4th Workshop of the Anglo-French Russian Studies Network 

Centre d'études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-européen, Paris, 24-26 Octobre 2008

Solidarities & Loyalties

in Russian Society, History and Culture

  Loyautés et solidarités en histoire Russe

L'objectif des workshops franco-britanniques en etudes russes consiste a soutenir l'internationalisation de la recherche sur l'histoire politique, sociale et culturelle de la Russie au sein de l'Union europeenne. Il s'agit ainsi de combler le manque de communication entre les chercheurs du monde anglophone et ceux du continent europeen. Jusqu'ici, cette initiative a reuni les chercheurs en histoire russe de l'universite d'Oxford, de la School of Slavonic and East European Studies (University College London) et le Centre d'Etudes du Monde Russe, Caucasien et Est-Européen (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales). Cependant, nous avons l'ambition d'elargir ce reseau a d'autres pays et d'autres institutions. L'un des aspects importants de notre reseau etant d'encourager la communication et de reconnaitre l'usage de plusieurs langues de travail.

The purpose of Anglo-French workshops in Russian Studies is to support the internationalisation of research into Russian history, society and culture within the European Union. In this we seek to counteract the regrettable lack of communication in this field between scholars from the English-speaking world and those from the European continent. So far, this idea has brought together researchers in Russian history and culture from the University of Oxford, the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (University College London), and the Centre d'Etudes sur la Russie, le Caucase et l'Europe Centrale (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales). However, we hope that with time the network will grow to include other countries and institutions. An important component of encouraging communication is the recognition of numerous working languages.

The first Anglo-French workshop in Russian Studies was a one-day event that took place at the Maison Francaise in Oxford on 4 Oct 2003, and the second in Paris at the Maison des Sciences de L'Homme on 27-29 Oct 2005. Recently, a third workshop took place at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (UCL) in London on 18-20 May 2007. For the fourth workshop, taking place in Paris on 24-26 October 2008, we intend to expand the pool of speakers to include scholars from other European countries.

The past two decades have seen the study of Russian history increasingly move beyond ideology and political institutions towards a broader understanding of society and culture. Re-examining Russian history through the prism of solidarities and loyalties offers an original approach to identifying the underpinnings of politics and society, the connection between overarching structural relations that govern Russian life, and concrete strategies of individuals who live and act in this society.

Recent research into idiosyncratic forms of social interaction typical of Russia and the former USSR (including, especially, systems of institutional patronage, communal 'joint responsibility', and the economy of favour-exchange) has revealed to what extent Russian/Soviet society has been held together by something more than the force of political ideology and propaganda, coercion and conformism, or indeed, a culture of covert resistance to these.

What is emerging is a remarkable patchwork of different types of social bonds, where actions and attitudes are governed by a multiplicity of competing and conflicting solidarities and loyalties, operating simultaneously at different levels and in relation to a whole variety of collective units or social institutions (state/nation/fatherland, political party/charismatic leader, class/educational stratum, civil society/civic associations, ethnic/local community, kinship group/family, peer group, generational cohort, professional corporation, industrial/commercial structure, religious organisation/faith community, etc.).

Studying solidarities and loyalties in Russian history and culture provides a particularly useful framework for understanding not just intra-group dynamics, but also how social agents are caught up in inter-group relations. Similarly, this approach becomes key to conceptualising areas of mixed loyalties and solidarity conflicts, thereby identifying fissures or distortions in the social fibre of Russian society. Finally, a historical examination of solidarity and loyalty raises a whole host of overlapping issues, including the question of trust in Russian society, the issue of political legitimacy, and the problem of a fragmented social identity, which emerge as crucial to fathoming Russia's difficult transformation into a (post)modern democracy.

Our workshops seek to investigate the diversity of solidarities and loyalties in the socio-historical, political and cultural evolution of modern Russia from the sixteenth century to the present day. Particularly striking in Russian history are the discrepancies between macro- and micro-loyalties/solidarities, i.e. those pertaining vertically/centrally to the state/Party, fatherland/empire and monarch/leader, versus those functioning horizontally/peripherally at the level of one's ethnic/tribal/familial community, local power-structure, profession/occupation, or peer group. However, such discrepancies cannot be taken for granted as simply belonging to parallel and structurally independent social dimensions. The complex interweaving and conflict of loyalties/solidarities at different levels enable one to question and refine the very idea of the centre-vs.-periphery opposition in the workings of Russian/Soviet societies.

Evidently, many of these questions have been most consistently developed in the field of history and the social sciences; yet it should not be assumed that the study of culture is excluded from such deliberations, given the central role that literature and the other arts have played in forging Russia's self-identity. In particular, given the extent to which much of Russian cultural production has been rooted in the experience of exile and emigration, a cultural perspective is especially useful in examining the problem of loyalty (whether to an inaccessible homeland and a deracinated language, or to a new host environment) and solidarity (between fellow exiles, and across border) beyond Russia's political boundaries.

Finally, solidarity and loyalty should be understood not as concepts with a single, unequivocal meaning, but as a 'package' of related and overlapping problems that include trust, alliance, identity, 'otherness', power, interest, symbolic/economic exchange, legitimacy, collective/personal responsibility, tradition, ideology, and group culture more generally. Understanding all the different aspects and forms of solidarity and loyalty, their various mechanisms and outcomes, the diverse ways in which they are perfomatively expressed or ideologically represented, necessitates the interaction of a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives - sociological, anthropological, psychological, historiographical and semiotic.

The nature of solidarities and loyalties in the history of Russian society will therefore be examined in all its complexity, at the level of institutional organisation as well as in the way solidarities and loyalties are manifested in everyday reality. Solidarity and loyalty will be analysed as they are inscribed in texts, routines, rituals and other concrete social practices, in the way they inform social psychologies as well as individual actions, and finally, as they embody overarching political relations governing the structure of Russian society as a whole at different times in its history.

© 2008 Solidarities & Loyalties in Russia, Oxford-SSEES-CNRS. All rights reserved.
Revised: August 15, 2008