As globalization is fading and a multipolar world emerging, the question of identity is essential for people not to get lost. Between the abstract multicultural ideal and homogeneity aspirations, Russia presents itself as a unique ‘middle way’.
Certainly, international law distinguishes between the concepts of nationality and citizenship. But these are legal subtleties that don’t concern random individuals, who have many other things to think about and who often, particularly in the West, have the tendency to believe that the two concepts are synonymous. Nevertheless, in a world that is being totally reshaped, we are touching here on the fundamental question of identity. If we don’t know where we come from, we can’t know where we are going.
The dominant West has unconsciously adopted a vision of identity heavily influenced by Rousseau’s version of the social contract theory. A contract between the population and the state, but one tainted with a naïve humanism that tends to consider all human beings as inherently equivalent and interchangeable. Universalism did not originate with the Age of Enlightenment – one can argue that its roots lie in Christianity – however, it was slowly but surely propelled by French intellectuals, to such an extent that it became a Western standard. Furthermore, it’s important to remember that about half of the English vocabulary is derived from French, particularly in the areas of law, government, and the military.
Consequently, the West has philosophically integrated a narrow conception of identity as a purely legal contract between a state and an individual. You have the papers? You belong to the country. Born in Pakistan, Muslim, and you obtained your British passport at 35? You are a true subject of the British Crown. Born in Mali, educated in Mali, but obtained a French passport? You are French. Born in Korea, arrived in the United States at 50 and obtained an American passport? You are American. Well, you get the idea.
This purely legal and administrative conception can be taken to extremes. For example, in the US, in theory, an American citizen working abroad for a foreign company must pay his taxes in the US (in addition to local taxes). In France, even though, as everyone knows, the state has a longstanding love affair with taxes, the two conditions for being a true, good Frenchman are having a National Identity Card (CNI) and the glorious Carte Vitale (the card that grants access to healthcare – the number of which far exceeds the population supposed to be allowed to have it). Add to that a certain tendency to think that if you also eat saucisson and drink wine, then you are the epitome of Frenchness. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know the national anthem, that your French is rudimentary, and that you think Chateaubriand is a steak.
One truly striking thing is the inability of Westerners to understand things differently. A fundamental misunderstanding. This is much less the case in the US, which was built on immigration, but if you challenge this idea in Europe, if you dare to say, “Okay, you’re Swedish, but where are you from?” you’re immediately labeled a racist, a xenophobe, and so on. To say that citizenship, considered as an equivalent of nationality, has become nothing more than a permanent residency permit is an insult to the Western multicultural ideal. Nationalities/citizenships are like interchangeable or collectible Panini stickers.
However, the rest of the world doesn’t think like that.
Looking at the new center of the world, the future – Asia – the conception is diametrically opposed. In Japan, dual citizenship is only conceivable for children of mixed couples, but these children must get rid of one of their citizenships at the age of 20. The Vietnamese accept dual citizenship, but under conditions and only for individuals with skills that contribute to the country’s development. The Koreans tolerate dual citizenship, but, as in the case of Japan, obtaining Korean citizenship is strictly restrained according to the individual’s financial stability and good conduct. In short, the approach is strictly pragmatic, not idealistic – one does not become Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese, etc. Any Asian would laugh if a Norwegian or a Chadian would claim to be Thai.
Russia, straddling Asia and Europe, offers a unique perspective. Its history of imperial expansion during the 18th and 19th centuries has created a space where multiculturalism developed organically, rather than being the product of some absurd philosophical and political project promoted through political marketing gimmicks. While nothing is explicitly stated on identity documents, there is a strict and universally accepted understanding of the difference between nationality and citizenship. Citizenship, as everywhere, is the contract between the individual and the state, whereas the concept of nationality is closer to the notion of ethnicity. There are 170 ethnic groups in Russia. Everyone is ‘Rossiyane’, while the term ‘Russky’ applies only to ethnic Russians. Until a few decades ago, an individual’s nationality was specified in his passport. This practice has been abandoned, but in Russia, people have an almost immediate understanding of their fellow citizens’ origins (based on appearance, name, habits). Yesterday, I was having a drink with three friends in Moscow. So there were four of us, all ‘Rossiyane’: A Russian, a Tatar, an Armenian, and a Frenchman. I was obviously the most exotic of the bunch.
Certainly, Russia, like Western countries today, is not homogeneous in the way Asian countries generally are, but it never has been. However, its heterogeneity is not a deliberate design but a result of history. The sense of belonging to one’s country is distinctly more traditional in Russia than in the West; it is an almost visceral attachment to a culture and an empire, not a formal adherence to an abstract republic with vaguely defined values.
While Japan is generally – and rightly so – considered another planet, Russia is also a world apart, difficult for contemporary Westerners to comprehend, given their strict legalistic understanding and their drive to achieve a kind of universalist philosophical ideal. This may well be yet another reason for Western exasperation with other systems: the homogeneity of Asian cultures contradicts their promotion of multiculturalism, and the organic multiculturalism of the Russian space highlights the failure of their forced multiculturalism.
The Rousseau-leaning social contract, this naïve and simplistic universalism, while denying history and geography, also contributes to the destruction of Western nations. Because the West, promoting its multicultural project, has failed to understand that after trying to impose its rules abroad and importing migrants from all over the world, it is now gradually the foreigners who impose their rules at home. This paper multiculturalism, legally and philosophically conflating citizenship and nationality, has killed the sense of identity for millions of people, while the emerging world, even the emerging world imported by the West, has no intention to forget its own.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.