Methodological Issues in Studies of Cultural Legacies in Post-Socialist Russia’s Civil Society

Conceptualization of Civil Society

In his study, Howard uses a rather restrictive definition of a civil society. Like a number of other influential writers (see, e.g. de Tocqueville 1840/1988; Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1994; Skocpol 2004), he assumed that a vibrant civil society is based on active and voluntary associational life. For Howard, however, “civil society does not refer to simply any form of mobilization, but to membership and participation in a formally organized group, club, or association” (39, emphasis added). In short, for Howard, formal voluntary associations are the lynchpins of democratic development, and insufficient involvement in formally organized associational activities by citizens is seen as an impediment to the development of a democracy. Because of this emphasis on formal organizations, Howard did not pay attention to peoples’ experiences in a wide variety of largely informal civic activities both in the past and present. Ironically, in some of the excerpts from interview transcriptions that Howard published, several Russian respondents emphasized their preference for participation in voluntary activities that did not occur in formal organizational settings (138–139).^[8] These data, however, were not employed in the communist legacy storyline that Howard developed.

The institutional structure and normative base of a civil society, in fact, is a subject of considerable debate. Debates have focused on a number of questions: Does the concept encompass organizational elements such as political parties, social movements, and informal social activities and structures or not? How does one differentiate between civic and noncivic organizations? ^[9] Howard was aware of these debates and presented counter arguments to a wide range of theoretical models of civil society found in contemporary scholarship (see, e.g. Edwards 2011b) that differ from his own.

The point that matters here, however, is that research findings and conclusions almost certainly will be different depending on which conception of civil society one^[10] employs. As Ekiert and Foa (2011) have noted,

If we pursue a multidimensional strategy for analyzing the constitution of civil society and civic behavior – that is, by measuring organization and behavior of civil society actors along a range of different dimensions and using a range of different sources rather than by a single concept or instrument – the picture of post-communist civil society becomes more complex and more interesting (38).

In short, limiting the definition (and measurement) of civil society to involvement in formal organizations may be helpful in promoting Howard’s conclusion that communist legacies (in Howard’s work, attitudinal and behavioral legacies) are the source of the current state of affairs in Russia and other former Soviet countries. Such a move, however, virtually guarantees that much of the complexity of civic life will be obscured and that the supposedly empirically grounded stories Howard and like-minded scholars tells about the post-Soviet era and its impact will be, at best, incomplete and, at worst, largely fictional. These stories, in other words, reflect the a priori assumptions and operational definitions employed at least as much as – and possibly more than – the actual empirical reality researchers like Howard are ostensibly trying to describe and explain.

An Inappropriately Bleak Picture of the Civil Society in the Soviet Past

The second problem with Howard’s supposedly empirical analysis is actually shared by much of Western political science, the discipline that socialized Howard and many other Western (and even some Eastern) social scientists. This problem involves the overwhelmingly negative a priori characterizations of the old Soviet Union (and socialist regimes, in general), characterizations that continue to influence the language and variables employed in studies of the Soviet past and present.^[11] This approach can partly explain why some Western social scientists, including Howard, are unaware of certain social and civic practices in the past or, at least, why they seem to discount even the possibility that cultural legacies from the Soviet era might have a positive impact on the present.^[12]

The attitudes are at least somewhat understandable. They emerged from a time of Cold War confrontation, a time when the world was, in many people’s minds, divided into heroes and villains and between those who were intent on making the world safe for democratic participation and a civil society that supported democracy, on the one hand, and those who presumably embraced antithetical goals, on the other. According to several analysts, this thinking has impacted basic theoretical assumptions methodology in research of post-socialist realm (e.g. Creed and Wedel 1997; Hann, Humphrey, and Verdery 2002; Mandel 2012). In the context of civil society research, the paradigm was that (a) “everything created prior to the collapse of communism was… ‘not a true civil society’” and/or (b) post-socialist development was “contaminated and adulterated by the Communist legacy… [and] had to be purged before any ‘true civil society’ and democracy could flourish” (Ishkanian 2007, 69).

During the last two decades, such perceptions have impacted the design and implementation of Western government policies in the area of democracy promotion in the post-socialist countries (e.g. Creed and Wedel 1997; Hemment 2004; Henderson 2002; Mandel 2002; Ishkanian 2007; Matveeva 2008). And, of course, these perceptions also influenced researchers, but, of course, not all researchers. In his review of contemporary sociohistorical studies of the civil society in East European countries, for example, Valkov (2009) noticed that research outcomes ranged “from complete denial of associational activities in the past to the discovery of persistent civic engagement across time” (428).

Howard appears to be closer to the denial end of the continuum suggested by Valkov’s (2009) review. He relied mostly on statements made by Jowitt (1992) and Bunce (1999) that characterized all associations in the socialist countries, including Soviet Russia, as being “communist,” i.e. entirely organized, sponsored, and controlled by the single-party state.^[13] Despite admitting a high organizational density of membership associations in socialist countries, Howard did not recognize them as being voluntary and/or independent. Additionally, as has already been noted, Howard did not give any credit for participation in informal collective grassroot activities. Consequently, he ignored the most intensive period of the social movements and various civic initiatives that emerged in the USSR in the end of the 1980s. He also did not take note of other periods in the history of Russia and, to some extent, the Soviet Union, generally, when associational life flourished: in the 1920s (during the New Economic Policy), the 1960s (during the Khrushchev Thaw), and from 1986 to 1992 (immediately before the collapse of the Soviet Union). (See more about what was going on during these periods in Mersiyanova (2000), Haliy (2007), and Jakobson and Sanvich (2010).)^[14]

In short, because of what it ignored, Howard’s research, by design, could not provide data about any positive associational experiences in his respondents’ social lives. Rather, his research was explicitly designed to focus exclusively on non-participation in formal organizations. This design feature was undoubtedly more unconscious than conscious and, clearly, reflected the legacy of Cold War thinking in the West, as well as a certain conception of civil society that equates civil society with the involvement of citizens in formal organizations. As the next section of this paper will indicate, however, the legacy of informal associational activity is very much a part of the history of Russia, at least.

Thus, Howard’s conclusions that the civil society in the Soviet Russia and Eastern European socialist countries, in general, has been virtually non-existent (and certainly not vibrant) after the demise of the Soviet Union is quite problematic. At the very least, it is a conclusion that is not primarily empirical but, rather, reflects the decisions that were made prior to the collection of empirical data. At any rate, Howard’s conviction about the absence of a “normatively” civic life in the Soviet past (unsupported by any articulated or referenced evidence, it should be noted) becomes an explanation for Russians’ present civic attitudes and behavior.

Differing Perspectives of the Role of Informal Networks in Russia’s Civil Society

A third critique of Howard’s work, as well as the work of the many scholars who have uncritically accepted and extended Howard’s analysis, involves Howard’s lack of sensitivity to Russian culture.^[15] As was mentioned in the previous section, several interviewees in Howard’s study demonstrated their preferences for informal engagement, volunteering, and philanthropic actions (see more Howard 2003, 138–139). This is hardly surprising because, in Russia, there is a tradition of civic and social engagement through wide and comprehensive informal networks.

Howard is clearly aware of these informal networks; however, he dismisses them as tiny, but persistent, friendship and kinship networks that are the direct legacy of the socialist past (122). Howard actually asserts that these networks have had a negative impact on the development of the civil society because they prevent participants from joining formal voluntary organizations. This position is problematic for a number of reasons.

First, there is no justification for assigning this friendship/kinship network legacy to communist times. The role of membership in kollektiv (defined as a kind of extensive informal network within or beyond official organizations) can be traced back deep into Russian societal history (see, e.g. Ely 2009; Lindenmeyr 2011; Spencer 2011). Several scholars have emphasized the cultural specifics of Russian communitarian life, which includes traditions of social cooperation mostly in informal institutional settings across centuries (e.g. Kharkhordin 1998; Alapuro and Lonkila 2000; Spencer 2011; Bremer 2012). These traditions persisted over many generations and still influence preferences and practices of the collective voluntary work in Russia beyond formal organizational settings (see more in Ely 2009; Lindenmeyr 2011; Spencer 2011).

Second, friendship networks historically have not only been widespread in Russia but also were more multifunctional (e.g. Kasyanova 1994; Kharkhordin 1998) than the particularistic and pragmatic friendship networks in Anglo-Saxon culture (see more about this in Stewart and Bennett 1991). Interestingly, however, if we look beyond the proliferation of small networks of immediate family members and close friends, which were the only safety net left after the economic collapse of socialist countries, Howard’s (2003) interview data actually suggest a rather dramatic decline in respondent’s use of the traditional broader informal networks in the post-socialist countries. Answering questions about changes in the interpersonal relations after the reforms, respondents from both Russia and East Germany emphasized the following common themes: “the increased focus on personal life, the newly prominent and destructive role of money, far greater social inequality, and the transformation of the work environment” (135). Many respondents expressed nostalgia for the sense of community they enjoyed before – e.g. the supportive network of work collectives, the spiritual closeness with people other than their immediate family members – which they perceived as having gone away, along with the socialist past.

For the majority of Howard’s interviewees, then, the post-socialist period brought painful experiences of the demolition of their earlier wider networks of kollectivs, which included former colleagues and classmates. Most likely, this destruction of the “civic habitat” has, indeed, inhibited civic development in the post-Soviet era, as Howard claims. However, traditional friendship networks and the ongoing changes within them impacted civic activities of Russians, including their involvement in associational life in decidedly different ways than the ways described by Howard.^[16]

To summarize, the key points in this section are as follows: (a) Informal networks are a pre-socialist cultural legacy, at least in Russia. (b) They operated effectively during the socialist era within and beyond pragmatic functions. (c) Rather than functioning as inhibitors of the development of civil society in post-Soviet Russia, their intensity and possible influence has actually declined. (d) Such networks have their own dynamics and appear to have an ambiguous impact on the forms and intensity of citizens’ engagement in civic life, especially if the impact of social media is considered.

Howard and other scholar who have uncritically accepted Howard’s empirical findings and interpretations have missed most of this, despite the fact that Howard’s interview data points out the significance of at least some of these points. Of course, there is no reason to assume that an insider’s view of a culture (what anthropologists characterize an emic perspective) is necessarily superior to the views of outsiders. At the very least, however, the emic perspective of Russia’s cultural history is a reminder that Howard’s communist-legacy storyline was shaped by his own priori cultural perspectives and not simply by the empirical data he gathered.

Interpretation of the Survey and Interview Data

A final problem with Howard’s analysis is primarily methodological. Howard’s (2003) bottom-line argument is that having had an “essentially negative experience with state-run organizations during the communist period, the majority of citizens throughout post-communist Europe continue to have a common sense of mistrust of organizations today” (140, italics added). This conclusion of his study has been accepted uncritically by many scholars. However, there are clearly problems with the way Howard operationalized and measured mistrust. Howard was measuring “mistrust of communist organizations by the extent to which [people] avoided joining organizations in the communist period” (107, emphasis added). Howard elaborated:

The category of “low” mistrust applies to those who were members of 4–9 communist organizations, “medium” mistrust to those who belonged to 3 communist organizations, and “high” mistrust to those who were members of only 0–2 communist organizations (note on 107).

According to this logic, those who had never been a member of any formal organization in the past had the most negative experience of associational life. Conversely, those who were members of many organizations were characterized as “having positive experiences, or low mistrust of communist organizations (127).”

If we disregard the “communist” affiliation that Howard bestows on all organizations during the Soviet times, his conclusion is a virtual truism: the more organizational memberships a person has had in the past, the more likely he or she is to participate in voluntary organizations at present. This truism, however, presents a problem for Howard (see more in Letki 2004). Howard underlined that numerous membership organizations existed during socialist times. If we assume that the number of participants in those “communist organizations” was also high, by definition (i.e. Howard’s definition), the number of people with “positive experiences” in membership organizations during socialism should also be high. However, this contradicts Howard’s major conclusion that was discussed above. i.e., that post-Soviet avoidance of membership in formal voluntary organizations today is the result of individuals’ negative experiences with organizational practices during the socialist era.

There is a possible way out of this contradiction, of course; Howard can simply claim that involvement in voluntary associations during the Soviet era was not really voluntary. This claim, however, calls into question Howard’s assumption that those who were members of many organizations were “having positive experiences, or low mistrust of communist organizations” (127).

Even more problematic for Howard’s storyline is the failure of Howard’s interview data to support the claims he makes about the impact of the communist legacy. As Howard, himself, admits, Russian interviewees, unlike East Germans, normally did not refer to their communist past experiences in explaining their current civic non-participation. For example, even people currently avoiding membership in official organizations in Russia do not express extreme or hostile attitudes to all membership associations in the past (though one did mentioned antipathy toward rigid organizational obligations under socialism (126)). Most Russian interviewees described a more general view of organizations as “unnecessary, useless, and sometimes distasteful” (127) and explained their own passiveness being caused by work pressure, lack of free time, or other personal interests.

Thus, claims that the phenomenon of mistrust of civic organizations is a product of the socialist past are not supported by Howard’s own cross-national interview data in all cases, especially the case of Russia. The finding that majority of citizens in post-socialist countries avoid joining the membership associations because of a negative attitude to those organizations during socialist period is, at best, an overgeneralization.

Four Alternatives

First, it is important that researchers stop painting with broad brushstrokes and focus, instead, on the unique cultural aspects of each of the former socialist countries. Howard, himself, acknowledged that his data suggested there were differences between Russia and East Germany, but this insight was lost by the time Howard articulated the conclusions of his study. Presumably, this loss occurred, at least in part, because Howard was not particularly interested in the unique features of each country. This is unfortunate because, even when countries have similar ideologies and similar official state policies, there is not necessarily uniformity in perspectives and actions at the individual and local community levels. On the other hand, Yurchak (2006) has written in the case of Russia,

[It] is the crucial and seemingly paradoxical fact that, for great numbers of Soviet citizens, many of the fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialist life (such as equality, community, selflessness, altruism, friendship, ethical relations, safety, education, work, creativity, and concern for the future) were of genuine importance, despite the fact that many of their everyday practices routinely transgressed, reinterpreted, or refused certain norms and rules represented in the official ideology of the socialist state. For many, “socialism” as a system of human values and as an everyday reality of “normal life” (normal’naia zhizn’) was not necessarily equivalent to “the state” or “ideology”; indeed, living socialism to them often meant something quite different from the official interpretations provided by state rhetoric (8).

Second, to understand the different ways citizens in different countries made sense of official ideology and state policy, there is a need for historical research that documents the defining elements of a country’s culture prior to the socialist era. A country’s culture and various social practices embedded in it, after all, did not begin with the socialist period. Rather cultures already existed in each of the countries that became part of the socialist bloc. These cultures undoubtedly not only influenced how socialist era ideology and state policies impacted day-to-day life during the socialist era; they also continue to influence – the current era.^[18]

A third implication for researchers of the critique that has been presented here is that researchers should recognize that they are also products of the cultures that have socialized them and that, consequently, they will inevitably be victims of epistemological ethnocentrism (Reagan 2005). This sort of ethnocentrism is, arguably, most evident in the scholarly community’s uncritical embrace of Western liberal democracy as the societal model that Russia and other post-socialist countries should emulate. It is interesting that a social democratic model was almost never discussed as an option for Russia or other post-socialist countries (Alapuro 2008), even though there might have been greater continuity between past and present if this model had been employed (Kulmala 2013).

All researchers are inevitably victims of epistemological ethnocentrism, of course. Consequently, the only antidote is to insure that a range of models is employed to conceptualize everything from a country’s ideal future state to the research methods used to study a country’s past.

Fourth, in the study of civil society, it is not just all encompassing models that matter; the definitions we use within the models we employ also can be exceedingly important. Implicit in the critique presented in this paper, for example, is the need to expand the definition of civil society beyond membership in formal organizations and focus, as well, on citizen’s engagement in informal groups and activities. As was noted in this paper, a preference for this sort of informal activity predates the socialist era in Russia, so it is impossible to really understand the extent of civil society in Russia, at least, if the aspects of informal civic life are ignored. Focusing on informal as well as formal civil society organizations also is essential for understanding the cultural aspects of civic activity in Russia and its dynamics over time, as well as the interaction of the formal and informal dimensions of civic life.

Why Does This Matter?

I will conclude this paper by briefly addressing what could be referred to as two “so-what” questions: Why does it matter that research tradition that can be traced back to Howard provides, at best, an incomplete and, at worst, a highly inaccurate picture of what has happened in Russia? Why should additional research employing different models and different definitions of the notion of civil society in Russia (and other countries) be undertaken?

Scholars, of course, are unlikely to need reasons to continue to explore social phenomena in new and different ways. For them, new knowledge is its own reward. Funders and policymakers, however, often are a bit more pragmatic. So, it is worth asking, what are the pragmatic reasons for moving beyond the research community’s conventional explanations for what has happened in Russia during the post-socialist era, on the one hand, and engaging in different forms of research with new models and a different definition of civil society, on the other.

One rather obvious reason for trying to move beyond Howard’s thinking and research is the bottom-line conclusion to which they lead: Significant change will occur in Russia only after generational change. This is a long time to wait; plus, even if we wait, there is no guarantee that a new generation socialized by the current generation will think and behave differently. And, of course, while we wait, there is no reason to develop policies and procedures designed to enhance civil society. Current thinking, in short, is a recipe for inaction.

By contrast, other ways of thinking that employ different models, different definitions, and different starting assumptions suggest greater possibilities for action, possibilities that are rooted in a more multifaceted view of the past and the assumptions that there are elements in Russia’s “usable past” within the socialist legacy (Henry 2006, 224), that can be employed to develop civic activities (see also White 2006; Kulmala 2013). From this perspective, a significant part of accumulated experience of “socialist” and “pre-socialist” generations of the Russian society can be perceived as a potentially positive cultural heritage, rather than largely negative “vestiges of the past.” This approach will promote inter-generational cooperation as a part of implementation of the research findings instead of requiring a generational shift.