Paul Goble
Staunton, July 31 – A newly created United Russia analytic center ostensibly intended to work with “the newly dissatisfied” in the Russian population will in fact collect information that governors and mayors are concealing from Moscow so that the latter will be able to take steps before popular anger is directed at the powers that be in the center.
In an interview to the URA.ru news agency, Ruslan Gattarov, who represents Chelyabinsk in the Federation Council and who will head this new body, said that he “will collect information which the governors and mayors are hiding” in order to help Moscow respond in a timely fashion (www.ura.ru/content/urfo/29-07-2010/articles/1036255397.html).
At least in principle, this new United Russia body represents the revival of yet another tradition of Soviet times – the use of ruling party cadres to keep watch on lower-level officials for Moscow and the awareness of such officials that party members are watching everything they do and say.
Gattarov, 33, arrived at the agency’s headquarters directly from the airport wearing a Che Guevara tee-shirt and carrying a CoscoSport backpack, described the ways in which his new group will be engaged in “the monitoring of the social-political situation in the regions” in order to forestall events like those which have rocked Kaliningrad.
“Speaking crudely,” Gattarov told URA.ru’s Mikhail Vyugin, “the regional and municipal powers that be frequently do everything to keep quiet about problems in order that nothing about them will leak out. And then what happens? People are dissatisfied that the problem is not being resolved.”
“And who do they blame for this?” he asked rhetorically, people “immediately transfer [the blame] to our leader Putin and our president Medvedev. That is, as a result of any problem which regional and municipal powers that be cannot control, the image of the party as a whole suffers.”
Gattarov dismissed suggestions that his new center would be as ineffective as Putin’s offices has sometimes proved to be. “One should not compare” the two, he said. Putin’s offices are responsible for “resolving the concrete questions of citizens, and its effectiveness is rated by the number of positively resolved requests, and this percent in fact is quite high.
“The task of the analytic center,” on the other hand, “is not only to find a problem but also the paths toward its solution,” Gattarov continued, “And we will examine issues which have a resonance with the population in order not to see repeated what happened in Kaliningrad” where the situation threatened to get out of hand.
The center itself, he continued “will be small: there will not be a single politician, only young guys. Moreover, we will not collect out information from functionaries. There are many people who are not indifferent to what is going on, and they will give us information. These are people from the web.” They use blogs and Twitter.
“I will try to answer all of them [because] this is living contact, the receipt of real information from a wild number of people, with whom offline it would be physically impossible to become acquainted.” Gattarov added that he will “very attentively” follow the opposition parties in parliament. “There is also the extra-systemic opposition – they are enemies.”
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Plans to Close Last Mari Language School in Russia’s Perm Kray Spark International Protests
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 31 – Plans by the educational authorities in Perm kray to close the last Mari language school there have sparked protests not only within that region but internationally as well, a conflict that has highlighted the difficulties minority language communities in Russia face because of budget stringencies increasing official support for Russian, the state language.
The school in question, Anton Razmakhnin notes in “Svobodnaya pressa” this week, is located in Vaskino, a village in the Suksun district of Perm kray where several thousand Maris live several hundred kilometers from Mari El and through which pass no major highways (svpressa.ru/society/article/28403/).
In recent years, the Vaskino school was “the only school in Perm kray where the Mari language was studied,” but now, in all probability, Razmakhnin says, “this school will be closed,” with the primary classes kept in the village but the middle and older students send to a village 15 kilometers away. But in neither will their native Mari language be taught.
Local Maris have arranged for a meeting with local educational officials (www.periscop.prpc.ru/2010-02-21-06-12-26/786-100729.html), and they have received support from Maris in Helsinki (mariuver.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/gornomari-perm/) and from the European Parliament (mariuver.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/evroparlament-protest/#more-18962), an indication of the importance of this case for all Finno-Ugric peoples.
But the Maris in Vaskino face an uphill task. As local educational officials point out, the school building there is “in very terrible condition.” Moreover, Perm officials say, the Maris failed to take advantage of the opportunity several years ago to have the school there declared “a national school,” something that might have saved it.
(The Maris themselves say that they wanted to do just that, but local and regional officials threw so many obstacles in their way that despite repeated efforts, the supporters of the 76-student school could not secure that special designation.)
As Razmakhnin points out, at one level, this story is “completely ordinary for contemporary Russia,” where officials have been consolidating small schools in order to save money and provide students with a greater range of courses and facilities than the schools they came from could offer.
As rational as that sounds, he notes, that approach fails to take into consideration that “the school in a rural locality” is a special place, which “alongside a club or the administration of a still ‘living’ collective farm’” holds the community together. If it is closed and especially if it involves a minority, consolidation threatens the identity and survival of the group as a whole.
What is striking and even disturbing, the “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist says, is that “Perm officials sincerely do not understand the Mari activists” and their passionate defense of the Vaskino school. These officials point to another village where Maris have a museum and cultural circles even though they no longer have a native language school.
In the view of officials, that is enough to keep the culture alive, and the mari language is one that in their view, “local residents simply don’t need.” Indeed, one official said that “no languages besides the state language (Russian) are in demand in Russia” because graduation exams and higher educational institutions are in that language.
This official continued that “for those who choose a career abroad, even Russian turns out not to be in demand. Why study it,” he asks rhetorically, “if it is possible to immediately take up English or Chinese?” Consequently, supporting minority languages is a costly survival of the past.
That is not how the speakers of Mari and other languages see it, and their ability to mobilize their communities both locally and via the Internet internationally may mean that the Mari-language school in Vaskino will survive, possibly in an even better building than it has now, although that is far from clear.
Indeed, the promise to construct a new school because the old one is in such terrible shape that it could lead to “a tragedy” may be little more than an effort by local officials to try to quiet the current protests and proceed as they had planned especially if demand for Mari-language instruction in Vaskino as measured by the number of students there continues to fall.
But the outcome of this struggle is something that not only Maris and other Finno-Ugric peoples inside Russia and abroad will be watching. That is because what happens in Vaskino will say a great deal about what Vladimir Putin’s regional amalgamation plans mean for smaller nationalities and what the fate of all these groups will be if current Moscow policies continue.
Staunton, July 31 – Plans by the educational authorities in Perm kray to close the last Mari language school there have sparked protests not only within that region but internationally as well, a conflict that has highlighted the difficulties minority language communities in Russia face because of budget stringencies increasing official support for Russian, the state language.
The school in question, Anton Razmakhnin notes in “Svobodnaya pressa” this week, is located in Vaskino, a village in the Suksun district of Perm kray where several thousand Maris live several hundred kilometers from Mari El and through which pass no major highways (svpressa.ru/society/article/28403/).
In recent years, the Vaskino school was “the only school in Perm kray where the Mari language was studied,” but now, in all probability, Razmakhnin says, “this school will be closed,” with the primary classes kept in the village but the middle and older students send to a village 15 kilometers away. But in neither will their native Mari language be taught.
Local Maris have arranged for a meeting with local educational officials (www.periscop.prpc.ru/2010-02-21-06-12-26/786-100729.html), and they have received support from Maris in Helsinki (mariuver.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/gornomari-perm/) and from the European Parliament (mariuver.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/evroparlament-protest/#more-18962), an indication of the importance of this case for all Finno-Ugric peoples.
But the Maris in Vaskino face an uphill task. As local educational officials point out, the school building there is “in very terrible condition.” Moreover, Perm officials say, the Maris failed to take advantage of the opportunity several years ago to have the school there declared “a national school,” something that might have saved it.
(The Maris themselves say that they wanted to do just that, but local and regional officials threw so many obstacles in their way that despite repeated efforts, the supporters of the 76-student school could not secure that special designation.)
As Razmakhnin points out, at one level, this story is “completely ordinary for contemporary Russia,” where officials have been consolidating small schools in order to save money and provide students with a greater range of courses and facilities than the schools they came from could offer.
As rational as that sounds, he notes, that approach fails to take into consideration that “the school in a rural locality” is a special place, which “alongside a club or the administration of a still ‘living’ collective farm’” holds the community together. If it is closed and especially if it involves a minority, consolidation threatens the identity and survival of the group as a whole.
What is striking and even disturbing, the “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist says, is that “Perm officials sincerely do not understand the Mari activists” and their passionate defense of the Vaskino school. These officials point to another village where Maris have a museum and cultural circles even though they no longer have a native language school.
In the view of officials, that is enough to keep the culture alive, and the mari language is one that in their view, “local residents simply don’t need.” Indeed, one official said that “no languages besides the state language (Russian) are in demand in Russia” because graduation exams and higher educational institutions are in that language.
This official continued that “for those who choose a career abroad, even Russian turns out not to be in demand. Why study it,” he asks rhetorically, “if it is possible to immediately take up English or Chinese?” Consequently, supporting minority languages is a costly survival of the past.
That is not how the speakers of Mari and other languages see it, and their ability to mobilize their communities both locally and via the Internet internationally may mean that the Mari-language school in Vaskino will survive, possibly in an even better building than it has now, although that is far from clear.
Indeed, the promise to construct a new school because the old one is in such terrible shape that it could lead to “a tragedy” may be little more than an effort by local officials to try to quiet the current protests and proceed as they had planned especially if demand for Mari-language instruction in Vaskino as measured by the number of students there continues to fall.
But the outcome of this struggle is something that not only Maris and other Finno-Ugric peoples inside Russia and abroad will be watching. That is because what happens in Vaskino will say a great deal about what Vladimir Putin’s regional amalgamation plans mean for smaller nationalities and what the fate of all these groups will be if current Moscow policies continue.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Belarusian Opposition Says Pro-Moscow Candidate Replacement at Least as Unacceptable as Lukashenka
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 30 – The Party of the Belarusian Popular Front, the oldest opposition group in that country, says that it will not ally itself with Moscow against Alyaksandr Lukashenka because a “pro-Russian” replacement would be at least as harmful to Belarus as the incumbent president has been.
Instead, as Moscow’s “Novyye izvestiya” reported yesterday, the opposition group has called on its supporters to step up their struggle against “the strengthening of Russian influence” in Belarus even if that makes them appear allies of Lukashenka whom the Kremlin has been attacking in recent weeks (www.newizv.ru/news/2010-07-30/130512/).
According to a declaration released by the Front, “Europe and the United States during the election campaign will conduct themselves quite passively while Russia ‘as the date of the holding of presidential elections gets closer, will strengthen the information campaign against Lukashenka.”
Aleksei Yanukevich, the head of the Party of the Popular Front, told the Moscow paper, that the Russian authorities may even go so far as to publicize information about the bank accounts of Minsk officials abroad, something that the US did not have when it “introduced sanctions” against Belarus.
The Moscow paper reported that Yanukevich believes that “Moscow is preparing its own protégé for the post of Belarusian president.” But, the Popular Front Party leader said, “a pro-Moscow candidate for us is just as unacceptable as Lukashenka,” because such an individual would cost the country its independence whatever he did domestically.
According to Yanukevich, the Russians have worked out the following “scenario” for changing the powers that be in his country. First, after the vote, many will complain that the results have been falsified, especially given how angry people are about the economy. Then, people will protest, and Moscow “will use its ties inside the Belarusian nomenklatura.”
In the elections, the Popular Front Party plans to run its deputy chairman Grigori Kostusev, although the party supports continued talks with other opposition groups to come up with a single opposition candidate. Those talks are not going well, but if they do succeed, Alyaksandr Milinkevich, head of the “For Freedom” movement, is expected to be the candidate.
Who the pro-Russian candidate might be is still unclear, “Novyye izvestiya” reported. But many in Minsk assume that this role will be played by Vladimir Neklyayev, a poet and opposition figure who lived for a few years in Norway but has since “returned to the Motherland.” He supposedly is backed by many in the force structures and nomenklatura.
The situation that the Belarusian opposition finds itself in is extraordinarily difficult, all the more so because most analysts in the West do not recognize its nature. While the opposition despises Lukashenka and all his works, they are not prepared to sacrifice their country to Moscow just because the Russian powers that be currently oppose him.
That impossible situation may be exactly the one that some in Moscow may hope to put the pro-Western Belarusian opposition parties in, all the more so because it may have the effect of making these parties look pro-Lukashenka to the Belarusian electorate when in fact they are nothing of the kind.
But unless Western governments recognize this situation and see that the Belarusian opposition is animated by long-term patriotism rather than short-term political calculations, those countries are likely to be unwitting players in a game that will either allow Lukashenka to continue his dictatorial ways or Moscow to rein in Belarusian independence.
Staunton, July 30 – The Party of the Belarusian Popular Front, the oldest opposition group in that country, says that it will not ally itself with Moscow against Alyaksandr Lukashenka because a “pro-Russian” replacement would be at least as harmful to Belarus as the incumbent president has been.
Instead, as Moscow’s “Novyye izvestiya” reported yesterday, the opposition group has called on its supporters to step up their struggle against “the strengthening of Russian influence” in Belarus even if that makes them appear allies of Lukashenka whom the Kremlin has been attacking in recent weeks (www.newizv.ru/news/2010-07-30/130512/).
According to a declaration released by the Front, “Europe and the United States during the election campaign will conduct themselves quite passively while Russia ‘as the date of the holding of presidential elections gets closer, will strengthen the information campaign against Lukashenka.”
Aleksei Yanukevich, the head of the Party of the Popular Front, told the Moscow paper, that the Russian authorities may even go so far as to publicize information about the bank accounts of Minsk officials abroad, something that the US did not have when it “introduced sanctions” against Belarus.
The Moscow paper reported that Yanukevich believes that “Moscow is preparing its own protégé for the post of Belarusian president.” But, the Popular Front Party leader said, “a pro-Moscow candidate for us is just as unacceptable as Lukashenka,” because such an individual would cost the country its independence whatever he did domestically.
According to Yanukevich, the Russians have worked out the following “scenario” for changing the powers that be in his country. First, after the vote, many will complain that the results have been falsified, especially given how angry people are about the economy. Then, people will protest, and Moscow “will use its ties inside the Belarusian nomenklatura.”
In the elections, the Popular Front Party plans to run its deputy chairman Grigori Kostusev, although the party supports continued talks with other opposition groups to come up with a single opposition candidate. Those talks are not going well, but if they do succeed, Alyaksandr Milinkevich, head of the “For Freedom” movement, is expected to be the candidate.
Who the pro-Russian candidate might be is still unclear, “Novyye izvestiya” reported. But many in Minsk assume that this role will be played by Vladimir Neklyayev, a poet and opposition figure who lived for a few years in Norway but has since “returned to the Motherland.” He supposedly is backed by many in the force structures and nomenklatura.
The situation that the Belarusian opposition finds itself in is extraordinarily difficult, all the more so because most analysts in the West do not recognize its nature. While the opposition despises Lukashenka and all his works, they are not prepared to sacrifice their country to Moscow just because the Russian powers that be currently oppose him.
That impossible situation may be exactly the one that some in Moscow may hope to put the pro-Western Belarusian opposition parties in, all the more so because it may have the effect of making these parties look pro-Lukashenka to the Belarusian electorate when in fact they are nothing of the kind.
But unless Western governments recognize this situation and see that the Belarusian opposition is animated by long-term patriotism rather than short-term political calculations, those countries are likely to be unwitting players in a game that will either allow Lukashenka to continue his dictatorial ways or Moscow to rein in Belarusian independence.
Window on Eurasia: Chechen Violence, Kadyrov’s Stance Leading More Russians to Support Radical Russian Nationalists
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 30 – The most dangerous result of this week’s clashes in the youth camp in Tuapse and of violence by Chechen migrants in Russian cities is the growth of support among many formerly apolitical Russians for extremist Russian nationalist groups, a trend exacerbated by Ramzan Kadyrov’s demand that Moscow give a clear political assessment of these events.
In an article in today’s “Vremya novostei,” Ivan Sukhov argues that this is the case for two reasons. On the one hand, such “’domestic’ conflicts,’” a term officials use to describe these events no longer has much credibility because such increasingly frequent clashes involve members of particular ethnic groups (www.vremya.ru/2010/134/4/259079.html).
And on the other, Kadyrov and other Chechen leaders want to have it both ways. Immediately after the Tuapse clashes, they blamed Russians for attacking Chechens and even suggested that the 2014 Sochi Olympics might be at risk if Moscow couldn’t improve ethnic relations in the region.
But yesterday, Kadyrov, responding to the anger those statements generated, backed down and said that the Chechen regime does not consider the clashes in the Tuapse camp “inter-ethnic or inter-religious.” At the same time, however, he demanded that Moscow give “a political assessment” of what happened, something Sukhov says the center cannot do.
Kadyrov also such to placate Moscow and Russian public opinion by insisting that there have been “marked changes for the better on questions of international relations in Russia,” something Moscow may want to hear but that as Sukhov points out, “all the events of recent times testifies to the reverse.”
“Sociologists,” the journalist notes, “have found already for a long time that those who come from the Russian North Caucasus, while being our fellow citizens, ever more often are viewed by other Russians as neighbors inside the country with whom they are forced to live but very much do not want to.”
Recent Internet polls suggest that such attitudes are intensifying among Russians, Sukhov says, with an increasing number prepared to get expel Chechnya from the Russian Federation and Chechens from their own midst. Such people, the journalist continues, are fed up with “rhetorical appeals about ‘a common home’ and inter-ethnic peace.”
And that in turn has had a major impact on Russian attitudes more generally. “If in the 1990s and the early 2000s, radical nationalists had an extremely insignificant ‘civil of sympathy’] in large Russian cities, now the base of their support is growing before [our] eyes, taking in even those circles which were either absolutely apolitical or led by completely internationalist ideas about the world.”
This development, Sukhov says, is hardly something to be “pleased” about. But it is Kadyrov’s demand for a political assessment of the Tuapse and other cases that is a task Moscow cannot carry out. To do so, the Russian journalist points out, “would mean to take one side or the other, and this is impossible for the federal powers that be.
First of all, he writes, “the behavior of the Chechens which as the law enforcement organs acknowledge generated a pogrom in the camp to a large extent is the result of the Caucasus policy of the federal center over many years, of a war which deprived several generations of Chechens of the chance for normal socialization and the follow on attempt to redeem the evil it had committed by a large number of preferences over given not to those who really suffered from the war.”
“To admit this would be to place under doubt the entire Caucasus policy of recent years,” Sukhov says.
At the same time, to declare the ethnic Russians involved guilty would lead to more anger “and possibly also hatred among the ethnic Russian policy, which still forms the majority in the country and from whom the success of the powers that be in upcoming federal elections somehow depends.”
But Moscow cannot generate a political assessment which spreads the blame to both sides of the conflicts “because in this case, it would all the same have to admit that reality is very strongly distinguished from slogans about a single civic nation,” something that the powers that be for all their talk of this have done little to create.
This dead end which Moscow finds itself in thanks to Kadyrov’s demands, Sukhov says, helps to explain the attention now being given to the idea of drafting some sort of code of behavior for Chechens and others coming from the North Caucasus into predominantly Russian regions and cities.
That idea appears to be gaining official support in the regions and in the offices of the North Caucasus Federal District. But those supporting it do not recognize that “in healthy societies, formed in reality of a single social-political organism, the functions of which are regulated by law and not by force or archaic customs do not need such rules.”
In such societies, these rules of behavior “exist and are communicated by themselves,” Sukhov points out. Where they do not exist, as in Russia today, any effort to impose them by fiat is certain to prove counter-productive, especially when the dominant ethnic community is increasingly infected by the virus of extremist nationalism.
Staunton, July 30 – The most dangerous result of this week’s clashes in the youth camp in Tuapse and of violence by Chechen migrants in Russian cities is the growth of support among many formerly apolitical Russians for extremist Russian nationalist groups, a trend exacerbated by Ramzan Kadyrov’s demand that Moscow give a clear political assessment of these events.
In an article in today’s “Vremya novostei,” Ivan Sukhov argues that this is the case for two reasons. On the one hand, such “’domestic’ conflicts,’” a term officials use to describe these events no longer has much credibility because such increasingly frequent clashes involve members of particular ethnic groups (www.vremya.ru/2010/134/4/259079.html).
And on the other, Kadyrov and other Chechen leaders want to have it both ways. Immediately after the Tuapse clashes, they blamed Russians for attacking Chechens and even suggested that the 2014 Sochi Olympics might be at risk if Moscow couldn’t improve ethnic relations in the region.
But yesterday, Kadyrov, responding to the anger those statements generated, backed down and said that the Chechen regime does not consider the clashes in the Tuapse camp “inter-ethnic or inter-religious.” At the same time, however, he demanded that Moscow give “a political assessment” of what happened, something Sukhov says the center cannot do.
Kadyrov also such to placate Moscow and Russian public opinion by insisting that there have been “marked changes for the better on questions of international relations in Russia,” something Moscow may want to hear but that as Sukhov points out, “all the events of recent times testifies to the reverse.”
“Sociologists,” the journalist notes, “have found already for a long time that those who come from the Russian North Caucasus, while being our fellow citizens, ever more often are viewed by other Russians as neighbors inside the country with whom they are forced to live but very much do not want to.”
Recent Internet polls suggest that such attitudes are intensifying among Russians, Sukhov says, with an increasing number prepared to get expel Chechnya from the Russian Federation and Chechens from their own midst. Such people, the journalist continues, are fed up with “rhetorical appeals about ‘a common home’ and inter-ethnic peace.”
And that in turn has had a major impact on Russian attitudes more generally. “If in the 1990s and the early 2000s, radical nationalists had an extremely insignificant ‘civil of sympathy’] in large Russian cities, now the base of their support is growing before [our] eyes, taking in even those circles which were either absolutely apolitical or led by completely internationalist ideas about the world.”
This development, Sukhov says, is hardly something to be “pleased” about. But it is Kadyrov’s demand for a political assessment of the Tuapse and other cases that is a task Moscow cannot carry out. To do so, the Russian journalist points out, “would mean to take one side or the other, and this is impossible for the federal powers that be.
First of all, he writes, “the behavior of the Chechens which as the law enforcement organs acknowledge generated a pogrom in the camp to a large extent is the result of the Caucasus policy of the federal center over many years, of a war which deprived several generations of Chechens of the chance for normal socialization and the follow on attempt to redeem the evil it had committed by a large number of preferences over given not to those who really suffered from the war.”
“To admit this would be to place under doubt the entire Caucasus policy of recent years,” Sukhov says.
At the same time, to declare the ethnic Russians involved guilty would lead to more anger “and possibly also hatred among the ethnic Russian policy, which still forms the majority in the country and from whom the success of the powers that be in upcoming federal elections somehow depends.”
But Moscow cannot generate a political assessment which spreads the blame to both sides of the conflicts “because in this case, it would all the same have to admit that reality is very strongly distinguished from slogans about a single civic nation,” something that the powers that be for all their talk of this have done little to create.
This dead end which Moscow finds itself in thanks to Kadyrov’s demands, Sukhov says, helps to explain the attention now being given to the idea of drafting some sort of code of behavior for Chechens and others coming from the North Caucasus into predominantly Russian regions and cities.
That idea appears to be gaining official support in the regions and in the offices of the North Caucasus Federal District. But those supporting it do not recognize that “in healthy societies, formed in reality of a single social-political organism, the functions of which are regulated by law and not by force or archaic customs do not need such rules.”
In such societies, these rules of behavior “exist and are communicated by themselves,” Sukhov points out. Where they do not exist, as in Russia today, any effort to impose them by fiat is certain to prove counter-productive, especially when the dominant ethnic community is increasingly infected by the virus of extremist nationalism.
Window on Eurasia: A Democratic Russia Could End Massive Corruption in Two Years But the Putin Regime Can’t, New Study Suggests
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 30 – Corruption in Russia could be reduced to manageable proportions if the country were to become a democracy, but Vladimir Putin and the other powers that be in Moscow would have to be committed to that, something that is not now the case, according to a new report by the Russian anti-corruption organization “Clean Hands.”
Today, speaking at the presentation of that report, Yevgeny Arkhipov, the president of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, pointed out that the average size of bribes in Russia had almost doubled over the last year, according to official figures of the MVD’s Department of Economic Security (www.nr2.ru/moskow/294410.html).
According to his calculations, Arkhipov continued, “about 50 percent of the entire economy of Russia is in the shadow of corruption. In other words, corrupt exchanges form about 50 percent of GDP. Those figures, he said, “practically coincide” with World Bank figures which suggest that “more than 48 percent” of Russia’s GDP involves corruption.
The Clean Hands report rated Russia’s regions in terms of corruption. As expected, the city of Moscow led the list. Moscow oblast was second, Tatarstan third, with the following rounding out the top 10: St. Petersburg, Krasnodar kray, Belgorod oblast, Mordvinia, Novosibirsk oblast, Bashkortostan and Nizhny Novgorod oblast.
The authors of the study said that “the absence of representatives of the North Caucasus region among the leaders is explained by the way that there complaining about corruption or even more attempting to struggle with it is dangerous for one’s life,” an indication of the difficulties of compiling such rankings in Russian conditions.
Arkhipov for his part argued that “the level of corruption directly depends on the stability of the political system of a country.” World experience suggests that the countries which have experienced political collapse or have undergone major social, political and economic change usually experience “a growth of corruption, crime and so on.”
There are two means of defeating corruption, he continued. “The first is the establishment of a harsh, repressive totalitarian system” like those of Stalin or Pinochet. The second is to institutionalize democracy, so that the people control the state apparatus and thus make “the appearance of corruption practically impossible.”
That is, the lawyer said, democracy has the ability to make corruption “unprofitable from an economic, social and even political point of view.” Examples of this are numerous, including Norway, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United States, and “the most recent example, Georgia.”
Russia, tragically, cannot decide to commit itself consistently to either of these paths but remains sitting between two stools. “The result of such an inconsistent policy is the ever greater growth of corruption,” something that has reached “such proportions that Russian statehood itself is threatened by it.”
One of the report’s most intriguing aspects was its rating of the power of various components of the Russian political system, a rating based “on the analysis of the decisions taken by this or that element.” Using that measure, the special services came out on the top with 55 percent, Putin stood in second place at 13, and the criminal world in third at 12 percent.
The prime minister’s low rating, the authors of the report say, reflects the fact that “only a small part of his decisions are implemented. And they add the following observation: “If Putin had come to power in 1985, we would still live under communism and the Soviet Union would exist as it did before.”
“If [Putin] had come to power in the United States, nothing would have changed there either. He is not a reformer; he is a man of the system,” Arkhipov added. Consequently, Putin and the current powers that be are carrying out “anti-corruption measures “which in fact will not change anything” because “a real interest in the victory over corruption is lacking.”
The lawyer said that it must be acknowledged that “the people themselves permitted the flowering of corruption.” If the people see that democracy can end corruption by making that evil “unprofitable,” Arkhipov concluded, then there is a chance that support for democracy will increase and corruption could be defeated “in [only] two years.”
Staunton, July 30 – Corruption in Russia could be reduced to manageable proportions if the country were to become a democracy, but Vladimir Putin and the other powers that be in Moscow would have to be committed to that, something that is not now the case, according to a new report by the Russian anti-corruption organization “Clean Hands.”
Today, speaking at the presentation of that report, Yevgeny Arkhipov, the president of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, pointed out that the average size of bribes in Russia had almost doubled over the last year, according to official figures of the MVD’s Department of Economic Security (www.nr2.ru/moskow/294410.html).
According to his calculations, Arkhipov continued, “about 50 percent of the entire economy of Russia is in the shadow of corruption. In other words, corrupt exchanges form about 50 percent of GDP. Those figures, he said, “practically coincide” with World Bank figures which suggest that “more than 48 percent” of Russia’s GDP involves corruption.
The Clean Hands report rated Russia’s regions in terms of corruption. As expected, the city of Moscow led the list. Moscow oblast was second, Tatarstan third, with the following rounding out the top 10: St. Petersburg, Krasnodar kray, Belgorod oblast, Mordvinia, Novosibirsk oblast, Bashkortostan and Nizhny Novgorod oblast.
The authors of the study said that “the absence of representatives of the North Caucasus region among the leaders is explained by the way that there complaining about corruption or even more attempting to struggle with it is dangerous for one’s life,” an indication of the difficulties of compiling such rankings in Russian conditions.
Arkhipov for his part argued that “the level of corruption directly depends on the stability of the political system of a country.” World experience suggests that the countries which have experienced political collapse or have undergone major social, political and economic change usually experience “a growth of corruption, crime and so on.”
There are two means of defeating corruption, he continued. “The first is the establishment of a harsh, repressive totalitarian system” like those of Stalin or Pinochet. The second is to institutionalize democracy, so that the people control the state apparatus and thus make “the appearance of corruption practically impossible.”
That is, the lawyer said, democracy has the ability to make corruption “unprofitable from an economic, social and even political point of view.” Examples of this are numerous, including Norway, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United States, and “the most recent example, Georgia.”
Russia, tragically, cannot decide to commit itself consistently to either of these paths but remains sitting between two stools. “The result of such an inconsistent policy is the ever greater growth of corruption,” something that has reached “such proportions that Russian statehood itself is threatened by it.”
One of the report’s most intriguing aspects was its rating of the power of various components of the Russian political system, a rating based “on the analysis of the decisions taken by this or that element.” Using that measure, the special services came out on the top with 55 percent, Putin stood in second place at 13, and the criminal world in third at 12 percent.
The prime minister’s low rating, the authors of the report say, reflects the fact that “only a small part of his decisions are implemented. And they add the following observation: “If Putin had come to power in 1985, we would still live under communism and the Soviet Union would exist as it did before.”
“If [Putin] had come to power in the United States, nothing would have changed there either. He is not a reformer; he is a man of the system,” Arkhipov added. Consequently, Putin and the current powers that be are carrying out “anti-corruption measures “which in fact will not change anything” because “a real interest in the victory over corruption is lacking.”
The lawyer said that it must be acknowledged that “the people themselves permitted the flowering of corruption.” If the people see that democracy can end corruption by making that evil “unprofitable,” Arkhipov concluded, then there is a chance that support for democracy will increase and corruption could be defeated “in [only] two years.”
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Soviet-Style Pre-Induction Military Training Returns to Moscow Schools
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 29 – Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is reviving pre-induction military training in his city’s schools, restoring a Soviet-era practice that the federal powers that be have not yet taken despite the fact that this idea, under discussion for more 15 years, has been given new impetus by the recent reduction in the length of draftee service from two years to one.
In today’s “Argumenty nedeli,” Valery Buldakov describes the courses on “how to throw a wooden grenade, assemble an automatic weapon, and at the same time to love the Motherland and survive in difficult times,” courses that young Muscovites have no experience with but ones that their parents will well remember (www.argumenti.ru/education/n248/70176/).
The Soviet Union used such courses in order to keep the draft cycle as short as possible in order to minimize the economic consequences of military service by young men. The Russian powers that be appear to be making the same calculation with demographic declines among draft-age men being an additional factor in their thinking.
Initially, this training will be provided in 70 lessons within the framework of the existing course on “Foundations of Life Security” in the 10th and 11th grades, supplemented by five days in a camp. But Luzhkov hopes to transform it into an independent course, something that would mean students would spend more time on military instruction, possibly from the 5th grade.
If the Moscow mayor proceeds further and especially if other Russian regions copy his initiative, this will almost certainly require a modification of the Russian education law. Under its provisions, demobilized officers cannot serve as teachers because “they do not have pedagogical educations and experience.”
But the Moscow mayor has proposed a solution to that: he wants to equate military service with “pedagogical” experience, an arrangement that could allow schools to have the military instructors they need but only at the cost of offending an already angry educational establishment.
“However strange it may seem,” the “Argumenty nedeli” journalist says, the Committee of Soldiers Mothers of Russia is not against the idea. Flera Salikhovskaya, the president of that group, said she has told the defense minister that restoring as soon as possible “the former ‘Soviet’ variant” of pre-induction military training would be a good thing.
Andrey Tatarinov, the head of United Russia’s youth movement, also supports Luzhkov’s program. Many young Russians “dream” of taking up guns, he said, recalling that when he was in school, “he very much looked forward to the courses in pre-induction military instruction.” Unfortunately, they were discontinued before he finished school.
But Kirill Goncharov, the leader of the Yabloko youth group said he was “categorically against” forced instruction in military affairs. Volunteer soldiers should be trained in this way, he acknowledged, but other young people have no reason to sacrifice time in other courses to learn such skills.
“If the Administration of the President and the Government of the Russian Federation support this idea,” Buldakov said, the necessary amendments to federal legislation could be introduced quickly. Nikolay Bezborodov, a former Duma deputy, says that the parliament’s defense committee has been working on them “already for 15 years.”
Staunton, July 29 – Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is reviving pre-induction military training in his city’s schools, restoring a Soviet-era practice that the federal powers that be have not yet taken despite the fact that this idea, under discussion for more 15 years, has been given new impetus by the recent reduction in the length of draftee service from two years to one.
In today’s “Argumenty nedeli,” Valery Buldakov describes the courses on “how to throw a wooden grenade, assemble an automatic weapon, and at the same time to love the Motherland and survive in difficult times,” courses that young Muscovites have no experience with but ones that their parents will well remember (www.argumenti.ru/education/n248/70176/).
The Soviet Union used such courses in order to keep the draft cycle as short as possible in order to minimize the economic consequences of military service by young men. The Russian powers that be appear to be making the same calculation with demographic declines among draft-age men being an additional factor in their thinking.
Initially, this training will be provided in 70 lessons within the framework of the existing course on “Foundations of Life Security” in the 10th and 11th grades, supplemented by five days in a camp. But Luzhkov hopes to transform it into an independent course, something that would mean students would spend more time on military instruction, possibly from the 5th grade.
If the Moscow mayor proceeds further and especially if other Russian regions copy his initiative, this will almost certainly require a modification of the Russian education law. Under its provisions, demobilized officers cannot serve as teachers because “they do not have pedagogical educations and experience.”
But the Moscow mayor has proposed a solution to that: he wants to equate military service with “pedagogical” experience, an arrangement that could allow schools to have the military instructors they need but only at the cost of offending an already angry educational establishment.
“However strange it may seem,” the “Argumenty nedeli” journalist says, the Committee of Soldiers Mothers of Russia is not against the idea. Flera Salikhovskaya, the president of that group, said she has told the defense minister that restoring as soon as possible “the former ‘Soviet’ variant” of pre-induction military training would be a good thing.
Andrey Tatarinov, the head of United Russia’s youth movement, also supports Luzhkov’s program. Many young Russians “dream” of taking up guns, he said, recalling that when he was in school, “he very much looked forward to the courses in pre-induction military instruction.” Unfortunately, they were discontinued before he finished school.
But Kirill Goncharov, the leader of the Yabloko youth group said he was “categorically against” forced instruction in military affairs. Volunteer soldiers should be trained in this way, he acknowledged, but other young people have no reason to sacrifice time in other courses to learn such skills.
“If the Administration of the President and the Government of the Russian Federation support this idea,” Buldakov said, the necessary amendments to federal legislation could be introduced quickly. Nikolay Bezborodov, a former Duma deputy, says that the parliament’s defense committee has been working on them “already for 15 years.”
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Wrong to Write Off Western Ukraine as Inevitably Anti-Russian, Analyst Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 29 – Russian officials are making a costly and two-fold mistake in viewing Ukraine as a country permanently divided between a virulently nationalistic and Russophobic West and a Russian-speaking and pro-Moscow East, according to a senior analyst at the Moscow Institute of CIS Countries.
On the one hand, Dmitry Korolyev points out, Western Ukraine is less powerful than many think because nearly all Ukrainian leaders, including some of the most nationalistic, come from the East and Center of the country. They may pick up nationalistic themes from the West, but real power comes from the economically more developed East.
And on the other, despite what many in Moscow and Kyiv think, Western Ukraine contains both a sizeable ethnic Russian population that could be mobilized in support of more pro-Russian positions and an ethnic Ukrainian population that could be won over by the promotion of economic and other development (www.materik.ru/rubric/detail.php?ID=10406).
Indeed, Korolyev say in what may presage a new Russian policy toward Western Ukraine, “people [there] are more concerned about their material problems” than with nationalist ideas “and they are inspired ever less by the irresponsible calls of politicians whose lack of talent and obvious thievery is perfectly obvious to all.”
“And that means,” the CIS Institute expert says, that Galichina is hardly such a hopelessly nationalistic ‘appendix’ of Ukraine as this may appear to many in Russia and in the East of Ukraine.” Instead, it is a place where Moscow through its consulate in Lviv and its Ukrainian allies should be working to promote a change of minds.
“In general,” Korolyev begins his essay, “Lviv is justly considered the chief bastion of Ukrainian nationalism (of the “Banderite” variety) and Russophobia.” But at the same time, that city and the rest of Western Ukraine (Galichina) matters “much less” even for the Ukrainian nationalist cause than many imagine.”
Overwhelmingly, the leaders of “the nationalist camp” in Ukraine are “not Western Ukrainian politicians” but rather individuals “from the East and Center of the country. And if one takes the composition of the BYUT faction in the Verkhovna Rada, then almost every third member has a typically Russian last name!”
Because that is so, it is very much an oversimplification to view Ukrainian politics as a contest between “the Russian-speaking South and East” and “’the nationally conscious’ West,” a mistake that gets in the way of understanding what is really going on and one that inevitably leads to the conclusion that Western Ukraine is far more powerful than in fact it is.
“In reality,” Korolyev says, “the struggle for power and influence is conducted by definite groupings (clans) of oligarchs who in this struggle play the ‘pro-Russian’ card or the ‘nationalist’ one,” depending on whether this helps them or not and depending on what region they are working in.
The participants are “exclusively Eastern Ukrainian, Russian speaking” people, who represent primarily the Donbass and other Eastern areas, the Moscow analyst says. “Western Ukrainian capital is very weak and not capable of ‘playing first violin’” in this orchestra, however much some of those who do draw on its notes.
There are three reasons for this: First, “Western Ukraine even under Soviet power was less developed industrially” than the East. Second, post-1991 Ukraine’s “one-sided” promotion of exporting metal products and chemicals only exacerbated this division. And third, such businessmen as exist in the West remain intimidated by their Eastern counterparts.
This “weakness of West Ukrainian capitalism makes impossible its independent and defining participation in the political life of Ukraine and in the formation of its domestic and foreign policy, although at first glance it may seem as if ‘the Westerners’ impose on Ukrainian society the ideas of ‘distancing Ukraine from Moscow’ and ‘Euro-Atlantic integration.’”
According to Korolyev, Western Ukraine plays “an entirely different role”: it is “the main reserve of reaction,” the location of people whose anti-Russian and anti-Soviet attitudes can be whipped up by politicians elsewhere who are quite prepared to make a bow to Western Ukraine ideologically even while they act on behalf of the Center and East otherwise.
People in Western Ukraine are increasingly aware of what is going on, Korolyev suggests, and consequently, “an important foreign policy task of Russia in Ukraine is the neutralization of the [remaining] nationalist attitudes in the Western region” by promoting economic development and playing up the role of Russian speakers there as well.
Staunton, July 29 – Russian officials are making a costly and two-fold mistake in viewing Ukraine as a country permanently divided between a virulently nationalistic and Russophobic West and a Russian-speaking and pro-Moscow East, according to a senior analyst at the Moscow Institute of CIS Countries.
On the one hand, Dmitry Korolyev points out, Western Ukraine is less powerful than many think because nearly all Ukrainian leaders, including some of the most nationalistic, come from the East and Center of the country. They may pick up nationalistic themes from the West, but real power comes from the economically more developed East.
And on the other, despite what many in Moscow and Kyiv think, Western Ukraine contains both a sizeable ethnic Russian population that could be mobilized in support of more pro-Russian positions and an ethnic Ukrainian population that could be won over by the promotion of economic and other development (www.materik.ru/rubric/detail.php?ID=10406).
Indeed, Korolyev say in what may presage a new Russian policy toward Western Ukraine, “people [there] are more concerned about their material problems” than with nationalist ideas “and they are inspired ever less by the irresponsible calls of politicians whose lack of talent and obvious thievery is perfectly obvious to all.”
“And that means,” the CIS Institute expert says, that Galichina is hardly such a hopelessly nationalistic ‘appendix’ of Ukraine as this may appear to many in Russia and in the East of Ukraine.” Instead, it is a place where Moscow through its consulate in Lviv and its Ukrainian allies should be working to promote a change of minds.
“In general,” Korolyev begins his essay, “Lviv is justly considered the chief bastion of Ukrainian nationalism (of the “Banderite” variety) and Russophobia.” But at the same time, that city and the rest of Western Ukraine (Galichina) matters “much less” even for the Ukrainian nationalist cause than many imagine.”
Overwhelmingly, the leaders of “the nationalist camp” in Ukraine are “not Western Ukrainian politicians” but rather individuals “from the East and Center of the country. And if one takes the composition of the BYUT faction in the Verkhovna Rada, then almost every third member has a typically Russian last name!”
Because that is so, it is very much an oversimplification to view Ukrainian politics as a contest between “the Russian-speaking South and East” and “’the nationally conscious’ West,” a mistake that gets in the way of understanding what is really going on and one that inevitably leads to the conclusion that Western Ukraine is far more powerful than in fact it is.
“In reality,” Korolyev says, “the struggle for power and influence is conducted by definite groupings (clans) of oligarchs who in this struggle play the ‘pro-Russian’ card or the ‘nationalist’ one,” depending on whether this helps them or not and depending on what region they are working in.
The participants are “exclusively Eastern Ukrainian, Russian speaking” people, who represent primarily the Donbass and other Eastern areas, the Moscow analyst says. “Western Ukrainian capital is very weak and not capable of ‘playing first violin’” in this orchestra, however much some of those who do draw on its notes.
There are three reasons for this: First, “Western Ukraine even under Soviet power was less developed industrially” than the East. Second, post-1991 Ukraine’s “one-sided” promotion of exporting metal products and chemicals only exacerbated this division. And third, such businessmen as exist in the West remain intimidated by their Eastern counterparts.
This “weakness of West Ukrainian capitalism makes impossible its independent and defining participation in the political life of Ukraine and in the formation of its domestic and foreign policy, although at first glance it may seem as if ‘the Westerners’ impose on Ukrainian society the ideas of ‘distancing Ukraine from Moscow’ and ‘Euro-Atlantic integration.’”
According to Korolyev, Western Ukraine plays “an entirely different role”: it is “the main reserve of reaction,” the location of people whose anti-Russian and anti-Soviet attitudes can be whipped up by politicians elsewhere who are quite prepared to make a bow to Western Ukraine ideologically even while they act on behalf of the Center and East otherwise.
People in Western Ukraine are increasingly aware of what is going on, Korolyev suggests, and consequently, “an important foreign policy task of Russia in Ukraine is the neutralization of the [remaining] nationalist attitudes in the Western region” by promoting economic development and playing up the role of Russian speakers there as well.
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