ (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000). Those internet-enabled Russians with whom I spoke saw themselves as set apart from the greater Russian community with whom they shared little in the way of collective action, disposition, etc. (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000: 7). This lack of solidarity seemed to be reinforced rather than diminished by the internet. 32 When I spoke with Kazakhstani Russians about going to another country, the destination of choice was typically Germany. Many maintained contacts with Russophones living there – typically ethnic Germans who had left Kazakhstan after



1991 under Germany’s repatriation effort which allows for the immigration of 225,000 Volksdeutsche per year. 33 Although, it should be noted that most Russians are visibly uncomfortable with the mantle of ethnic or national minority. Nearly 100 per cent of Kazakhstani respondents eschewed the term ‘national minority’ as did a vast majority of Latvian Russians. Besides the stigma associated with minority status, the legacy of the Soviet Union’s nationality policies dictates that, groups with an ethnic homeland whether it is the Russian Federation, the Republic of Kazakhstan, or Latvia cannot be classified as a national minority because they have someplace to ‘go home to’. Hence, the Latvian government only recognizes the existence of one national minority within its borders – the previously mentioned Livonians, a Finno-Ugric people who number less than 100 native speakers today – while classifying the country’s million or so other national minorities as ‘immigrants’ despite the fact that many of these so-called immigrants can trace their ancestry back to the mid-17th century.

References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Back, L. (2002) ‘Aryans Reading Adorno: Cyber-Culture and Twenty-First-Century Racism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 25(4): 628–51. Bhabha, H. (2001[1990]) ‘Narrating the Nation’, in V.P. Pecora (ed.) Nations and Identities: Classic Readings, pp 359–63. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Brockman, J. (1996) Digerati: Encounters with Cyber-Elite. San Francisco: Hardwire. Brubaker, R. (1996) Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brubaker, R. and Cooper, F. (2000) ‘Beyond “Identity”’, Theory & Society 29: 1–47. Dahan, M. and Sheffer, G. (2001) ‘Ethnic Groups and Distance Shrinking Technologies’, Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 7(1): 85–107. Deutsch, K. (1953) Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. Cambridge, MA: The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Djilas, M. (1983) New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Fishman, J.A. (1998) ‘Globalization at Work: The New Linguistic Order’, Foreign Policy 113: 26–40. Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hawisher, G.E. and Selfe, C.L. (2000) Global Literacies and the World-Wide Web. London: Routledge. Innis, H.A. (1972) Empire and Communications. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Jayasekera, R. (2000) ‘Waiting for the Kingdom: Nations in Cyberspace Are No Substitute for the Real Thing’, Index on Censorship 29(3): 140–5. Kaldor-Robinson, J. (2002) ‘The Virtual and the Imaginary: The Role of Diasphoric New Media in the Construction of a National Identity during the Break-up of Yugoslavia’, Oxford Development Studies 30(2): 177–87.


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Biographical note Robert A. Saunders is an assistant professor in the political science department at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey at Newark. He teaches courses on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, global Islam, and mass media. His research interests include transnational identity, politics in cyberspace, and national minorities. He has also taught at Wagner College, Monmouth University, and Fairleigh Dickinson University. He received his PhD in global affairs from the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University in 2005. Recent publications include ‘A Marooned Diaspora: Ethnic Russians in the Near Abroad and their Impact on Russia’s Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics’ in International Migration and the Globalization of Domestic Politics (Routledge, 2005). Address: Department of Political Science, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 360 Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd, Newark, NJ 07102, USA. [email: [email protected]]


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