Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities

The Urban Landscape in the post-Soviet Era

Cordula Gdaniec, Cordula Gdaniec

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781845458317
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Anthropologie

Cultural diversity — the multitude of different lifestyles that are not necessarily based on ethnic culture — is a catchphrase increasingly used in place of multiculturalism and in conjunction with globalization. Even though it is often used as a slogan it does capture a widespread phenomenon that cities must contend with in dealing with their increasingly diverse populations. The contributors examine how Russian cities are responding and through case studies from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Sochi explore the ways in which different cultures are inscribed into urban spaces, when and where they are present in public space, and where and how they carve out their private spaces. Through its unique exploration of the Russian example, this volume addresses the implications of the fragmented urban landscape on cultural practices and discourses, ethnicity, lifestyles and subcultures, and economic practices, and in doing so provides important insights applicable to a global context.

1

Cultural Diversity between Staging and the Everyday

Experiences from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Other Russian Cities. An Introduction

CORDULA GDANIEC

A poster depicting flowers – but, interestingly, not people – and bearing the caption ‘the city consists of different people (gorod – edinstvo nepokhozhikh)’ can be seen in every Moscow metro station. The original Aristotle quote continues ‘similar people cannot form a city’. This implies that urban culture is necessarily diverse, multi-faceted, often contradictory, even conflicting. Cities are built on and develop through cultural diversity. More specifically, this poster indicates a unique situation in Moscow where, as the mayor quotes on the website of the House of Nationalities, ‘diversity is our wealth and beauty, and not a problem’¹, but where immigrants, or so-called priezzhie (newcomers, people who have moved to Moscow), are increasingly made to feel that they are only visitors or passers-by, who will not be given rights of the city or made to feel at home. These two quotes and the way they are presented are indicative of how cultural diversity is managed in Moscow, and in Russia more generally, on a discursive, official level that largely bypasses the realities of the multicultural everyday² in Russian cities and that also constitutes a global form of cosmopolitanism (Evans/Foord 2006). At many intersections of the urban landscape with its temporal axes these three levels, of course, merge or overlap, and cultural diversity is socially produced, implicitly, or even as part of the city's image strategy, by actors from the various groups of interest. Still, in every city there remains a discrepancy between an official rhetoric embracing on the one hand cultural diversity as cultural capital for the city and social capital for its inhabitants, and on the other hand the everyday experience of exclusion and racism or homophobia by the people embodying diversity. In Russian cities today this discrepancy appears to be greater compared to Soviet times and different in its causes and manifestations in comparison with cities in western Europe. However, many trends are rooted in current global flows and transformations, highlighting emerging similarities.

Diversity as Cultural Capital

Every city manages its intrinsic ethnic and cultural mix in a different way. While all cities are spatial and cultural manifestations of their multicultural society, representing a heterogeneous urban landscape as well as multiculturalism or cultural-diversity politics, some actively foster this cultural capital on several levels. With respect to the policy terms (and tools) ‘diversity management’ and ‘diversity mainstreaming’ (Fager 2006; Jung 2003), managing cultural diversity, in the context of this introduction, plays out on three levels: 1) that of city government and policy as well as public discourse facilitated by economic agents, state-run or private media; 2) that of organisations representing, or claiming to do so, ethnic or cultural minority groups; and 3) that of everyday social, economic or cultural practices. In Berlin, for instance, cultural diversity plays a central role in city marketing, in urban policy and in people's choice to either move to or visit Berlin (Färber 2005). The city authority's self-representation as an attractive business location and tourist spot, or the events listings (see Zitty and tip magazines), are testament to this cultivation of diversity as a positive and profitable aspect of Berlin culture (Knecht and Soysal 2005; Lanz 2007; Berlin Partner). Other cities promote their multicultural aspects only on an official and discursive level, and the existing multitude of different lifestyles and groups is tolerated rather than seen to actively constitute cultural capital. Moscow, for example, belongs to this latter group. In an age of cultural and economic globalisation and increasing transnationalism of people's lives, cultural diversity in the city is becoming an ever more important topic within certain branches of the economy, in politics, and, not least, in the everyday lives of the city's inhabitants (Hannerz 1993, 2000; McDowell 1999). It is also an increasingly urgent item on policy agendas as social and economic problems are becoming more and more racialised.

Beneath the official and public discourse of multiculturalism and tolerance in cities there lies, of course, an everyday where these discourses are taken as given and ‘function’ without any problem but are also experienced as intolerance and racism. Certain groups that do not form part of mainstream local or national culture (e.g., beggars, labour migrants, gays, subcultural youth) are forced to, or choose to, carve out their own, separate spaces within the city, construct urban niches for themselves, and negotiate visibility or rights within physical or media space. There is always a public sphere in which problems of intolerance and exclusion can be discussed and criticised, when they are addressed at all. By public sphere I mean the media, including the Internet and meeting places, such as cafés, NGOs (non-governmental organisations), events or demonstrations.³ This leads to two important questions for researchers: first, how do city governments and public discourses deal with this increasing multiplicity of urban culture, especially where it results in greater fragmentation of the urban landscape? and, second, how are the different cultures inscribed into the urban landscape? When and where are they present in public space? Where and how do they (have to) carve out their private spaces? The interaction between city governments and ‘cultural groups’ and the interaction between the appropriation of public space and of private spaces, which involves negotiations about contested spaces and cultures, is a crucial element of urban culture and the development of the social, economic and spatial fabric of the city. These are the questions that the authors in this volume are exploring in their respective case studies.

The authors in this collection present case studies of qualitative ethnographic research in a number of Russian cities on the theme of cultural practices and their spatial manifestation in the city, which I define in this context as urban culture (cf. Hannerz 1993; Zukin 1995). They examine four different perspectives of cultural practices within the urban context: ethnicity, lifestyle/subculture, gender and economic practices. The contributions explore the chances and limitations of various groups in Russian cities, as well as the official discourse on cultural diversity or cultural identity. Through this, they help to imagine how ‘open’ or ‘closed’ the respective city might be for diverse groups. A comparison with Western notions of the multicultural city, which was subject of the workshops in Moscow which this collection is based on, highlights the problematics as well as different approaches that can be found among Russian and Western researchers (cf. Malakhov 2007). More precisely, these essays give some insight into the spatial practices of groups of people beyond the Russian cultural mainstream – where and how they become visible (e.g., youth subcultures as explained by Irina Kosterina and Ulia Andreeva), if they choose to be visible at all (which is not necessarily desired, as in the case of lesbians and gays, explored by Katja Sarajeva), where they enter contested spaces (e.g., the spaces of street-level economy in Maria Scattone's contribution) and where they are (or want to be) part of a Russian social space (e.g., African volunteers in social projects as described by Svetlana Boltovskaya or labour migrants in the city as in the chapters by Olga Brednikova, Olga Tkach and Larisa Kosygina).

Because cities foster the development of culturally diverse environments, providing spatial and social niches for diverse cultural groups, the urban context is central to this book, and the various case studies seem to illustrate the concept of the city as assemblage (Venn 2006). Different temporalities and spatialities exist in cities side by side, which means urban niches for some and problems for others. In terms of governance this means management – in other words, control – of those elements of urban culture that fall outside the accepted, official (or mainstream) idea of the city. Those city dwellers in the perceived other spatialities or temporalities form part of the city, representing a normalcy of urban culture through their own everyday experience but also sometimes being aware of their anathema standing vis-à-vis the hegemonic structure. These Others, sometimes self-identified marginals, are not only migrants – i.e., representatives of the globalised or transnational urban population who are most visible – but also, and not to be neglected, other cultural minorities such as lesbians and gays, youth in subcultures, members of alternative cultures, members of minority religions, the disabled or representatives of low socio-economic status which together make up the social fabric of the large city. When looking at these populations and their positioning within the social space of the city one automatically also addresses policy issues and issues of power structures. With the city in a constant state of transformation, and not only in post-Soviet transformation, it is difficult to answer questions; or rather, the researcher keeps on discovering new important questions.

Managing Cultural Diversity in Moscow – Official Discourse, Public Rhetoric and Everyday Practices

‘There is this nationality: gastarbaiter’ ran the headline of an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda discussing the newly published novel, entitled with the Russian term for labour migrants leaned from the German word Gastarbeiter (‘guest worker’, Steshin 2007). The autobiographical novel by Eduard Bagirov appeared at a time when the issue of labour migrants and social problems associated with their increasing presence in Russian cities had reached a peak in the Russian and foreign media. The year 2006 was marked by a number of incidents involving migrants and people perceived as such, including numerous attacks and even murders based on racist motives (see Boltovskaya in this volume and Gdaniec 2008). Furthermore, the Rodina (Homeland) party created negative headlines during the Duma election campaign in autumn 2005 with a video that expressed the allegedly growing public sentiment that ‘Russia belongs to Russians’ (Siegl 2005; WCIOM Sep. 2006). Bagirov's story of arriving in Moscow from Turkmenistan and finding first work through small ads in the papers in the semi-legal world of dubious retail firms in the mid-1990s is interesting not only for its insider description of this part of the post-Soviet retail and service economy but also for its frank account of the personal experience of everyday racism (see, e.g., 105f, 125ff). Thus, at a time of a steep increase in violent incidents, real and reported, there has also come a heightened awareness of xenophobia in Russian cities, especially St. Petersburg and Moscow. The novel's publication was accompanied by a large-scale media and advertising campaign, prompting critical discussions of the subject in the media, the quality of which was new in the otherwise conservative Russian media not renowned for their awareness of this subject. Indeed, the media have been proven to play an important role in reproducing stereotyping and prejudices through their use of language and slant in reporting (based on discourse analysis of Moscow media within the Berlin-Moscow research project; see also Karpenko 2002; Malkova 2005). The book title alone is a confrontation of this subject in the ‘megapolis’ Moscow that has an estimated 12 million inhabitants, an increasing proportion of whom have moved there, but where native residents (korennye Moskvichi) still maintain a certain snobbism (Bagirov 2007: 84; see also Gdaniec and Ovchinnikova 2006) that places ‘Others’ firmly in a separate category.⁴ In popular discourse they are not even considered residents of the city, a fact that was sorely brought to attention through comments by Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov in response to the accident at Baumansky Market in February 2006. The roof of the market building collapsed under a heavy load of snow in the very early hours, which meant that those who were buried under the rubble had slept at their work place. There were many casualties, injured and several dead, and the mayor very quickly announced that ‘only a few Muscovites had suffered’ (various press, e.g., Tichomirowa 2006). While it emerged in subsequent media coverage that the deceased were originally from Azerbaijan it is also clear to those who know how Russian markets are run that these transnational migrants have a base in Moscow, that they may well consider Moscow their home and that they are spending or have already spent a considerable amount of time, part of their life in Moscow (cf. Brednikova and Tkach in this volume; see Gessen 2006). It is an unwieldy bureaucracy and popular discourse that prevent migrants from acquiring citizens’ rights or even legal status as resident. Even when they have the necessary documents they are still discursively constructed as outsiders, as marginals, as the term ‘gastarbaiter’ indicates.⁵ This trend to exclude migrants from city spaces culminated in a law preventing people not holding a Russian passport from working in markets. It came into effect in April 2007, with the immediate result of some markets closing altogether and the others being left half empty (see Brednikova and Tkach in this volume).

Fig. 1.1: ‘The city is made up of different people’, Moscow. Photograph by the author, 2006.

It is within this setting that we need to consider the current official staging of the multicultural city. The most prominent space on the official multicultural scene is the Moscow House of Nationalities (Moskovskii Dom Natsional'nostei, or MDN), which opened after long and heated discussions in October 2003 (Khabenskaya and Filippov 2007). This House is a representational object of Moscow city government for its multicultural commitment and a physical space for associations of ethnic communities. However, it provides room only for associations that claim to represent the interests of their respective diaspora by trying to preserve the traditional ethnic culture, and many are shaped by the personal interests of their chairmen (Khabenskaya and Filippov 2007: 3). When visiting the MDN I found it difficult to access and was provided little information. On entering the restored nineteenth-century usadba, or manor house, you are greeted by two security guards who will permit your entry only if you have an appointment or are on the list of invited guests for an event, and only after they have checked your passport. I had an appointment with one of the higher-ranking civil servants there to find out about their programme, their aims. After a near interrogation about the Berlin House of World Cultures (HKW), which the civil servant regarded as a model for the MDN and sought to establish contact with, I was offered a little book about the history of the building and an issue of the city government bulletin which included information about the administration of the MDN. I also got a tour of the building with its conference hall, offices and the corridors which would host exhibitions by artists representing various ethnic cultures. What I did not receive was a programme or mission statement, and subsequent research revealed that there is none. The events taking place at the MDN are not open to the general public, as they are not generally advertised and they lack a common theme. Like the atmosphere in the House, they exude a Soviet-style, hierarchical and ideological quality. Events included a seminar series ‘Inter-ethnic consent and safety in society’, a round table on ‘Spiritual and material culture of the Buryats’, a concert to celebrate the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland and a meeting of the group organising the ‘Days of Slavic Writing and Culture in Moscow’ (Khabenskaya and Filippov 2007: 7). Interviews with members of various ethnic minorities in Moscow indicated that this sort of paternalistic representation of ethnic communities was not desired by many representatives and that they clearly did not (want to) belong to a community, or that one cannot speak of ‘the Armenian community’, etc. Except in virtual space, that is, on the Internet, the House of Nationalities is largely invisible in Moscow as it does not figure on the cultural landscape, neither in the What's On magazines nor on posters.

Once a year the official multiethnicity of the city does enter a visible central stage, though: The official celebrations of City Day (Den’ Goroda) take place on Tverskaya, Moscow's main street, in front of the mayoralty. Only invited guests are allowed on the tribune and the entire section of Tverskaya is closed off for half the day, heavily guarded by police and OMON.⁶ Those who are interested can watch the show on TV Tsentr, City Hall's television station. In this highly staged event the mayor presents himself not just alongside other Moscow political figures but also next to the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. On the stage, below the statue of Yuri Dolgoruky, the city's founding father, dance ensembles and bands perform traditional folkloristic pieces. Apart from traditional Russian costumes, music and dance there are some performances of Other ethnic folklore, which amounts to an official demonstration of the multiethnicity that is the city's ‘wealth’ (see above). Another item on the programme is the annual award ceremony for ‘the best in their professions’, in which a number of citizens are rewarded for outstanding professional achievements. The pictures thus produced form part of the city's imaginary that is still deeply rooted in Soviet iconography and policy: Moscow as the centre of the multinational Soviet Union and the communist world, with connotations of the capital of an empire, which it clearly was before the Russian Revolution. Whether this stage is in actual fact more visible than the MDN is debatable. The programme of all the festivities includes many stages throughout the central city and at least one in each administrative district with different musical and other shows which are not explicitly dedicated to the multicultural city. Most central streets are closed to traffic for the day, which renders the city almost eerily quiet for usually it is teeming with traffic. People walk along them selling small Russian and Moscow flags. Many families with children and groups of youth enjoy a day out. At the same time as people are strolling around, workers of the municipal services are already out there sweeping the streets, collecting the litter. They are conspicuous not only because of their bright orange vests but also because they all appear to be migrant workers ...