Biopolitics in Russia: History and Prospects for the Future

Starting in 1991, the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research began to explore the interactions between biology, politics, and law in the post-communist region, with special attention to Russia. Established a decade earlier by Dr. Margaret Gruter to bring together the work of scholars in the life sciences, social sciences, and law, the Gruter Institute invited several leading Russians, including Dr. Kemer Norkin, Director General of the Mayor's Office of the City of Moscow, to a conference on "The Infrastructure and Superstructure of the European Market: Implications for the Next Two Decades" (St. Moritz, Switzerland, August 26-28, 1991). Based on discussions at this meeting, the Gruter Institute organized a conference "From a Centrally-Planned Government System to a Rule-of-Law Democracy" at the Siemens Stiftung, Munchen, Germany (May 18-19, 1992), followed by a fact-finding trip to Moscow by members of its Steering Committee (May 20-24, 1992). These deliberations in turn led to a major conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC on "The Rule of Law, Human Nature, and the New Russia" with the participation of Russian guests who included Cief Justice Lebedev of the Russian Supreme Court and Dr. Norkin of the Mayor's Office (for proceedings, see Danilenko and Smith, 1993; Masters, 1993). Participants from Russia and other post-comunist countries attended subsequent conferences of the Gruter Institute, such as the international symposium on "Migration from the Perspective of Law and Behavioral Research" at the Freie Universitat Berlin (April 16-29, 1995) at which Dr. Norkin presented a paper on migration in Russia and the former USSR.

In 1992, A. Zub published a detailed study concentrating on the ethological and sociobiological dimensions of biopolitics, under the title "Power as Reflected in the Biopolitical Mirror" (with I. L'vov as co-author). The following year, Vitaly Egorov of the Department of Psychiatry organized an international conference at the University of Crimea at Sebastopol. In addition to scholars from the West were participants from a number of universities from the former Soviet Union. In 1993, R. Masters published his paper on "Evolutionary Biology and the New Russia".

In the same year, Oleskin wrote a paper on a somewhat paradoxical subject, the interactions between biopolitics and microbiology, published in the Russian journal Microbiology (a revised and updated version of this paper appeared in English in The Journal of Basic Microbiology). In 1994, Oleskin published a series of 3 papers on biopolitics in the Russian journal Moscow University Proceedings (Biology Series), and in 1995, a generalizing article on this subject, entitled "Biopolitcs and its Applicability to Social Technologies" in The Problems of Philosophy (Moscow).

As far as the gradual dissemination of biopolitical ideas in Russia is concerned, special tribute is to be payed to the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. The Head of one of its subdivisions, the Laboratory for Philosophy of Biology and Ecology, Prof. Igor K. Liseev, received Dr. Vlavainos-Arvanitis during her visits to Russia. The Institute produced a fundamental monograph entitled Philosophy of Nature: the Coevolution Strategy (by R. S. Karpinskaya, I. K. Liseev, and A. P. Ogurtsov), which gave sufficient attention to biopolitics and related subjects.Since 1986, the Dean of the Biology Dept of MSU Prof. Gusev was a member of the international Commission for Biological Education (CBE) under the auspices of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS). The CBE goals were to eradicate bio-iiliteracy, to promote a biological educational system for non-biologists, and to cope with various "biopolicy" issues. At the conferences of this organization, M. Gusev gave a number of talks on biopolitics. Under his influence, the former Chairman of CBE, Prof. Gerhard Schaefer (Hamburg, Germany) also developed an interest in biopolitics, and mentioned this term in a number of his recent publications. Prof. Gusev supported Dr. Oleskin in establishing a new subdivision, the Educational & Research Sector for Biopolitics and Biosociology (short title Sector for Biosocial Problems) at the Biology Dept of MSU. This Sector was officially set up in January, 1995. The staff members of the Sector and the associated scientists and scholars have been dealing with both parts of the word bio-politics. They have been doing biological research (on the role of chemical tramsmitters in the social behavior of living organisms), engaging in politics-related activities, such as the Hirama Project, and writing a Biopolitics & Bio-Humanities Thesaurus. This contribution can be considered a preliminary publication in terms of the Thesaurus-related project supported by the Russian Humanities Research Foundation (grant # 96-04089).

In 1995, Dr. Zub defended a Doctor of Science dissertation at MSU on the Philosophic and Methodological Foundations of Biopolitics. Dr. Oleskin gave talks on this subject at conferences organized by the International Center for Economics and Ecology in 1994 (Tubingen, Germany) and in 1995 (Miscolc, Hungary). Biopolitical matters were also discussed by him at an international German Limnological Society conference (Berlin, 1995). His presentation was also included into a broadcast by one of the Moscow radio stations. As it happened, the Deputy Administration Chief of the Moscow City Council Mrs. Olga A. Bektabegova heard this broadcast while driving to her office. She set up a creative lab, Future of Russia, under the aegis of the City Council. Biopolitics was incorporated into the research and development projects carried out by this lab, which generally concerned itself with long-term urban planning and optimizing social and political structures in Moscow.

Two talks on biopolitics-related matters (by Prof. Franz Wuketitz from Vienna, Austria, and Oleskin) were given at a Synergetics Conference in Moscow in January 1996. A travel grant from the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR) enabled Dr. Oleskin to spend six months at Dartmouth College, working under Prof. R. Masters on biopolitics and to establish contacts with M. Gruter from the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research and with Professors Albert Somit, Steven Peterson, James Schubert, Peter Corning, Peter Meyer, and others during the ESS/IPSA/APLS Meeting in Alfred (July 22-27, 1996). One of the goals of Dr. Oleskin's visit was to intensify the cooperation between Russian and American biopoliticians (and scholars in related fields).

Following is a brief description of selected biopolitical problems which are currently being actively researched in Russia.

3. Biopolitics and Social Technologies. The Network Group (Hirama) Project

Social technologies are interpreted here as including all kinds of techniques aimed at (1) ameliorating interpersonal and intergroup relations in various social settings (families, worker collectives, research teams, artistic creative groups, parliamentary commissions, etc.) and (2) improving the organizational patterns of human social structures per se. With the aid of other scientific approaches (based on game theory, decision-making theory, small group sociology, management theory, etc.), biopolitics can be expected to make its contribution to a number of Russian social and economic problems. Biopolitics-related social techniques should help the country accumulate its "social capital" (Nichols, 1996), i. e. establish dependable relationships between the incumbents of various social roles (bank clerks, clients, sales assistants, production managers, etc.), based on the rule of democratic law.The project discussed below has been developed by the Sector for Biosocial Problems at MSU and by the Creative Lab at the City Council of Moscow. This project envisages establishing a system of social networks, whose organizational patterns are in conformity with the recent data and concepts of evolutionary biology. The variant of network structures promoted in Russia by biopoliticians has been termed "the hirama model", since these small-scale networks resemble the Middle East hiramas established about 2,000 years ago3. There is, nevertheless, also a modern interpretation of the word hirama (High-Intensity Research and Management Association). The hirama-type networks promote non-hierarchical (horizontal) relationships among people. This principle is in conformity with

the data on primate social structures, suggesting that they do not always represent "close-knit" rigid hierarchies, can easily disintegrate in response to environmental changes, and often coexist with horizontal relations based on friendly bonds (e. g., among young vervets, McGuire, 1982). Ape groups are characterized by prevailing loose, impermanent friendly relationships (food sharing, greeting, grooming, and game behaviors), despite the presence of dominant individuals ("silver-back" males in gorilla groups). the widely accepted concepts on primitive human societies, which are envisioned as relatively small groups (up to 50—100 people) engaged in gathering, scavenging, and/or hunting. Conventionally described as "hunter-gatherers," these were cooperation-promoting, low-density networks which give an individual a chance to migrate and to stay isolated (see, e. g., Maryanski and Turner, 1992). ethological data suggesting the involvement of the following factors in behavioral coordination: (1) hierarchy and imitation of the leader's behavior by most individuals in the biosocial system, a widespread biosocial pattern occurring in primates (McGuire, 1982), social insects (Zakharov, 1991), and presumably even microorganisms (Oleskin, 1993, 1994c). However, it does not represent the only option; (2) local interactions among neighbors which stimulate and imitate each other's behavior (Holzman, 1984)—the practice colloquially known as "keeping up with joneses", such interactions are involved in nest construction by ants (Zakharov, 1991), collective hunting by lions (Stander, 1992), and the movements of "anonymous flocks" (Lorenz, 1966) such as leaderless fish shoals; (3) diffuse behavior-stimulating agents permeating the biosocial system (chemical agents, physical fields). For instance, olfaction is an ancient and evolutionarily conservative communication channel operating even in human face-to-face groups. historical data on horizontal network structures successfully tested in various historical epochs and countries. These structures can be exemplified by Swiss Gemeinden (originally "non-hierarchical, undivided ... valley communities", Steinberg, 1976, p.11), modern Israeli kibbutzim, American communes such as "Twin Oaks" (with communal ownership and communal satisfaction of the members' needs), cooperatives in the US and West Europe (e. g., "Mondragon" in Spain), as well as Russian "informal groups", which flourished under Gorbachov's regime. finally, with the fact that these networks are spontaneously generated by humans. For example, as new scholarly disciplines emerge in universities,we see them everywhere complementing the existing Departments (themselves networks of individuals who cooperate and compete in complex ways). At the other end of the social scale, we find gangs emerging in otherwise anomic ghetto environments. Hence, from the highest to the lowest social strata, we see informal social networks as essential components of more complex institutional or social behavior (cf. Peterson, 1991; J. Schubert, 1991).