«NORTHERN LIGHTS»: VISUALIZATION OF THE NEW RUSSIAN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE

The article is devoted to the analysis of one of modern Russia’s local or group historical narratives, which articulates the mystical connection of the north-Russian population with Finno-Ugric shamanic practices based on runes «Kalevala». The TV series «Northern Lights» (the original script of Victoria Platova) in the genre of a mystical detective discusses one of the ways to deploy a «folk» or popular historical narrative, which is some controversial attitude of the state policy of memory and a conservative turn in historical policy. The relationship of the representations about Finnish roots of Russian ethnos with such unrelated concepts as «escapism» and «Aryan myth» was analyzed. The gradual drift of popular history in mass media is considered from the purely Slavic narrative of origin and ancient mystical practices of the people of north-western Russia to the recognition of Finno-Ugric roots or even the unity of Russian and Finnish peoples of the Russian north. The deconstruction of the series by visual anthropology techniques revealed a constant appeal to the everyday magical practices of the Karelian heroes of the series, who identify themselves as Russians. The inhabitants of the Island, where the action takes place, all the structure of their daily lives and holidays are built around the gods and heroes of Kalevala. The narratives «Finnish roots» in media are considered in connection with the interpretation of dubious results «Russian Nobility DNA Project», the origin of Princess Olha and Old Ladoga, as the source of Russia. The conclusion is reached on the participation of many actors and polyphonicity of modern Russian historical narrative, search for new lines of interface of Russian history and Europe.

Conservative Islamic factions vs. secular nationalists: toward a civil contestation in democratic Indonesia

This paper describes how Indonesia’s presidents have delt with Islamist and secular nationalist political contestation since the preparation of Indonesian independence and how the current president compares. Soekarno’s initial reliance on civil discourse ended in his autocratic decree that banned the Indonesia’s most powerful Islamic party (Masyumi). Soeharto’s initial iron-fist approach ended up meeting some Islamic demands. B.J. Habibie helped transformed Indonesia through a democratic election in 1999, but the leader of the winning party, Megawati was defeated in the parliament that elected a pluralist Muslim cleric, Gus Dur. Gus Dur’s administration, ended by the central axis, suggests that liberal democratic processes cannot be applied in an increasingly conservative Muslim majority country. Megawati lost, partly because she is a female president unpopular among the Islamists, while SBY was sympathetic toward the Islamist’s demands, enhancing the “conservative turn.” Jokowi has used discursive and legal approaches to promote Pancasila in challenging the hardline Islamic demands, enabling him to ban HTI and FPI and to implement the speech freedom-limiting laws, leading to criticisms and the decline in the 2020 Indonesia's Democracy Index. Jokowi’s expansion of these laws to maintain unity and stability may be deemed an “authoritarian turn,” but I argue that it may be more appropriately called “the Pancasila turn.” In framing and analyzing Jokowi’s laws as a Pancasila turn, I am arguing in this paper that this lays the foundation for a more equal, civil, and democratic contestation.

Nationalism as an argument in contemporary Russia. Four perspectives on language in action

This dissertation analyses the uses of the concept of nationalism in Russia from a historical perspective. It is based on four empirical studies examining textual material produced between the years 2000 and 2020. During this time, and after the so-called “conservative turn” in particular, the state leadership in Russia adopted increasingly authoritarian policies vis-à-vis society, and started to portray Russia as being under an external threat. The annexation of Crimea and the onset of the war in Ukraine in 2014 solidified the way in which recent political changes in Russia were characterised as “growing nationalism”. In this temporal context, the study suggests that nationalist discourses are currently shifting, and traces these shifts in scholarly and everyday language. The negative connotations of nationalism in everyday language affect its scholarly use, which is why the aspects of nationalism as an analytical concept, as well as the complex relationship between the concept and the term itself, are expounded in the study. Following the tradition of critical nationalism studies, the dissertation approaches the ‘nation’ as a political claim that results from a constructive process in language. The dissertation draws on the rhetorical tradition of conceptual history in analysing specific concepts, metaphors and narratives within nationalist discourses as a means of framing politics. The way language is used simultaneously defines the boundaries of actual policies. More specifically, the rhetorical choices of politicians map the conditions of belonging to a nation, duly having real implications for people’s lives.

Authoritarianism, Democracy, Islamic Movements and Contestations of Islamic Religious Ideas in Indonesia

Since independence, Islamic civil society groups and intellectuals have played a vital role in Indonesian politics. This paper seeks to chart the contestation of Islamic religious ideas in Indonesian politics and society throughout the 20th Century, from the declaration of independence in 1945 up until 2001. This paper discusses the social and political influence of, and relationships between, three major Indonesian Islamic intellectual streams: Modernists, Traditionalists, and neo-Modernists. It describes the intellectual roots of each of these Islamic movements, their relationships with the civil Islamic groups Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), their influence upon Indonesian politics, and their interactions with the state. The paper examines the ways in which mainstream Islamic politics in Indonesia, the world’s largest majority Muslim nation, has been shaped by disagreements between modernists and traditionalists, beginning in the early 1950s. Disagreements resulted in a schism within Masyumi, the dominant Islamic party, that saw the traditionalists affiliated with NU leave to establish a separate NU party. Not only did this prevent Masyumi from coming close to garnering a majority of the votes in the 1955 election, but it also contributed to Masyumi veering into Islamism. This conservative turn coincided with elite contestation to define Indonesia as an Islamic state and was a factor in the party antagonizing President Sukarno to the point that he moved to ban it. The banning of Masyumi came as Sukarno imposed ‘guided democracy’ as a soft-authoritarian alternative to democracy and set in train dynamics that facilitated the emergence of military-backed authoritarianism under Suharto. During the four decades in which democracy was suppressed in Indonesia, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, and associated NGOs, activists, and intellectuals were the backbones of civil society. They provided critical support for the non-sectarian principles at the heart of the Indonesian constitution, known as Pancasila. This found the strongest and clearest articulation in the neo-Modernist movement that emerged in the 1980s and synthesized key elements of traditionalist Islamic scholarship and Modernist reformism. Neo-Modernism, which was articulated by leading Islamic intellectual Nurcholish Madjid and Nahdlatul Ulama Chairman Abdurrahman Wahid, presents an open, inclusive, progressive understanding of Islam that is affirming of social pluralism, comfortable with modernity, and stresses the need for tolerance and harmony in inter-communal relations. Its articulation by Wahid, who later became president of Indonesia, contributed to Indonesia’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy. The vital contribution of neo-Modernist Islam to democracy and reform in Indonesia serves to refute the notion that Islam is incompatible with democracy and pluralism.