Nowadays these “Russian” subjectivities, together with their extremely diverse range of political and social positions, lie at the core of an intense process of external appropriation or, alternatively, internal rejection in the post-Soviet national discourses. As testified by the so-called Crimean euphoria—that is, the dynamics of the public debate in Russia following the contested annexation of Crimea and the war in East Ukraine in 2014—geopolitical clashes in the region served as a catalyst for new political projections of the Russian idea (and cultural space) beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. It is especially the theorization and contested ideological appropriation of the concept of the Russian World (Russkii mir), which was “once created as an alternative to nationalism and imperialism in any form” and is now “strongly identified with them” (Nemtsev ←14 | 15→2019), that contributes to an understanding of the fluidity of the narratives implemented by political actors in the post-Soviet arena.
As retraced by Mikhail Nemtsev (2019), the origin of the concept is deeply rooted in the late Soviet years, when the historian and philosopher Mikhail Gefter introduced the idea of Russkii mir in his analysis of “the Soviet Union’s future prospects through his philosophy of world history” as “a possibility for humanity to save itself from self-destruction.”2 Throughout the 1990s, the concept was then “suitable for conceptualizing a ‘new Russian-language self-consciousness’ [Russkoiazychnost’ myshleniia] for post-Soviet people” in the work of “humanitarian technologists” in Eltsin’s times. It was only in the 2000s that we witnessed the political appropriation of this philosophical concept by the Kremlin, directly affecting its original “universal appeal” and tying it “to the geographical boundaries of the former Soviet Union” (Nemtsev 2019). The Russian world came thus eventually to be externalized beyond the borders of the Russian Federation, but within the blurred boundaries of the Russian cultural space.
In spite of the highly politicized narratives around Russkii mir, it is only through the lens of the dynamic changes occurring in post-Soviet societies that we can still understand where symbolic politics fails to represent a vivid picture of the Russian cultural space. When focusing on the local developments of Russian culture—and on its interrelation with local cultures, societies and traditions—we clearly witness how today “ ‘Russianness’ [Russkost’] is still deterritorialised,” or “largely ‘broken off’ from any geographic boundaries or ethnocultural traditions of the Russian ethnos” (Nemtsev 2019).
Interestingly enough, only in the 2010s did scholars in post-Soviet studies start to reconsider the role of the new Russian cultural phenomena emerging locally.3 In the aftermath of the dramatic political developments in the last ←15 | 16→decade, and following the specious misuse of cultural categories in the public debate, new research questions arose: “Could there ever be ‘another Russian World’?” (Nemtsev 2019); “Where is Russian culture properly located?” (Platt 2019a: 3), or “How can we even posit a single entity called ‘Russian culture as a whole’?” (Platt 2019a: 5). While “rethinking Russianness,” today, scholars and observers in post-Soviet studies wonder about “new ways of translating” the other Russian world in all of its diversity. This creates the ground for developing new analytical tools not only for an understanding of the new local places and shapes of Russian culture in the region, but also for better interpreting the heterogeneity of post-Soviet local scenes through the lens of the global—and transnational—location of culture.
From Russianness to Russophonia
Over the past 30 years much attention has been devoted, especially in the social and political sciences, to the role played by such “groups of people who are referred to variously (often interchangeably) as (ethnic) Russians, Russian speakers and Russophones” (Cheskin, Kachuyevski 2018: 3) in the post-Soviet scene (Brubaker 1996; Kolstø 1996; Laitin 1998; Zhurzhenko 2002b; Gorham 2011). Geopolitical developments related to the implementation of new nation-building policies and the formation of new national majorities and minorities in the former Soviet republics, the heritage of the Soviet policies of nationalities and ethno-federal structure, the emergence of new normative measures in the Russian Federation devoted to the protection of the alleged “Russian diaspora” and compatriots, and eventually the rise of migration flows within and beyond the former Soviet Union: all these factors have contributed to the methodological cul-de-sac affecting ←16 | 17→the creation of a solid research framework for the study of this complex mosaic of peoples, ideas and traditions as a whole.
Yet the problematic conceptualization and terminology adopted throughout the last years to define such a diverse and heterogeneous group of people—together with their political and social ideas, activities and behaviours—still deserves further discussion. A constructive point of departure has been proposed by the contributors to the previously mentioned volume Global Russian Cultures (2019). While retracing the background behind the title of the book, Platt highlights how the shared stance of the scholars who participated in the research venture is that Russians “have gone global” (or, better, “plural”): “Our use of the plural ‘cultures’ corresponds to our shared conviction that these formations must be seen as an interconnected web of distinct entities rather than a totality that can be captured in any definition or formula” (Platt 2019a: 4). Yet global Russian cultural life is “a highly complex area of study that varies across time, space, social environment, and the vagaries of individual cases” (Platt 2019a: 5). Focusing on the dialogical relations between cultural production and political forces—in post-Soviet Eurasia and globally—we witness how “ ‘being Russian’ or ‘performing Russian culture’ is everywhere subject to local constraints, but those constraints, and therefore the content of ‘Russianness’ as well, are distinct in each new context” (Platt 2019a: 6).
The kind of approach brilliantly described by the scholars who contributed to this research venture can help us deconstruct the multiplicity of labels and categories based on strictly exclusive territorial, linguistic and ethnic terms, especially whereas we understand that paradoxically, as in the case of Central Asia, the “Russophone cultural-linguistic space might continue to function here even without a larger presence of ‘Russians’ ” (Kosmarskaya, Kosmarski 2019: 90). Moving further to an understanding of the complexity of the “Russian-speaking” world, new insights emerge from the analysis undertaken by the Kazakhstani scholars who contributed to the thematic issue emblematically entitled When Global Becomes Local: Modern Mobilities and the Reinvention of Locality (2017) in the scholarly journal Ab Imperio. At the core of Akbota Alisharieva, Zhanar Ibrayeva and Ekaterina Protassova’s research proposal lies the opportunity to study Russian as a polycentric language, following the analogous case of the field of the so-called “World-Englishes,” which was first developed ←17 | 18→in the 1970s in the aftermath of the decolonization process (Kachru 1992; Bolton, Kachru 2006). Here again, “[i];n theoretical and pragmatical terms […] the use of the term ‘Englishes’ emphasizes the autonomy and plurality of the world varieties of the English language” (Kachru et al. 2006: 4). Similarly, nowadays the “Russian-speaking space” is influenced by the new demographic processes, national cultural standards and language practices which have followed the Soviet collapse since 1991:
As a result of the collapse of the USSR, the Russian-speaking area has reduced and