Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
Race and social relations 259 The instrumental nature of these relations was obscured by their reformulation in Russian discourse as aspects of “friendship” and mutual assistance (Ledeneva 1998; Pesmen 2000). Yet this ideology of intimacy was not simply an illusion: relatives, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and neighbors were, in fact, the very persons with whom Russians shared and exchanged goods, information, assistance, and other resources. Thus participation within an exchange network denoted more than the parameters of one’s access to resources; it also demarcated one’s membership in a collective social group of assistance - a community of people linked by acts of support. In linguistic terms, Russians distinguish between those individuals who belong to the same social and economic group as “nash" (ours) and those who are outsiders as “ne nash” (not ours).6 The successful articulation and enforcement of this simultaneously symbolic and practical demarcation of insiders versus outsiders depends on an ethic of trust and mutual responsibility among participants, so that transactors perceive both their exchange partners and the partners of their partners, as well as the very commodities and services that circulate through these personal relationships, as being reliable and safe (Pesmen 2000; Caldwell 2002). Consequently, Russians have preferred to deal with individuals who are either friends or “friends of friends" (Shlapentokh 1989) and approach strangers with caution. More recently in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia these distinctions between trustworthy insiders and distrusted outsiders, or between “nash” and “ne nash” persons, have played out within a schema of social differentiation that emphasizes perceived racial and ethnic differences. This social differentiation and ranking of individuals according to presumed physical, biological, and innate differences has long been an important component of the project of nationbuilding in Russia (Bromley 1974; Hirsch 1997; Khazanov 1997; Tolz 1998; Goluboff 2001). In particular, “blood” (krov) has been a central idiom in Russian discourse for the determination and transmission of racial, ethnic, and nation-
