Project description - Self-Governing Associations in Northwestern Russia

1 Background

Points of Departure

The project deals with the roots and prospects of republican tradition in Northwestern Russia, but attempts to study it from a novel perspective. The interest in republican tradition in Russia has surged recently, linked to developments in reform of municipal self-government in 2002-2003. Given the Tocquevillean intentions of the initial 1995 municipal reform, the township was supposed to become the main element of civil society in Russia, independent from federal and regional power holders. However, effective changes in funding bodies of self-government that leave them a fixed portion of federal taxes (rather than sending all of this money to Moscow for later redistribution) have been adopted only in 2003. Up until now the alleged self-governing municipalities in reality depended on regional and federal authorities to finance local utilities, transportation and other communal services. Thus, the main struggles on the municipal level in 1996-2002 were waged over who would fund and how would be funded the deteriorating public infrastructure. Cities and villages frozen in the winter or flooded in spring constitute a sizable bulk of national news in Russia.

The situation provides a fruitful starting point to the project. It looks (1) at human interaction involved in diverse forms of self-governing associations - an object of traditional research - but it examines also (2) how and which material objects take part in the coordination of human conduct. The project aims at integrating insights obtained in the last twenty of years of science and technology studies in Europe (e.g. Bruno Latour and Michel Callon) and the recent developments in the sociology of action (e.g. Luc Boltanski, Laurent Thévenot, and Nicolas Dodier) with the empirical study of Russia.

The former theme will be studied through a number of case studies, whose aim is to investigate the relationship between networks and associations, and more specifically the relationship between the organizations and those who they purport to represent, as well as with the state authorities. A topic will be gender differences. As to the analysis of the latter theme, instead of viewing the problem of leaking and exploding pipes, ageing electrical power generators, crumbling bridges and decrepit roads in Russian urban and rural settings as a lamentable nuisance that stands in the way of building true democracy on the municipal level, this project will take them to be active factors that contribute to coordinating human action in a republic. In a similar way, Latour and Callon have studied what they called techno-human networks in France, showing that the element "res" - meaning "a thing" - in the Latin term "res publica" is as important as the element "publica". French sociology of action has drawn our attention to material objects that are actively involved in constituting arenas for business dispute resolution in a modern French enterprise (Boltanski and Thévenot), in the construction of associations around machine use (Dodier), associations around new medical substances (Callon and Vololona Rabeharisoa) or in formation of quartier associations (Thévenot).

The objective of the research project is to examine the historical and present experience of sharing tangible and durable things that lie at the foundation of Russian self-governing associations, and draw some lessons for the current municipal reform that was promulgated to secure liberties at a grass-roots level once and for all.

Previous activity

The project is linked to an ongoing research agenda on civil society in Russia that has been established by the principal project coordinator. In the past decade Alapuro worked with networks and the problems of civil society within two large research projects funded by the Academy of Finland, the first dealing with teachers in St. Petersburg and Finland ("Social Networks and Characteristics of the Finnish Culture"), the second with factory workers in Russia and Estonia ("Civic Culture and Nationality in Northwestern Russia and Estonia"). He was in charge of the former project. The latter project has resulted, among other contributions, in a collection of articles  Beyond Post-Transition: Survival and Challenge in Russia and Estonia, edited by Risto Alapuro, Ilkka Liikanen and Markku Lonkila (2004).

The primary research contact from Russia is a recognized authority in studies of associational life there. Following the influential thesis of John Dunn and Adam Seligman on a covert religious dimension of different civil society conceptions, Kharkhordin first studied the Orthodox Christian underpinnings of the current problems of associational activity in Russia. His book, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999, analyzed the peculiarities of small group interaction and social cohesion techniques in Russia that are so important for creating and maintaining associations, including self-governing ones. His work after that dealt with mechanisms of everyday interaction and informal associations. The most recent development in Kharkhordin's thinking is attention given to objects founding the associational life - he has just finished an article, "St. Petersburg as Res Publica: The Liberty of Common Things," forthcoming in Stephen M. Norris and Zara Torlone, eds., Placing St. Petersburg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 (?).
Summing up, one can say that associational life in Russia has been already studied by Alapuro from the standpoint of human network approach and by Kharkhordin from the standpoint of the sociology of everyday life. Now, however, the technological elements founding human networks and supplying obvious everyday tangibility to human institutions will enter into consideration as well. Kharkhordin and Alapuro worked together on many occasions, given that Alapuro serves since 1996 as an external reviewer of the master's theses for the department of sociology at the European University at St. Petersburg, of which Kharkhordin served as the chair in 1998-2001.

Links with other projects

For Alapuro's part, this application is meant to cover the Finnish-Russian comparisons of the research group involved in the project "Spaces of Democracy: Associations and Political Culture in Finland in a Comparative Perspective." The current project will allow Alapuro to work on the problems that self-governing associations face in Russia, and to contrast them to corresponding problems in Finland, and to engage a post-graduate student to do the PhD-thesis on related issues. Both studies are envisaged to be based on the rich data gathered in factories in St. Petersburg and in Petrozavodsk and Pitkäranta in the Russian Karelia in 2000 for the project "Civic Culture and Nationality in Northwestern Russia and Estonia." They will be further analyzed and comparisons will be made both between them and with a Finnish case. Comparisons with Finland are made possible by the availability of similar Finnish material from a factory in Helsinki; it was gathered in 2003 in Dr. Markku Lonkila's Academy-funded project "Russia, Finland, and Globalization in a Micro Perspective".

On his part, Kharkhordin is now participating in a PICS (Projet international de cooperation scientifique, French- and Russian-funded, 2001-2004) entitled "From private to public: forms of cohabitation in Russia and France" with Laurent Thévenot from EHESS. In this framework, Kharkhordin has started a historico-sociological study of public things in the medieval republic of Novgorod, 1136-1471. Also, as part of French-Russian PICS, the post-graduate student from the European University at St. Petersburg, Anna Kovaleva, studies under Kharkhordin's guidance, the sharing of common things in Russian close friends' networks. Her work nicely fits the project as well. Furthermore, Kharkhordin participated in the seminar of Bruno Latour on the sociology of things at Harvard in 2003, and will be part of the pan-European social science exhibition "Res Publica: Making Things Public" that is scheduled to take place in Karlsruhe, Germany, in the summer of 2004. A Norwegian post-graduate student (see below), working along the lines of Latour's sociology, adds a Nordic dimension.

All in all, we envisage a formation of an international network of scholars that include teams working in Helsinki and St.Petersburg, but if possible also in London (led by Sarah Ashwin from LSE) and Paris (led by Laurent Thévenot at EHESS and Bruno Latour at Ecole des Mines). Even a short visit of either Thévenot or Latour to a research team meeting could solidify the international cooperation and create a lasting pan-European network of research

2 Objectives and Methods

Objectives

The general objective is to study the role of self-governing associations in Northwestern Russia at the critical moment of a major reform of municipal self-government. In order to do that, we have to split the overall objective into several sub-objectives.

The first sub-objective is to investigate the relationship between networks and associational activity. In particular, the goal is to explore why, when social networks in Russia are generally characterized as strong, the social organizations which constitute civil society are usually seen as weak. To this end the research aims at examining the operation of selected associations, completing, if needed, the data collected in various factories in St. Petersburg and Russian Karelia.

Even though strictly comparable data are not available from the other countries in Alapuro's project "Spaces of Democracy", he will adopt a comparative perspective in looking at findings in Russia. The doctoral student engaging herself in the project will focus on the gender dimension in the activities of the associations (see below).
The second sub-objective is the study of a more institutionalized kind of self-governing associations in Russia. In particular, we will concentrate on municipalities and other institutions of a more stable kind, with a republican form of governance. Our objects of study include the medieval city-state of Novgorod, the zemstvo self-governing associations in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia, contemporary municipalities and a self-governing university. Here we envision an intermingling of historical and sociological research.

A study of the medieval city-state of Novgorod and the phenomenon of zemstvo will show the historical trends and sociological patterns of self-governing republics in Northwestern Russia. The republic of Novgorod controlled vast territories from the borders of contemporary Estonia to the shores of the lake Onega and was an important part of the Hanseatic Union. However, when the historians studied Novgorod, this res publica was habitually taken to be just a matter of a form of government (matters pertaining to publica only), and no similar attention was given to res. In our project Kharkhordin will finish his study of such "public things" as the public assembly square, its grandiose bell (that called on the citizens to get together for deliberation, and was the first thing to be confiscated by the Muscovite tzars upon conquest of Novgorod), the cathedral of St. Sophia (a symbol of free Novgorod and the site of an elected bishopric) and the Great bridge over river Volkhov (a site of republican factional struggles and executions). This will clarify our understanding of the common or public things that serve as arenas or as linkages for the gathering of a human assembly. Such an analysis will then serve as a good historical mirror for revealing heretofore ignored contemporary problems of sharing public things in a self-governing municipality, a strategy that has been already used by Robert Putnam in his influential study of civic traditions in medieval Italy and contemporary reform of local self-government there.

Another historico-sociological study will deal with the phenomenon of zemstvo. Zemstvo was an organ of local self-rule established after the 1861 reform in the Russian empire, which had introduced many aspects of civilized self-government into the Russian countryside. Contemporary sociologists hail zemstvo as the only indubitable element of civil society in Imperial Russia, while Solzhenitsyn called its restoration the main goal of rebuilding of Russia on an indigenous democratic basis (Solzhenitsyn 1991). The central problem for the proposed study is the transformation of these self-governing bodies of zemstvo in Northwestern Russia after 1917, and their legacy for post-1995 developments.

For contemporary Russia, the project entails a series of studies of shared things lying at the basis (or mediating the structure) of self-governing associations. First, the contemporary self-governing municipality itself is to be addressed. For most city government offices now - after a radical decrease of investments into their repair and maintenance - the town's utilities and infrastructure have acquired a status of a key public problem, a central "shared concern", a res publica. Second, as a contrast case to municipalities, we would like to study the non-municipal self-governing units with shared things at the center of their activities. The proposed case-study would center on an independent, non-state university with a republican form of government. This will allow us to evaluate what are the specifically municipal features of political sharing that the modern self-governing municipality exemplifies, in contrast to the university.

Methods

The first sub-objective is based on the  information of networks and participation, gathered in standardized interviews. Alapuro and the team which has worked with him during the past decade has considerable experience in the network analysis in Russia.

The second sub-objective will be achieved using more diverse methods. Kharkhordin's work depends on the sociological reinterpretation of historical sources. Thus, for example, the questions to be addressed here are not the usual historical question on whether the zemstvo was easily swept away by the Bolshevik revolution (and if this is so, why) or, on the contrary, integrated into the Soviets (and how this happened), Rather, known historical accounts will be reinterpreted, by paying closer attention to the role of the zemstvo's material infrastructure in this transition. This same reinterpretation will be applied to historical sources on Novgorod. The emphasis on material trappings of the republic and on the everyday markers of its tangibility comes from the recent European sociology of things involved in action, mentioned above.

Studies of contemporary self-governing associations like a municipality and a university will involve two primary methods - interviews and participant observation. There will be about 30 interviews per studied object. Detailed questionnaires will be compiled during the initial research group discussion to ensure the compatibility of research findings in such different cases as the municipality and the university. Both Bychkova and Kalacheva are experts in interview research, having used this method extensively for their PhD dissertations. Participant observation will be carried out following the methodology of "extended case method" proposed by UC Berkeley sociologists who did research in Northern Russia in the 1990s (Burawoy 1998).

Please see more on methods used in individual studies in the section on research team and resources.

Time schedule

The research group will start its work in the spring of 2004. The overall time frame of research is about three and a half years, till 2007. The first organizational meeting will take place in March 2004, in St. Petersburg. Annual meetings of the whole research team will be held in Russia.

Fieldwork in all studies will take place in 2004-2005. The end of 2005 and the first half of 2006 will be spent on writing progress reports in each individual sub-project, and making links between them, so that a joint result (a "common thing" of this very research project) could start gestating. In the end of 2006 individual stories have to be written up as finished texts (books or article drafts), while a preliminary group result should be presented for discussion by a broader academic community. 2007 will be the year to finish individual manuscripts and bring a group monograph into existence.

3 Performers of research and resources

Composition of the research team and division of labor

The Finnish team will be led by Professor Alapuro, who is also responsible for the overall project guidance. Alapuro's own contribution will consist of a Russian-Finnish comparison as a part of his project "Spaces of Democracy." He will study notably conceptions of associations, social partnership, and civil society in the two countries (and the two languages).

Prof. Kharkhordin will head the Russian part of the research team. For his own part, he will bring his expertise on sharing common things in a republic. The Academy grant will allow him to write a book on the medieval city-state of Novgorod. The expected completion date of this book is the end of 2005. After that, he plans to do a study of the material bases for transformation of the self-governing bodies of zemstvo in Northwestern Russia after 1917 and their legacy for post-1995 developments. Planned visits o Helsinki will be dedicated towards finishing a book on the Novgorod republic and doing new research on zemstvo (the library of the University of Helsinki has a unique collection of sources on Russian history).

Kharkhordin will coordinate the work of two junior researchers from Russia. First, Olga Bychkova will do a study of Russian public policy in the field of municipal self-government proper. Her PhD work dealt with changes in the optical fiber cable network as part of privatization of the major telecom giant, Svyazinvest, in 1997. She will now examine what role changes in heating and electricity-supply infrastructure plays in the self-governing reform in Russia after the most recent legislation changes of 2003. Her methods will entail participant observation in two utilities' producers of the same town and their interaction with the municipal unit, as well as a series of interviews in the municipal office, in departments of regional governor's office (with those who are responsible for utilities' maintenance in the region and for relations with a municipality in question), and with regional representatives of federal authorities, in particular, with tax and treasury administrators, responsible for money flows between the municipality and the federal accounts.

Second, Olga Kalacheva will do a long-term study of the formation of a self-governing association in post-Soviet Russia, taking European University at St.Petersburg as an example. Kalacheva had studied such objects as Estonian ethnic community in St. Petersburg, 1991-2001, and the role of birthday party rituals in Russian associational life, so she is most suited for this study of formal and informal republican practices and the role of common things. Her study will be based on interviews with major actors in the establishment and maintenance of this major non-state institution with a republican form of government: main actors in the university administration (including the internal building development office), the city government property office that was one of the university co-founders who supplied the building, and with the deputies and staff from the local legislative assembly that now funds the university building maintenance. She will also examine the role that the "republican infrastructure" (common rooms, cafes, common holiday and ceremonial sites) plays in the maintenance of the republic. Her study will complement the study of common things in cities proper, taking a non-municipal kind of civitas as her object.

Additional research outside of the project

A Norwegian post-graduate student from the University of Science and Technology at Trondheim, Haavard Hungnes Lien, will do a study, complementary to Bychkova's. If Bychkova studies the more generic case  of municipalities with a more or less independent infrastructure - Lien intends to study the common things in smaller towns tightly linked with a single dominating enterprise stationed in this town. Having just completed his MA dissertation on Putin's Russia, Lien intends to apply for a stipend from the Norwegian (or Nordic) funding bodies to support his PhD study. That is, he will NOT be funded by the proposed project grant. The object of his study will be the governance of small townships in the Leningrad Oblast' -  in Svetogorsk and Kingisepp. Materials gathered in previous Finnish research on the town of Pitkäranta might be used as well.

Also, as part of French-Russian cooperation project with Laurent Thévenot from EHESS, Kharkhordin directs the EUSP post-graduate student, Anna Kovaleva. She studies the sharing of things in a Russian friends' network, and why this type of sharing precludes political mobilization. Her work nicely fits the presently proposed project, particularly the second sub-objective described above. Research on sharing of things in a friends' network where political mobilization does not arise, as a rule, will reveal to us the significant factors that lead to such mobilization in self-governing associations like municipalities. As Lien's PhD study, Kovaleva's work will NOT be funded by the Academy of Finland grant, and we mention it here just to show the scope of our overall ambition.

4 Results

The obvious direct result will be books and articles on self-government in Russia, put in a broader European perspective. First, Kharkhordin's book on the historical experience of Russian city-states could be published in both English and Russian. Second, Alapuro will include Russia in his planned comparative book on "spaces of democracy". Third, a joint volume in English on the history and present of Russian self-governing associations is an ultimate outcome. Furthermore, we consider the publication of Bychkova's work as a separate book, given the need in such books felt by the municipalities.

Of course, the findings of research will also affect the course structures in both Alapuro's and Kharkhordin's teaching, attracting more student interest in these issues. But the broader European debates are to be affected as well. For example, a conference volume, following a Finnish-Russian-French (with Thévenot-Latour) or a Finnish-Russian-British (with Ashwin) discussion, could affect a European debate on issues of self-government and associational life, the sociology of things, and Russia-Europe relations.