Crossing the Boundary into the Russian “Imagined Community?”: “Language”, “Culture” and “Religion” in Russian Media Discourse on the Integration of Immigrants

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Crossing the Boundary into the Russian “Imagined Community?”

“Language”, “Culture” and “Religion” in Russian Media Discourse on the Integration

of Immigrants

Christine Myrdal Lukash

Dissertation for the Degree of PhD

Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages University of Oslo

March, 2019

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Supervised by Professor Pål Kolstø (University of Oslo) and Associate Professor Andreja Vezovnik (University of Ljubljana)

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Notes on Transliteration

I have mainly relied on the Library of Congress Russian Romanization table, which can be accessed from https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf I have chosen not to transcribe hard sign. I have transcribed soft sign, except for names that are commonly

transcribed without it, such as “Eltsin.” I transcribe “ё” as “e”. With regard to names of places or indigenous peoples, I have transcribed these in the way they commonly appear in English language sources, for example “Biryulyovo,” instead of “Biriulёvo.”

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List of Abbreviations

CPRF

Communist Party of the Russian Federation DPNI

Movement against Illegal Immigration FADN

Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs FMS

Federal Migration Service KP

Komsomol’skaia Pravda LDPR

Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party MK

Moskovskii Komsomolets NEORUSS

Nation-Building and Nationalism in Today’s Russia RG

Rossiiskaia Gazeta ROC

Russian Orthodox Church Rosstat

Russian Federal State Statistics Service RSFSR

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic SPCH

President’s Council on the Development of Civic Society and Human Rights

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Crossing the Boundary into the Russian “Imagined Community?” Language, Culture and Religion in Russian Media Discourse on the Integration of Immigrants.

Christine Myrdal Lukash http://www.duo.uio.no/

Print: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo

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Abstract

The thesis studies how Russian national identity is negotiated in a hitherto little-explored segment of Russian public discourse: how the Russian “imagined community” is represented in print media discourse on the integration of immigrants. Second, I ask to what extent the images produced in the media correspond with the images of the Russian community conveyed in presidential discourse in the period 2000 up to 2015.

I adopt a discourse-based perspective on Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth’s idea of how group identities are maintained and reproduced as a result of perceptions of a boundary between them. I approach the research questions by investigating how the three diacritical markers

“language”, “culture” and “religion” function as boundaries of the Russian “imagined community.” The study shows how the three diacritical markers contribute to produce a variety of images of the Russian community. Yet, the most dominant image is characterized by internal uniformity and a culture that can be expanded to include immigrants.

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Professor Pål Kolstø at the University of Oslo, for his patience and thought-provoking comments throughout the long process of writing this thesis, not to mention my BA and MA theses. I also express my gratitude to my co-supervisor, Associate Professor Andreja Vezovnik at the University of Ljubljana, for advising me on discourse theory and discourse analysis. I am also sincerely grateful to Professor Vera Tolz, at the University of Manchester, who served as a discussant for my mid-term review. I also wish to thank my committee members Eleanor Knott and Peter Rutland for their constructive comments on the first version of my thesis.

My special thanks go to Professor Ljiljana Šarić for contributing to an inspiring academic and great social environment among the members of the “ILOS Area Studies Group.”

I would like to thank Tina Skouen for taking up the position as PhD coordinator at ILOS. Your advice on how to survive at UiO has been invaluable.

A great thanks to research coordinators Jon Anstein Olsen and Silje Mosgren for being so willing to my questions regarding practical issues.

To Marthe for being such a wonderful kontorkamerat.

To Egle for all the cups of tea and chocolates .

I am also indebted to my two copy editors: Susan Høivik for invaluable corrections, useful advice and encouragements, as well as updates from Sollihøgda and Italy, and Nicole Gallicchio for pointing to all my inconsistencies and advising me on how to weed them out.

This author is fully responsible for any inaccuracies or mistakes.

Now, to all of those who really and truly mean something. Mum, Dad, Håkon, Line, and Marius for great walks during weekends. All my good neighbors in Stjerneblokkveien who made me never forget that there is a world beynd academia. To Rehan for running the world’s best supermarket. To Beta, Milla, Akka, Katrine and those of you taking care of the

“big children” who have smiled at me every morning. All employees at Furuset Elementary School and Activity School Camp who are there for us every day. To the majority in-group among Oslo’s inhabitants—that is, those who live in Groruddalen. To the owner of the café at

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Furuset Bibliotek og Aktivitetshus, who makes the best coffee in the world. To those with whom I have shared study rooms at Furuset: keep up the good work! To the Night Ravens who are there when you end your work day at 11pm. To Kjersti for showing up for morning coffee at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday.

To my new colleagues at VID and my neighbors and hopefully future friends in Stavanger. I am speechless with gratitude for your warm welcome and generosity in what has truly been a hectic period of my life.

Last, but not least: to Mitja and BBB for always being there. I look forward to spending more time with you. Home is wherever you are.

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1 Chapter I Introduction

1.1 Research Question

This thesis is ultimately concerned with a question that has featured in Russian public

discourse for centuries: how do Russians understand what the Russian “imagined community”

is? The dissolution of the Soviet Union reinvigorated the quest to solve this riddle of the Russian national idea. In his 2007 Annual Address to the Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin referred to the search for a Russian national idea as an “old tradition, a favorite pastime.”

Today, well over 25 years into post-Soviet times, this search persists, but the underlying conditions have changed dramatically since the dawn of the post-Soviet era in the early

1990s. In his 2007 address, Putin also referred to national identity as a work in progress (Putin April 26, 2007; see also Blakkisrud 2016: 266). That constitutes the point of departure for this research project. My intention is to study how this work in progress unfolds in a little-

explored segment of Russian public discourse. I explore how the Russian “imagined community” is represented in Russian media discourse on the integration of immigrants.

I ask the following two main research questions:

1) How has the Russian national community been represented in Russian print media discourse on the integration of immigrants from 2000 and up to 2015?

2) To what extent does this “image” of the Russian community correspond with that conveyed in presidential discourse during the same period?

I approach these research questions by investigating how certain distinctive features—or diacritical markers—function either as boundaries between the members of the Russian in- group and members of out-groups or as a common ground for the integration of immigrants (see Barth 1969, 1994, 2000; see also Brubaker 2013). In turn, insights concerning the

boundary between the Russian in-group community and its out-groups can make it possible to identify core characteristics of the Russian in-group as an “imagined community” (see

Anderson 1991).

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The question “how do Russians see Russia?” encompasses the questions “who belongs to Russia?”, or “who are the members of the Russian community?” Approaching this question from the perspective of the integration of immigrants leads to a question of relevance also beyond Russia: “who can become members of the in-group community?”, or “who can cross its boundaries and become integrated?” Close examination of these questions should yield important findings pertaining to self-perceptions about Russian national identity today—

precisely where this study seeks to contribute to the literature on Russian nationalism and Russian national identity.

Project Affiliation

This thesis is part of the project “Nation-Building and Nationalism in Today’s Russia”

(NEORUSS), in which the overall aim is to investigate the “national question” in Russian discourse, and to determine to what extent Russian national identity is shifting away from an imperial (and implicitly multiethnic) understanding of the nation and towards an ethnic and exclusive one. The NEORUSS project addresses the following four key issues, all related to the development of Russian nationalism:

1) changes in political signals, as well as the state’s actual policies 2) the nationality issue among the opposition and political fringe groups 3) the role of the media

4) changes in the public mood

This thesis is situated within the scope of key issue number 3, the role of the media, which is narrowed down to Russian mainstream media. However, it is not a study of Russian media per se. What I offer is an in-depth study of how Russian national identity is represented in a specific discourse in Russian newspapers. Examining this discourse, I see print media as part of the Russian public sphere in which this discourse unfolds.

1.2 Theory Framework

On the theoretical level, this study approaches the issue of Russian identity by adopting a discourse-based perspective on insights about group identity that originate in anthropological

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3 studies. A key concept here is Barth’s (1969, 1994, 2000) idea regarding how group identities can be maintained and reproduced. To Barth (1969), identity construction takes place by accentuating how a group differs from other groups, by constructing a boundary between the in-group and those who are considered to be out-group members (see also Kolstø 2009: 16).

On the one side of the boundary, we find the Russian “in-group community.” To quote Anderson’s (1991: 6–7) seminal formulation, we may see this community as an “imagined community.” It is a representation. What brings together Barth’s idea of a boundary and the representation of the Russian community is discourse (Kolstø 2009: 17; Neumann 1999).

According to Barth (1994: 16), “An imagined community is promoted by making a few […]

diacritica¹ highly salient and symbolic, that is, by an active construction of a boundary.” In this thesis, I identify three diacritical markers that appear in both official and media discourse:

“language,” “culture” and “religion.” My main reason for choosing precisely these diacritical markers is their presence in both types of discourse. In the statements to the media, they are present in what I will term “critical discourse moments” (Chilton 1997: 12; Gamson 1992:

26). These are statements when the diacritical markers particularly visibly construct the boundaries of the Russian in-group community. Brubaker (2013: 3) identifies language and religion as “arguably the two most socially and politically consequential domains of cultural difference in the modern world.” However, the inclusion of “culture” among my diacritical markers cannot be justified in the same way. As Brubaker writes, culture encompasses both language and religion. The reason I include it as a separate diacritical marker is that it clearly functions as such in the empirical material. In this I follow Barth (1994: 12), who argued for a bottom-up approach to diacritical markers. It is not what the researcher sees as distinctive features of a given community that are relevant, but those that are invoked by members of the community themselves. In the current empirical material, “language,” “culture” and “religion”

are the three diacritica that have been identified as most saliently being constructed as boundaries of the Russian community.

1.3 Empirical Material

On the empirical level, the study brings together two types of discourse on the Russian nation and Russian national identity. My material consists of textual sources. First, I draw on a

1 This Greek term that Barth used means “distinctive features.” I use “diacritica” interchangeably with

“diacritical markers” throughout the thesis.

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collection of presidential addresses and articles from 2000–2015. Most of these are the Russian presidents’ annual addresses to the Federal Assembly, followed by opening and concluding speeches to Russia’s Council for Interethnic Relations and the International Valdai Discussion Club. These texts also include Putin’s article “Russia: The National Question,” published in Nezavisimaia Gazeta (henceforth NG). Together, these sources constitute what I refer to as the “official” or “presidential discourse.”² They all, in one way or the other, touch on the question of what Russia is, or what characterizes the Russian

community.

The second type of sources are statements expressed in some of Russia’s most widely read newspapers in their coverage of the integration of immigrants. By “statements,” I here mean accounts by interviewees, journalists and columnists, and others who have expressed

themselves to the media or authored texts published in the newspapers selected for this study.

These statements constitute the “media discourse.” Here, it is important to note that media discourse differs from media coverage in going beyond journalistic coverage of the topic. I do not focus on editorial lines or journalistic framing of the news. What I examine is how the contributions to the discourse represent the Russian “imagined community” in the context of the integration of immigrants. I focus on how the Russian community is constructed in this discourse. From this focus on discourse, it follows that I see the publications included in this study as representing a segment of the Russian public sphere in which this discourse unfolds.

In this thesis, I adopt a multiperspectival approach to discourse (Jørgensen and Phillips 2012:

4). Hall (2007: 201, see also Jørgensen and Phillips 2012: 1) defines a discourse as “a group of statements which provide a language for talking about—i.e. a way of representing—a particular kind of knowledge about a topic.” In terms of methodology, I integrate selected elements of Jørgensen and Phillips’ (2012) conversion of discourse-theoretical concepts (i.e.

Laclau and Mouffe 2001; Foucault 1972) into practical tools for analysis with the analysis of the statements as discourse. Addressing the three diacritical markers, I rely on an originally post-structuralist concept: nodal points, that is, themes that organize the discourse. By studying “critical discourse moments,” I focus on statements that can also be seen as challenging the limits of what is “sayable” in the current discourse (see Macgilchrist 2011:

11). As such, I am not concerned with mapping general tendencies of the discourse. In line with Macgilchrist (2011), I examine the specificities of each statement and how the

2 “Presidential” and “official” are used interchangeably throughout the thesis.

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5 representations of the Russian community produced by the statements relate to each other, and to those produced by the presidential discourse.

1.4 Underlying Rationale and Main Contribution of the Study

Why study representations of Russian national identity in discourses about the integration of immigrants? The main argument for presenting what might seem like just another study of the vague and often inconsistently used term “identity” is that—despite the abundance of existing studies—identity still matters (see Jenkins 2008). Its importance extends far beyond academic research. What we believe about who we are, and who we are not, is crucially important in everyday social interaction, although we may rarely be aware of this.

In the case of Russia, Hutchings and Tolz (2015: 1) pertinently note that their study of nation, ethnicity, and race on Russian television is ultimately concerned with the “conditions and prospects for statehood in Russia.” By the same token, a study that focuses on the topic of integration of immigrants is also concerned with Russia’s future: it concerns the various processes all aimed at incorporating new members into the Russian community. Thus, a study that approaches representations of the Russian community through the lens of perceptions about integration should ultimately be able to draw conclusions as to how Russians envisage their own society when this society is faced with prospective new members.

As Robarts (2008: 99) notes, the territory that once made up the Soviet Union has in post- Soviet times come to constitute one of the world’s principal migration regimes. As of 2013, Russia was the world’s second-largest migration recipient state (“International Migration”

2013). This makes studies dealing with migration and integration in Russia increasingly salient. Also relevant is the relatively recent shift in migration across the post-Soviet space from internal migration to international migration.

As time pushes the Soviet Union further back into the past, the cultural and linguistic influence of Russia across its territory decreases. Migrants formerly considered as fellow countrymen or recently having been such, are today increasingly perceived as ethnoculturally distant foreigners. At the same time, Russia in itself includes a considerable number of ethnic minorities, with those who identify as ethnic Russians making up approximately 80% (Kolstø 2016b: 35) of the total population. Thus, Russia constitutes an interesting case for a study of

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how perceptions of its own ethnic composition play out in approaches to the integration of immigrants. While migration to Russia rarely features in the headlines of (Western) European media, migration to and the integration of immigrants in Europe attracts attention in Russian media. In turn, that connects this thesis with the historical debate on Russian identity, where Russia is compared and contrasted with the West (see Neumann 1996; Nistad 2004; Tolz 2001).

Located in-between the issue of post-Soviet international migration and Russia’s own ethnocultural diversity is the perception of Russia as having an “inner abroad”—the non- Russian republics of the North Caucasus (Kolstø 2016a: 4). As Russian citizens, people hailing from these republics should, theoretically at least, fall outside the discourse on the integration of immigrants. However, occasional mentions in the empirical material

substantiate my argument that approaching Russian national identity as is done in this thesis provides a unique opportunity to uncover perceptions of Russia’s own diversity, or ideas as to who can be represented as Others, irrespective of formal citizenship.

Why has the topic of integration of immigrants in Russia remained underexplored? Part of the reason must be that there exists no comprehensive and consistent state program for integration in Russia. What I see as existing is an identifiable discourse on integration. Studying this discourse should make it possible to say something about how the idea of integrating migrants into Russian society resonates in Russia today—and it is relevant to the perennial search for a national idea in Russia. It is precisely this concern with a Russian national idea that has inspired the comparison of the two discourses in the thesis. Since the publication of Vladimir Putin’s (1999) “Millennium Manifesto,” statements that can be categorized as addressing Russia’s “national question” have recurred in presidential addresses and articles, under Putin as well as Medvedev. While I was collecting the empirical material, I identified the chosen diacritical markers as present in both types of discourses, and that inspired the element of comparison. However, I do not study these from the perspective of the possible effect of one type of discourse on another. No, I see the presidential discourse as a point of reference that exemplifies official representations of the Russian community. Against this backdrop, I study how images of the Russian community arise in the media discourse on this hitherto little- explored topic.

Thus, my study aims to contribute to the body of research on Russian national identity through the lens of discourses on the integration of immigrants. Within this frame, it sheds

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7 light on the topics of migration and the integration of immigrants in Russia, while locating Russia as a case of interest within the larger academic field of migration studies. Close examination of contributions to the discourse on the integration of immigrants in Russia can provide insights relevant to other migrant-recipient countries as well.

1.5 Literature Review

As noted, this thesis is intended as a contribution to the literature on Russian nationalism and Russian national identity—specifically to the integration of immigrants as reflected in the Russian public sphere. Focusing on the integration of immigrants, it also relates to the issue of migration more broadly.

The scholarly literature on Russian nationalism and national identity that concerns migration can be divided into three groups. The one group consists of studies focused on overt forms of racism and/or xenophobia (Leonova 2010; Shnirelman 2010). A second group deals with attitudes towards migrants, as expressed in statistical surveys and otherwise (Alexseev 2010, 2015; Alexseev and Hale 2016; Kosmarskaya 2016). The present work can be categorized within the third group: studies that analyze the media. This body of literature is small but growing. As Hutchings and Tolz (2015) point out, many contributions here have been studies of Russian print media or the Internet available in the Russian language, or shorter journal articles focused on specific incidents or single issues. Within this third general group, we find studies dealing with racism and xenophobia in the Russian media. There are articles and more comprehensive volumes, in both English and Russian (Iarskaia 2012; Shnirel’man 2007;

Svirina 2007).

Some studies of media representations of migrants employ content analysis, like Vera Mal’kova’s (2007) volume on representations in local newspapers of Moscow as a multiethnic city. Mal’kova found that the largest Moscow newspapers generally promote a Moscow regional identity and an atmosphere of peace and interethnic cohesion (Mal'kova 2007: 238). Employing a similar methodology, Schenk (2012) has studied representations of migrants and migration in local Stavropol’ newspapers, focusing on the coverage of events that started with a large street fight that resulted in the death of a Chechen student in 2007.

Among her conclusions is that by allowing oligarch-owned papers to print ethnically charged

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content, the Kremlin is showing tacit approval of these messages (Schenk 2012: 796).

A study of Russian media representations of migrants that does not directly link the findings to the national question in Russia is Titov’s (2004) article on how several major national newspapers construct migrants as “ethnic” migrants. This happens by implying that specific groups of people possess certain psychological and behavioral characteristics. According to Titov, this results in descriptions of migrants as either positive or negative. With the latter, newspapers characterize migrants by emphasizing features that evoke exclusively negative emotions from the reader, like fear or disgust. By contrast, when portraying migrants in positive terms, the journalist relates empathically to the individual migrant’s struggle to earn a living under difficult conditions (Titov 2004).

Some studies have assessed the link between migration and the national question or Russian national identity. Rybina (2014) employs critical discourse analysis to study representations of migrants in two Russian newspapers, Rossiiskaia Gazeta (RG) and Novaia Gazeta. She categorizes her empirical material in terms of four overarching themes: migration policy, the authorities, migration, and the national question (Rybina 2014: 41–42). Concerning the national question, Rybina finds that the issues of migrants and illegal migration are closely associated with both the national question and with tensions among the various ethnic groups residing in Russia—in particular, relations between ethnic Russians and North Caucasians (Rybina 2014: 52, 58). Davis and Sosnovskaya (2009) examine representations of otherness as a counterpoint to Russian national identity in the coverage of immigration in Russia’s four largest-circulation newspapers between January 1 and June 30, 2005, focusing on what attitudes these papers display towards immigrants.

Recent contributions on migrants and national identity construction in Russian media include those by Hutchings and Tolz (2012, 2015, 2016) and Tolz and Harding (2015). These

thoroughly analyze the role of the state-aligned television in representing and forming perceptions of national identity in Russia. Focusing on the period from 2010 onwards, they cover recent events such as the 2010 riots in Moscow’s Manezhnaia Square, the riots in the Biryulyovo district of Moscow in 2013, as well as the beginning of Putin’s third presidency in 2012. On the whole, these publications show that the discourse on ethnicity and nationhood conveyed by the state-aligned channels is neither coherent nor univocal, and may even be contradictory. Broadcasters tend to either overstate or to downplay the significance of

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9 ethnicity issues (Hutchings and Tolz 2015). Further, state television reflects the Kremlin’s promotion of ethno-cultural diversity in Russia, while also communicating ethnonationalist- friendly viewpoints (Hutchings and Tolz 2012: 896 and 2016: 328; Tolz and Harding 2015:

476). Analyzing TV coverage of the 2010 Manezhnaia riots, Hutchings and Tolz (2012: 897–

898) suggest that media coverage reflects deep uncertainties about how to define the Russian post-Soviet national community.

A study that occupies a special position as a forerunner to this thesis is an article by Berg- Nordlie, Aasland and Tkach (2010): “Compatriots or Competitors? A Glance at Rossiyskaya Gazeta’s Immigration Debate 2004–2009.” The three authors find that RG connected

migration primarily with problems in maintaining law and order, and with the issue of the Russian economy. As regards “law and order” the most frequently and thoroughly discussed topic was illegal migration, debated as a problem that needed to be solved. With regard to the economy, the RG articles tended to display a positive attitude to migrants, except for 2009, when the financial crisis hit Russia. Their study also found that the coverage on migration peaked in 2007, when new amendments to the legislative framework on migration entered into force.

Largely absent from the coverage was the issue of interethnic tensions. Berg-Nordlie, Aasland and Tkach (2010: 22) attribute this to RG’s position as an official newspaper. That might explain the tendency to avoid fueling interethnic tensions, and to aim at reflecting the Russian leadership’s official desire for stability.

At the other end of the continuum, Tolz (2017) has shown how race, religion, and nationhood played a prominent role in state-aligned television coverage of migration during part of Vladimir Putin’s third term in office. State-controlled broadcasters began to employ ethno- racial definitions of the nation. Their coverage systematically racialized Islam in particular—

in one instance even invoking the theories of Soviet ethnologist, Lev Gumilev, known for his unorthodox theories of eurasianism and ethnogenesis (Tolz 2017: 6). In their coverage of Western Europe, broadcasters emphasized how large numbers of Moslem migrants were threatening Europe’s traditional Christian values (Tolz 2017: 7–8).

The differences in findings can be explained by reference to both the two different types of media sources and the differences in the periods covered. Still, given the radically different findings in Berg-Nordlie, Aasland and Tkach’s and Tolz’ studies we may ask: what is

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articulated in the public space between these two extreme points? What is deemed permissible to express, in the public sphere, about the integration of immigrants in Russia today?

Whereas Tolz has studied media coverage, Berg-Nordlie, Aasland and Tkach focus on media discourse. That is also the point of departure for my study. As the intention is to contribute to the field of Russian nationalism and national identity, I have narrowed down the focus to an in-depth study of how the three diacritical markers function as boundaries of the Russian

“imagined community” in the current discourse on the integration of immigrants.

1.6 Empirical Backdrop

1.6.1 Migration

As Robarts (2008: 99) notes, the territory that used to make up the Soviet Union now constitutes one of the world’s principal migration regimes. According to the UN report

“International Migration 2013: Migrants by Origin and Destination,” Russia hosted the second largest number of migrants worldwide in 2013, surpassed only by the USA

(“International Migration” 2013). The vast majority of immigrants to Russia arrive from those member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that enjoy visa-free regimes with Russia.

According to material available from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), the top migrant-sending countries in 2016 were Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Moldova, and Kyrgyzstan (Surinov 2017: 84–85). Rosstat registered that in 2016, 575,158 individuals registered as immigrants in Russia³ (Surinov 2017: 84–85). Of these, 511,773 arrived from CIS countries, of which 141,855 were from the three Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Arrivals from the Slavic-speaking countries Ukraine and Belarus amounted to 192,864—the vast majority from Ukraine. The remaining 177,054 arrived from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and

Turkmenistan. With regard to other countries, China topped the statistics with 8027 registered migrants during the same period (Surinov 2017: 84–85). As Tetruashvily (2012: 62) explains, it is important to note that such figures show only the total number of foreigners who are

3 “Immigration” is here defined as registering as a migrant for a certain period of time. See Surinov 2017: 78 for an explanation to the figures.

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11 registered. The actual number of migrants staying in Russia is impossible to ascertain, due to illegal crossings of the Russian border, and also because initially legal migrants who have overstayed their visas or work permits may simply go under the statistics radar. Estimates of the number of illegal migrants in Russia vary from a few million to ten million or more (Kolstø 2016b: 41).

Soviet and Early Post-Soviet Migration Trends

Migration has occurred for centuries within the territory that today makes up the Russian Federation (Kappeler 2001). Over the ages, migration currents have assumed differing directions, depending on various push and pull factors. During the post-WWII

industrialization, internal Soviet migration currents went towards the Central Asian republics, with workers from other parts of the USSR arriving to work in newly established factories (Rybakovskii 2009: 304). Internal USSR migration also encompassed educational migration, army service, and forced labor migration.

Large-scale migration to the areas of what is Russia today got underway in the 1970s, when ethnic Russians began to leave non-Russian Union republics and settle in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) (Malakhov 2014: 1063). During the late 1980s, the same type of migration again occurred, but now due to violent ethnic conflicts. This flow of migrants, or displaced (first internally, then internationally) persons, continued into the 1990s, peaking in 1994, when 1,200,000 people crossed into the Russian Federation (Malakhov 2014: 1063). Most of these were ethnic Russians or ethnic groups that were targeted in their states of origin (Tetruashvily 2012: 54). Between 1992 and 2001, some 1.6 million out of a total of 2 million immigrants were granted refugee status in Russia (Zaionchkovskaia, Mkrtchian, and Tiuriukanova 2009: 54). A parallel development that occurred in the second half of the 1990s was that of labor immigration. In the mid-1990s, the vast majority of migrant laborers to Russia arrived primarily from the neighboring Slavic-speaking countries of Ukraine and Belarus.

Overall, in the period from 1991 to 2010, net immigration to Russia was 5,129,500, with approximately 80% arriving before the year 2000 (Vechkanov 2015: 37). During the same period, registered net out-migration amounted to 675,700 people (Vechkanov 2015: 38).

Here, we should note that although registered net in-migration was considerably higher than

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net out-migration, Russia experienced negative population growth during the same period, due to natural decline (Vechkanov 2015: 37).

Early Developments of a Legislative Framework in the Sphere of Migration Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia found itself without a legislative framework for regulating the steady streams of forced migrants from former Soviet states.

During the 1990s, the Russian legislative framework regarding migration consisted of laws regulating freedom of movement within the Russian Federation, laws on forced migrants, and the Law on Citizenship. It was not until 2002, when Federal Law No 115- FZ “On the Legal Position of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation” was passed, that Russia got its first law regulating “voluntary” migration. This law constitutes the basis of the current legislation on migration (Tetruashvily 2012: 55). The 2002 law was a response to what were seen as undesirable effects of the influx of refugees during the 1990s: informal sector activity, forced labor, human and drug trafficking, and corruption (Tetruashvily 2012: 54–55). The 2002 law imposed a strict regime for registration and the issuance of temporary resident permits and work permits.

Labor Migration and Liberalization

Over the next several years, Russia experienced a period characterized by economic growth as well as a contracting population. This meant a need for more imported labor, and here the 2002 law proved to be an obstacle. In 2007, a set of new amendments to the existing legal framework entered into force. The most profound change of relevance to labor migrants was that the responsibility for applying for and receiving a work permit was now shifted from the employer to the individual migrant (Tetruashvily 2012: 64). For the migrants, the

amendments ensured greater freedom and security, as they no longer had to depend on their employers for a work permit: they could now switch jobs according to their own preferences.

The amendments did not cause the actual number of migrants to Russia to increase, but more migrants now took the steps necessary to legalize their stay in Russia. Moreover, the

composition of the migration currents had changed since the mid-1990s. Whereas the

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13 majority had been coming from Ukraine and Belarus, by 2007 the main migrant-sending country was Uzbekistan, and the number of Tajik migrants was on the rise (Myhre 2012: 13).⁴

Tightening of the Migration Regime

As a result of the global financial crisis, in 2009, the Federal Migration Service issued a decree that largely reversed the more liberal 2007 regime. The most significant change involved stricter requirements for migrants to document that they had a labor contract if they wanted to prolong their stay in Russia (Tetruashvily 2012: 66). As many employers simply did not offer labor contracts to migrants, the result was that, initially, legal labor migrants became illegal migrants.

In 2010, Russian migration legislation began to differentiate between “foreign specialists” and other labor migrants. The former were defined according to salary levels, and were persons from countries without a visa-free agreement with Russia. As to the second category, CIS migrant laborers were now allowed to work legally for private individuals independent of the quota system, by obtaining a license called patent in Russian. In practice, the license system was similar to a system of advance payment of tax. Having applied for and obtained a patent, migrants could work for private individuals as long as they continued to pay the required patent fee. In 2014 alone, 2.4 million patents were issued. In 2015, the patent system was expanded to cover employment for entrepreneurs and companies (Chudinovskikh and Denisenko May 18, 2017). The number of patents indicates who were migrating to Russia at that time. Prior to the forced-migrant influx from Ukraine, more than 60% of those coming to Russia arrived from Central Asia: from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan (Streltsova 2014: 25).

Since January 1 2015, the duration of a migrant’s legal stay in Russia has been limited to a maximum of three months in the course of a six-month period. Labor migrants who overstay the three-month period will be fined and banned from entering Russia for the next three years (“Russia: Re-Entry Restrictions for Illegal Migrants” February 27, 2015; “On Amending…”

2014). Moreover, CIS residents—except for citizens of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan—are required to enter Russia on their external passports. And, in some regions,

4 After the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine in 2013, Ukrainian migration to Russia rose significantly, outnumbering the Central Asians (see, for example, Myhre 2017).

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patent fees have risen to such high levels that they equal two months of a full year’s salary (Chudinovskikh and Denisenko May 18, 2017).

1.6.2 “Compatriots”

An important distinction as regards categories of migrants is between “compatriots”

(sootechestvenniki) and “migrants.” “Compatriot” is a fuzzy category. When the Soviet Union broke apart, many ethnic Russians found themselves residing outside the Russian Federation.

Russia’s first attempt to solve at least part of this problem was to introduce legal dual citizenship with other former Soviet republics (Shevel 2011: 192, Zevelev 2008). However, some of the former Soviet states with the largest proportion of ethnic Russian residents—

Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan—did not accept dual citizenship. As a result, Russia shifted its focus towards what had been designed as a supplement to the strategy of dual citizenship:

the program called “Basic Directions of the Russian Federation’s State Policy Towards Compatriots Living Abroad” (Zevelev 2008).

In 1999, Russia adopted the Federal Law “On the State Policy of the Russian Federation Towards Compatriots Abroad.” This law defined “compatriots” as a) citizens of the Russian Federation living abroad; b) former citizens of the Soviet Union; or c) individuals who had emigrated from the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation, including their descendants. For those who were citizens of the Russian Federation, the law explicitly stated that self-

identification as a compatriot was voluntary (“On the State Policy…” 1999, Art. 3).

In 2010, the law on compatriots was amended. From now on, non-Russian citizens belonging to peoples who had historically lived within the territory of the Russian Federation could also be included in the “compatriot” category on the basis of individual self-identification (“On Amending…” 2010: art. 1). Moreover, according to the 1999 version of the law, descendants of members of titular nations in foreign states were not recognized as compatriots. In the 2010 amended version, this provision was deleted. As a result, individuals who could be recognized as “compatriots” under the 2010 law comprised a larger and more diverse group than under the 1999 version. Recognition as a compatriot means entitlement to apply for resettlement in the Russian Federation through the Compatriots Program. In 2014, the Federal Migration Service announced that more than 200,000 individuals had been resettled in Russia through the Program (Myhre 2017: 696). After the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine in 2013, Russian-

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15 speaking Ukrainian refugees constituted the majority of compatriots arriving in Russia

(Myhre 2017: 691).

1.6.3 Integration of Immigrants

So far, there exists no federal-level programs or established policy measures for the

integration of immigrants in Russia (Streltsova 2014: 28). President Putin raised the issue at a meeting of the Council for Interethnic Relations in October of 2016. He pointed out that Russia lacked sufficient legal norms, as well as organizational and economic instruments, to ensure the proper integration of immigrants. He also underscored the need for a federal agency (federal’nyi organ) with responsibility for this policy field (“Meeting of the Council…” October 31, 2016).

According to various news outlets, reports and other Internet sources, Russian efforts to integrate migrants have been fragmented, and depend on the capacity and willingness of local authorities or non-state actors. What could loosely be subsumed under the term “integration measures” exist mainly as legal requirements that migrants must fulfill to obtain residence or work permits, or as various courses in Russian language, history, and civics. However, these are not coordinated on the federal level and are not necessarily accessible to all migrants.

In 2012, the State Duma passed amendments to the laws “On the Legal Position of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation” and “On Education in the Russian Federation.” These required certain groups of foreigners to either produce sufficient documentation of their fluency in the Russian language or pass a language proficiency test in order to obtain a work permit. At the time, more than 160 test centers had been granted the right to conduct such tests (Streltsova 2014: 28).

In 2014, President Putin signed into law the Russian language, civics and history test given to migrants today. The test was drafted by the Ministry of Education and Science, but actual implementation was delegated to the regions. Thus, there is no uniform standard across the country as to costs and processing time (Ruget 2018: 25). The test is compulsory for migrants applying a work permit or a permanent residence permit. Exemptions can be granted to foreign specialists or citizens of countries belonging to the Eurasian Economic Union:

Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Moreover, citizens from areas where Russian has the status of state language may be exempted from the Russian-language portion of the

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test (Ruget 2018: 25). Centers to help migrants prepare for the exam have been set up all across Russia. This does not mean, however, that they provide comprehensive courses in Russian language and civics.

In May of 2017, Russia’s Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (federal’noe agentstvo po delam natsional’nostei, FADN) prepared the bill “On the Social and Cultural Adaptation and Integration of Foreign Citizens in Russia.” The bill calls for the establishment of adaptation centers for migrants, and requires that migrants prove successful adaptation in order to have their stay in Russia legalized (“On the Social…” 2017: art. 8, 9). Although the Bill was finally prepared by FADN in 2017, the first draft dates back to 2014, indicating the inertia that may attend the development of policies and measures in Russia.⁵

Information about organized integration measures in Russia is scarce. So far, research points to St. Petersburg as the most successful example of organized integration measures

(Rozanova 2014: 62). In St. Petersburg, the integration of immigrants has been incorporated under the two state programs for tolerance, adopted in 2006 and 2011. But, as Rozanova (2014: 70) notes, the integration component of the 2011 program is not comprehensive, and there is no guarantee that it will prove effective. Concerning Moscow, various news reports tell of the establishment of centers of adaptation and integration of immigrants. However, these centers do not seem to be part of a coordinated effort to ensure the integration of immigrants in the capital. Rather, the situation in Moscow seems to reflect the general

situation in Russia: responsibility for the actual organization of integration measures is shifted to non-state actors.

The Russian state has actively promoted the non-state sector’s involvement in the

organization of integration measures. Both the 2012 Presidential Decree on the Strategy of the State Nationalities Policy and the explanatory note to the law “On the Social and Cultural Adaptation” call for cooperation with volunteer organizations to assist the state in providing integration measures (see “On the Strategy…” 2012: Art 17.d; “Explanatory Note…” 2014).

In 2014, the Russian government introduced an amendment to the law “On Non-Commercial Organizations,” enabling organizations that dealt with adaptation and integration of

5 Note that the year 2017 lies outside the timeframe of this thesis. Information on the preparation of the Bill is included here because I see it as important background information.

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17 immigrants to register and apply for state funding for their activities (“On Non-Commercial Organizations…” 1995: Art 31.3, pp 15).

Among the non-state actors actively involved in integration efforts are religious organizations.

Information obtainable on the web indicates that these are mainly the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and various Moslem organizations. As yet, only the ROC’s cooperation with Russian authorities has been formalized on the federal level. In April 2013, Patriarch Kirill and Konstantin Romodanovskii, who headed the now-defunct Federal Migration Service, signed a five-year agreement on cooperation, “Enlightenment: Language and Cultural Adaptation of Migrants” (“Podpisano soglashenie…” 2013). Previously, the FMS and the ROC had cooperated on the local level. The territorial bodies of the Federal Migration Service of Russia had already signed 62 cooperation agreements with various ROC eparchies

(dioceses) (Shimanskaya 2016: 131).

With Moslem organizations and individuals, their involvement has been ad hoc and difficult to obtain information about. Similar to the ROC, the FMS has also cooperated with Moslem organizations on the local level. By 2013, this amounted to 35 agreements (Shimanskaya 2016: 131). According to the websites www.islam.ru and www.dumrf.ru, various local initiatives exist, but they depend on whether migrants attend their local mosques (“Politika DUM Rossii po sotsiokul’turnoi adaptatsii migrantov” 2011). In 2011, the Chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Ravil Gainutdin, explained to head of FMS Konstantin Romodanovskii that Moslem migrants tend to visit the mosques when they need help (“Politika DUM Rossii po sotsiokul’turnoi adaptatsii migrantov” 2011).

While the Moslem efforts are less well-known than those of the ROC, the Russian leadership has obviously endorsed the Moslems’ involvement. In 2011, President Medvedev expressed his gratitude to Russian muftis for their involvement in the sphere of integration, which he considered important in securing interreligious cohesion in Russia (“Dmitry Medvedev Met with the Muftis…” 2011). In the ensuing years, Putin reiterated Medvedev’s viewpoint when meeting with representatives of Russia’s religious associations (“Introduction to the

Meeting…” 2013; “Meeting of the Council…” 2014).

To sum up, it is difficult to achieve a full overview of existing integration efforts in Russia.

This is mainly due to it still being a non-existent policy field that can be about to emerge. This brings me back to my point that this study addresses the discourse about integration. In the

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Russian context, “integration” is first and foremost part of “the ‘reality’ that is entertained by the speaker” (Chilton 2004: 154).

1.6.4 The Role of the Other in Russian Identity Formation

Kolstø (2016a: 5) points to xenophobes as singling out Moslem immigrants as the main Other in today’s Russia. In a historical perspective, the idea of an Other in the formation of Russian national identity has been recognized as relevant by scholars.

The West

Perhaps the most thorough account of Russia and its Others is Tolz’ (2001) analysis of the West and the East as historical Others in Russian identity construction. Comparison with the West has been the most important element in modern Russian identity, beginning, with the reforms of Peter the Great, who aimed at westernizing Russia (Tolz 2001: 69). Throughout the centuries, intellectual discussions and cultural expressions in Russia have involved comparison with the West, emphasizing both similarities and difference. Among the central contributors to the discussion were two groups of the Russian 19^th century intelligentsia, the Slavophiles and the Westernizers. These differed in their beliefs as to whether Russia should admire the West and aim to follow it, or rely on what were seen as its own indigenous traditions.

After the 1917 revolution, Soviet images of the West became increasingly negative. In the interwar period, the USA replaced Western Europe as the geographical location of Russia’s constituent Other. After World War II, a mythologized memory of the Soviet victory became crucially important for uniting the Soviet people (Tolz 2001: 115). Soviet hostility towards the West increased during the early post-war years, due not least to the Soviet perception that the Western allies had deliberately delayed the opening of a second front during the war (Tolz 2001: 115). Later, intellectual discussions about Russia’s position in the world again centered on Russia’s relationship with the West. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was among those who adopted the position of the Slavophiles and advocated a special path of development for Russia. By contrast, those who argued that Russia should aim at getting closer to the West saw the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov as their main spokesperson. Towards the end of the Soviet era, Mikhail Gorbachev became the most prominent figure to be associated with

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19 pro-Western attitudes. He held that Russia had always culturally belonged to Europe and

“Western civilization” (Tolz 2001: 122).

Following the dissolution of the USSR, President Boris Eltsin and his government pursued a policy of integration with West European institutions and closer relations with the USA: in order to ensure future development, Russia would have to make sure to be included in “the civilized world” (Tolz 2001: 125). The efforts of the Eltsin leadership were not always popular. Criticism came from both the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), as well as individuals within Eltsin’s own administration. The general public also displayed anti-Western feelings, directed mainly at the USA, not Europe (Tolz 2001: 130).

The East

As Tolz (2001: 132) points out, “Russia’s agonizing ambivalence over its relationship with the West has raised inevitably the question of its relationship with the East, the ‘Orient.’” In the context of the current thesis, the Asian parts of the former Soviet Union are particularly relevant as they are home to a large proportion of those migrating to Russia. In many respects, Russia’s relationship with the East features an ambivalence. The difference from the West is that “the East” has been seen as either areas that were already part of the Russian state, areas that Russia was in the process of conquering, or areas which were considered possible to conquer in the future (Tolz 2001: 134). In the 18^th century, the Tatars from Kazan constituted Russia’s “Asians.” Historical images of the Tatar Mongol invasion stretched back to the 13^th century.

In the first half of the 19^th century, one region in particular came into focus as Russia’s Eastern Other: the Caucasus. Between 1801 and 1830, Russia annexed the territories of Transcaucasia. From the 1820s until the mid-1860s, Russia was engaged in war with the

“mountain dwellers” of the North Caucasus (Tolz 2001: 137). In the sphere of literature, the Russian people were introduced to the Caucasus by Pushkin’s poem “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” and the poems of Lermontov—in both cases, these featured a predominately imperialistic attitude towards the people of the Caucasus (Tolz 2001: 137).

Russia’s next area of expansion was Central Asia. After the takeover was concluded in 1885, Russian intellectuals began to view the region as Russia’s new “Orient.” Later, Far Eastern

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areas were annexed and came to serve as Russia’s “Orient,” though to a more limited extent than the Caucasus and Central Asia (see Tolz 2001: 139). With regard to relations with the West, these eastward expansions were promoted as evidence of Russia’s ability to carry out its civilizing mission in the East more efficiently than the Europeans (Tolz 2001: 140).

Importantly, alongside the attitude of the “Eastern” peoples as needing to become “civilized,”

the discourse also encompassed the view that Russia’s relationship with the East differed from that of Europe. Here, the conquered “Asias” were seen as part of Russia: and the peoples were seen as capable of achieving the same cultural and intellectual standards as that of European civilization (Tolz 2001: 141).

The general Russian attitude towards Asia changed little during the Soviet period. One point, however, deserves further attention. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the question of demography entered the discourse on Russian identity. The high birth-rates in Central Asia and the North Caucasus brought into the debate the argument that ethnic Slavs might find themselves outnumbered. As a result, some Russians came to see the “Moslem” as Russia’s main

constituent Other against whom to construct Russian national identity (Tolz 2001: 148). This brings us to the final type of “Others” in the Russian context: Russia’s own internal Others.

Today’s Internal Others

According to statistics from the Levada Center (see “Intolerance and Xenophobia” 2017), the groups towards which Russians consistently displayed negative attitudes in the period

between 2004 and 2017 were Caucasians and Central Asians, followed by the Chinese. Of these, the Caucasians consistently top the statistics as the group that most respondents held should be subject to restrictions regarding residency within the territory of the Russian Federation. These figures tell us that Russians’⁶ skepticism towards groups other than their own is expressed primarily as skepticism towards members of the country’s own citizenry.

During the same period, a stable percentage of 35–40% among those surveyed expressed positive attitudes towards realization of the slogan “Russia for Russians”—if carried out

“within acceptable limits” (see “Intolerance and Xenophobia” 2017). In 2005, a large-scale survey showed that Russians were inclined to over-estimate the numbers of certain ethnic groups in their home area to 2.5 times greater than the actual figures (Alexseev 2010: 171–

6 Note that the presentation of the survey does not contain information about whether the term “Russians” means Russian citizens or ethnic Russians.

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21 173). Anti-immigrant sentiments are also reflected in the popularity of the formerly leading nationalist organization Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), which was banned after the riots in Moscow’s Manezhnaia Square in 2010 (see Kolstø 2016b: 34).

Since the turn of the millennium, Russia has witnessed a series of clashes among ethnic groups.⁷ In 2000, the killing of an ethnic Russian in the town of Kletskaya in the Volgograd region resulted in mass demonstrations and attacks on local Chechens. In 2000 and 2001, Azerbaijani and Chechen vendors were attacked at Moscow markets, resulting in four deaths and numerous injuries.

In 2002, fighting between Russians and Chechens occurred in the Kurgan region and the Yaroslav region. In Moscow, young men attacked several Armenian families and demanded of the authorities that they “cleanse” the city of non-Russians after a perpetrator of Armenian descent had stabbed a Russian man with a knife in a Moscow bar. In the city of Nalchik, the local population and Chechen students were involved in two large-scale fights in 2003, beginning with the beating of a local resident on a bus.

In 2006, local residents attacked Caucasian individuals in the town of Kondopoga in Karelia, resulting in a massive violent conflict. The same year, members of the nationalist group “The Savior” (“Spas”) detonated a bomb in Moscow’s largest marketplace.

In December 2010, thousands of people gathered on Manezhnaia Square in central Moscow to protest the death of a Russian football supporter, Egor Sviridov, who was killed during a fight with North Caucasians in Moscow. In 2013, massive riots broke out in the Moscow region of Biryulyovo, after a young ethnic Russian was stabbed to death by a perpetrator assumed to be of migrant origin. The police later arrested a man of Azerbaijani origin for the murder.

While this account is not exhaustive, it shows that alongside the influx of migrants to Russia, members of the Russian in-group community have displayed a steady level of skepticism towards members of certain groups. Such attitudes have also found expression in numerous violent conflicts between ethnic Russians and members of other groups.

1.6.5 Summing Up

7 A list of ethnic conflicts/clashes can be found on the following web page:

http://www.pravdareport.com/history/10-10-2007/98545-ethnic_conflicts-0/.

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Russia is one of the world’s principal migration regimes. The majority of immigrants to Russia arrive from other former Soviet countries. Russia’s first law on migration was adopted in 2002. Since then, new legislation has been passed, aiming to control (and often restrict) migration to Russia. Since approximately 2007, migration currents to Russia have changed.

An increasing share of migrant laborers arrived from the non-Slavic republics in Central Asia.

Integration efforts are a relatively recent phenomenon in Russia and policy is still lacking.

Since 2004, Russians consistently displayed negative attitudes towards members of certain groups, among them the Caucasians. Moreover, since the turn of the millennium, Russia has witnessed a series of clashes among ethnic groups.

1.7 Research Context

1.7.1 Civic and Ethnic in the Russian Context

The two terms “civic” and “ethnic” occupy a special position in the literature on Russian nationalism. The civic/ethnic distinction gained currency in scholarly literature on Russian nationalism and other post-Soviet nationalisms after the dissolution of the USSR (Smith 2003:

75). Briefly put, the distinction between a civic and an ethnic understanding of the nation consists of whether national loyalties are seen as related to the territory and institutions of the state, or as defined by primordial ties.

A civic nation is usually defined in terms of either its citizenry or its common territory

(Brubaker 1996: 46; Kolstø 2000: 2), or as “bound together by voluntary, shared allegiance to political principles and procedures” (Smith 2003: 74). The term “civic” often encompasses systems of democracy or popular government and free and equal self-governing citizens as well (Smith 2003: 74).

By contrast, an ethnic nation is seen as held together by features such as common language, tradition, culture, religion, and folklore, and is not necessarily co-existent with the citizenry of the state (Brubaker 1996: 44; Kolstø 2000: 2). In Eastern Europe, the idea of an ethnic nation gained prevalence as part of the oppositional struggle against the rulers of the former empires (Kolstø 2000: 2).

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23 Assuming a critical perspective, Yack (1996) contends that both concepts are questionable in themselves. In making the claim that a certain nation is founded on purely civic principles, we tend to overlook that these principles are also loaded with inherited cultural content (Yack 1996: 196). Likewise, a definition of an ethnic nation must necessarily rest on the claim that the national community can be traced back to a distinct ethnic community—but such a definition overlooks the possibility of change in identification with the national community (Yack 1996: 202). Further, Goode and Stroup (2015: 719–20) argue that the persistence of the civic/ethnic distinction in the literature precludes the study of ethnic majority nationalism, as it shifts the focus towards ethnic minorities. On the other hand, as Barrington (2006: 12) points out, the civic/ethnic dichotomy is useful to the extent that it provides us with analytical leverage. According to Smith (2003: 77), scholars tend to agree that the labels “civic” and

“ethnic” are more a matter of degree than two distinct categories separated by massive walls.

1.7.2 Russkii and Rossiiskii

Moving from analytical categories to language in use, the distinction between a civic and ethnic nation is often coupled with the two terms that designate “Russian”: russkii and rossiiskii. Conventionally, russkii is associated with an ethnic understanding of the nation, while rossiiskii designates loyalty by citizenship and thus encompasses all citizens of Russia, irrespective of ethnic identification.

Today, rossiiskii is most commonly associated with former president Boris Eltsin’s usage of it, accompanied by the noun rossiiane, which he employed to refer to all citizens of the Russian Federation. Yet, the terms rossiiskii and rossiiane can be traced back to the 18^th century, as can the distinction between russkii and rossiiskii. As they were employed by Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin, russkii referred to customs and culture, while rossiiskii referred to what we today call a civic community (Tishkov 2009: 45; 2013: 4). According to Tishkov (2009: 46), the type of civic allegiance to the state that later came to be associated with the term rossiiskii had already arisen under Peter I and Catherine II and described a sense of belonging to the concepts of “fatherland” and “homeland.” From this, Tishkov argues for the existence of a historical rossiiskoe state, which should be considered a nation-state, irrespective of is multiethnic composition (see Tishkov 2013: 5–7).

As Tishkov (2009) points out, Russians use the terms russkii and rossiiski interchangeably in everyday speech (see also Goode 2019). Further, both terms can be broadened up and

Crossing the Boundary into the Russian “Imagined Community?”: “Language”, “Culture” and “Religion” in Russian Media Discourse on the Integration of Immigrants