How the Russian nationalist movement is Splintered by Ukrainian Maidan? Identifying ideologyical determinants by means of empirical data & mixed methods

ТЕОРИЯ, МЕТОДОЛОГИЯ И МЕТОДЫ

DOI: 10.14515/monitoring.2016.6.01 Правильная ссылка на статью:

Rotmistrov A., Popova P. How the Russian Nationalist Movement is Splintered by Ukrainian Maidan? Identifying ideological determinants by means of empirical data mixed methods // Мониторинг общественного мнения : Экономические и социальные перемены. 2016. № 6. С. 1—13. For citation:

Rotmistrov A., Popova P. How the Russian Nationalist Movement is Splintered by Ukrainian Maidan? Identifying ideological determinants by means of empirical data mixed methods. Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes. 2016. № 6. P. 1—13.

A. Rotmistrov, P. Popova HOW THE RUSSIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT IS SPLINTERED BY UKRAINIAN MAIDAN? IDENTIFYING IDEOLOGYICAL DETERMINANTS BY MEANS OF EMPIRICAL DATA MIXED METHODS

HOW THE RUSSIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT IS SPLINTERED BY UKRAINIAN MAIDAN? IDENTIFYING IDEOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS BY MEANS OF EMPIRICAL DATA MIXED METHODS

РОТМИСТРОВ Алексей Николаевич — кандидат социологических наук, доцент кафедры методов сбора и анализа социологической информации НИУ ВШЭ, Москва, Россия. E-MAIL: alexey.n.rotmistrov@gmail.com ORCID: 0000-0003-2386-8710.

ПОПОВА Полина Артемовна — магистрант НИУ ВШЭ, Москва, Россия. E-MAIL: polina.popova@gmail.com ORCID: 0000-0002-7667-148X

Аннотация. В статье рассмотрен ряд аспектов российского националистического движения в контексте украинского Майдана осени 2013 — зимы

HOW THE RUSSIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT IS SPLINTERED BY UKRAINIAN MAIDAN? IDENTIFYING IDEOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS BY MEANS OF EMPIRICAL DATA MIXED METHODS

ROTMISTROVAlexey N.1 — Candidate of Sciences, Associate Professor E-MAIL: arotmistrov@hse.ru ORCID: 0000-0003-2386-8710

POPOVA Polina A.1 — Graduate Student E-MAIL: polina.popova@gmail.com ORCID: 0000-0002-7667-148X

Abstract. This paper addresses questions concerning the Russian nationalist movement in light of the Ukrainian Maidan revolution and its political and

cultural consequences. We argue that these questions have been rarely raised by an academic community in spite of the relatively large amount of works focused on the Ukrainian crisis. Furthermore, we show how the Ukrainian events caused profound changes in the Russian domestic politics which should not be overlooked. This paper considers how the organizations belonging to the Russian nationalist movement reacted to the Ukrainian events. The types of their reaction vary from supporting Maidan and decrying the Russian policy in Ukraine to decrying Maidan and supporting the Russian policy in Ukraine. We tried to identify those organizations& ideological basics, which explained differences in the types of their reaction. Information concerning these processes was gained by means of mixed methods. We combined a qualitative flexible interview format and text analysis with their formalized analogues. After organizing the raw data into the matrix, we used log-linear analysis, which showed that only four ideological basics out of the six explored ones played the statistically significant role as predictors. These basics are the standpoints regarding the USSR and type of their nationalism, the adhering to racism and preferences regarding the Russia&s territory.

Первая часть: http://wciom.ru/fileadmin/file/monitoring/2015/129/2015. 129_1_Popova_Rotmistrov_Tolstova.pdf

Ukraine has marked the third anniversary of Maidan. This event (empirically described in details in many works, e. g., in [Cybriwsky, 2014]) was followed by significant changes in political and economic domains of the European continent and the global

arena. These changes affected the field of international affairs dramatically and echoed in political articles both in Europe and in the USA.

It seems to be the appropriate time to draw a summary of the scientific reflection of these changes. This reflection is concentrated in more than 100 relevant documents, which were published in the period of 2014—2015 years. These documents may be divided into a number of categories according to their authors& exploring focus. It is depicted in [Rotmistrov, 2015] that the bulk of these authors pay especial attention to the geopolitical dimension of the Ukrainian crisis. These scholars tend to consider the restricted list of actors, such as President Putin and his entourage and the G7-governments. From this standpoint, Ukraine is considered not as an agent, but as a middle link of the West-Russia confrontation and geopolitical trends of the crisis.

On the other hand, only the minority of the authors explore domestic Ukrainian processes, which preceded Maidan, comprised Maidan as a whole, and followed it. Some of the authors emphasize the nationalism&s and fascism&s exertion significance in these processes. It is noticed that the link between nationalism, civil society, organized crime, and protests has been under-theorized and often ignored by political scientists; but academic discussions and scholarly analysis of Ukrainian and Russian nationalisms should not ignore all of these aspects [Kuzio, 2014; Phillips, 2014; Polyakova, 2014; Shekhovtsov, 2014].

It may be concluded that the question of the Ukrainian crisis, its reasons and consequences has been extensively posed in academic literature. However, the academic community has rarely raised the question of a Maidan&s impact on the Russian domestic politics. Meanwhile, the Russian domestic politics and the Russian foreign policy are interdependent. That is why we deem reasonable some shift of scholars& attention from the Russian foreign policy to the Russian domestic politics.

The Russian domestic politics, alike Ukrainian one, consists of official and unofficial sectors. As in Ukraine, Russian radical nationalists, who sometimes proclaim a revolutionary agenda, play significant role in the unofficial sector. Studying dynamics and peculiarities of the Russian nationalist movement makes it possible to draw meaningful conclusions on the Russian domestic politics& nature and its possible influence on the Russian foreign policy.

In the present research, we try to classify the Russian radical nationalist movement according to its reaction to Maidan and its consequences. The main question to what the study is addressed is what determinants affect these or those nationalist organizations& reaction types to Maidan. We presume that this research&s results may contribute to understanding of the Russian nationalist movement structure and its possible tracks in the future.

The Russian opposition is strongly affected by the Ukrainian events

We suggest shifting of scientific attention from the Russian government to the Russian opposition including its nationalist sector. The case of Ukraine demonstrated that sometimes a seemingly stable government is overwhelmed by a political force which emerges unexpectedly. That is why it is deceptive to concentrate just on governments as the predominating actors of states& politics.

In the present research, Ukraine is considered to be a subject of the influence and Russia as an object thereof. By observing the situation in the Russian domestic politics over the past 10 years, one may discover that it is strongly influenced by political events in Ukraine. First of all, the «Orange revolution» (empirically described in details in many works, e. g., in [Khmelko, 2014]) in 2004 had a profound and continuing effect on the Russian protest movement. Its impact continued until 2014 and peaked in 2012 when the presidential election in Russia took place and the radical opposition denied its results. Some opposition leaders attempted to replicate partly the Ukrainian Maidan&s scenario and agenda in Moscow, in Bolotnaya square (one of this study&s authors observed this phenomenon with his own eyes).

Studying the Russian nationalists and their reaction to the Ukrainian events by means of mixed methods

The contemporary Russian radical nationalist movement is seemed to be studied poorly [Polyakova, 2014; Соколов, 2004: 303—305]. The authors on the issue and their main works are reviewed in [Ротмистров, Толстова, Попова, 2015]. That is why we have been conducting the research on the Russian nationalist movement since 2013. This research&s general structure and methods were as follows:

The research included several iterations. Its first iteration was performed using only flexible qualitative methods of gathering information. These methods were combined into case study procedures. The cases for these procedures were the Russian nationalist organizations. The research&s last iterations were performed by much more formalized methods of gathering information such as content analysis and semi-formalized interview with the organizations& representatives. The matrix comprised of the organizations and their features had been created on the first iteration, then it was enlarged and elaborated by means of content analysis. Finally, this matrix played the role of guide for semi-formalized interviewing the organizations& representatives. They agreed or disagreed with our estimates of their organization&s features and commented these estimates.

When carrying out the study, we assumed the Russian nationalist movement&s heterogeneity concerning the reaction to the Ukrainian events. It was the starting point for our

main hypothesis. After confirming it, some interesting questions and assumptions arose. Those are: what are the clusters that the Russian radical nationalists are divided into regarding the Ukrainian events? How acute is the discrepancy among the organizations, which we distributed to the different clusters? Probably, the most interesting question is how the organization&s features which comprise the matrix mentioned above, affected the organization&s reaction to Maidan and its consequences. Our main hypothesis is that the following characteristics affected the types of reaction mentioned above:

Their preferences regarding 4) the Russian&s territory,

The Russian radical nationalists classification in regard of their reaction to the Ukrainian events

We explored how the Russian nationalist organizations reacted to the five Ukrainian events:

It was argued in [Rotmistrov, 2015] that the Russian radical nationalist organizations had to react to those events, and the types of reaction extremely differ one from another. The each reaction type&s specificity became a basis for a classification in the mentioned paper. Here, we reproduce briefly each cluster&s characteristics and then provide some models which may explain each cluster&s specificity.

In the mentioned paper, we distributed the exploring organizations into three clusters by means of latent cluster analyses (LCA). We chose LCA because of the exploring variables (i. e. the exploring organizations& attitudes towards the five Ukrainian events) scale type and because LCA incorporates exhaustive statistical tool for assessing a cluster solution&s quality (see more in [Magidson and Vermunt, 2014]). The gained three clusters are described in Table 1.

Table 1. The organizations& positions regarding the Ukrainian episodes

Cluster ^ The attitude towards -l «Dominant» (15 organizations) «Transitional» (7 organizations) «Marginal» (10 organizations)

The mass protests against the corrupted government in Kiev Contra (all organizations in the cluster) Pro (all organizations in the cluster) Pro (8 of organizations in the cluster)

Cluster ^ The attitude towards l «Dominant» (15 organizations) «Transitional» (7 organizations) «Marginal» (10 organizations)

The demand for closer partnership between Ukraine and the EU Contra (all organizations in the cluster) Contra (6 of the organizations in the cluster) Contra and Pro (4 of the organizations in the cluster)

The Crimea-Russia reunion Pro (14 of the organizations in the cluster) Pro (6 of the organizations in the cluster) Contra (8 of the organizations in the cluster)

The East Ukrainian separatists Pro (14 of the organizations) Pro (5 of the organizations in the cluster) Contra (6 of the organizations in the cluster)

«Right sector» Contra (all organizations in the cluster) Contr (all organizations in the cluster) Contra 5 of the organizations in the cluster)

The first cluster consists of 15 organizations; and represents the bulk of the organizations. All of them decry both Maidan and «Right Sector» and support both the Crimea-Russia reunion and «Novorossia». Such a position is considered to be in line with the mass opinion predominating in Russia. Because of such accordance and because almost half of the exploring organizations were ascribed to this cluster, we decided to name it «Dominant».

The bulk of the organizations from the second cluster differ from the cluster mentioned above in only one aspect: they do support Maidan as a mass protest. Those organizations& representatives told that they admitted spontaneous nature of Maidan protest because they shared «street democracy» principles. Some organizations ascribed to the second cluster support Euromaidan&s pro-European orientation.

In contrast, the organizations from the third cluster demonstrate the position that is deemed much more divergent from the first cluster because they either decry the Crimea-Russia reunion or «Novorossia», or support «Right Sector». Such a position seems hardly acceptable for any considerable part of the Russian society.

If drawing an intermediate conclusion, one may agree that the assumption of a profound split within the Russian radical nationalists is confirmed. This split has happened due to dramatically different outlooks which had been developed in the Russian nationalist sector since the Ukrainian revolution had broken out. These differences in outlook show us the organizational and partly ideological crisis which the Russian nationalists have faced in consequence of the Ukrainian events. The crisis seems to be so severe that some nationalist organizations stopped their activity. Moreover, many Russian nationalists take part in the war both on the Ukrainian official side (the Ilya Bogdanov case) and on the separatists& side (the Alexey Mil&chakov case).

What determinants may affect the organizations& reaction to the Ukrainian events?

Let us consider those organizations& characteristics, which were described and systemized in [Ротмистров, Толстова, Попова, 2015] and presumably predict their types of reaction.

All the six characteristics are considered in details in [Ротмистров, Толстова, Попова, 2015]. That paper provides the organizations distributions according to these characteristics and log-linear analysis of how these characteristics are interrelated. Below we present the log-linear analysis of how these characteristics affect the types of organizations& reaction to the Ukrainian revolution and its consequences.

Why log-linear analysis is appropriate for identifying the exploring determinants in redard of their effect on the organizations& reaction to the Ukrainian events?

We assumed that all the mentioned organizations& characteristics possibly exert their influence on organizations& functioning. These characteristics comprise the ideological basis of each exploring organization. Consequently, their leaders presumably

needed to take into account their organizations& ideological basics when deciding on how to react to the Ukrainian events. This need may be indicated by the statistical associations among the organization belonging to any cluster out of the three mentioned above and their explored ideological characteristics.

Statistical associations may be found by means of a wide range of methods. But the specificity of our task leads to some limitations on the method choice. The first limitation is rooted in a small number of objects—33. The small number of objects often leads to sparse data problem when building multiway contingency tables. The second limitation refers to the type of characteristics scaling. The exploring characteristics belong to categorical scale type, including dichotomous. In other words, distances between any pairs of categories (e. g., «Secular», «Orthodox Christian» and «Slavic pagan») of the exploring variables (e. g., «The organizations& preferences regarding religious arrangement») could not be measured. Moreover, in this case and analogous ones even the order among the categories could not be identified. That is why many popular statistical methods, including the bulk of regression types, are inappropriate for our task. The third limitation has to do with the multidimensionality. In terms of regression modeling, we have the six hypothetical predictors, which may affect the cluster membership variable directly and indirectly. Moreover, these predictors may take part in interaction effects. That is why two-dimensional statistical methods are inappropriate for our task.

Taking into account all the mentioned limitations, one may agree that log-linear analysis is suitable method for the task completing. This multidimensional method handles with categorical variables and includes regression modeling with interaction effects. Its basics are described in details in [Upton, 1978]; its history and principles are described in [Upton, 1991].

In regard of our issue, log-linear analysis makes it possible to perform the following logical and mathematical tasks:

— to exclude the predictors which do not take part in any kind of statistically meaningful association;

— to arrange the rest variables according to their effects on the other predictors and on the cluster variable (analogously to path analysis).

How the chosen determinants statistically affect the organizations& reaction to the Ukrainian events?

It was analyzed more than 100,000 models comprised of any possible predictor combinations. Log-linear analysis has indicated that two out of the six hypothetical predictors do form statistically meaningful direct combinations (at the 95 % confidence level) with the dependent variable (the cluster membership). In other words, if one imagine the matrix consisting of 33 rows (the organizations) and 6 columns (the organizations& ideological characteristics), the data in two of the columns may be organized successfully according to the cluster membership variable. These two predictors are the organizations& standpoints regarding the USSR and type of their nationalism.

The built model is reasonable to be considered in terms of a forecast. Let us scientifically imagine the ways, which the radical nationalist organizations& leaders passed, when coming to their tactics concerning Maidan and its consequences:

— the organizations and their leaders may be distinguished according to their standpoints regarding the USSR. If their standpoint is positive they may not drop in the «Marginal» cluster with high probability (8/9). In other words, they very probably could neither decry the pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine nor support «Right Sector».

— the organizations and their leaders may be distinguished according to the type of their nationalism. If they weakly associate their nationalism with the ethnicity they may drop in the «Dominant» cluster with high probability (10/18). In other words, they very probably could both support the Crimea-Russia reunion and pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine and decry Maidan and «Right Sector». In contrast, if leaders& and their organization&s strongly associate their nationalism with the ethnicity they may not drop in the «Dominant» or «Transitional» clusters with high probability (8/11). In other words, they very probably could decry the pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine and support «Right Sector».

These predictors& affects are depicted in the gray realm of Table 2. Among the rest four predictors are those, which affect the dependent variable indirectly; they are: the organizations& adhering to racism and their preferences regarding the Russia&s territory. Thus, the organizations& adhering to racism affects the cluster membership through their type of nationalism and the organizations& preferences regarding the Russia&s territory affects the cluster membership through their standpoints regarding the USSR. These indirect influences are depicted in the white realm of Table 2.

Table 2. The scheme of the organizations& ideological characteristics effects on their types of reaction to the Ukraine events

The predicting direction The predicting direction

Adhering to racism

Type of nationalism

Standpoints regarding the USSR

Preferences

regarding the Russia&s territory

Yes -No + Rare usage of terms associated with the ethnicity in the organizations& documents + Dominant 4 4

Frequent usage of terms associated with the ethnicity in the organizations& documents - Dominant Transitional

Marginal - Positive - Only the realm of the Russian majority

Notions: «+» positive association «-» negative association

— Thus, if the organizations and their leaders do not adhere to racism they may weakly associate their nationalism with the ethnicity with high probability

(19/25);

— if they prefer Russia to occupy only the territory where Russians are the ethnic majority they exactly do not have the positive standpoint regarding the USSR with (probability = 1).

Finally, other predictors do not statistically affect the organizations& types of reaction to the Ukrainian events directly or indirectly.

The research&s next iteration was interpreting the discovered regularity. For this task, we appealed to i) the regularities, discovered in [Rotmistrov, Tolstova, Popova, 2015] and to ii) the organizations& representatives. In the mentioned paper we argued that the standpoint regarding the USSR plays a key role among the nationalist organizations& ideological basics. Some organizations consider the USSR as the Russian Empire successor in developing the Russian culture and geopolitical subjectivity. It was very likely that these organizations dropped in the Dominant cluster because in their outlook Ukraine remains a part of the Russian culture and territory; and they consider Europe as a hostile geopolitical subject. On the other hand, one may see the organizations, which decry the USSR and consider the Russian Empire to be outdated. Generally, they share the European principle of national state. Then, because of racism, they feel themselves Europeans rather than «Rossiyane» (the official term, which is to replace the term «Russian»). That was why it was very likely that these organizations dropped in the Marginal cluster.

Conclusion

Our main hypothesis is partly confirmed. It seems that we managed to find out some ideological basics which are relevant to the deciding processes in the exploring Russian radical nationalist organizations. These basics refer to some values which, been understood, may help dealing with Russian nationalists.

Dealing with Russian nationalists may become actually in a medium term. Although they are undergoing the severe crisis mentioned above, the downtrend in their social power may give the way for an uptrend. Thus, the Ukrainian nationalist movement was in a profound crisis just recently in the early 2010s [Likhachev, 2013: 63], but now their leaders are presented in the Ukrainian Parliament and in many departments of the Ukrainian Government, e. g., D. Yarosh, the head of «Right Sector», and the «extra-systemic ultraright» leader A. Biletsky [Ibid: 65] have been elected to the Parliament.

Our model is generally thought-provoking because it consists of those four ideological characteristics out of the six, which tend to be actually playing a role in the political tactics formulating process. E.g., when the organizations leaders decided on how to react to Maidan and its consequences, their perception regarding those who threat Russia and their preferring economic arrangement did not play a role. Yet, their standpoints regarding the USSR and type of their nationalism, their adhering to racism and their preferences regarding the Russia&s territory did play the role. By the way, it may indicate that nationalists& perception of the USSR notably similar to their perception of the Russian Empire. But another paper should be addressed to this question.

Our model can be extended to the general population because log-linear analysis is a statistical method. Consequently, it may be transferred from an organizational level to a personal level if the hypothesis about the explored organizations ideological homogeneity is confirmed. Our paper is not addressed to this question, but if taking into account that the bulk of the explored organizations are not large (limited to a few thousand members at most), it seems to be logical that they are not strongly heterogeneous.

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