In the words of the illustrious Sovietologist Alec Nove, Soviet sociologists were, despite the ideological constraints imposed upon them by the principles of Marxism-Leninism, “constructive dissidents” who went against the grain and anticipated social change.^[1] This progressive tradition pre-empted perestroika,^[2] and continued through a multitude of homegrown sociological works that have complemented Western studies on post-Soviet transformation.^[3]
Ranging from descriptive analyses based on opinion polls to theoretically grounded works,^[4] these inquiries provide a rich source of knowledge on post-Soviet society. To their polyphony of voices, and in continuation of the tradition of intellectual dissent, Lev Gudkov’s Negative Identity is a welcome contribution. In this collection of articles written in 1997–2002, Gudkov, a former student of Yurii Levada – himself a “constructive dissident” during the Soviet era – presents a full-frontal exposure of post-Soviet malaise. Using results of opinion polls conducted with collaborators at the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Social Opinion as part of the project entitled “The Soviet Ordinary Person,” as well as his exhaustive knowledge of Western sociological theory, Gudkov subjects post-perestroika society to an uncompromising scrutiny.^[5] Although these works were written within the span of five very different and eventful years in Russian contemporary history, they present a uniform, if somewhat redundant, set of arguments that cover such interconnected topics as Russian national identity, the rise of nationalism and xenophobia, the Chechen imbroglio, neotraditionalism, the impact of globalization, as well as the overall degradation of life including but not limited to the crisis of the education and legal systems.
In his attempt to decipher post-Soviet society, Gudkov identifies the main precepts of Russian national identity throughout the collection. According to the author, the post-Soviet collective mass subconscious is characterized by a concoction of nostalgia for the past, disillusionment with the present, resentment, apathy, and a combination of envy and admiration towards the West – feelings that can be best described as self-deprecating exceptionalism. This gloomy condition is further aggravated by the “eternal Russian ennui and reverie, Manilov-like sentimentality and lisping about high but ‘dead’ culture, an all-surpassing ‘spirituality’, along with a drunken tear about ruined and spoiled – by others! – life” (P. 282). In the “Structure and Character of National Identity in Russia” (1999) Gudkov attributes these elements of Russian collective psyche to an overall atmosphere of fear of, and yet, at the same time, longing for a collective ordeal. It is during wars and other extreme situations that the Russian nation shows its true identity (Pp. 122-146). Furthermore, he paints a grim portrait of people who, in their fear, have relied heavily on the protective power of the state throughout history, and are unwilling and unable to resist circumstances or foster change.
Unsatisfied with overused clichйs rooted in Russian Slavophile thought, and critical of the recurrent search for the recipes of the Russian national idea and ideology (P. 131), Gudkov turns to the Soviet past in search of explanations. He argues that it is the years of living under Soviet rule that have indebted post-Soviet society with a collective memory of deprivation, injustice and humiliation.^[6] It is this collective memory that continues to plague today’s Russians and to define their national identity and self-positioning in the world.
In looking for explanations, Gudkov refutes transition and modernization paradigms,^[7] and turns instead to psychology and theories of psychoanalysis. In “To the Problem of Negative Identification” (2000), he introduces the concept of negative identity. With some carelessness regarding sources (a fallacy of which he accuses others), the author shies away from mentioning the 1950s and 1960s clinical and psycho-historical writings by the father of the concept, Erik Erikson,^[8] and murkily reinterprets negative identity as “self-definition from the opposite” that is “expressed in the form of a negation of whatever qualities or values of that of its carrier – in the form of alien, repulsive, frightening, threatening, personifying everything that is unacceptable to the members of the group or a community, in a word, in the quality of an antipode” (P. 271; emphasis mine). He further extrapolates the notion of negative identity onto an entire post-Soviet society by pointing out that the society in focus is glued together by a common response to this negative (prohibited and feared) entity; in short, by its relation to what represents a taboo for the society (P. 272). The author concludes that such a society is based not on positive but on negative civic solidarity; in other words, on “unity in dependence, fear, resistance to any initiatives and stimuli that would lead to a higher productivity and intensiveness of achievements, to openness, good-heartedness, to an increased quality and value of actions.” This is a solidarity that leads to a “collective identity of baseness” (P. 283).
As clearly stated in the preface to this volume, “social asthenia, apathy, and indifference, a lack of – if idealistic – hope for a better future, and of aspirations of self-perfection” (P. 10) rules in Russia. As well as the present, Russian history is a subject of pessimistic, negative thinking. As follows from the “Victory in the War: To the Sociology of a Certain National Symbol” (1997), Russian citizens prefer “sacralization of victory” to “rationalization of history” and identify as the most important events of the 20th century wars and other catastrophes: the 1945 victory in the “Great Patriotic War” is considered by the majority of Russians as the defining moment of their national history, followed by the October Revolution, the Chernobyl tragedy, the dissolution of the USSR, and Stalinist repressions (Pp. 21-29). Russians therefore view their past as a “chronic of fatal, natural disasters, and of their surmounting” (P. 22). According to Gudkov, this catastrophic mindset is the corner stone of Russian mentality.
For Gudkov, the deficit in positive attitude multiplied by the hollowness of the intellectual space of recent years are products of the Soviet totalitarian past, as “the disintegration of a repressive society brings about no sense of release from the constraint of poverty, no feeling of being finally freed from eternal captivity. Neither is it accompanied by any particular enthusiasm, idealism or new-found universal love.” Quite the opposite, post-totalitarianism presents a deadly cocktail of collective depression and aggression: “in Russia communism gave way not to a new Silver Age, but to a futile era of imitation, postmodernism, universal piss-taking, xenophobia and Kremlin-led sobornost’.”
To support these claims and to complement the data received from opinion polls, Gudkov resorts to the debatable concept of totalitarianism. In “‘Totalitarianism’ as a Theoretical Framework: Attempts at Revision of a Controversial Concept” (2001), the author affirms that totalitarianism is an appropriate notion to be applied to the Soviet era. The author attributes the current Russian condition to residual totalitarian societal structures that influence the formation of mass consciousness (P. 419). The main argument running as a red thread through this volume is that contemporary Russian society is best understood as a post-totalitarian one, and that it is the lingering culture of homo sovieticus that impedes positive change. The narrative reaches its culmination when the author concludes that his is a society that is “empty from within” (Pp. 287-293), and then proceeds to ask whether an entire society can qualify as an immoral one.
As a totalitarian empire, the Soviet Union existed in the regime of chronic mobilization that made its citizens feel as if they were living in a constant state of emergency in an occupied fortress (P. 132). In the “The Ideologeme of an Enemy” (2001), Gudkov argues that the vestiges of totalitarianism such as hypocritical doublethink and moral relativism are complemented by a “combination of the official cult of heroism, self-sacrifice and hostage-taking” (P. 553), which still constitute part of the mind-set of the average Russian. Gudkov depicts the post-Soviet man as being overcome by panic and therefore comfortable with the overpowering role of the state that is perceived as a protector (“Fear as a Framework of Understanding of the Current State of Affairs” (1999)). The memory of years of repression has made out of this man a self-sacrificing ascetic with a victim’s complex. As Gudkov argues in “Complex of a Victim. Peculiarities of Russian Mass Self-perception as an Ethnonational Community” (1999), a contemporary Russian citizen is struggling with inferiority but is unable (yet) to fully break with the past and to take a fresh start.
In the “Attitudes in Russia towards the United States and the Problem of anti-Americanism” (2002), Gudkov contends that as a result of totalitarian legacy and of ensuing negative identity, Russians view themselves through their relation vis-а-vis the Other, which is a “demonized symbolic enemy” (P. 210). This Other wears different masks – the West, Chechens, oligarchs, NATO, mafia – and serves as a unifying ground and a raison d’être for the entire society that lives according to the principle “I hate therefore I exist” (P. 543). As Gudkov further notes in “Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia in post-Soviet Russia,” opinion polls show a rise in chauvinism towards the end of the 1990s as “people started projecting their own fears, flaws, tabooed desires, [and] motives” onto what they perceive to be their enemies (P. 200).
Linked to, and symptomatic of, negative identity are both xenophobia of the masses and “ideational” nationalism of the educated elites. Both are largely inspired by compensatory defense mechanisms (P. 205). The author ponders the disappearing gap between the intelligentsia and the average person, as the intelligentsia can no longer stand as a consciousness of the nation nor carry enlightenment and humanism to the “masses” (P. 206). Members of the intelligentsia have freed themselves from a sense of responsibility that was one of their definitional characteristics in the past. What is more, the level of intolerance rises in those with higher education, and is higher in Moscow than in the rest of the country (P. 209). Finally, it is among the youngest and the oldest generations that one finds the most alarming levels of xenophobia. While the opinions of fathers and sons might differ, grandfathers and sons share their beliefs (P. 188). Gudkov concludes that xenophobia is the price of centralization and strengthening state control.
Xenophobic and nationalistic beliefs often coincide with a neotraditionalist worldview, as ethnic phobias are part of neotraditionalist and quasi-traditionalist mechanisms of social regulation (Pp. 177-182). Social particularism and the rejection of such a precondition to modernization as the universal value system are part of the restorative tendencies and resurgence of traditionalism. In “Russian Neotraditionalism and Resistance to Changes” (2002), the author links collective depression and nostalgia for the past to waiting for a Russian national Renaissance, longing for empire, anti-Westernism, isolationism, revitalization of the image of an enemy as a functional composite of properly Russian attributes, and an overall simplification and conservation of debased perceptions about man and reality (P. 662). Gudkov writes: “the worst we are ourselves, the stronger our heroic-ascetic myth of the great past as a superpower, its instrumental achievements – in outer space and colonial ones from one hand, and non-real mirrors of our fantastic merits: we are simple, open, the most deep, cultivated, good-hearted, hospitable, ready to help, etc.” (P. 284). He attributes the resurgence of traditionalism to a general lethargy and aloofness caused by the totalitarian past and a general decay of the system.
Turning to theoretical premises laid out in this work, one cannot fail to notice that the author disparages fellow analysts who apply Western theory to the study of post-Soviet transformation. He criticizes transitology for misunderstanding the complex nature of post-Soviet social processes and for heavily overusing the Western concepts of “social stratification,” “middle class,” “social elite,” “representative system,” “presidential republic,” as well as the “ethic of entrepreneurship” and the “division of powers” and “civil society”; and claims these can be used but with reservation in the Russian case (P. 6). Yet at the same time, Gudkov resorts to definitely Western theoretical notions of negative identity and totalitarianism to prove his case.
Heavily indebted to the works of Western maitres, the author falls prey to the post-Soviet vogue of applying identity and personality theories to the study of society.^[9] Additionally, Gudkov does it in a rather repetitive manner: at times the reader is faced with the same account of the negative identity of post-Soviet society (with some paragraphs and arguments appearing copied verbatim twice or more throughout the book). It is therefore not difficult to imagine that these numerous articles present a better reading as separate pieces than as a collection.
It is with these reservations regarding the theoretical contribution of the author that one should approach this book. If done so, this compilation of articles can be of great interest to those looking for clues to the institutional and, most importantly, spiritual and ideational crisis that has overshadowed Russia during the “roaring 1990s”. Gudkov’s use of psychoanalytic theory provides an account of a deeply ill society suffering from collective depression and disillusionment with the reforms of the early 1990s. Written by a talented author, whose approach is from the Western tradition, the articles vacillate between serious scholarly analysis and social commentary (publitsistika), gravitating towards the latter. Hastily written and verbose at times, and lacking the profundity that one would expect from this reputed author, this volume is nevertheless a far better example of the many works that focus on the ideational vacuum that was created by the demise of Marxism-Leninism.