Russkiy Mir Executive Director Vyacheslav Nikonov will be participating in Global Policy Forum 2011, which will be held in Yaroslavl, Russia, September 7-8. Mr. Nikonov will be a moderator of the section Democratic Institutions in Multiethnic Societies. Ahead of the forum, he gave an interview in which he spoke about how cultural factors are becoming more important in the world.
– How important are cultural differences in the context of social conflicts that we see today in Europe, particularly in England? Do they matter at all or do these conflicts have some other origins?
– Certainly, culture always matters. Culture has an impact on all aspects of our life irrespective of what is going on, because every person is under influence of culture or subcultures of the country where he/she lives. There is no doubt that the latest events in England were partly caused by political factors, because people of mixed race constitute a majority of the population of Tottenham district, where the unrest began. There is no sense in denying that they belong to other cultures, not the British one, even if the British authorities were trying to portray the riots as mere hooliganism. Nevertheless, it is obvious that cultural differences played a role in the riots because the driving force behind them were those groups of population that are often being and feeling discriminated in London and other cities.
Generally, I would say that cultural factors are becoming more important in the world despite the fact that the end of the Cold War everybody thought that their role will decline. Actually, it is entailed by the growth of new culture groups within a lot of states, for example, in Europe. This provoked a strong backlash from the native population that is sometimes manifested in radical forms of nationalism, which we can see in all European countries. As a rule, today nationalists and nationalist parties gain political weight in the elections rather than lose.
– How can secular states deal with the problems related to religious identity of certain groups? On the one hand, religion is the private matter, but on the other hand, some of its manifestations can have the consequences for the whole society…
– Each country has its own answer to this question. Sometimes there is an official religion in some states, not only Muslim, but also European ones. Other countries seek to maximize the level of tolerance towards all religious groups. An example is the US, which is one of the most religious nations on the planet while its population is composed of people of many different confessions.
As for the Russian experience, I think that it is very interesting and could be used by other countries. Russia has been a multi-confessional state over the centuries, though it is difficult to overestimate the Russian experience and the role of the Russian Orthodox Church, because they are pillars of the Russian culture and identity. However, other beliefs have also left their mark on the character of our society, and attitude toward those beliefs has always been more than tolerant in comparison with other states. The Russian experience of peaceful co-existence of different religious groups within the same territory with the preservation of their identity is the unique contribution that could be made by our country to the world cultural heritage.
– Ideally, every citizen should be naturally interested in the welfare of the whole society. But because of the mass migrant flows and unsuccessful integration processes this formula does not work anymore. How can the state build the relations with its citizens if it is not sure that all of them are interested in the public good? Is it one more sign of the current crisis of the state?
– I do not think so. Perhaps, the situation has always been like that. I suppose that if all citizens were interested in the welfare of the society, there would be no need in the state or the society itself, because al problems would have been solved automatically. Unfortunately, it is not the case. There is nothing new in the modern world: as a rule, only the small part of the population takes care of the public god while the others pursue their own ends. However, it’s another matter that today large communities of people do not identify themselves with certain states or even territories. Such ‘citizens of the planet’ travel from one country to another without having any deep roots. This phenomenon caused by globalization challenges nation states and it will continue to do so in the future. However, one cannot say that the state is losing in these conditions its importance, its ability to influence the functioning of the society and resolution of ethnic conflicts.
– These and other issues will be debated in the Yaroslavl Global Policy Forum that you are attending in September. What are your expectations from these debates? What do you plan to say and what would you like to hear from other participants?
– I am responsible for the moderation of the very interesting section ‘Democratic Institutions in Multiethnic Societies’. Multiculturalism is one of the most discussed problems in the modern world. Three Western leaders – Merkel, Sarkozy and Cameron – said that multiculturalism is dead in their countries. A lot of events related to problems of multiculturalism have occurred in the world recently. We can remember Breivik, a real Norwegian brute who shot his young fellow citizens simply because he did not share their viewpoints, including ones on the racial problem. Moreover, there is the example of Tripoli, which was divided de facto into ethnic and tribal districts by rebels when they took the city.
Central ideas of the section are very urgent – for example, the problem of compatibility between multiculturalism and democracy. Some experts tend to think that it is more difficult to build democratic institutions in multicultural societies than in ethnically homogeneous ones. This is not true, because big multiethnic democracies and small mono-ethnic dictatorships are in abundance in the world and they exist at the same time. Another problem is how the cultural matrix determines the behavior of one state or another and what impact it has on its opportunities to build a democratic society. There is also a problem of the relationship between democracy and the digital world of network communications that is becoming more and more complex. This encourages rebuilding relations between states and a large number of people who exert influence on the former, including with the help of transnational means of communication, because the Internet community is transnational in its nature.
From my point of view, the section will be attended by very interesting persons, starting from Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation Valery Zorkin, head of the CPRF State Duma group Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Russia Vladimir Churov, and ending with former President of Indonesia Bacharuddin Habibie, Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova, and other interesting scientists and practicing politicians such as Zbigniew Brzezinski. We will see at our forum a wide range of other respectable outstanding figures of global intellectual discourse.
Yulia Netesova
