Russia was an empire in a world of imperialism. But it was a peculiar Empire. Set apart by its vast territorial expanse and human diversity from the continental dynastic empires to which it was closest akin politically, Russia also differed intrinsically from the maritime colonial empires of Western Europe in the patterns, motives and consequences of its expansion. Not surprisingly, therefore, the question of Russian specificity has marked the starting point in discussions of theories and conceptual approaches emerging out of the Western colonial experience. Beginning with Edward Said’s pathbreaking work “Orientalism” and continuing with the now thriving field of post-colonial studies, scholars of the Western empires have offered both a stinging moral indictment of imperialism and powerful conceptual tools for understanding the cultural and political dynamics inherent in the European encounter with the colonial “Other”. Where does Russia fit into this body of literature? Is the moral outrage of Said and his successors justified or, more to the point perhaps, useful in understanding the complex interplay of force and accommodation underlying the Russian Imperial endeavor? Are the tools of post-colonial studies applicable to the Russian Empire? Can they be modified or enhanced to better address the particular features of the Russian Empire? Over the past few years, somewhat belatedly perhaps, Russian historians and literary scholars have begun engaging this problem.^[1] David Schimmelpenninck and Alexander Etkind in their respective articles develop this ongoing discussion in rich and thought-provoking new directions.
For both Schimmelpenninck and Etkind, Russian specificity marks the point of departure. Schimmelpenninck, in particular, reminds us of a basic ambiguity that immediately distinguished Russia from its colonizing contemporaries: Russia was itself deemed Oriental in the eyes of the West.^[2] Inevitably Russia’s dual position – dominating and dominated, orientalized and orientalizing – shaped conceptions of Russia’s mission in the East. Schimmelpenninck illustrates the breadth of opinion and underlying ambivalence in Russian Orientalism. The calm unquestioned assumption of cultural supremacy underlying Western colonial encounters was, perhaps, not so self-evident in Russia. For all the bellicose imperialist thunder of a Prezhevalsky or Skobelev, orientalist rhetoric in Russia was complicated and in some cases tempered by an uncomfortable sensation that “we too are Asiatics”. Ambivalence and insecurity can provoke a variety of responses, hence it is not surprising that Russian images of the Asiatic “Other” spanned a wide spectrum, from Borodin’s noble Khan Konchak, through Vereshchagin’s exotic barbarians to Prezhevalsky’s sub-human Asiatic swarms.
But was the presence of the relatively sympathetic views of the “Other” that Schimmelpenninck notes a distinctively Russian trait? Perhaps not. Alexander Etkind, in an intriguing expansion of Said’s model, notes a tradition in Western thought parallel to “classical Orientalism” in which the non-European “Other” was idealized as the embodiment of lost virtue. The trope of the “noble savage,” Etkind insists, is also Orientalism. Whether or not such an interpretation is compatible with Said’s original conception is debatable.^[3] But Etkind’s point resonates on a deeper level. Cultural projections of both varieties—the ignorant perfidious oriental on one side, and the noble savage on the other – are, in essence, components of the same overarching endeavor – the fashioning of group identity by means of the “Other”. If the “perfidious oriental” valorizes the image of rational, moral, civilized Western man, then the noble savage articulates the sensation of alienation and loss that arises with the onset of civilization and modernity.
In both of these cases, cultural distance serves as a vehicle for the expression of collective identity. But this collective identity must be achieved at the expense of an “Other” who is relegated to an implicitly subordinate relationship that many theorists choose to define through the concept of colonialism. This is where Etkind’s primary interest lies. As in the case of Orientalism, Etkind draws upon, but also substantially modifies, the concept of colonialism. He begins with the premise that cultural distance is a constituent element in colonialism: if there is no cultural distance, he notes, there can be no colonial situation. This may be true, but can we accept the inverse: if there is cultural distance, there is a colonial situation? Etkind’s argument would appear at least to point in this direction. If cultural distance is the key component of colonialism, he suggests, then why should we limit ourselves to the vertical axis of East and West? The horizontal divisions within a society can be equally powerful indicators of cultural distance and hence colonial relations. Broadened in this manner, the concept of colonialism can now be easily applied to Russian history. Russia’s colonialism, and hence Orientalism, Etkind suggests, was primarily directed inward at the Russian people themselves - the ignorant downtrodden peasants who occupied a place analogous to the distant colonial “Other” in the Western empires.
Etkind supports his argument by noting the many instances in which Russian elites have sought to distinguish themselves by accentuating the cultural difference between themselves and the common people, the narod. At times the separation was forceful and aggressive, as in the case of Russian autocrats who, as Richard Wortman has demonstrated, consistently portraying themselves as triumphant foreign conquerors subduing and bringing the benefits of wise and just rule to their subjects.^[4] Others such as the Slavophiles and Populists bemoaned the separation as a national tragedy. In both instances the essence of Russianness lay on one side or the other of the cultural divide. Etkind’s arguments here are on solid, and, I would add, well-trod historical ground. The gulf between educated society and the narod and the tensions introduced into Russian culture by Westernization are among the most familiar themes in the historiography of Imperial Russia.^[5] What is new is Etkind’s insistence that these cultural fissures can be understood as manifestations of colonialism.
Why paste a new label onto an old picture? For one thing, by portraying “internal” and “external” colonialisms as two sides of the same coin, one can posit a relationship between the two. In this vein, Etkind argues that Russia’s “internal” colonialism acted as a break on expansionist urges, effectively preventing Russia from following the example of its Western neighbors and building an overseas colonial empire. But in this particular case the facts are not especially convincing. Russia’s failure to develop a commercial maritime Empire along the lines of the British, Dutch or French can be explained by a number of geographical, economic, cultural and political factors without having to resort to the influence of “internal” colonialism. Moreover, Etkind introduces a rather artificial distinction in referring only to the lack of an overseas empire while neglecting geographically contiguous expansion.^[6]
Above and beyond the factual evidence justifying one aspect or another of Etkind’s thesis, one cannot help but wonder how useful it is to transplant historical concepts so far beyond their original setting. To be sure, Etkind has a valid point when he notes that theoretical constructions like Orientalism need not be set in stone; they can evolve over time and gradually come to encompass new meanings and contexts. On the other hand, just how far can one stretch a concept before it begins to disintegrate, losing its utility as an analytical tool in the process?
Etkind’s use of Said’s Orientalism illustrates in a very interesting and paradoxical manner the possibilities for slippage in the redeployment of concepts. By blending the “positive orientalism” of the noble savage into Said’s “classical” or negative Orientalism, Etkind arrives at a very broad definition. Orientalism, he suggests, is “any means for the marking of difference that blocks the intermingling, hybridization and assimilation of the Other.” Yet the one thing that can be said with certainty about Empires in general and the Russian Empire in particular is that they provided the means for precisely such an intermingling, hybridization and assimilation. Thus Orientalism, as Etkind describes it, would appear to be the antithesis rather than the correlate of Empire. It is the enemies of Empire – “freedom fighters” in the struggle for national liberation, nationalists ferociously proclaiming their cultural uniqueness – who would seem to be the most thoroughgoing practitioners of Orientalism. Where Orientalism holds the Other at a safe distance, denying the possibility of rapprochement or assimilation, Empire is driven by a transformative impulse. Empires draw their subjects into a common space and expose them to the cosmopolitan culture of the metropole, which takes on a life of its own, becoming more than just the culture of the titular nationality writ large.
Granted, the inclusiveness of Empire varies from one context to the next, and certain markers of difference are more easily transcended than others, but on the whole I am sympathetic to Etkind’s implied model of multicultural Imperialism. This was certainly not what Said had in mind, however, and I suspect he would be perplexed to see his ideas being used in what might appear to be an apology for empire. So do we really need to continue to use the vocabulary of Orientalism and Colonialism to describe these processes? Do these terms really lead us to new insights? The danger, it seems to me, is that while these terms can be stretched to a certain point, they remain rooted in their original contexts: Orientalism, for all the suggestive parallels that come to mind, is fundamentally about the Orient, which Said views mainly from the perspective of the Islamic Near East. Colonialism immediately evokes images of Caribbean plantations.^[7] In applying these terms in other contexts we are, essentially, suggesting a metaphor: the Russian agrarian heartland was, obviously, not an overseas colony, but perhaps there were some similarities. Up to a point such comparisons are undoubtedly productive and worthwhile. But in applying the same terms to describe both sides, do we not run the risk of conflating the metaphor with the thing in itself? Are we not in danger of substituting specific knowledge drawn from a detailed examination of particular circumstance with assumed knowledge deduced through application of a universal model?^[8] These are, of course, rhetorical questions, which can never be resolved or totally avoided, but they do raise doubts about Etkind’s internal colonialism thesis, notwithstanding its merits as a cultural metaphor.
If Etkind parts company with Said in his definition of Orientalism, he remains firmly in Said’s camp when it comes to the role of intellectuals in colonial subjugation. The participation of intellectuals in colonialism, in Etkind’s narrative, appears to be as inevitable and organic as mold growing on a week-old slice of bread. Once a colonial situation takes shape it is only a matter of time before ethnography, geography, and statistics, the quintessential sciences of Empire, also make their appearance. The fact that such fields were directed in Russia primarily toward the study of the Russian peasant is, in Etkind’s view, direct evidence of the colonial nature of Russia’s relationship with its own people. One wonders, though, how far this logic could be stretched. Ethnography, after all, was associated not only with colonialism but with nationalism as well. Should we therefore extend the “internal colonization” model to encompass the “national awakenings” of Eastern Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century and include such luminaries as Vuk Karadzic, Pavel Šafařik, and Jan Kollár in the ranks of outstanding colonizers of their own people?^[9]
Following Said’s lead, Etkind posits that intellectuals not only accompany colonialism, they make it possible. If cultural distance is the key enabling condition of colonialism, then intellectuals whose “work consists of the manipulation of cultural distance,” clearly have an essential job to perform. “It is for this,” he writes, referring to the task of establishing and maintaining cultural distance, “that historiography is created, novels are written, field work is carried out, and museum collections are formed.” Perhaps I am reading too much into this short passage, but Etkind’s formulation suggests at the very least a confusion of cause and effect if not outright reductionism. Cultural products from history to literature to museum collections may well have had the effect of affirming and reinforcing cultural distance, but to say that this is the reason why they were created in the first place means essentially to sweep away the multiplicity of interests and motives underlying the creative process and put in its place a single discursive imperative.
To readers of the recent exchange in the journal Kritika, these concerns will sound a familiar note. I return to this point, not merely to defend beleaguered intellectuals from the attacks of post-colonial critics who seek to implicate them in all nature of crimes and injustice. There is a deeper issue at stake here regarding the individual in society. Certainly, the idea of the individual as a fully autonomous actor with complete power to shape the surrounding landscape can easily be criticized as idealistic and theoretically naïve. But in rejecting one extreme, must we accept the other—an ultra-deterministic vision in which the individual becomes a mere illusion, as writers, scholars, politicians and ordinary people alike blindly act out the promptings of reified forces with names like Orientalism and Colonialism? There must be some kind of middle ground. To be sure, the reality of constraints on what an individual can think and do imposed by overarching structures of knowledge, power and historical context cannot be denied. But these structures can be seen not as the negation of human agency, but rather as productive matrices facilitating the consolidation and expression of the self. Just as literature would be impossible without the confining structures of grammar and syntax, and music is recognized as such by virtue of its adherence to a rigorous and complex tonal language, the expression of individual agency is inconceivable outside of a particular set of historical and discursive constraints. Such structures define the context in which agency is manifested and are themselves continually rearticulated and redefined through the workings of individual action and expression. To draw on a present day cliché for illustration, one can only “think outside the box” if the box is there to begin with, and once such a feat is accomplished, the box may well have a different shape.
How do these abstract speculations relate to the ongoing discussion on Orientalism? In effect, the ideas I have sketched out reinforce from a theoretical perspective what Schimmelpenninck has shown through specific examples. Yes, Orientalism was a subtle affair, an intellectual endeavor pursued in a context defined by imperialism but whose content was by no means dictated or preordained by the demands of Imperial power. Orientalist knowledge could certainly be used in the interests of power, but it could also provide fuel for resistance. And we cannot exclude the possibility that with regard to the functioning of empire on both a practical and conceptual level, the intellectual products of Orientalism could at times be simply irrelevant.^[10]
Putting polemics aside, there is no doubt that the issues of knowledge and power raised in Said’s Orientalism have proven a fruitful field of inquiry and debate. But discussions of Said have been going on for some time now, as Etkind points out, and have the potential to grow stale. At the same time, questions raised in recent literature could expand the Orientalism debate in new directions. Works that probes the problem of historical subjectivity and the formation of self, both on an individual and collective level, for example, could be of use in moving beyond Said’s overly deterministic use of the notion of discourse.^[11] Likewise, studies that explore the specific ways in which knowledge is mobilized in colonial situations could shed a clearer light on the often elusive connection between intellectual production, state violence and cultural domination.^[12] The issue is no longer, I think, whether or not Said’s orientalism is “applicable” to the Russian context. Etkind, Schimmelpenninck and previous writers, myself included, have noted the inadequacies of Said’s model, when applied in a direct and literal fashion to the distinctive conditions of the Russian Empire. But to note seeming incompatibility of Said’s conception with Russian Orientalism does not mean to negate the underlying issues that gave rise to Said’s work in the first place. By viewing from a critical perspective theoretical works like Orientalism, drawing on what is of use and combining it with rigorous empirical study we can address these issues without losing our sense of cultural and historical specificity.
Was Russia its own Orient? I, for one, am not completely convinced. But the problems raised in Schimmelpenninck and Etkind’s articles regarding the ways in which the internal dynamics of Russian culture and society shaped its character as an empire are of fundamental importance and deserve further study.